The Widow Even Tries To Work Election Magic With Her Deceased Hubby's Campaign Strategies. By The Editors THERE'S NO DOUBT Brenda Even is determined to win the Pima County Board of Supervisors District 4 seat her late husband held for about four months in 1996. Brenda, who is giving up the TUSD Board seat she's held for the last eight years to make the jump into county politics, was bitterly disappointed she wasn't appointed to the county seat. (Instead, Ray Carroll landed the job after a split vote by the Board of Supervisors and the Clerk of the Board). Spurned, Brenda began laying the groundwork for her own campaign. She'll face Carroll and accountant Ken Marcus, whose name also came up during the appointment process. As we watch Brenda's campaign unfold, we're struck by a sense of deja vu. We noted in the past that Brenda cribbed most of her bio sheet from John Even's 1996 biography ("Ms. Originality," The Skinny, Tucson Weekly, November 26, 1997). Now she's released one of her first campaign pieces--and once again, as you can see, it appears that Brenda is a copycat. John Even ran a successful race in 1996 by stressing his competency compared to incumbent Paul Marsh, whose allegiance to then-Supervisor Ed Moore probably cost Marsh the seat. But the ground has shifted significantly since 1996. Supervisors are now openly admitting that growth doesn't pay for itself, and that drastic measures are necessary to reign in the rampaging development industry. Recent polls show that Arizona voters strongly support such measures--as well as a Sierra Club ballot initiative that would also set strict guidelines for bulldozing the unique Sonoran Desert. John Even, like Paul Marsh, was a friend of the development community, and both candidates had plenty of stucco-dollars in their campaign warchests. But this time out, Brenda will be facing two environmentally sensitive candidates who are both responding to Pima County's paradigm shift on the growth issue. If Brenda hopes to win with the same sort of campaign that her husband ran, she's likely to find out that, as Lyndon Johnson once observed, "that dog don't hunt."

Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth