The presumed frontrunners in the crowded Congressional District 2 race did not fare well with the left-leaning crowd at a forum last week.
Ann Kirkpatrick—who mostly recently represented the neighboring Congressional District 1 and who has, until her decision to seek the CD2 seat, called Flagstaff and Phoenix home—was outright booed for some of her moderate positions. And only 7 percent of those who filled out a post-debate survey said that Matt Heinz, the physician who lost the CD2 race by a wide margin two years ago, was their choice in the upcoming Aug. 28 primary.
Admittedly, the crowd at the forum presented by Represent Me AZ, is not a representative sample of the Democratic voters who will go to the polls next month. But they clearly favored two of the underdogs who were among the six candidates on the stage: political newcomer Billy Kovacs and former state lawmaker Bruce Wheeler.
Kovacs, a 31-year-old entrepreneur who has been involved the restaurant and hospitality sector, received the most exuberant cheers. The crowd applauded Kovacs’ comments on environmental issues such as climate change and opposing the Rosemont Mine. Kovacs took his mining opposition a step further and said that Arizona should get rid of mining all together and instead put money into precious metal recycling centers, which he says would be less costly and more sustainable.
“We don’t need to be doing the old idea,” he said. “We need to make sure that we have new ideas.”
Among other important issues, Kovacs supports a $15 minimum wage, abolishing ICE, Medicare for all and tribal sovereignty. He promoted Arizona’s economy as ambassador to the Arizona Technology Council. And as an ambassador with Tech Launch Arizona, he worked to connect talented UA graduates to programs and resources meant to retain young professionals. He’s mentored students and can usually be found supporting youth at political action events.
Kovacs received a 4.5 GPA, a solid A, in the post-debate survey. Audience members were asked to rate candidates on an A-F scale and share who they would vote for. More than 42 percent who pledged support to a certain candidate chose Kovacs.
The runner up was Wheeler, who served in the Arizona Legislature in the 1970s, the Tucson City Council in the late ’80s and early ’90s and then again in the Legislature until last year. Wheeler earned an A- from the crowd, with a 4.2 GPA and 36 percent of participants pledging their vote. Wheeler was the winner of the previous CD2 forum held by Represent Me AZ.
Like Kovacs, Wheeler falls on the left side of Democratic values, raising his hand to abolish ICE, legalize weed, strengthen Dodd-Frank and of course, support universal health care. His Medicare for All plan worked like this: The United States spends $3.2 trillion on healthcare; 27 million Americans remain uninsured; and the cost of Medicare-for-all $1.38 trillion. And yes, he has a plan on where that money will come from.
Wheeler supports policies that would regulate the rising cost of prescription drugs. He’s for restricting the use of school vouchers and fully funding public education. Among other issues he supports are low interest rates for college loans, investing in renewable energy, and fair and humane immigration policy.
The tension was thick between former state lawmaker Heinz and former Congresswoman Kirkpatrick, who have led the polls that have been released so far in the race for the seat now held by Rep. Martha McSally. McSally is now seeking a U.S. Senate seat, leaving the highly competitive District 2 seat open in the November election.
Survey participants gave Kirkpatrick a 2.5 GPA, or a D. Heinz received a 3.3 GPA—an average C-. Only 8 percent of participants plan to vote for Kirkpatrick. An even smaller number pledged to vote for the other two candidates on the stage, retired Assistant Secretary of the Army Mary Matiella and Barbara Sherry, who describes herself as an “LGBT mortgage-broker-turned-rancher.”
Represent Me AZ, who hosted the event, revoked an invitation to the seventh candidate, Yahya Yuksel, for the way he handled rape accusations at a press conference earlier in the week. Forum moderator Marion Chubon said Yuksel’s behavior lacked responsibility following the allegations. Yuksel, understandably, wasn’t on the survey at all.
Although Represent Me AZ called their survey “very scientific,” the group’s members were being sarcastic. The 215 participants who are motivated enough to attend a primary forum are not a scientific sampling of the 133,300 registered Democrats in the district.
On paper, Kirkpatrick and Heinz would appear to be the strongest candidates. They have raised more money in this race than their opponents, with Kirkpatrick raising more than $1.76 million and Heinz raising nearly roughly $850,000 ($375,000 of which he loaned himself). Matiella is next with roughly $257,000, followed by Kovacs with about $72,000.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2018.
“put money into precious metal recycling centers, which he says would be less costly and more sustainable”
Copper is already recycled. It’s so valuable thieves regularly steal copper wiring to sell for meth. What a moron.
“Kovacs, a 31-year-old entrepreneur who has been involved the restaurant and hospitality sector”
Ah, so someone who hires a lot of illegals and makes money off of paying them next to nothing instead of hiring Americans. No wonder he wants to run as a Democrat: so he can keep his businesses fully staffed in the back of the house.
Please do not call Ann Kirkpatrick a moderate. I used to respect her, and would have considered voting for her.
However, the tenor of her current ad campaign repudiates everything she has ever stood for. She has veered off the charts left to try and outflank Matt Heinz.
I remember Ike. When he decided to run he had to pick, D or R. He was a slight right of center moderate. Today, he would be considered a flaming, off the chart, liberal. 50 years of right wing political talk shows and fox entertainment’s addition have done their job, pushing the idea of where the centerline is, to the 75 yard line. The crazy left, like Bernie Sanders would have just been called a liberal in the 60’s. Murkowski and Collins, to far left of the republican party are both to the right of Barry Goldwater. Funny how that happened.
Kenneth Groves, I believe you have the scenario totally reversed. The media, celebrities, and the activists have moved the centerline to the 75 yard line, but in the other direction.
However, I do agree with you that Goldwater would not be welcome in today’s Republican Party. He was way too libertarian.
However, on the Democratic side, John F Kennedy would not be welcome in today’s Democratic Party.
The problem with both mainline parties is that they think they know better than you what is good for you, and will not hesitate to use the power of government to enforce their views.
Kovaks sounds like he has no idea what he is talking about, he is just preaching talking points that poll well with the far left but fall apart when you actually look at realistic implementation, transitions and effecting any kind of real change. It’s ok to have some elected wing nuts but Tucson is a moderate district, possibly the most moderate in the country, and we should be represented by a local who fits the bill, someone like Mary Matiella.
Keep pushing the left further left and we can kiss the party goodbye. Is this really a sane agenda? Or just over reaction to President Trump?
bslap: “Copper is already recycled. It’s so valuable thieves regularly steal copper wiring to sell for meth. What a moron.”
– Do you know how many smelters there are in the U.S. to recycle cooper? 10? 100? Actually, not a single one The U.S. reclaims more cooper from recycling than it imports, but it’s all sent overseas for actual recycling – melted in smelters to make new copper products – 90% in China. You might want to let up on the name calling, because such ignorance on the topic kinda makes you look like what you called Kovacs.
Despite this rag and it’s commenters interest in reducing each candidates positions into bumper stickers, and a silly rating system worthy of those who predicted Hillary’s win, This community deserves articles that have more depth, information, and respect for all candidates willing to put up with the tedious journey of getting elected whether being a D or R, and answer softball questions asked by lazy, agenda serving journalists. We deserve better than this crap. We get the gov’t we deserve…there are no do overs…come on weekly, you can do better than a 1,000 word freshman level essay. Evaluate the candidates, despite the attendees or the organizers agenda.
Cochise Citizen,
First of all, I am not trying to defend bslap but you are wrong about copper smelters. A smelter is a smelter. There is not a special smelter for recycling copper. The USA has 3 major copper smelters. Should we build more to process recycled copper? There is no economic basis for this. Why? The US is a net exporter of copper, new and recycled. The demand for copper abroad exceeds domestic demand. It would make little economic sense to build new smelters here in the USA that pollute our environment and would cost more money when we can just export the recyclable copper at a lower cost and let other countries smelt and refine it themselves. This is the result of free market economics. Unfortunately, eliminating free trade is one of the things that the far left and the far right seems to have in common these days.
Also, it should be added that yes, most of the old scrap copper is exported to China, but only about 10% of that comes back to the USA. The amount of recycled scrap copper that stays domestic still outnumbers that amount that goes to China for processing and comes back. This fluctuates year to year based on copper prices. As prices go up, domestic recycling and refining goes up as well. Again it’s all about free trade. BUT the vast majority of recycled copper that is sent abroad never comes back to the US because the demand in Asia, specifically China, far out weighs domestic demand.
I have read things that Kovacs has written in the past and his understanding of these sorts of things sounds suspiciously similar to yours. By that I mean uninformed and factually incorrect with a complete misunderstanding of how commodity markets works and how international trade functions. I would be worried about electing someone who has to learn on the job to such an important position at such an important time.
beano,
Copper is not a precious metal!
Free trade doesn’t mean zero tariffs, more importantly, it’s related to subsidies.
China’s steel and aluminum industries, have built huge capacity, more than their domestic manufacturers could possibly need. This happened because the chinese government approached these industries decades ago and asked the question.”what can the gov’t do, to reduce your costs, improve efficiency, and increase capacity? The largest cost to reduce bauxite into aluminum metal, or iron ore into pig iron and then steel, is energy.
The Chinese gov’t built a gaggle of utilitity providers near these smelters, so that the producers of steel and aluminum pay almost nothing for their energy. This allows China to export this excess capacity for a price that is less than US producers can make it. These are not more efficient plants, harder working employees, etc, etc.
Is this free trade or a level playing field? Europe plays this game as well.
I agree with most of your analysis of exported scrap copper, just not the free trade aspect.
You also correctly imply that real recycling is a heavy industrial process, resulting in environmental degradation, toxic gases and residues, and hazardous waste. In fact, I would argue that having a secondary pickup of these items using similar combustion engine trucks, worsen air pollution and global warming and simply replace one type of pollution with another. It ain’t magic. Separating garbage, paper, cans, etc is not recycling despite our need to feel good about doing it. It’s just a collection of commodities…nothing is recycled until it’s made into something new.
I can’t help but wonder how many of the folks who have commented here actually attended or watched the video of this very illuminating forum. Calling the audience lefties (headline) is pretty silly unless it can be backed up by poll data. Suppose the Tucson area democrats have just had enough of the kind of representation we have had!?
HumanBean: “The US is a net exporter of copper, new and recycled”
– You might consider a bit of research:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states…
“Imports of Copper in the United States increased to 484.70 USD Million in January 2017 from 387.22 USD Million in December of 2016”
There’s lots of money on that stage and poverty is still an ongoing issue, dr king stated that poverty is a crime in the 21st century. Many voters will never have the funds to get a campaign going and its nearly impossible for a poor person, an orphan or a foster child to hold office or lead a political office that raised them. This says alot where the Arizona corporation commission fights alternative energy and minimum wage efforts. The governors office profits off of mines, old energy ,military industrial investments , and for profit prisons while privatizing education for profit. 85% of the state legislature is in bed with special interests. Were not even getting into Monsanto or the increasing lack of clean water. If money is speech the money less are silent in a free country. prisons have walls not countries ones that did eroded from existing on the world stage. The Judicial Branch believes its above the law and free of public spotlight. Potter4Az I am not on a ballot. I support the us Constitution, i believe the the power of the people. Find me in a courthouse.