Observations regarding yesterday’s primary:
Gabby Giffords’ election-night party was way more rockin’ than Randy Graf’s. Not saying that’s gonna make the difference come November, but it’s clear that the GOP is gonna need a lot more counseling than the Democrats are.
As we’ve noted previously in The Skinny, Clean Elections is empowering the GOP’s right-wing more than anybody else, as demonstrated up in Legislative District 26, where Cap’n Al Melvin took out Toni Hellon, and David Jorgenson grabbed an open seat. Something tells us that the architects of Clean Elections didn’t have that in mind.
Local Democrats remain in denial over the real impact of Clean Elections and hope that their LD26 candidates now have a better chance in November. Yes, and Iraq will soon be a functioning democracy. In the meantime, Hellon’s defeat means a setback for Sen. Tim Bee’s push to become Senate President. Bad news for Southern Arizona.
Campaign organization beat out name recognition in almost every showdown yesterday. Giffords beat Weiss. Drake beat Sweeney. Munsil beat Goldwater. Melvin beat Hellon.
We’ll be poking around the corpse of the body electorate more in next week’s dead-plant edition.
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2006.
Well said about Clean Elections. My prof in grad school taught me that changing institutions often come back to haunt people. The very thing that you design to benefit you can be used effectively by the people who later figure it all out. One good reason why some conservatives in this state should NOT be pushing for judicial elections over our current merit system. Learn to play the game you have before you change the rules to benefit you.
Question: Any rumblings that the crew backing Huffman might now quietly (or even publicly) back Giffords? I mean, where will all the developers and home builders get their labor if folks like Graf win the day?
Roger: It’s a guess as to what the Huffman money crew will do now. A lot of people are guessing that his backers will stay out of Graf/Huffman and, assuming Gabby’s elected, gear up to back someone to knock her out in two years. But then again … that’s just a guess. The answer will be revealed soon, whatever it is.