All Quiet on the Campaign Front
What if they had an election and nobody ran?
As we enter 2015, it looks like it could be a rough year for political junkies.
The odd years bring us Tucson City Council elections. This year, Mayor Jonathan Rothschild is wrapping up his first term and looking for a second one. So far, Rothschild has drawn no announced opposition. No Democrats are stepping up to challenge him in the primary, no Republicans are stepping up to challenge him in the general.
That doesn’t mean the newly elected Pima County Republican Party chairman Bill Beard won’t find someone; it just means no one has enough fire in the belly to have started the ol’ fundraising and organizational effort.
This is not entirely surprising, given that Democrats have a significant voter-registration advantage over Republicans in the city of Tucson. You may recall how this went the last time out: There were two would-be challengers to Rothschild, but both Shaun McClusky and Ron Asta were booted from the 2011 ballot because they didn’t turn in enough valid signatures. (And don’t even get us started on the would-be Democratic challenger to Rothschild, an oddball who called himself a billionaire based on some quasi-legal mumbo-jumbo he cooked up that made him the owner of all the houses in Tucson or some such nonsense. Marshall Home—who had filed so many actions in federal court that he was banned from doing so without a lawyer’s approval—had some ‘splaining to do with the feds after his brief political career collapsed.
After vanquishing that lineup in the courts, Rothschild ended up facing GOP write-in candidate Rick Grinnell, who launched his campaign with a promise to cut garbage service. It went downhill from there and Grinnell lost by 15 percentage points.
Unless Republicans can come up with a better candidate this year (and the fact that nobody is even floating a few names makes us think they’re not likely to), Rothschild will be cruising to an easy re-election.
It’s just as quiet on the council front. The three Democrats up for re-election—Ward 2’s Paul Cunningham, Ward 3’s Regina Romero, Ward 4’s Shirley Scott—are also facing no competition. Cunningham and Scott have both filed their 2015 campaign paperwork and Romero is expected to launch her campaign soon.
Scott, who was first elected to the council in 1995, nearly lost in 2011, but prevailed by just 2 percentage points, so she was vulnerable in her last run.
We’re certainly hoping that some decent candidates will emerge to take on the Democrats—and not only because we want something to do in the fall. We have serious challenges facing us here in Black Rock that deserve serious debate. What should Broadway Boulevard look like? Should the city turn over the bus system to a regional transportation authority? Should the city’s golf courses be turned into parks? Why can’t we fix more of our streets? Is our water policy on target? How are we going to get the budget back on a sustainable path?
Ah, who are we kidding? If we get a campaign, it will probably all be about potholes, Rio Nuevo and Grand Canyon University.
Bondage Gear
Will Pima County go for a bond election?
There’s still a chance that Pima County could ask voters to approve a bond package on the November ballot, although the members of the Board of Supervisors that we’ve talked to remain skittish about the idea.
Nonetheless, the Pima County Bond Committee continues to whittle down the list of projects, which started out north of $2 billion. We hear that that Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry wants to see a final bond package in the $550 million range, so there’s work there to be done to come up with a package that includes economic-development projects, park improvements, community centers and more.
If it’s gonna go on the ballot, then the folks who stand to benefit are going to have to talk to some of their friends on the Board of Supervisors.
Charter Chatter
Yet another boring effort to reform the city’s bureaucracy, help voters sleep
We hear the usual suspects are trying to agree on a package of changes to the city’s charter, a sort of constitution for the city that sets up the powers of the mayor and council, controls how the elections are run and includes other provisions that our city fathers believed important at the close of the roaring ’20s.
Various reformers backed a similar measure back in 2010, but whatever the merits may have it been, it never had a prayer of passing because it was attached to a gigantic pay raise for the mayor and City Council.
We’ll see what the changes look like, but it probably does make sense to give the mayor more powers than planting trees and reading to children. One big deal that could be a game-changer: a move to ward-only elections instead of the current system of having ward-only primary elections and citywide general elections. (Even if you understand how the current system works, try explaining it to the average Tucson resident who doesn’t give a shit about city politics.)
A final 2015 election note: John Kromko is still hard at work with his political mischief. He and his merry band are out collecting signatures to ask voters to ban those darn high-tech cameras that bust speeders and lead-footed drivers who run red lights. Kromko didn’t have enough signatures the last time he tried to stop the growing influence of Robocop in our lives on the 2013 ballot. Can he defeat the machines this year?
“Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel” airs every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on KGUN-9. This week, former state lawmaker Jonathan Paton and attorney Jeff Rogers look back at the top political stories of 2014 and look ahead to what we’re likely to see in 2015.
This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2015.
Um, what is the difference between the “serious” issue of fixing our streets and what the Skinny belittles as attention to potholes? Why is a discussion of budget issues not related to Rio Nuevo? And how is the important issue of selling our parks not related to the sale of El Rio to Grand Canyon University?
What is most amazing is how the Weekly (and the Star) have ignored one of the most important issues regarding El Rio and G.C.U., and that is the city’s illegal actions to prevent public disclosure of public documents. You would think that this might be an important issue for the press. I guess you would be wrong if you did!
Um, what is the difference between the “serious” issue of fixing our streets and what the Skinny belittles as attention to potholes? Why is a discussion of budget issues not related to Rio Nuevo? And how is the important issue of selling our parks not related to the sale of El Rio to Grand Canyon University?
What is most amazing is how the Weekly (and the Star) have ignored one of the most important issues regarding El Rio and G.C.U., and that is the city’s illegal actions to prevent public disclosure of public documents. You would think that this might be an important issue for the press. I guess you would be wrong if you did!
This is how they operate. If we don’t like their lawlessness, we are supposed to leave.
Sorry, ain’t going to happen. Pressure up for 2015. Hold the criminals accountable, with or without the media.
Right, Rat. You are talking about Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield, aren’t you?
Dear Jim Nintzel,
Your recent column “All Quiet On the Campaign Front: What if they gave an election and nobody ran?” wishes Tucson had candidates in local political races to debate big ideas. You recap what a laughable hullabaloo the two major parties had in fielding mayoral candidates in 2011.
But you neglected to mention that the Green Party offered their party members the only chance to vote in a contested primary race for Mayor in 2011. And, once a Green winner emerged, she invited her primary opponent to serve as her campaign manager, showing politics doesn’t always have to be divisive and ugly.
The 2011 Green Party mayoral candidate qualified for the City’s matching funds by raising many small individual contributions. The Green Party does not accept corporate donations. At the end of the campaign, unspent money was returned to the City. All the financial records were submitted promptly, and the amount spent per vote gained was a fraction of what it cost the Democrat and Republican campaigns.
The Green Party got international media coverage for conducting the Tucson Mayoral campaign out of a tent amid the Occupy Tucson encampment in the Veinte de Agosto Park. The Tucson Weekly’s cover story on 2011 Mayoral candidates featured Mr. Rothschild and Mr. Grinnell on the front cover, but stuck the Green candidate’s picture in the middle of the magazine. And the TW reporter was 20 minutes late to the scheduled interview appointment.
The Green Party needed to earn 5% of the total ballots cast for the Party to qualify to run candidates in the 2015 Mayoral race. But 2011 Green Party mayoral candidate Mary DeCamp received only 4.94%, so the Green Party does not merit a place on the ballot this year.
Jim, I tried to be a good candidate. I was knowledgeable, earnest, engaged, and showed up for all the debates. I had a sense of humor. I didn’t slander or malign. And I don’t even get an acknowledgment in your column that I stepped up and offered myself as a candidate? Maybe the lack of local candidates has something to do with how the local media generally treat third-party alternatives?
My 2015 wish is that people will exercise the courage of their convictions instead of surrendering to the status quo. There are great ideas, and many of them are afoot here in Tucson. Groups, neighborhoods, faith communities, and all sorts of social networks are forming compassionate bonds and getting good work done. Let us hope that the officials who are elected, despite the paucity of candidates, listen to Tucsonans who have ideas on how to make the Old Pueblo a good home.
Love & Peace,
Mary
What Tucson needs is not more power or more money for its Mayor and Council. What’s needed is more transparency regarding the actions of the Mayor and Council, and all its elected officials…. more pressure on elected officials to act in the interest of ALL residents of Tucson, not just those with lots of money and power. But to achieve that, we will have to have elections that are fully publicly funded only….. elections where private spending on campaigns is prohibited…. elections where the local TV news networks are required to provide the public with real debates among all candidates during primetime viewing, and where all candidates are provided the exact same amount of money for ads that address only the issues and voting records of candidates…. not mudslinging about personal issues.
Until we have that, things are not going to get better for Tucson. The only thing that will continue to improve is the growth of short-term profits by the already wealthiest corporations and individuals in and around Tucson.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has completely blocked any city or town or state from being able to pass publicly funded elections, by claiming that a corporations is a person, and therefore has all the rights of a person, including freedom of speech, and that same Supreme Court defined money as speech. So any attempt to regulate or prohibit money buying our elections is against the law!
This means that the only chance Tucson and any other city in our nation has, for improving the lives of average citizens, is passage of an amendment to the US Constitution, which entirely eliminates corporate personhood and the false definition of money as speech, and makes it clear that campaign funding and spending can be regulated and even prohibited by government of the people. So far only one of the amendments proposed will do this…. the Move To Amend amendment…. the “We the People Amendment”. for more details and to sign the petition for passage of this amendment go to movetoamend.org.
Lee