Month: October 2017

Can an Independent candidate win in Tucson?

by

Can an Independent candidate win in a Tucson City Council race?  For the first time in a long time, an Independent (Gary  Watson in Ward 3) is running for political office in Tucson.  Having reported for Tucsoncitizen.com for 4.5 years and here at Blogforarizona.net for 3.5 years, I’m trying to recall when Independents have run or been in political office.

Former Republican Pima County Supervisor Ed Moore ran for re-election in Nov. 1996 as an Independent, and lost to newcomer Democrat Sharon Bronson.  Tucson City Council member Carol West was a long time Democrat and changed to Independent, then did not seek re-election in 2007.   Former Republican Gene Chewning ran for AZ House in LD 27 in 2010 as an Independent and lost, as did former Dem AZ House Representative Ted Downing in LD 28 State Senate race. And didn’t Green Party candidate Dave Ewoldt also run as an Independent for State Senator in LD 28, to get onto the 2010 General Election ballot?  They both lost to the Democrat incumbent Senator.

So, no Independent candidate has run and won  in Tucson (as far as I know). Chewning told me after his 2010 loss, that because he ran as an Independent, he no longer had a party structure to assist in his campaigning. He got a lot more votes as a Republican for the same LD 27 House race in 2006 (11,327 to 4,526).

Firefighter /Captain of a Northwest fire station Gary Watson (I, former Republican) said at a recent AZ Independents forum at Murphy-Wilmot library that he was “not R enough for the Republican Party”, and “not D enough for the Democratic Party”.

Gary Watson

Read more

Amend the Constitution to reform the U.S. Senate

by

While the U.S. Supreme Court grapples with the question of ending partisan gerrymandering of House seats, little attention is paid to the truly undemocratic Senate where each state, regardless of population, has two senators, the result of the Connecticut Compromise between the large states which wanted equal representation in Congress based on population, and the smaller states that worried about losing autonomy to the larger states. The undemocratic nature of the Senate offended many of the framers but it was necessary in order to obtain ratification of the Constituion by the states. It was a compromise of political expediency that has long since outlived its purpose.

America has developed from a rural agrarian society in 1787 to an urban population overwhelmingly concentrated in large metropolitan cities. This has resulted in the United States now being a non-majoritarian democracy, in which small rural states weild a disproportionate share of political power over the majority living in more populous states.

Population Map

E.J. Dionne Jr., Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann,the authors of “One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported,” explain this dynamic in an op-ed today, Why the majority keeps losing on guns:

Why does our political system make it impossible even to consider solutions to gun violence? After the massacre in Las Vegas that has so far taken nearly 60 lives and left more than 500 injured, the first reaction of the many politicians who carry water for the gun lobby was to declare it “premature” to discuss measures to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

The “premature” word echoed from President Trump’s White House on down, and those who used it were really saying that Congress would never enact even modest efforts to prevent mass shootings. This is damning evidence of the stranglehold that far-right lobbies have on today’s Republicans, who extol law and order except when maintaining it requires confronting the National Rifle Association.

But something else is at work here. As we argue in our book, “One Nation After Trump,” the United States is now a non-majoritarian democracy. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, that’s because it is. Claims that our republic is democratic are undermined by a system that vastly overrepresents the interests of rural areas and small states. This leaves the large share of Americans in metropolitan areas with limited influence over national policy. Nowhere is the imbalance more dramatic or destructive than on the issue of gun control.

Read more

Autumn Moon Festival At Tucson Chinese Cultural Center

by

  PROGRAM: “Where Are You From?” TIME: 6-8:30 PM DATE: Saturday, October 7th, 2017 WHERE:  Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, 1288 W. River Rd. Featuring Asian Pacific American Storytellers from around Tucson ** and special guest storytellers from Phoenix**Celebrating diversity and fighting stereotypes under the Autumn Moon In collaboration with the National Asian Pacific American Women’s … Read more

Justice Kennedy is the key vote to ending partisan gerrymandering

by

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Gill v. Whitford on Tuesday, in which the justices will decide whether Wisconsin’s electoral maps are the product of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

From the oral argument transcript, it appears that Justice Anthony Kennedy is seeking an answer to end partisan gerrymandering, and he will be the decisive vote.  If so, he will be the author of the opinion in this case, and he will influence other redistricting cases from North Carolina, Virginia and Texas on the court’s docket.

Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog reports, Argument analysis: Cautious optimism for challengers in Wisconsin redistricting case?

The district court may have regarded this case as a “straightforward” one, but few justices seemed to share that sentiment today. That’s not particularly surprising, because the issue of partisan gerrymandering has deeply divided the Supreme Court in the past. Thirteen years ago, the justices rejected a challenge to Pennsylvania’s redistricting plan, with four justices agreeing that courts should decline to review partisan-gerrymandering claims, because it is too hard to come up with a manageable test to determine when politics plays too influential a role in redistricting. Four other justices would have allowed courts to review partisan-gerrymandering claims. That left Justice Anthony Kennedy, who agreed that the Supreme Court should stay out of the Pennsylvania case but suggested that courts could play a role in reviewing partisan-gerrymandering cases in the future if a workable standard could be found.

Read more