Another CD 8 Candidate Forum

KVOA News 4 asked each of the Democratic Candidates what they thought the #1 issue was. Many of the answers staked out familiar territory and conformed pretty closely to the crosstabs of every poll on the race I’ve seen: Iraq (Rodriguez), Healthcare (Weiss), Immigration (Johnson). Every candidate had their own issue they were trying to own, presumably to avoid just saying "me too…" all the time.

There were some surprises.

Francine Shacter identified protecting the integrity of our Constitutional system as her top priority. Good on her. The degree to which the Administration and the GOP leadership have targeted our democratic institutions for denegration and destruction is the most shocking, outrageous, and dangerous aspect of the majority’s agenda. She really is the only candidate that is consistently hitting this message. More of them should.

Jeff Latas returned to his earliest and primary theme of America’s energy policy leading us into a foriegn policy boondoggle as his most important issue. This issue is one that is certainly begining to make in-roads into conventional wisdom across the political spectrum. Jeff is certainly right, our dependence on foriegn oil is problematic; even the Republicans are recognizing this fact. Their solution, however, is not to diversify our energy supply and invest in alternative sources and technologies and/or increase efficiency, it’s to drill for more petroleum and mine other hyrocarbon sources here at home. All the GOP candidates in CD 8 want to tap domestic off-shore reserves, drill in ANWR, and invest in ‘clean coal’ and natural gas, and technologies to make gasoline out of coal, shale, and tar sands.

Jeff’s issue is fertile political ground, for the simple reason that it can be framed as reducing our dependence foriegn oil by increasing production of domestic oil and completely ignoring the climatalogical impact of our energy profile. Both sides of the aisle can play the game and reap the political rewards they seek.

Finally, Gabby Giffords has perhaps the most unexpected response of the evening. She answered that she believed the number one issue of the race to be universal all-day Kindergarten. Huh?

Education is certainly important, but 93% of the funding comes from state and local revenues, and most of the important decisions are made at the state level or below. The Federal government, and Congress in particular, just don’t have all that much impact on eduction policy. I could see railing against NCLB – who doesn’t these days – and that is a strong area of Federal involvement in the schools as well as a fundamentally flawed policy. But all-day K? It sounds like Gabby is running for Governor, or maybe Alex Rodriguez’ TUSD seat, or maybe her old LD 28 State Senate seat.

Maybe she was just choosing something fresh, or floating a trial balloon, or maybe she was trying to mend fences with Janet (who apparently is a little whiffed at Gabby for taking a DLC junket instead of sitting in committee to help derail the GOP budget, and whose pet project has been all-day K). I don’t know. But it was certainly that oddest top priority to show up that evening.

If Gabby, or one of the other candidates, wants to go all family-centered in their policy profile let’s try a few issues that the Feds could play a large role in, like expanded family leave, paid or subsidized day care, manditory flex time or a shorter full-time work week, raising the minimum wage above poverty, or universal health care from conception to 18 years of age. Or, if she really want to talk about education, maybe she could advocate for paid tuition to any college that admits them for every young person who granduates high school and completes a term of national service, either before or after college.

There was also considerable controversy stirred by Patty taking aim at Gabby’s record as a state legislator. I wasn’t at the forum, but by all accounts it comared Gabby’s voting record with that of Republican Steve Huffman. I asked the Weiss campaign about the basis of those allegations, and they were happy to share.

• Download huffman_giffords_20032005_summary.xls

  (Excel file)

• Download huffman_and_giffords_votes_20032005.xls

  (Excel file)

• Download giffords_votes_against_gov.doc (Word file)

These documents record Giffords’ votes from 2003 -2005 and compare them to Steve Huffman’s votes on the same bills, and the Governors signature or veto of bills. Whether or not this research actually proves anything is certainly a debatable point, but they are not just attacks without substance, and you can look at the data for yourself.

I think that it is likely that if you compared any Democrat to any Republican you would get a large percentage of overlap in their votes. Many of the bills are simply not at all controversial. I would guess you could compare the voting record of the most ideological Republican and most ideological Democrat and they would be congruent on more than 50% of their votes. What would be interesting is to see how the Democratic caucus member’s votes average in their congruence with the GOP party line. Then you would have a baseline to work from that removes the noncontroversial bills from the mix. Then you would know if a particular Democrat was voting against their caucus and with the opposition more regularly than other Democrats.

It could be that Gabby voted against her caucus more often than others, I don’t know. Comparing her to Steve Huffman and getting a 90% average congruence in their votes certainly sounds bad, but it may be more heat than light. That 10% might contain a whole world of difference; or, then again, it might not. Only when you take a close look at the particular bills involved would you get an accurate picture of Gabby’s ideological predelictions.