Terry Goddard

ExPhoenix Mayor and State Attorney General Terry Goddard Spearhead a New Outlaw Dirty Money Initiative

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APS holds a blind auction for two State Corporation Seats in 2014, bankrolling the two candidates that agree with their rate hiking agenda. The State Legislature, led by Vince “Dark Money is Good” Leach, has adopted measures to attack the enforceability of voter-approved Dark Money Ordinances in Tempe (which passed with 91 percent voter approval) … Read more

Free “Dark Money” film screening & panel discussion

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Sunday January 27, 1:30 to 4 p.m Summit Ridge Community Church, 505 W. Hardy Rd. Tucson Hosted by Represent.Us Tucson and 2 others “Watch Tucson’s first free screening of “Dark Money”, an award-winning documentary by Kimberly Reed exposing political corruption in Montana. Free childcare from 1:15 p.m. to 4:15 p.m., too. The film draws parallels … Read more

Campaign to Outlaw Dirty Money with a “Right to Know” Initiative

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Dark Money is so prevalent that it helped defeat preschool scholarships in Tucson. The Koch brothers’ front organization “Americans for Prosperity” teamed up with local Republicans to kill Prop. 204. And that’s not all. Governor Doug Ducey was elected in 2014 with $3.5 million in spending by six dark-money groups, and he signed a law … Read more

Robert Robb is correct, but also mistaken, in his analysis of Top Two Primary.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

johnson top two
Photo: Arizona Republic

Robert Robb makes a logically consistent, persuasive, and correct argument (sort of) in favor of the 2016 Top Two Primary initiative in Arizona:

The principal objective of the top-two primary initiative shouldn’t be sugarcoated.

It isn’t to increase voter turnout or eliminate discriminatory barriers to independent candidates. Those might be desired byproducts. But they are not the main event.

The principal objective, the main event, is to reduce the influence of conservative Republicans in state government and politics. Those who don’t like the outcomes of Arizona elections want to change those outcomes by changing the rules.

It’s really about reducing conservative power

Plainly stating the principal objective shouldn’t settle the argument, even for conservative Republicans. For there is something else that should be plainly stated: The current system of partisan primaries doesn’t fit today’s political demography in Arizona.

Under the current system, state law establishes conditions for having a political party recognized. Taxpayers pay for recognized parties to hold primary elections to select their general election candidates. Parties get other advantages, such as preferential access to the voter roll.

Robb is correct that claims of Top Two increasing turnout or helping “independent” candidates get elected are howlers to people who pay anything resembling close attention to Arizona elections but possibly plausible to those who don’t, hence such claims being at the forefront of selling the initiative to the general public and certain gullible pundits.

And Robb is on point with his assertion that the traditional primary system does not reflect current registration figures (a third of the state’s voters are not officially affiliated with any party) and the case he makes for removing taxpayer funding of partisan primaries is a solid one. It is objectively the best argument for changing to an open primary system.

So far, so good, but here’s where even Robb, who has thus far evaluated the initiative in the most clear-headed manner of anyone in the news media, gets it wrong:

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Meet the highly shady out-of-state characters influencing, and bankrolling, Top Two Primary in AZ

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

John Arnold and Jackie Salit
John Arnold and Jackie Salit

It’s no secret that “centrist” business leaders in the Central Phoenix corridor and their friends at the Arizona Republic are strongly backing the Top Two Primary initiative, which now has ballot language and is getting signatures gathered for it. Even political reporter Mary Jo Pitzl couldn’t help but make her lede look like a press release for it:

Unlikely allies want to shake up Arizona elections with proposals outlawing anonymous corporate political donations and replacing a primary system they say favors the extremes of both major political parties.

The proposed ballot measures are being spearheaded by two former Phoenix mayors who ran as Democrats for governor and the Republican political consultant who most recently backed Gov. Jan Brewer.

But Terry Goddard, Paul Johnson and Chuck Coughlin say they’ve found common ground in a quest that Coughlin describes as an effort “to reinvent the architecture of Arizona politics.”

Supporters cite the fact independents have become the largest voting block in Arizona and could propel both measures to success in November.

“A political system has to accurately represent the true picture of the electorate,” said Jackie Salit, president of IndependentVoting.org. And that’s not happening now, she said.

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