The LD 28 Candidate Forum – Senate Candidates

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Special thanks to volunteer Curtis Dutiel for videotaping the LD 28 Candidate Forum and editing the videos.

Today we have the two Democratic candidates for the Senate seat, incumbent Sen. Paula Aboud and her challenger, former Rep. Ted Downing. This is a rematch of the nasty 2006 Senate primary, and apparently what will be a grudge match this year.

Sen. Paula Aboud begins the festivities by asking Ted Downing to drop out of the race for the sake of party unity and to allow her to spend her time working for the election of Terry Goddard as governor. I don't know, that sounded a little to me like "do it for Terry's kids" (a riff of the Jerry Lewis MD Telethon). I'm confident that every Democrat running for office will be supporting Terry Goddard for governor, the future of our state depends on it.

As you might expect, this appeal for unity did not sit well with Ted Downing. He took the gloves off and came out swinging. Downing cited a recent hit piece in the Arizona Daily Star about Democratic legislators' attendance and voting records. The old maxim that "there are lies, damn lies and statistics" applies here. What made the Arizona Daily Star hit piece journalistic malpractice is the same reason why Downing's argument is suspect: context. Raw data without context is meaningless.

We have a Republican dominated Legislature. The majority leadership does not consult the minority leadership in most instances, and loves to play partisan games. The majority leadership will schedule votes without adequate notice to members and strategically timed to produce the vote they need to pass a measure. These votes often are scheduled when members of the Legislature who do not live in the Taliban State of Maricopa have already returned to their homes in the Free Republic of Arizona. This was especially true last year with five Special Sessions. Most times, the Republican majority has the votes it needs without a single Democratic vote. There are sometimes strategic reasons why a Democrat would not want to take a position on a particular bill. Other times, there are tactical reasons why Democrats are not on the floor to vote, i.e., to deny a quorum or to stage a protest against procedural violations of the rules (which occurs all too frequently), etc. Context matters.

Curtis says he will have the LD 28 House candidate speeches available shortly. The House candidates stuck to their scripts of talking about their own campaigns, and not attacking one another. Not the kind of thing the local media types report on – they want controversy and "he said, she said" accusations. The local media types will have to satisfy their blood lust with this Senate race.