Casa Grande Dispatch
Arizonans expect work on schools, immigration
By Joe Robison, chair of Pinal County Democrats
While ballot counting goes on for some offices, it is not too early to look at what we should expect of the Legislature. There are a number
of issues that must be dealt with: the need to improve our educational systems; providing the necessary structure that will make health care accessible for all
our citizens; the need to provide a state budget without gimmicks; and comprehen- sive immigration reform.
As for education, the voters have spoken by soundly rejecting Prop. 204; they did not want a permanent tax to be the solution to our anemic financing of public education. However, if we are to believe promises of the majority of candidates for both houses of the Legislature, Republicans and Democrats, we should expect some positive action.
The public was reading the news of a much improved revenue situation being published by state government in recent months and believes that some of those new dollars have to be directed to our crumbling public education system. Arizona cannot continue to be at or near the bottom of per-pupil funding if we are to compete for the high-tech jobs of the future. Arizona must make a conscious decision to improve our schools.
The main thing that prospective employers look at prior to relocating or expanding their companies is the quality of our educational system. Arizona cannot continue to rely on the housing industry as the sole mover of our economy.
Voters across the nation soundly rejected the possible repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act. They stood with the president by electing him to a second term while they basically kept the nation’s House and Senate with the same leadership. In this way they were saying “stay the course” on one of the major issues that was debated during the recent campaign. It is time for Arizona to stop putting up roadblocks to implementing health care.
The state’s budget process must be transparent, void of gimmicks and open to not only public input but also must, at the very least, listen to
the minority party for input. The current budget relied on federal stimulus dollars, which in this writer’s opinion were wrongly used, to project a balanced document. In years past the Legislature sold buildings and used a buyback scheme to bal- ance the books. This approach is projected to cost us taxpayers millions down the road. The voters of Arizona have voted to change the face of the Legislature. While one party still controls both houses, I think the message is clear, they expect some common sense to prevail on West Washington in Phoenix.
The nation’s voters also expect some real change on immigration reform. While I am sure that there are still some hardliners opposed to any comprehensive plan, I believe that we as a nation are ready to move forward on this issue. I believe that some politicians, reluctant as they may be, see working together on a comprehensive plan as a way to ensure the survival of our two-party system. With the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration reform as major issues in the campaign, they were issues that helped the president win reelection.
The U.S. Supreme Court threw out most of Arizona’s SB 1070, basically saying that immigration is a federal responsibility. They only left standing the “papers please” portion of the bill. What the court was saying is that we cannot have a patch- work of state laws covering immigration. While our governor may sell a lot of books and get a lot of publicity by sticking her finger in the face of the president, she would be better off working with our congressional delegation to ensure that whatever measure that may come through the Congress is one that is best for all of the citizens of Arizona.
To sum it up, I believe the voters nationally were saying: “Mr. President, even though progress is slow, stay the course and keep working to get us out of the hole that two unpaid wars with tax cuts we could not afford was handed to you in January 2009.”
In Arizona, where we have five Democrats in Congress, I believe voters were saying: “Hands off health care and start working together in Washington.” I can only hope that the Republicans in Arizona’s Legislature will work across the aisle for the benefit of all constituents.
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Precinct committeemen are key to parties’ future
By Tom Ramsdell, secretary and communication director of the Western Pinal Republican Club
Joe and I decided to keep this op-ed focused on Arizona politics and stay away, for the moment, from the national post-election landscape.
Let’s look at Pinal County Republicans first.
Remembering that “All politics is local,” there is something each of us can sink our teeth into right away. True, Republicans had some major gains in the county elections this past election. Republicans now hold four of the five Board of Supervisor seats with the addition of two supervisor positions. That’s pretty incredible, looking back at the Democratic dominance in county politics since we gained statehood.
Who actually are the power brokers in Pinal County Republican and Democratic politics? It is the PCs (precinct committeemen). These are folks who go around their neighborhoods and collect signatures to get their name placed “on the ballot” during the primary. Most likely you never see their names on the primary ballots, because, typically, there are never enough candidates running to fill the vacancies. The only time you see a name for precinct committeeman (I know this is a misnomer — political correctness would dictate we use the term precinct committeeperson) is when there are more folks filling out applications than there are PC vacancies in that precinct. This is actually the “grass roots power base” of the Republican and Democratic parties. What do I mean about that, how can these folks most of us have never heard of be so powerful?
It is because these PCs are the ones who elect their county and state party leadership; they set the tone and the direction of the local party. They vote to place folks in the state party leadership positions and they are the ones who vote for the “planks” of their party on the county and state level. Truly, only a small number of party activists power the party in the state.
I don’t know how many PC vacancies there are in the Democratic Party, hopefully Joe will let us know, but I sure know how many vacancies there are in the Pinal County Republican Party, it is 309. The Republican Party in Pinal County has slots for 541 precinct committeemen. (Democrats have a similar, if not identical number.) Only 230 Republicans have chosen to participate, or 42 percent of the number needed. These folks hold the power for the Republican Party in Pinal County, they vote for the Arizona party leadership, along with the other county parties in Arizona. By the time voters get to walk into a polling place to vote, what they see is largely a result of the various county party PCs’ work over the past two years.
Pinal County Republican politics has been, well for lack of a better word, somewhat polarizing since the last general election, but things are about to change. The change will likely be dramatic, and I am not attempting to say it will be for the better or worse. What is clear, when you only have a few folks participating, as one faction takes over from another faction, there is the danger the priorities will shift too far in the other direction.
That is why it is so important that people participate in local party politics by becoming PCs in their precincts. The more PCs we have in each party, the less dramatic a shift will occur when there is a leadership change. You have more stability. With stability will come a degree of consensus and the compass of the ship stays pretty much on the right tack, not shifting so far back and forth, and the ship stays pretty much on course.
So if you are a Democrat and concerned about your party losing power in Pinal County or a Republican having to explain to friends around the country how Arizona became the first state ever to send a bisexual to the halls of Congress, become an appointed precinct committeeman.
