Alia Beard Rau, Mary Jo Pitzl, The Republic | azcentral.com
But he was so nice about it…Doug Ducey scored an endorsement from the Associated General Contractors, a bit of surprise given Ducey helped crater the group’s hopes for more infrastructure spending when he led the campaign against continuation of the penny sales-tax increase.
But David Martin, president of the trade group, said it just goes to show that a disagreement in one area doesn’t make lifelong enemies.
“To be completely direct about it, Doug was always statesmanly through it,” Martin said of the 2012 initiative campaign, in which Ducey complained the measure would fund bigger bureaucracy. Like, road-building bureaucracy. “And statesmanship is sorely missing in our state.”
For his part, Ducey pointed to the endorsement as an indication of the broad coalition he has formed. This just shows, he said in a news release, that people who didn’t see eye-to-eye on a ballot issue still value his leadership skills.