By Phil Riske | Managing Editor
Approval ratings published for Gov. Jan Brewer (2009-2015) and current Gov. Doug Ducey during their first few months in office slipped significantly compared with their two predecessors.
Jane Hull
Shortly after taking office, Governor Jane Hull (1997-2003) had a 45 percent “excellent/good” rating, with 20 percent rating her “fair,” and 4 percent judged her performance as “poor/very poor,” according to a Rocky Mountain Poll conducted by the Behavior Research Center.
Janet Napolitano
Despite a rocky start for Gov. Janet Napolitano (2009-2013) because of a pipeline break near Tucson that created a crisis shortage of gas in Phoenix, she garnered early approval marks in the Rocky Mountain Poll, with 49 percent “excellent/good, 24 percent “fair,” and 10 percent “poor/very poor.”
Jan Brewer
Only 22 percent of people interviewed by the Rocky Mountain Poll said they approved of Brewer’s first months in office. Twenty-eight percent rated her performance as “poor.”
“Voter assessment of the Governor remain significantly lower than those of her two predecessors, Janet Napolitano and Jane Hull, clear evidence that her struggles with GOP lawmakers over taxes and the 2010 budget have had an enduring impact,” the Rocky Mountain Poll concluded.
Doug Ducey
Arizona Capitol Times reported Monday a poll released by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling, showed only 27 percent of respondents approved of Ducey’s job performance, compared to 44 percent who disapproved. Twenty-nine percent said they weren’t sure whether they approved or disapproved. *
Ducey has taken heat for cuts to education funding, and sixty-four percent o those polled said the state doesn’t spend enough on K-12, compared to 10 percent who said Arizona spends too much.
The poll followed a legislative session in which Ducey and the Legislature cut $99 million from the state’s universities. They also cut $117 million in “non-classroom” funding while providing an additional $176 million in formula-based funding and another $74 million of inflationary funding.
Nationally
Not enough polling was available on the country’s 13 first-time governors to conclude whether Arizona’s decline in popularity for its governor’s first months in office is a national trend.
Sixty-five percent (65%), however, trust their state government, while 74 percent trust their local government, according to Gallup.
In a Pew Research Center study conducted last year, only 24 percent said they trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.
Only twenty-eight percent (28%) of likely U.S. voters now think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Report.
* Public Policy Polling® interviewed 600 Arizona voters from May 1st to 3rd. The margin of error for the survey is +/-4.0. 80% of interviews for the poll were conducted over the phone with 20% interviewed over the Internet to reach respondents who don’t have landline telephones.
