In one of the closest gubernatorial races in recent Arizona history, Democratic candidate Janet Napolitano has less than three weeks to convince voters she's the best choice.
Opinion polls show that Napolitano and Republican candidate Matt Salmon, a former Arizona congressman, are only points apart.
The addition of two other parties, Libertarian Barry Hess and Independent Richard Mahoney, has added to the nature of this competitive race.
Napolitano arrived in Phoenix in 1983, after receiving her law degree from University of Virginia. After a successful career in law enforcement, she is today Arizona's attorney general and running neck-and-neck with Salmon in opinion polls.
Salmon has publicly criticized Napolitano's record on crime issues, attacking her opposition to a victim's rights measure. Salmon's criticism drew support from Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who works closely with Napolitano in her job as attorney general.
Despite criticisms from her opponents, Napolitano has also gained support in unexpected places. The conservative sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, has appeared in commercials for Napolitano's campaign and The Arizona Republic has chosen her as their endorsed candidate.
She spoke with The State Press on Monday regarding her stance on education cuts, the campaign and her feelings on young voters.
[The following questions and answers are representative of an interview conducted on Monday, for the full interview tune into SDTV Channel 2]
Q. Arizona is lagging behind most of the nation in funding for education. How do you plan to address education budget cuts?
A. The budget crisis is not just the result of the economy going down the tube, but a result of 12 years of bad choices by the legislatures. The choices have been giving tax breaks to massage parlors and telemarketers who have lobbyist down there versus investing in education. The result has been that we have had a brain drain from the faculty...We have to be able to keep up the level of faculty and have to keep improving the quality of our universities...I'm going to work with President Crow and the Regents to find different sources of support for the universities...We need to work on expanding the private source funding through the endowment process... There have been a lot of things that have been done successfully in other states that will allow us to keep improving the quality of the university experience in the state, but in the short term, it's going to be painful, and I don't think there is anyway around it.
Q. Have the negative campaigning tactics of other candidates changed your campaign tactics?
A. Well some of the stuff we had to respond to, for example, when I was attacked for being soft on porn — Sheriff Joe Arpaio said that's outrageous, he's worked with me in law enforcement for almost a decade, he cut an ad and we had it up that very day. That may have actually turned into a positive for us…Hopefully we've seen the last of the scud-missile ads and we can go back to running positive ads about my vision for Arizona.
Q. How do you think third and fourth party candidates affect your campaign?
A. I thought that when Mahoney got in, given that he was a clean elections candidate and would be getting a substantial amount of money, that he had the potential of playing a major part in this race. I no longer think that is the case. I think he has shown himself very badly in the past weeks... And the Libertarian…he makes no bones about it, he's going for the solid Libertarian vote. And that will hurt Matt [Salmon] more than me because those votes tend to come out of the Republican vote.
Q. This is an extraordinarily close race, what do you think is going to make the difference?
A. I think that when people go in to vote, they are going to have to look at themselves and ask, "Who is the best qualified to lead us in the future?" and I believe I am that person.
Q. [Maricopa County] Attorney Rick Romley came out saying that you weren't tough enough on crime. If elected, you would have to work very closely with him. Would this affect your relationship?
A. I worked with him more as an attorney general, and his statements are wrong. Anybody who has worked as a prosecutor for nine years as I have and handed thousands of cases, you could pick any one and distort it, and that's what Rick did, and he should be ashamed of himself, I could go through his case load and do the same thing, but I wouldn't. My record on crime is extraordinarily strong, and I'll stand on my record and proudly so.
Q. How do you view the vote of college students, particularly those of ASU?
A. I hope the vote turns out from this community… Voting is your power. What's at stake for the universities is huge. What's at stake for ASU is its continued reputation as a Research I university, class size and being able to have a quality faculty. I've talked to so many students who can't get into the classes they need to graduate and end up having to spend more time as an undergraduate. That's a terrible waste of time and money.
Reach the reporter at megan.rudebeck@asu.edu.
Editor's note: The State Press plans more election coverage on Napolitano and the other candidates in these weeks leading up to the Nov. 5 election.
