Monday, February 27, 2006
Morlock: No ammo for foes - or friends - on candidate Giffords' Web page
BLAKE MORLOK
Tucson Citizen
Schools: good. The deficit: bad. Illegal immigration: Do something about it.
That's about the depth of the debate defining the race for Congress. The candidates know what they like but don't seem too eager to explain how they would get it for Arizona or America.
One high-profile offender is former state Sen. Gabrielle Giffords.
She wasn't too specific in her announcement speech a few weeks ago. But a Web site can usually be counted on to flesh out the detail.
Giffords' issues page explains that she would take southern Arizona values to Congress, address the border comprehensively and (get this) "hope" to bring troops back from Iraq "safe and soon."
Uh-huh.
As if someone would campaign to bring Washington values to southern Arizona, let the border hemorrhage and hope for a protracted war with thousands more coffins unloaded at Dover Air Force Base.
Part of this is tactical. Devilish details provide heavenly targets for opponents to "go negative" and turn the race in the 8th Congressional District. It's also possible that Giffords is waiting to latch onto a larger Democratic agenda out of Washington, should she wrap up the primary.
Giffords is a smart politician whom even the Democratic field concedes privately to be the front-runner. At some point she owes it to Arizona voters to get specific, frame the debate and give us some detail.
Might also be a good idea strategically because Democrats are certain to make hay of the fact that she was a Republican until 1999 - before she entered politics.
Sure, it will be hard. But it's Congress and she says she's ready.
Right face
Evangelical Christians were the talk of the 2004 election, providing what many observers called President Bush's margin of victory.
And they may have their man in Arizona's Republican gubernatorial primary: cherub-faced Len Munsil.
Munsil started the Center for Arizona Policy, which seeks to nudge state lawmakers in the direction of restricting abortion, publicly funding private schools and making sure gay couples don't get married.
His group is the lead galvanizing force behind politically inclined evangelicals and provides a great network for the primary.
Munsil's group launched a voter initiative to ban gay marriage and certain rights for unmarried Arizonans.
The issue in other states drives evangelical voters to the polls and, if it works again in November, could give Munsil a shot to score an upset against Napolitano.
No love for vets
Marine Corps Maj. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who nearly scored a huge upset in a congressional race last year, is out of the Ohio Senate race. It has local congressional candidates hopping mad that he was nudged to the sidelines by Democratic honchos.
Jeff Latas, a retired U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who helped start the Democratic group Veterans for a Secure America, hopped on the left-wing blog the Daily Kos and fumed about party "string pullers" who try to short-circuit primary challenges of their preferred candidate.
"They will block funding, media and do whatever they can to keep our voices silent," wrote Latas, who is seeking the Arizona District 8 seat.
His veterans' group of 46 congressional candidates met on the mall, and not one party leader was there to meet them, he said.
"They just want us to go away," Latas said.
Roll out some Dem to shake Latas' hand, at least. Twenty years of pulling G's for freedom ought to earn him something.
A flock of vets of the Global War on Terror should be seen as a godsend to a party that has a rep for being soft on national security.
You don't have to endorse them. But why not meet them?
Hey, they don't call the Democratic Party "THE MINORITY" for nothing.
Blake Morlock covers politics for the Tucson Citizen.
