Just Democrats Only: August 2013

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Oh, what a tangled website they weave

(PNI) What's good for the goose …The state Republican Party last week sent out an e-mail criticizing the state Democratic Party for removing "important files and records" from their site.

"Several years worth of agendas, minutes and event reports have vanished from the website," according to the Republican statement.

A search of the site shows there are no minutes to be found, and a Google search leads to a link to nothing.

Democratic party spokesman Frank Camacho did not return a call seeking comment.

The more records available to the public, the better, at least in Insider's eyes. Which got us wondering …

If the Republicans have deemed these documents so vital to the public, surely they would make available the same information on their website.

Nope.

Stay interesting, our candidates … After going after Democratic opacity, the state GOP set its sights on what it viewed as Democratic mediocrity: gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal, whom the GOP labeled "the most uninteresting man in the world."

DuVal rose to the challenge in a, dare we say it, interesting way. He shipped a case of Dos Equis beer to GOP Chairman Robert Graham, along with a photoshopped picture of himself as the beer's bearded pitchman, aka the "Most Interesting Man in the World."

"Stay desperate my friends," DuVal wrote in his note, signing it as "the most electable man in Arizona."

DuVal, who so far is the only Dem in the race for governor, said he wanted to set a new standard for statesmanship. If that new standard involves cases of cerveza, Arizona's political climate just might get merrier.

Now there are two …As opponents of the state's new election law circulate petitions to get it on the 2014 ballot so they can make a case for how awful and terrible it is, not one but two groups have formed to defend the wide-ranging bill.

But what they will do, exactly, is unclear … even to the spokesman who is representing both the Protect Our Secret Ballot group, headed by state Sen. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale, and the Stop Voter Fraud group, led by former state lawmaker and congressional candidate Jonathan Paton.

"I can't tell you what they're doing," said Barrett Marson, of the groups that support House Bill 2305. After all, he noted, the measure has yet to be referred to the ballot (opponents face a Sept.12 deadline) so there is nothing to strategize.

That hasn't stopped the Stop Voter Fraud group from raking in $60,000 in big-dollar contributions, with $50,000 coming from the limited-government American Action Network and $10,000 from the Arizona Republican Party. The committee turned around and promptly spent $10,000. But Marson said he didn't know what that money went for.

As for Reagan's group, the Senate Elections Committee chairman said she wanted to keep her options open, but it was important to have a committee for fundraising. But if they're out tapping donors, they're doing it in smaller chunks, which means they don't have to adhere to a state law that requires immediate disclosure of contributions of $10,000 or more.

Quote of the week

"I believe there are more important issues than my last name. But sometimes you have to put sugar on the broccoli to get people's attention and bring these issues to the front." -- Phoenix City Council candidate Austin Head, whose "I (heart) Head" campaign signs have helped him get voter attention in a race crowded with well-known names.

Compiled by Republic reporters Mary Jo Pitzl and Alia Beard Rau. Get the latest at politics.azcentral.com.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Tough politician left modest state legacy

(PNI) Becoming head of the California university system probably brings an end to Janet Napolitano's career as an Arizona politician.

It's been an odd story. Napolitano dominated her political party more than any other state politician in the modern era. At the zenith of her power, in 2006 and 2007, she defined the center of Arizona politics. Yet, today, there's not a trace of her influence or legacy. It's as though she never was governor.

Napolitano was barely elected governor in 2002, with the second-lowest percentage of the vote (46percent) in Arizona history. In 2006, she was re-elected in a stunning victory that defied the laws of political physics.

In 2002, Napolitano owed her victory to Pima County. She lost the balance of the state and carried a bare majority of the counties. She lost Republican-dominated Maricopa County by 25,000 votes.

In 2006, Napolitano won with 63percent of the vote, the largest margin for a gubernatorial candidate since Bruce Babbitt's re-election victory in 1982. She carried all 15 counties. She won Maricopa County by more than 200,000 votes.

Her opponent in that race, Len Munsil, was relatively unknown and didn't have enough money to really make a game of it. But Munsil was no slouch, and even a better known and financed opponent would have gotten trounced. At that time, Napolitano was a comfortable fit for the Arizona body politic.

Before Napolitano, the Arizona Democratic Party was still feeling the reverberations of the rivalry between Babbitt and former U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini. The rivalry was never destructive, and by the time Napolitano was elected governor, both had been out of elected office for quite a while. But Democratic politicians were still frequently known as being from the Babbitt or DeConcini camps.

Napolitano superseded all that. Helped by party Chairman Jim Pederson's largesse, she dominated the state Democratic Party and had no rival. She was the unquestioned and unchallenged queen bee.

She also mastered the Republican Arizona Legislature. During her first term, state general fund spending increased nearly 70percent. Three consecutive years, the increase was more than 15percent. And for the most part, legislative Republicans voted for those budgets. She also vetoed more bills than any governor in Arizona history, 58 in one year alone.

The spending spree was fueled by housing-bubble-related revenue. The bottom was falling out about the time Napolitano was splitting for Washington, D.C., to become President Obama's Homeland Security secretary.

I give Napolitano a pass on her tenure at Homeland Security. The agency shouldn't exist. It's too big to be effective or effectively managed. It had to drive Napolitano, who was a bit of a control freak while governor, nuts on occasion. On the other hand, it was probably good training for overseeing large universities, which are also generally unmanageable.

Back in Arizona, all of Napolitano's gains were erased by the fiscal tsunami that hit state revenue. State spending remains well below the Napolitano peaks. Her signature reform, state-paid all-day kindergarten, has been repealed.

Nor did Napolitano leave a political legacy. She never did have coattails. No Democrat won a statewide race in 2010 or 2012. In fact, today, for the first time in Arizona history, there is not a single Democrat holding statewide elected office. And no Democratic politicians are thought of as from the Napolitano camp.

The last Democrat elected to the governorship before Napolitano, Babbitt, never dominated state politics the way she did. He didn't try. He took a largely hands-off approach to the Republican-controlled Legislature, monitoring it rather than trying to master it.

Instead, Babbitt concentrated on getting a few things done of importance to him. The state is still guided today by two of his legacy projects: the groundwater law and the urban lands act.

All that's left of the Napolitano governorship, despite her extraordinary political dominance, is a portrait on a wall.

Reach Robb at robert.robb @arizonarepublic.com.

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Election law targets Democrats, favors the Republican vote

Respect.

Arizona Democrats have earned it. However, Gov. Jan Brewer and her political operatives have once again abused their power to marginalize Democrats. Signing House Bill 2305, which is designed to bolster the Republican Party's advantage in the 2014 election, is the latest example.

The victories of the past session are due in large part to the gains Democrats made in the Legislature in 2012. By restoring balance to the Legislature, moderate Republicans finally gained the confidence they lacked during the debate over Senate Bill 1070, the impeachment of a redistricting commissioner or the budget cuts that negatively impacted Arizona's schools, universities, cities and public safety, and left hundreds of thousands without health care these past five years.

Expanding health-care coverage this session was only possible because national Democrats risked and lost their political power in 2010 to pass health-care reform. Gov. Brewer is now being anointed sainthood status, though she merely swept in at the last minute to fix a problem that she helped orchestrate.

Brewer could have easily decided it would have been easier to side with the "tea party" and continue fighting Medicaid expansion, but thankfully, she decided to do what was best for Arizona. For this, she does deserve credit -- but we should not forget the foundation of her decision was prompted by 13 Democratic state senators and 24 state representatives.

The question surrounding a promise to kill or veto HB 2305 is irrelevant. The bill lacked compromise and transparency. It was designed not with the intent of making voting easier and more accessible, but with the intent of limiting voter participation and choice. It includes new restrictions on how Arizonans can exercise their right to vote early. Arizona lags behind in voter turnout and has failed to update outdated voter-registration deadlines, improve access to early-voting locations and remove antiquated precinct restrictions on Election Day.

The fight to preserve voting rights defines the modern-day Democratic Party. This right has been fought for and sealed with the blood of those who battled for civil rights. Given Arizona's dark history of discrimination and drawn-out arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Department of Justice, it is crucial that all election reforms require the highest degree of scrutiny, transparency and compromise.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected another Arizona law aimed at restricting voter participation, and the stage was set for Brewer to reverse the political bickering and continue the goodwill she built up with Medicaid expansion. Political decency could have once again prevailed in Arizona. Instead, Brewer and her political advisers did what they do best: divide Arizona.

Luis Heredia is government relations director for the Torres Consulting and Law Group and a Democratic Party national committeeman.

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Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Key Homeland official facing ethics inquiry

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's choice to be the No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department is under investigation for his role in helping a company run by a brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's, the Associated Press has learned.

Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is being investigated for his role in helping the company secure an international investor visa for a Chinese executive, according to congressional officials briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the investigation.

Mayorkas was named by Homeland Security's Inspector General's Office as a target in an investigation involving the foreign investor program run by USCIS, according to an e-mail sent to lawmakers late Monday.

In that e-mail, the Inspector General's Office said, "At this point in our investigation, we do not have any findings of criminal misconduct." The e-mail did not specify any criminal allegations it might be investigating.

White House press secretary Jay Carney referred questions to the Inspector General's Office, which said that the probe is in its preliminary stage and that it doesn't comment on the specifics of investigations.

The program, known as EB-5, allows foreigners to get visas if they invest $500,000 to $1million in projects or businesses that create jobs for U.S. citizens. The amount of the investment required depends on the type of project. Investors who are approved for the program can become legal permanent residents after two years and are later eligible to be citizens.

If Mayorkas were confirmed as Homeland Security's deputy secretary, he probably would run the department until a permanent replacement was approved to take over for departing Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The e-mail to lawmakers said the primary complaint against Mayorkas was that he helped a financing company run by Anthony Rodham, a brother of Hillary Clinton's, win approval for an investor visa after the application was denied and an appeal was rejected.

Mayorkas, a former U.S. attorney in California, previously came under criticism for his involvement in the commutation by President Bill Clinton of the prison sentence of the son of a Democratic Party donor. Another of Hillary Clinton's brothers, Hugh Rodham, had been hired by the donor to lobby for the commutation. Mayorkas told lawmakers during his 2009 confirmation hearing that "it was a mistake" to talk to the White House about the request.

Hillary Clinton, who stepped down as secretary of State on Feb. 1, is considered a possible contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

According to the inspector general's e-mail, the investigation of the investor visa program also includes allegations that other USCIS Office of General Counsel officials obstructed an audit of the visa program by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The e-mail did not name any specific official from the General Counsel's Office.

The e-mail says investigators did not know whether Mayorkas was aware of the investigation. The FBI's Washington Field Office was told about the investigation in June after it inquired about Mayorkas as part of the White House background investigation for his nomination as deputy DHS secretary.

The FBI in Washington has been concerned about the investor visa program and the projects funded by foreign sources since at least March, according to e-mails obtained by the AP.

The bureau wanted details of all of the limited liability companies that had invested in the EB-5 visa program. Of particular concern, the FBI official wrote, was Chinese investment in projects, including the building of an FBI facility.

"Let's just say that we have a significant issue that my higher ups are really concerned about and this may be addressed way above my pay grade," an official wrote in one e-mail. The FBI official's name was redacted in that e-mail.

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent the FBI a lengthy letter Tuesday asking for details of its review of the foreign investor visa program and Chinese investment in U.S. infrastructure projects.

Chinese investment in infrastructure projects has long been a concern of the U.S. government. In September, the Obama administration blocked a Chinese company from owning four wind farm projects in northern Oregon that were near a Navy base used to fly unmanned drones and electronic-warfare planes on training missions. And in October, the House Intelligence Committee warned that two leading Chinese technology firms, Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corp., posed a major security threat to the U.S. Both firms have denied being influenced by the Chinese government.

The most routine users of the EB-5 program are Chinese investors. According to an undated, unclassified State Department report about the program obtained by the AP, the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, processed more investor visas in the 2011 fiscal year than any other consulate or embassy. The document says "applicants are usually coached and prepped for their interviews, making it difficult to take at face value applicants' claims" about where their money comes from and whether they hold membership in the Chinese Communist Party. Party membership would make an applicant ineligible for the investor visa.

Anthony Rodham is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Funds Management LLC in McLean, Va. The firm is one of hundreds of "Regional Centers" that pool investments from foreign nationals looking to invest in U.S. businesses or industries as part of the foreign investor visa program.

There was no immediate response to an e-mail sent to Gulf Coast requesting comment.

It is unclear from the IG's e-mail why the investor visa application was denied. Visa requests can be denied for a number of reasons, including a circumstance where an applicant has a criminal background or is considered a threat to national security or public safety.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Monday, August 12, 2013

Gun debate still lingers in Colorado

DENVER — DENVER The last time Colorado enacted gun-control measures was in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Once the laws were on the books, there was little acrimony.

The state's latest batch of gun-control laws -- coming after a gunman's deadly rampage at a suburban Denver movie theater a year ago -- has sparked a struggle over guns that shows little signs of fading. Gun-rights advocates are trying to recall two state senators who backed the package, and dozens of Republican county sheriffs are suing to overturn it.

"This is going to remain a political hot potato for Democrats for many, many months," said gun-rights activist Ari Armstrong.

In the months after the gunman's shooting spree left 12 people dead and injured 70 others, there was little public discussion of gun control here. The shooting at a midnight showing of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" occurred in a key swing county in one of the most hotly contested battleground states in last year's presidential election.

But President Barack Obama, seeking re-election, did not bring up gun control in a state that cherishes its western frontier image. Neither did most Colorado Democrats.

It wasn't until December's shooting at a Connecticut elementary school left 20 first-graders and six adults dead that gun control rose in prominence. By March, Colorado became the only state outside the Democratic Party's coastal bases to pass sweeping gun-control measures, including universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines.

After the Columbine attack, voters closed a loophole that allowed buyers of firearms at gun shows to evade background checks. In the wake of the Aurora massacre, the prospects for more gun control in this libertarian-minded state seemed shaky at best.

In a television interview days after the shooting, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper appeared to cast doubt on the effectiveness of new gun-control laws.

Hickenlooper said he had quiet conversations around the state and was struck by wide support for universal background checks.

In November, Democrats won both the state House and Senate as Colorado helped re-elect Obama. And on Dec.12, Hickenlooper declared that "the time is right" to talk about gun control.

Two days later in Connecticut, Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed his mother, then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire before killing himself. The attack shocked a country that had grown hardened to mass shootings. Obama vowed an all-out push for gun control.

In Colorado, a similar push was already queued up.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's gun-control organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, hired four lobbyists to help push gun bills in Colorado. Vice President Joe Biden called state legislators to urge them to vote for the package. Biden told them that Colorado, with its western traditions, could help set the tone for national gun policy.

To Republicans and gun-rights groups, the message was clear. "The Obama administration and these East Coast politicians decided that, as Colorado goes, so goes the rest of the nation," said Republican state Rep. Mark Waller.

Republican legislators fought furiously to delay the bills' passage. Hundreds of demonstrators circled the state Capitol and packed the legislative chambers. Democrats were confident voters were on their side.

"The voices that are the loudest (in protest) are not the ones that determine elections here," Laura Chapin, a Democratic strategist who worked for local gun-control groups, said after the bills passed.

For gun-rights advocates, the movie theater attack exposed serious problems that Democrats were ignoring: bans on guns in public areas, and the issue of mental health. James Holmes, a former neuroscience graduate student accused of the theater shootings, purchased his guns legally -- including a rifle and a high-capacity magazine able to fire 100 bullets -- but also had seen a psychiatrist who feared he was dangerous.

The legislature agreed to Hickenlooper's $20million plan to expand mental health services. But the gun-control package got the most attention. The bill banning larger-capacity magazines squeaked through by a single vote in the state Senate.

In June, Colorado gun activists collected enough signatures to trigger recall elections for two state senators, including that chamber's president. If Democratic efforts to block them fail, the recall votes could be the first electoral test of post-Sandy Hook gun control.

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Foes vow to fight new ballot hurdles

Libertarian Barry Hess said he's determined to run for governor next year, even though he'll face a 4,380 percent increase in the number of signatures he'll need to qualify for the ballot.

For Democrats, it's a 9.8 percent increase. Meanwhile, any Republican seeking the seat will have a 5.8 percent decrease in the signature requirement.

The shifting numbers are due to a late addition to a wide-ranging election bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week. The measure was favored by Republicans, who flexed some local and national muscle to revive House Bill 2305 in the waning hours of the recently completed legislative session.

The law raises the bar to qualify for the ballot so high that minor-party candidates, such as Greens and Libertarians, say it would be nearly impossible for them to compete in statewide, congressional and legislative races. The law also raises the requirement for Democrats seeking to run statewide, be it for governor or U.S. senator.

In legislative and congressional contests, the effect on Democrats and Republicans varies with the voter registration in a given district. In some cases, they will need to collect fewer voter signatures; in others, more.

That provision, on top of other parts of HB 2305, has energized critics who say they are working on plans to stop the law from taking effect Sept. 13.

Warren Severin, chairman of the Arizona Libertarian Party, predicts a referendum to put the matter before the voters in 2014.

"There will be legal action," said Severin, adding that opponents are meeting Tuesday to discuss strategy.

D.J. Quinlan, executive director of the state Democratic Party, says the bill smacks of voter suppression with its tighter limits on the citizen-initiative process, ballot collection and the early-voting list.

"All options are on the table," he said.

The new law ties the signature requirement to the total number of voters registered in a given district, as opposed to the the current system, which is linked to the number of registered voters of a given party. Parties with smaller numbers have had a smaller base from which to calculate the signature requirement; the new law widens that base by linking it to all registered voters, not just those of a given party.

Representatives of the Green and Libertarian parties said they find that particularly offensive in the case of primaries, in which parties nominate their own candidates. In some cases, they will have to get the signatures of independents, Democrats or Republicans to qualify for their own party primaries.

Angel Torres, chairman of the Arizona Green Party, said the law effectively shuts his party out of primary contests because of the higher signature count. He predicted the Greens will opt to run as write-in candidates.

Critics of the law said it's a valentine for Republican candidates, who often view third-party candidates, particularly Libertarians, as spoilers in their races. The bill would cement the two major parties' hold on Arizona elections, said Hess, communications chairman for the state Libertarian Party.

Republicans who pushed the measure say it's a matter of fairness: All candidates for a given race should meet the same signature threshold.

The bill failed on a Senate vote but was revived when Sens. Steve Pierce and Rich Crandall reversed their stances and voted in favor of it.

Pierce, R-Prescott, said he got a call from Daniel Scarpinato, spokesman for the Republican National Congressional Committee. Pierce said Scarpinato was not calling in his official capacity, although his concern was how the signature requirement would affect campaigns.

Scarpinato was the spokesman for Republican Jonathan Paton's congressional campaign last year. Paton lost to Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick in a close race for Congressional District 1 that also included Libertarian Kim Allen, who received 6percent of the vote. If Allen were not on the ballot, Paton's camp believes, Paton would have won.

To underscore the political ramifications of HB 2305 and its effect on minor-party candidates, Pierce said an angry state Rep. Adam Kwasman, R-Oro Valley, confronted him after the bill failed. Kwasman said he needed it to pass because he plans to run in CD1 next year, Pierce said.

Kwasman did not return a call seeking comment.

Pierce said he switched his vote after calling two people, whom he did not identify, asking to be released from his promise to vote against the bill.

Scarpinato did not return a call for comment. Crandall, R-Mesa, also did not reply to several requests for him to comment on his changed vote.

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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Rep. Markey wins Senate race in Mass.

BOSTON — BOSTON Longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Edward Markey defeated Republican political newcomer Gabriel Gomez in a special election on Tuesday for the state's U.S. Senate seat long held by John Kerry.

Gomez, a 47-year-old businessman and former Navy SEAL, positioned himself as a moderate and Washington outsider who would challenge partisan gridlock, contrasting himself with Markey, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 1976.

With almost all precincts reporting late Tuesday, Markey had 55percent, or about 629,000 votes, and Gomez had 45percent, or about 513,000 votes.

Markey, who declared victory two hours after the polls closed, ticked off a slew of legislative priorities. He said he wanted to help spark a "green energy revolution," protect seniors, boost job growth in Massachusetts and ensure young people can attend college without shouldering enormous debt.

Markey told voters he doesn't take the Senate race win lightly.

"I go there to stand for you. To speak for you. To seek change that lifts up your families and your future," he said.

Gomez said he called Markey to congratulate him and wished him "nothing but the best." He said he'd waged the campaign with honor and integrity but was heavily outspent by Democrats in the five-month election.

"Not every fight is a fair fight," Gomez said in his concession speech. "Sometimes you face overpowering force. We were massively overspent. We went up against literally the whole national Democratic Party. And all its allies."

Kerry left the Senate this year after being confirmed as U.S. secretary of state. Markey, 66, will serve for the remainder of Kerry's term, which expires in January 2015, meaning that another Senate election will be held a year from November.

Though Markey has a lengthy career in Congress, he will become the state's junior senator to Elizabeth Warren, who has been in office less than six months after defeating Brown in November.

Markey led in pre-election polls but said Tuesday when he voted with his wife in his hometown, Malden, that there was no overconfidence in his organization. He had said the campaign called or rang the doorbells of 3million prospective voters in the past several days.

"I have delivered a message on gun safety, on a woman's right to choose, on creating more jobs, and I think that message has been delivered and I feel very good about today," he said.

Gomez said while voting Tuesday in Cohasset, where he lives, that the election was about choosing the future over the past and what he called Markey's failure to take on the important issues despite 37 years in office.

"Where I come from, that is mission incomplete," he said.

In Cambridge, Lori Berenson, 51, said she voted for Markey, mainly because she was skeptical of one of Gomez's main campaign pitches: his request for just 17 months in office.

"He thinks in 17 months he's going to accomplish what Markey hasn't done in 37 years?" she said.

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Pardoned financier Rich dies at age 78

GENEVA — GENEVA He was a wheeler-dealer pardoned by another consummate deal maker, a working-class Jewish boy who left Belgium to escape the Nazis and rose to become the billionaire "King of Commodities."

Marc Rich's connections to the rich and powerful not only made him fabulously wealthy but when he was indicted for fraud, racketeering and tax evasion on a grand scale, they helped secure him a pardon from Bill Clinton, hours before the U.S. president left office.

That triggered a political firestorm from critics who alleged Rich bought his pardon through donations that his ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, had made to the Democratic Party.

Rich died Wednesday of a stroke at a hospital in Lucerne, near his home for decades. He was 78, and his Israel-based spokesman Avner Azulay said he would be buried Thursday in a kibbutz in Israel.

Throughout his storied career at the pinnacle of high finance, Rich was known as a man who could deliver the big deals thanks to personal relationships he had forged with powerful figures around the world.

In a rare 1992 interview with NBC, Rich said that in his business, "we're not political. … That's just the philosophy of our company."

During the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, Rich used his Middle East contacts to purchase crude oil from Iran and Iraq and made a fortune selling it to American companies.

In 1983, while he was in Switzerland, Rich was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than $48million in income taxes.

Although the Swiss refused to arrest or extradite Rich, he stayed on the FBI's Most Wanted List, narrowly escaping capture in Finland, Germany, Britain and Jamaica, until Clinton granted him a pardon.

Rich was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on Dec. 18, 1934. His Jewish family fled from the Nazis to the U.S. Rich had two daughters, Ilona Schachter-Rich and Danielle Kilstock Rich.

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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Arizona shock wave

(PNI) The regular session of the Legislature was pretty ho-hum. The special session, however, was a humdinger.

Monumental things were done in the special session. A budget was passed and Medicaid expansion enacted.

Monumental things were done dramatically. The special session was called without warning to those not part of Gov. Jan Brewer's Medicaid-expansion cabal. Parliamentary guile was used to seize control of legislative proceedings and completely sideline leadership and the majority caucus.

The budget and Medicaid expansion were voted out in the shortest time allowed by the state Constitution without real debate. Brewer has said that the insurgents were even willing to formally depose leadership if required.

Even more than what was done, how it was done is likely to have political repercussions and reverberations, at least through the Republican primaries in 2014 and probably well beyond. To understand why, you have to understand how tribal American politics is.

People who are politically active tend to cluster around conservative and liberal axes. Since the Reagan realignment, the Republican Party is the vehicle for conservatives and the Democratic Party is the vehicle for liberals.

There are lots of fissures within the parties. On the Republican side, economic libertarians don't see eye to eye with social conservatives on priorities and some issues. Business and cultural populists tussle for influence. On the Democratic side, unions and environmentalists often clash. And there are tensions between what remains of pro-business Democrats and economic populists about how much and how business should be regulated.

But the ethic is that these disputes are settled within the tribe. You don't go conspiring with the other side to diminish the influence of fellow tribal members. That weakens the power of the tribe overall.

When you hear an elected official or candidate say that he is committed to bipartisanship, you are listening to canned babble intended to lure swing voters. The real intention is to increase the power of his tribe to be in a better position to crush the other tribe.

Now, many people think that the tribal nature of American politics is unproductive and silly. And that it produces undemocratic results. If a majority of the Legislature thinks Medicaid should be expanded, it should be expanded. Who cares that the majority consists of mostly Democrats and a few Republicans?

Those people have a point. But they also tend not to be nearly as politically active as those who regard politics as tribal. And for those people, the Republican members of the Medicaid cabal have breached a fundamental tribal ethic.

Something similar happened in 2004. Fifteen Republican House members sided with Democrats to pass a state budget over the objection of House leadership and a majority of the House Republican caucus. Only eight of them returned the following year. And only one of them, current state Sen. Michele Reagan of Scottsdale, is still a politician of any note.

The breach of the tribal ethic this time is much graver. In 2004, there was no special session, no seizing of control of the legislative process, no threat to dispose leadership. Moreover, a majority of Republicans in the state Senate voted to accept the House renegade budget.

Overall, Republican legislators were pretty evenly divided over that budget, 24 in favor and 32 against. On this budget, only 14 Republicans supported it and 39 opposed it. And in 2013, as opposed to 2004, a side casualty was an abortion bill strongly desired by social conservatives, who remain the most powerful force in Republican politics.

Will the political careers of those 14 suffer the same fate as the 2004 rebels? You'd have to say the odds are that they will.

Republican primaries are a place where tribal politics matter. The business community vowed to come to the rescue of any Republican facing a primary challenge because of voting for Medicaid expansion. I'll believe it when I see the money. Regardless, a Republican primary can be won even if the other side spends a lot more.

Moreover, Republican primary challengers will have a potent charge to make: The incumbent voted to implement "Obamacare" in Arizona. Brewer hates this formulation, but it's fair enough for politics. Expanding Medicaid to 133 percent of the poverty level was a key component of Obamacare. And Brewer's Medicaid expansion implements it.

But here's the weird part. The budget that the Medicaid cabal passed is actually a very conservative budget. And, except for Medicaid expansion, it's pretty much the same budget legislative Republicans would have passed if the budget hadn't gotten caught up in the Medicaid-expansion melodrama.

And here's the really weird and ironic part. By voting for the budget as part of the Medicaid coup, legislative Democrats have basically signed on to the Republican approach to managing the state's way through the current rough patch. And in so doing, they've largely given up their chief campaign issue for 2014.

The coup eclipsed the nearly universal consensus that exists among legislative Republicans about fiscal policy. They saved over a billion dollars from the temporary sales tax. The plan is to largely hold the line on spending, use that surplus to paper over structural deficits over the next three years and hope revenue picks up enough to make ends meet before the surplus runs out.

The 2014 budget that passed with mostly Democratic votes implements that strategy. Democrats have been complaining for years about how Republicans have recklessly cut state spending. The budget for which they supplied the majority of the votes still funds the Department of Education $340million below its pre-recession peak; Department of Economic Security (which houses most of the state's social-welfare programs) $68million less than its peak; and the universities $357million below.

The budget Democrats voted for has not a dime for all-day kindergarten, next to nothing for school capital, and continues the waiting list for child-care subsidies.

So, how are the Democrats going to complain about Republican spending cuts when the state is spending precisely the amount for every program of state government Democrats voted to approve?

All these tribal dislocations and future turbulence could have been avoided. Republicans could have been left free to craft a budget implementing their fiscal strategy, and Democrats could have retained their political argument that it didn't spend enough.

Independent of the budget, Brewer could have forced a vote on Medicaid expansion, on which there was a natural bipartisan coalition. That could have been considerably less of a violation of tribal ethics.

But drama we had. And political turmoil we will now endure.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@ arizonarepublic.com.

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