Attorney General: Felecia Rotellini
For the last four years, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has played politics with the Arizona Attorney General's Office. In between scandals, Horne has cooked up schemes to disenfranchise voters, prevent the DREAM Act kids from getting an affordable education at community colleges and hand out legal pork to anti-abortion, anti-gay legal teams. And while Mark Brnovich wouldn't likely have the scandals, we're afraid he'd follow in Horne's footsteps with many of those other bad policy calls.
Felecia Rotellini has plenty of experience in the attorney general's office. She cut her teeth working for former AGs Grant Woods and Janet Napolitano, untangling complex cases such as the swindling of trusting seniors who invested in the Baptist Foundation of Arizona. She's not going to look for legal fights to deny women the right to an abortion or to block gays from receiving equal rights or to make life tougher for immigrant kids who are trying to make a better life for themselves. Vote Rotellini.
Secretary of State: Terry Goddard
Terry Goddard served the state with distinction as Arizona's attorney general. During his two terms, Goddard went after money launderers, human smugglers and swindlers who cheat seniors. We like his promise to use those skills to go after the dark-money campaigners who see our elections as up for sale.
And given the important role that the Secretary of State plays with elections, we have to say that we trust Goddard over his opponent, Michele Reagan, a state senator who last year pushed through an omnibus election-reform bill that was filled with different provisions designed to reduce voter participation. (After an angry coalition of voters collected enough signatures to force a public vote on Reagan's voter-suppression law, she joined with Republican colleagues in repealing the legislation earlier this year rather than allow voters to decide its fate next month.) Vote for Terry Goddard.
Superintendent of Public Instruction
This one isn't even a close call. David Garcia is an Army veteran with a lengthy career in education. He has worked in a high-ranking position in at the State Department of Education and now teaches at ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. We don't even have room in this space to go over his extensive résumé in the education field, but he has extensive experience in developing education policy for the state. Even though he's a Democrat, Garcia has won the endorsement of former GOP superintendents Lisa Graham Keegan and Jamie Molera, as well as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the Tucson Metro Chamber, the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and many others. Why? Because not only is he experienced, but his opponent, Republican Diane Douglas, is so unqualified for the job that even Republican-leaning organizations recognize that she should not be put in charge of Arizona's schools. Douglas is a former Peoria Unified School Board member who opposed even a temporary tax increase to keep schools open and remains a political ally of former state lawmaker Russell Pearce. We wouldn't hire Diane Douglas to wash our windows. You shouldn't vote for her to run our schools. Vote David Garcia.
Arizona Corporation Commission
There is one major question in the race for Arizona Corporation Commission this year: Is the state going to continue to nurture the solar-power industry or are we going to smother it in its crib? Thanks to some smart tax credits and other subsidies, the solar industry was a $1.2 billion industry last year, employing more than 8,500 people across more than 330 businesses. On top of that, the growing use of solar energy has helped reduce the emissions that are contributing to the climate change that the vast majority of the scientific community is warning will leave the planet a much worse place for future generations. So we're urging you to vote for Democrats Sandra Kennedy and Jim Holway to send the message that you support alternative energy—and that you oppose efforts by big utilities to buy the seats for Republican candidates.
Legislative District 9
This is a tough call. Legislative District 9, which includes north-central Tucson, the Catalina Foothills and the Casas Adobes area, is now represented by Republican Ethan Orr and Democrat Victoria Steele. Democrats hope to knock out Orr with Dr. Randy Friese, a smart trauma doc who first made local headlines when he helped save many of those wounded in the mass shooting at Gabby Giffords' Congress on Your Corner on Jan. 8, 2011.
We like the job that Steele has done at the Legislature and find ourselves aligned with Friese on most issues. But we also respect Orr for crossing party lines to support Gov. Jan Brewer's Medicaid expansion, as well as his support for educational and other programs in Southern Arizona, even though we disagree with other issues, particularly when it comes to abortion and gun rights.
It comes down to this: If you want to see more Democrats in the Arizona House of Representatives, you should vote for Steele and Friese. If you want to reward a relatively sensible Republican who is willing to sometimes cross party lines, vote for Ethan Orr and one of the other Democrats.
Legislative District 10
We're happy with the work done by the Democrats who are now representing the competitive Legislative District 10. Sen. Dave Bradley and state Reps. Stefanie Mach and Bruce Wheeler have been leaders in the opposition to the many bad bits of legislation that have been passed—and in a few cases, stopped—at the Legislature over the last two years and all three deserve another term. Vote for Bradley, Mach and Wheeler.
