The pro-choice community in this state is in big trouble. May 1, the Arizona affiliate of NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) will shut its doors. Bruce Miller, essentially NARAL’s one-man show for the past four years, is headed to Minnesota to run that state’s Common Cause chapter…
Two years ago, Arizona voters approved the Clean Elections initiative, a law that offers public funding to state and legislative candidates who agree to voluntary campaign spending limits. But with the law in limbo — pending a ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court — it’s increasingly likely that there will…
Here are the texts of key initiatives for which organizers are seeking signatures in Arizona. With the exception of Healthy Arizona 2, Lee Petition Management is working for all of them. The texts were obtained from the secretary of state. English Language Education for Children in Public Schools Requires that…
In 1987, Derrick Lee was selling roofs in Huntington Beach, California. He had no interest in politics. But he had this unemployed roommate. One day Lee noticed some help-wanted ads for paid petition circulators — the folks you see outside the library and the supermarket who ask you to sign…
Maricopa County schools chief Sandra Dowling has been on a power trip for 11 years, and only two groups can stop her: the Arizona Legislature or the electorate. I hope someone is successful — and soon. But if history is an indication, Dowling will continue on indefinitely. In her three…
By the time you read this, Super Tuesday will be history, and the pundits will be gumming the results. Democrat Bill Bradley likely will say farewell by week’s end. But on the other side of the aisle, things are far from finished. Even if John McCain blew it in California…
Would United States Senator John McCain be a presidential contender if it weren’t for his marriage to Cindy Hensley McCain, heiress to the Hensley liquor fortune? It’s doubtful. The senator’s wife and — more important — his father-in-law, James Willis Hensley, are very wealthy people. Like his father and grandfather…
John McCain is using his Web site to raise millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Now let’s see him use that Web site to let us in on who his contributors are, with full disclosure in a fashion befitting his campaign-reform message. Put your money — or, rather, a record…
A scant three weeks before Arizona’s GOP presidential primary, I wonder whatever happened to Steve Forbes. You remember Forbes — nerdy rich guy, looks sort of like Bruce Babbitt but with chipmunk cheeks and glasses. Fresh on the scene with his flat tax and plain talk, he captured the hearts,…
Carr Crash The Arizona Democratic party’s downward spiral continues. While party chairman Mark Fleisher was making national headlines with the news that Arizona will be the first state to use Internet voting in March’s presidential primary — a terrible idea, in my opinion, given that the party can hardly get…
Steven took his first punch on the playground at Mitchell Elementary School in west Phoenix. He was five. He didn’t defend himself, because his assailant was a sixth-grade girl, and Steven was taught never to hit girls. So he lay bleeding while his older sister walloped the girl. Growing up,…
John McCain released his medical records over the weekend, and now we know all about our senior senator’s skin cancer (cured), colon polyps (benign) and prostate (slightly enlarged, but normal for a 63-year-old). We even know that in 1980 McCain’s doctors spotted a “herpetic lesion” on his genitals — and…
Senator John McCain doesn’t get high ratings from the League of Conservation Voters or the Sierra Club, but he and environmentalists have worked together for years to limit noise over the Grand Canyon. Concern about canyon overflights began in the mid-’80s as a debate over safety, but once that matter…
When Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association collapsed in 1989, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain’s political career nearly went with it. McCain, the country learned, was one of five senators who had met with federal regulators at Keating’s behest. Although the senators insisted there was no quid pro quo,…
Sandy Bahr has a lonely job. As conservation outreach coordinator of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club, Bahr is the only full-time environmental lobbyist at the Arizona Legislature. She’s usually the sole voice in opposition to bills that fly through the conservative legislature — bills navigated by her…
Until this fall, the only thing that Republican John McCain and Democrat Claire Sargent had in common was the fact that both ran for the United States Senate in 1992. Now they’ve both published memoirs. McCain prevailed as a candidate, and he prevails again as an author. This weekend he…
All is deceptively quiet on the Arizona political front. There are some rumblings — to the east, as Scottsdalians wonder who might challenge Mayor Sam Campana, and farther east, as presidential contender John McCain pounds the New Hampshire pavement — but for the most part, no one’s talking much about…
Frank Crerie loves modern art. He loves the Sonoran Desert. And at 80, the retired venture capitalist has cash to spend and not a lot of time to spend it. So Crerie figured he’d combine his passions by commissioning artists to create a sculpture garden in the middle of the…
Can a model car save a kid from the mean streets of Phoenix? On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Isaac Avila, 11, focuses all his attention and an overused paintbrush on the underside of a ’61 Ranchero Custom. Satisfied with the paint job, he sorts through dozens of plastic pieces in…
Robert is in his mid-teens and has been involved in gangs since he was 10. That kind of admission has become almost a cliché in the past decade, as the media, the courts and the political system grapple with the pressing problems of a dysfunctional society and the increasingly violent…
In the early Eighties, a guy named John McCain moved to Mesa to run for Congress. When opponents cried “carpetbagger,” McCain simply told them — and anyone else who would listen — that the longest he’d ever lived any place in his life was five and a half years, the…
Phoenix is poised to elect its mayor and half its city council next week. Did you even know? I’ve heard of sleeper races, but this campaign has been downright catatonic. Sure, a vociferous and bitter few are furious over the mayor and council’s most egregious breach of trust to date,…
