A couple of weeks ago, the Center for the Future of Arizona asked candidates to answer questions from voters in a survey called The Arizona We Want.
I submitted my answers the next day. The Center for the Future of Arizona asked candidates to post their answers on their websites, along with a link to the survey and other candidates' responses. After two weeks, no candidates for U.S. Senator, Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Corporation Commission State Mine Inspector, State Treasurer have responded, nor has a single candidate for State Senator.
One candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jason Williams, a Democrat, has responded, as have just four candidates for State Representative, all Democrats: Aaron Jahneke in District 10, Ken Clark in District 15, Pat Carr in District 2 and Steve Farley in District 28.
Two other candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives have also responded to The Arizona We Want survey: Republican candidate Ed Winkler in the Third Congressional District and the very capable Green Party candidate, Rebecca DeWitt, whom I support, in the Fourth Congressional District.
Here are our reprinted survey responses:
Composite Questions
Your Vision
What is your vision for the state? How will Arizona be different if you are elected to office?
Arizona needs to suck less.
It's dead last in education rankings among the state. The state's economy has been based on the unsustainable growth of the real estate industry, and of course that bubble has long burst, with the predictable disaster. Now in the rest of the country, when I am among civilized people, when you do say you're an Arizona resident, they invariably say something disparaging about the state - usually, but not always, regarding the state's intolerance - but sometimes for other reasons.
The truth is that Arizona, among the fifty states and District of Columbia, is not a good place to bring up children. It is not a good place to be a student at any level of P-16 education. It is not a good state to be a senior citizen because of the inadequate services for the elderly. It is not a good state to be if you are highly educated, because the jobs aren't there - nor are the important cultural and social amenities are largely absent as well.
And even those bigoted nativists who designed the odious SB 1070 would say Arizona is not a good state if you are Hispanic/Latino. Or different from their white-bread-with-mayo-and-Tea-Party regressive, repressive, antediluvian Weltanschauung - which, for all I know, may sound slightly better in the original Germany. It's far from a coincidence that the anagram for "Arizona" is "or a ****."
The state's transportation system is a disaster brought about the suburban sprawl that Arizona is almost synonymous with. The state's tax system is antiquated. The entire state has been judged in a dysfunctional manner by a moronic legislature pursuing an extremist, un-American agenda.
That's why I'm running for the U.S. Congress, not the rented ******** that is the Arizona Legislature. What idiot would want to associate with the uncultured, unintelligent baboons who run the worst state in the union?
At least as a Congressman I'll get to live in the Washington, D.C., metro region most of the time and it will get me out of Arizona. As bad as it is, Arizona still deserves adequate representation on Capitol Hill Rep. Jeff Flake *brags* about doing nothing in bringing jobs, capital improvement projects, individual government benefits and assistance to the voters of the Sixth Congressional District.
Since your group is about Arizona's future, here's my guess on that: The majority of Arizonans under 18 aren't white and soon that'll be true not just in seven states as it is now, but the entire U.S. But the same time, the country is also aging, as the massive baby boom generation (I'll be 60 next year) moves into retirement. But in contrast to the young, fully four-fifths of this rapidly expanding senior population is white. That proportion will decline only slowly over the coming decades, with whites still representing nearly two-thirds of seniors by 2040.
As a recent article at the National Journal by Ronald Brownstein ("The Gray and the Brown," from which I've taken some of this), notes: A contrast in needs, attitudes, and priorities is arising between a heavily (and soon majority) nonwhite population of young people and an overwhelmingly white cohort of older people.
Already, this plays out in Arizona over the tension between the older white and younger nonwhite populations in the dispute over the sucky SB 1070. It's not entirely along ethnic and age lines, as my own old white guy's positions attest, but look at the 2008 presidential election: young people (especially minorities) strongly preferred Democrat Barack Obama (again, to be fair, so did many "young-thinking" oldsters like myself and my 83yo dad in Apache Junction), and seniors (especially whites - but again, also a few "old-thinking" chronologically young people, mostly white Young Republicans with acne and bad haircuts) broke solidly for Republican John McCain.
Over time, the major focus in this struggle is likely to be the tension between an aging white population that appears increasingly resistant to taxes and dubious of public spending, and a minority population that overwhelmingly views government education, health, and social-welfare programs as the best ladder of opportunity for its children.
As Brownstein says, there's an irony here: "The twist is that graying white voters who are skeptical of public spending may have more in common with the young minorities clamoring for it than either side now recognizes. Today's minority students will represent an increasing share of tomorrow's workforce and thus pay more of the payroll taxes that will be required to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits for the mostly white Baby Boomers. Many analysts warn that if the U.S. doesn't improve educational performance among African-American and Hispanic children, who now lag badly behind whites in both high school and college graduation rates, the nation will have difficulty producing enough high-paying jobs to generate the tax revenue to maintain a robust retirement safety net."
The future of America is in this question: Will the Baby Boomers recognize that they have a responsibility and a personal stake in ensuring that this next generation of largely Latino and African-American kids are prepared to succeed?
I think many more progressive states will answer that question with a resounding Yes. As for Arizona, things don't look so hot. We may need for the Joe Arpaios and Russell Pearces and the doddering Tea Party crowd and backward-looking Republicans to die off first. But it won't happen soon enough, in my opinion, to save Arizona from disaster.
I tell young people in Arizona to vote with their feet and get the hell out of here.
Other states have great advantages - like a functioning state government and not being the worst state for education, por ejemplo.
Your Issues
What issues are most important to you? What positions on those issues will cause voters to support you?
Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs ad infinitum.
Unless we can get Americans back to work in good jobs at good wages, we're ******. Obama's stimulus package has saved millions of jobs, but it was too small to be truly effective to get a vibrant recovery going. We need for the federal government to do what it did in the New Deal: be an employer of last resort. We need to adequately support those who are currently out of work. We need to put in place policies that will encourage small business hiring and corporate hiring. We need a better educational system, a better transportation system, single-payer health care (Medicare for all), a fairer tax structure, policies that will reverse the decades-long severe income and wealthy inequality that, as many of our other policies, makes the U.S. the odd (and struggling) duck among the developed nations.
Jeff Flake's laissez-faire free-market fanaticism caused the fiscal implosion that made the effective bank bailout necessary, but he and the other crazed right-wingers apparently have not learned their lesson. The recently enacted financial regulation, like the stimulus and health care reform passed in this Congress, are a good start but inadequate to bring vigorous safety and prosperity to the system.
I would immediately withdraw our troops from the useless, unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and I will not vote to add another penny to the $1.15 trillion these foreign misadventures. As a Jew who has taught at Jess Schwartz Jewish Community High School in Phoenix, I strongly support an independent Palestinian state and an end to the repressive occupation and a return to a secure Israel within the pre-1967 war borders. I support engagement with democratic elements in the Green movement in Iran, a fair trade policy without protectionism, cooperation with the UN, our allies in Europe, aid for developing nations, assistance to forestall and fight the genocide we've sadly witnessed in the past decade, and renewed talks with our hemispheric and contintental neighbors.
I favor a carbon tax. I favor a one dollar a gallon "Patriot Tax" on gasoline to help "green" industries and jobs develop. I oppose offshore drilling. We must curb greenhouse gases and end our dependence on fossil fuels which has made our whole society captive to the dictatorships of many oil states and their tinhorn dictators.
I favor comprehensive immigration reform with a clear path to citizenship for the hard-working undocumented people among us. I favor equality for all in terms of gender, race, religion, age, national origin, sexual orientation, disability status or any other differences, which ultimately are all trivial because we are all Americans and the Constitution guarantees us equal protection under law.
Your Politics
Partisanship and divisiveness are becoming endemic at virtually all levels of government. As a candidate, what kind of assurance can you give that the interests of Arizona citizens are going to be put before party, special interests, or personal ideology?
I'm not a Republican or Democrat and I'm not an ideologue. I'm a progressive, but I support valid and well-thought-out conservative ideas. Look, I'm not stupid enough to think I'm going to win this election, or even come in second, but I suggest that you can't get this kind of assurance from any candidate who answered this survey.
Voting for someone is always, in some ways, a leap of faith. Jeff Flake, the incumbent, has a clear record of putting first his obstructive political party, the special interests who've given him millions in campaign funds, and his obsolete, discredited personal ideology that says that the best thing a government can do in any situtation is absolutely nothing.
And in eight years in Congress Jeff Flake has been excellent in doing nothing for the people of Arizona or the U.S. In contrast, I'd put regular people first, not last.
Your Approach
If elected, you will be expected to take action on a number of issues that are important to citizens. Many of your decisions about one issue will affect other issues. Your decisions on education will affect job creation, for example, and your decisions on healthcare will affect state finances. Please describe your approach to dealing with the multiple implications of these kinds of decisions.
Read, study, talk with people, get out there and see what's happening. Make my decisions based on reliable evidence, not narrow ideology. Wait until all the information and feedback is in before taking action.
Unfortunately, ideology is all Jeff Flake and the even more regressive (and much stupider) Republicans who control Arizona base ther decisions on.
A 1978 rebellion against spiraling property taxes in California morphed like a virulent virus into a national attack on public spending in general. Measures like Prop 13 and its progeny have created a fiscal crisis for states like Arizona, one which they "solved" by slashing funding for education and other public programs.
The Great Recession offers Arizona and the U.S. an opportunity since it underscores the foolhardiness of tax cuts favoring the wealthy and other polices that have fueled spiraling inequality over the last generation. Such regressive right-wing programs favored by Flake and other "free market" conservatives have produced a less just and stable country, contributing to actions like the dismantling of public higher education in the more backward states such as Arizona.
Just to use that as an example, federal financial programs have softened the blow of reduced state funding for public higher education - but only at the cost of ensuring tat the public subsidizes private colleges and universities attended primarily by wealthy families and the take-the-student-loan-money-and-run frauds of the for-profit criminal enterprises like the University of Phoenix which dominate Arizona's feeble private higher education "system." Call it "socialism for the rich" or kleptocracy or whatever, it's the Arizona right-wing way.
Issue-specific Key Questions to be Answered
Job Creation
1.What is your perspective on the value of incentives for economic development? How important are incentives, and should they be planned at the state level or at the local level?
As I stated above, incentives for economic development and job creation are important at the federal level - which would be my concern as a member of Congress - as well as the state and local level.
2.What kind of collaboration do you desire between education and industry? How would you foster that collaboration to generate more jobs and better qualified employees?
I've been a college professor, a law school faculty member and administrator, and a high school teacher since 1975. I could write a lot about this. There needs to be collaboration between education and industry, but it has to be carefully planned as to best practices.
But I'd commend to you two recent books, "Saving State U" by Nancy Folbre and "Unmaking the Public University," by Christopher Newfield. These books, particularly Newfield's, explaining the dismantling of public higher education systems like California's excellent one and Arizona's middling-but-something one.
The rise of the knowledge economy after World War II, and with it a mass college-educated middle class, presented a threat to conservative U.S. elites. Writers such as John Kenneth Galbraith heralded the rise of this new class of knowledge workers in the 1960s by celebrating their capacity to generate not simply economic growth but also far more capacious forms of human development.
Back in my day, the university was the key locus of these attempts to challenge widespread forms of social alienation. Activist academics argues that while late capitalism had generated notable economic development, it was simultaneously promoting underdeveloped people who channedled all their energies into the office cubicle to the service of monolithic corporaations.
This critique of one-dimensional humanity, voiced from within and to a certain extent against, the mass university of the postwar period, overlapped with the sweeping denunciations of the racist, imperalist, sexist, homophobic values embraced by the country's elite and embodied in much of the established currriculum. As an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, I was a student representative on the Faculty Council curriculum committee (student power had gotten us equal representation) in the early 1970s.
The reaction of elites to all this, according to Newfield, was to unleash a renewed wave of red-baiting, the likes of which we see today in primitive states like Arizona and media outlets like Fox News. For the culture warriors, the critique of a system managed for the benefits of the powerful few was not only wrong - it was dangerous, since it threatened to fatally compromise what they mistakenly believed was the "strength" or the nation: their own hold on power.
Newfield argues that this cultural attack by the right effectively diminished economic claims of the middle class by trashing its key sources of cultural legitimacy. Why should public funds be spent to support the work of professors if those professors are "dangerous" to the country and its fehkokteh values.
So, getting back to your question, now, in place of an expansive and inclusive approach to the intellectual development of well-rounded human beings, we have what the right wing has championed (and the implication behind your somewhat moronic question): the effective resegregation of public education and the dominance of narrowly economic benchmarks -- in other words, what critics like Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades have termed "academic capitalism."
In this increased pinched world view, probably shared by your organization for political reasons even though I suspect that in your heart and mind you know better, non-quantative disciplines such as those in the humanities are a drag on the university since they produce far less lucrative intellectual property.
But if you read Newfield's book, you see that he demolishes the common myth that scientific research brings in external funds and therefore supports the university, while fields like art history and anthropology are non-marketable boondoggles. The truth, Newfield shows, is exactly the reverse: scientific research may be important, but it rarely leads to immediately profitable applications. Instead, relatively inexpensive fields like the arts, humanities and social science that subsidize the natural sciences.
Instead of concentating, as your sniveling question does, on "industry," and viewing, as you and your conservative allies do (though you of course would be shocked, shocked to find yourself on the dias of the same banquet as the Russell Pearces of the state), education as a ****ing "investment" that will pay off in higher wages (which of course, it does, which is why - with a J.D., M.A. and M.F.A., I and my similarly well-educated friends, are suffering very little or not at all in this recession), education's function is not a "collaboration" between itself and "industry" = but to better equip people to be effective actors by providing them with the tools for critical thinking.
Countless people have emerged from college with a completely different and far richer sense of themselves, their interests and their abilities. It's this kind of transformation, of which being an informed civic actor is just one part, that Newfield and to some extent Folbre discusses in their books. Access to education is crucial because it enriches people's *lives*, not just their bank accounts or the coffers of anyone else.
3.I’d like to ask the candidates what they will do to create green jobs for Arizona? It’s been our experience that this draws young people. It’s a very exciting occupation for young people, and I think that would do a lot to turn around our per capita income.
As a Congressman, I'd be creating green jobs for all Americans. What the state legislature can do is up to them, and given its recent experience and worldview, it ain't gonna do ****.
So while you're 100% correct that green jobs draw young people, it's probably too late for Arizona unless the state suddenly changes directly drastically.
For now, I'd recommend young people in Arizona who are interested in green jobs move to New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, other states, or - if they're really adventurous - China.
4.In Arizona, 97 percent of the businesses here are run by small business owners. What are you going to do to help the small business owner create jobs?
For one thing, create Medicare for All so that they can avoid offering health insurance to employees and incurring expenses that are a drain on their businesses.
5.Do you really believe that we need to diversify our business base rather than just waiting for real estate construction and tourism to recover? What actions would you take to foster that?
Duh. Real estate is dead. Construction is dead. Tourism, thanks to the boycott of this misbegotten state (which I support), is dead.
Education
1.Do you believe that the success of public education is the most important role of government in the State of Arizona?
Yes. Arizona's being dead last in education and the very low percentage of residents who've got bachelor's degrees is why it is a failed state. If you are a parent interested in your child's education, move out of Arizona if you can.
Arizona now is lucky to produce graduates with the intelligence of "Jersey Shore"'s Snooki, who brags that she's read only two books in her entire life (one of them the crappy "Twilight," written, or course, by an Arizonan).
Arizona's Snookis aren't on MTV reality shows but in the halls of the state legislature.
2.There’s been a substantial reduction in funding for higher education in this state, and I’d like to know specifically from candidates what level of investment you will support in higher education and how you believe that will support our economy.
Hey, I live much of the year in a state other than Arizona because I work in higher education and Arizona funding is so poor, there is no way I can make a living in the Cactus State. Funding for higher education needs to be at least doubled. On the federal level, I can't help you that much. Ask the legislative and statewide candidates.
3.How would you ensure our students rise to national/international standards? How will they become “career-college ready” with the state’s current education fiscal budget?
The only way Arizona's students can rise to international standards is to move to another country or another state.
4.Every candidate says they support education. What specifically will you do to change education in Arizona?
Stop electing Republicans who hate education and believe it is not the government's job.
5.Knowing that getting a child ready for kindergarten begins at birth, how do you plan to support a P-20 educational system?
Yes. This is crucial. Don't hold your breath in Arizona, though. It's a vicious cycle because the leaders are so uneducated; many in the legislature barely have a K-12 education.
Ironically, the older whites who currently are so vocal in their anti-minority prejudices and who favor reducing funds for education (see question #4, above) will increasingly depend on the payroll taxes paid by younger minorities to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as state benefits in Arizona, which already has a majority-minority demographic among those under 18.
The number of whites in the workforce will decline over the coming decades, and all of the increase in the labor market will come among minorities. Today, only about three-fifths of Hispanic and four-fifths of young black people complete high school, compared with about 90 percent of whites; similarly a much larger share of adult whites (about 30 percent) than blacks (17 percent) or Hispanics (under 13 percent) have obtained college degrees.
So oldsters like myself have a tremendous stake in investing in the education of young Latinos and African-Americans so they will get good jobs and we can tax the daylights out of them to support the baby boomers' retirement. The racial gap in achievement has to be narrowed if there's any serious hope for American competitiveness in the global economy.
Indeed, if the U.S. does not significantly improve college completion rates for African-Americans and Hispanics, the overall share of American adults with college degrees will decline very sharply in the next 10 or 15 years. That's an ominous trend in an increasingly knowledge-based economy.
Arizona probably will not be part of that global economy, just some third-world backwater unless it make a 180-degree turn.
Natural Resources
1.Do you support having the whole state comply with the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, which requires that you cannot pump out any more groundwater than is naturally or artificially replenished? Right now there are vast areas of the state, mostly in the rural areas, that do not have to comply with that law.
Yes.
2.I would ask any candidate if they're willing to support continuation of the Growing Smarter program, which helps protect our natural resources. In particular, do you support bringing back the scorecard program, which was never fully implemented?
Yes.
3.What is your position on state trust land reform, and would you be in favor of giving the State Trust Land Department more latitude in the way they manage their lands for the benefit of Arizona schools?
Yes.
The Department is a single entity, an "it," not a "they." You must have learned grammar and usage in Arizona schools.
4.What is your commitment and plan to keep all of our state parks open? And should they be publicly funded?
Duh, in a civilized state or country this would not be asked. Yes, yes, ******* yes.
5.Will you look beyond the needs of Maricopa and Pima counties? To what extent will you consider the needs of smaller cities and rural areas with regard to water and environmental issues?
Yes, this is important.
Healthcare
1.If elected, will you work to expand Kids Care again to deal with the 40,000 children that are on the waiting list at the time?
Yes.
2.What will you do to close the gap for the working poor who do not qualify for AHCCCS but cannot afford private insurance?
Medicare for All.
3.We have a shortage of healthcare professionals in Arizona, and the University of Arizona has gone through extensive planning to expand the medical school in Phoenix. It requires a great deal of investment. Are you supportive of continuing this investment or increasing it?
Supportive.
4.Given the current extreme shortage of doctors in the State of Arizona, what would you do about tort reform to help more doctors want to practice here?
When Arizona sucks less, doctors will want to move here. Other states with the same tort system don't have this problem.
5.Do you support additional funding for Graduate Medical Education, which helps put medical residents in rural community hospitals?
Yes.
Immigration
1.The majority of Arizona citizens support SB1070, despite the fact that some communities have decided to take legal action. Do you specifically support or oppose SB1070?
I oppose this piece of ****.
2.Do you support the removal, in whatever way, of the 600,000 estimated illegal immigrants? Or do you support creating a process in which some of those would be able to stay in the state and in the country legally?
I support amnesty, if you call it that.
3.My question is about the children who come to this country at three years of age and have gone through elementary school and high school. Are you in favor of sending them back, even though they had no reason to be in this country except their parents brought them here?
What are we, ******* *****? No, don't send them back. The fact that you ask this question is truly nauseating.
4.Will you do everything possible when you get into office to make sure that the federal government does the job it has been constitutionally mandated to do, which is to protect our borders from illegal entry?
I'll be in Congress and pass comprehensive immigration reform.
5.What kind of influence can you bring to bear on our Congressional delegation to secure a comprehensive immigration policy for this country and especially for our state?
Duh, I'll be in Congress, so I can influence myself by giving myself a good talking-to every morning when I shave and look in the mirror, all right?
Leadership & Government
1.How do you feel about an open primary concept for legislative office, where anyone can vote in a primary election and the general election is a runoff between the first and second (place) candidates?
This system sucks in Louisana and hasn't worked out that well in Washington. In Louisiana it produced David Duke. Arizona has too many extremist neo-***** who in a multi-candidate field could make the runoff with a small percentage of the vote. So I oppose this system.
2.In almost every election, we have propositions on the ballot. How do you feel about proposing some kind of legislation that these voter-mandated programs be revisited periodically and referred back to voters on some kind of regular basis?
Generally, I don't favor legislation by voters. Of course the legislature is filled with assholes and is even more incompetent.
3.Do you support changing the position of Secretary of State to Lieutenant Governor?
Yes.
4.Do you support term limits?
No.
5.Do you support a redistricting process that results in more politically competitive districts?
yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my ******* all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
6.Will you support a constitutional convention to modernize our state government?
No. I don't trust the people who would be delegates. They wouldn't "modernize" it; they'd do the opposite.
State Finances
1.If you want to decrease taxes in Arizona, you can do it with a simple majority. But if you want to increase taxes, you need a two-thirds vote. Are you willing to do anything about that so we can increase or decrease easier as needed?
This 2/3 law is moronic and should be repealed.
2.Every issue we’ve talked about really has some cost to it. What I want to know is what your top priorities are for state spending? Where should the dollars go first, and where should they go last?
I'm a federal candidate, but education first.
3.It’s my understanding that there’s a cap on the amount of money or revenue that can go into the rainy day fund. Do you favor removing the cap?
Yes.
4.We are experiencing a severe economic downturn, and I think part of that is because of the tax structure we have in Arizona. What do you feel the appropriate mix of taxation should be in the state?
This is a state issue. The taxes in Arizona are too low, though.
5.Oftentimes our cities are burdened with unfunded mandates. I want to know the candidates' opinions about unfunded mandates and if they would be willing to lessen them or eliminate them altogether.
Sometimes the federal government needs to tell the stupider states like Arizona what to do, like to make sure their citizens are treated like human beings. Burdensome unfunded mandates should be eliminated.
Here is the June 8, 1010 press release from the Center for the Future of Arizona:
ARIZONANS, CFA WORKING TO ADVANCE CITIZENS’ AGENDA
FIVE JUNE TOWN MEETINGS TO HELP DECIDE QUESTIONS FOR CANDIDATES
DURING 2010 ELECTIONS
PHOENIX – This month Arizonans have some new opportunities to shape the conversation with candidates as part of the 2010 elections. Residents from five communities will participate in The Arizona We Want citizens' agenda through a series of invitation-only town meetings in Peoria (June 8), Flagstaff (June 14), Mesa (June 17), Tucson (June 21) and Sierra Vista (June 22).
Additionally, all Arizonans are encouraged to submit their questions for candidates online at www.TheArizonaWeWant.org.
The town meetings will help frame specific questions for candidates in seven areas: job creation; education; healthcare; natural environment and water management; tax policy; immigration; and quality leadership and the modernization of Arizona's state government. The forums are being co-hosted by the Center for the Future of Arizona, the cities and local community organizations.
CFA will carry forward the citizens' questions in a consolidated report to be made available to all candidates, the media and others interested in the 2010 election. The questions will be compiled and published twice – prior to the start of early voting in the primaries, which begins July 29, and prior to the start of early voting in the general election, which begins October 7.
According to Lattie Coor, chairman and CEO of the Center for the Future of Arizona, the effort is designed to address the serious disconnect between citizens and elected officials. According to Coor, who is spearheading The Arizona We Want citizens' agenda, the Gallup Arizona Poll commissioned by CFA found that only 10 percent of Arizonans believe that their elected officials represent their interests. Recent online polling on The Arizona We Want Web site indicates that only three percent of those responding strongly agree that their elected officials represent their interests.
“Despite the perception that Arizonans have very different perspectives and interests, the Gallup Arizona Poll found there is remarkable consensus among our citizens on a broad range of issues and public policy positions,” Coor noted. “The challenge now is to make sure we elect public officials who will help move Arizona forward in a way that is consistent with what our citizens want.”
Every Citizen’s Voice Matters
“The Arizona We Want is a powerful new wave of civic engagement that has huge potential formaking our government truly representative of our citizenry," Coor said.
The center encourages all citizens to contribute to the “citizen voice” by submitting their questions online and taking the Gallup Arizona Poll at www.TheArizonaWeWant.org.
Thousands of individuals have participated online since the formal poll was completed last year, including members of more than 50 Arizona organizations.
"Increasing the number of citizens who are taking the Gallup Arizona Poll online will strengthen our shared commitment to greater civic engagement," Coor said. "It will also encourage candidates for public office to take our collective concerns seriously."
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR THE FUTURE OF ARIZONA
The Center for the Future of Arizona is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Phoenix. It is helping to shape and define Arizona’s future through an action-oriented agenda focused on issues and topics critical to the state. More than a think tank, the center is an independent “do tank” that combines public-policy research with collaborative partnerships and initiatives that will create opportunities and quality of life for all Arizonans.
It's typical of Arizona candidates that only a handful cared enough to respond to this survey after all that effort.
