In Tucson city elections, all voters can choose a mayor and three council members in one year and three other council members two years later. But in county elections, we can vote every four years for one supervisor from the district where we reside.
Other folks pick the remaining four supervisors.
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The City Council spends $1.25 billion a year to provide services and benefits to me. The Board of Supervisors spends about $1.5 billion but I have a much smaller voice in county policies than in city matters. So do you if you’re a city resident.
Only one county supervisor has to worry about what we think, but if you live in Tucson, all seven elected officials know you can play a role in their next election.
Carroll and District 5 Democratic Supervisor Richard Elias are unopposed this year and presumably will serve four more years.
But early primary voting is under way, and our largest daily newspaper has carried little news on the three contested supervisor primaries and endorsed candidates in only two of them.
On Aug. 3, the Arizona Daily Star editorialized in favor of re-electing Supervisor Ann Day over fellow Republican challenger Joe Higgins in District 1. That day the Star also endorsed re-election of Supervisor Ramón Valadez over fellow Democrat Robert Robuck in District 2.
The newspaper skipped the third contest, where District 3 Supervisor Sharon Bronson is challenged by former County Democratic Chair Donna Branch-Gilby.
“The Star chooses not to make endorsements in primary elections because they are party functions,” the newspaper explained. “We may make exceptions when the winner of a primary race will not face opposition in the general election, as is the case in the Pima County Board of Supervisors races in Districts 1 and 2.”
So since Republican Barney Brenner will face the winner of the Democratic primary between Bronson and Branch-Gilby, the Star sees no reason to endorse a primary candidate.
This twisted logic isn’t some long-time Star tradition decreed back in the 1920s by Editor and Publisher William R. Mathews and continued under the ownership of the Pulitzers decades later.
It’s a policy of Lee Enterprises, the chain based in Davenport, Iowa, that bought the Star and other Pulitzer newspapers in 2005.
Lee Enterprises originally decided against making primary endorsements in the Star but relented slightly when readers and employees pointed out some local races are over after the primaries because both parties enjoy “safe” districts and the rival party doesn’t field candidates.
Now someone should tell Lee Enterprises that Arizona primary elections aren’t “party functions,” limited exclusively to Republicans or Democrats.
Independents, no-party voters, vegetarians, whigs, tories and others can vote in Democratic or Republican primaries by requesting a mail ballot or showing up at the polls.
State law require Republicans or Democrats to vote in their own party’s primary or re-register to vote in the other party’s primaries. A few do, then re-register in their own party after the election.
The Star editorials for supervisors Day and Valadez continued a trend of favoring incumbents and giving challengers short shrift. Higgins and Robuck were each mentioned once in the Day and Valadez endorsements.
That’s another “long-standing” Lee Enterprises policy that’s already been changed in recent years. An earlier Lee Enterprises publisher decreed that opponents of Star-backed candidates could not be mentioned at all in the newspaper’s endorsement editorials.
Star employees say that ended a few days later when the publisher couldn’t remember the name of a candidate running against one of the Star’s choices.
He realized some Star readers also might not know. So the “name them only once” rule became the Star’s new “long-standing” policy.
At least until it changes.
Contact Steve Emerine or e-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Emerine, a Tucson resident since 1960, has run Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations since 1994. He is a former local newspaper reporter, editor and columnist and served as Pima County Assessor from 1973 to 1980. He is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to noon weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.
Comments
Reb wrote on Aug 9, 2008 9:50 PM: