Sunday, July 24th, 2005...7:08 am
Two Names Floating
I’ve got a bit of an update on some stories we’ve been following here on 3R.
First of all, the likely candidate to fill Jim Pedersen’s position as state chairman is Sen. Harry Mitchell, who is from Tempe. Mitchell was also the hugely popular mayor of that town, and made a previous run for statewide office. The only thing that I worry about is that Pedersen was rather, for lack of a better word, hollistic in his view of Arizona. He grew up in Casa Grande, went to college in Tucson, and made his money in Phoenix. I don’t know that Mitchell will have that same sort of broad perspective on the state. Fred Duval’s name is still circulating. He has a Pedersen’s “three town” perspective on Arizona (Duval grew up in Tucson and has worked in Phoenix and Flagstaff), but his candidacy seems wishful thinking on the part of people like me.
Chuck Coughlin, a former aide to J. Fife Symington III, is talking up Mary Peters as a possible candidate for Governor. I guess this means that Marilyn Quayle and Dr. Richard Carmona have taken their names out of consideration. Peters was Jane Hull’s transportation chief, and she has been head of the Federal Highway Administration. (NB- Funny thing about their website, they are part of the Department of Transportation, or DOT, so their URL is “…dot dot gov.”
I don’t know much about Peters, but I think I know somebody that knows a bit about her performance on transportation issues. I expect a detailed post from him.
I keep thinking I should include a complete list of people who have been “prominently mentioned” as Republican candidates for governor, but people tell me my posts are too long as it is. I have a feeling that Peters will end up on that roster along with Rick Schroeder and Rep. J. D. Hayworth.
One more thing, I wrote a while back that Rep. Jack Jackson Jr. was mulling a run against Rep. Rick Renzi. Well, last week, he made it official. Renzi claims he isn’t worried, but he hired a new staffer tasked with Native American issues. I’m sure that is totally unrelated, right?
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