Wednesday, April 30th, 2008...11:30 am
Nostradamus They Ain’t
Poking around on these here internets, I ran across an article in the Tucson Weekly from over ten years ago entitled “Withered Crop”. (The article originally appeared in the New Times.)
Amy Silverman talks at length about the folks that ran the state party at the time (interestingly for those of us who were in the thick of the internecine battles that marked turn-of-the-millenium Democratic politics, she trashes both Melodee Jackson and Mark Fleischer), but the bulk of her article is about what she felt were the crop of losers that the party was running for office that year.
What’s funniest is Silverman’s assesment of two of those candidates, some woman named Janet Napolitano and some guy named Terry Goddard.
Here she is on Napolitano:
Napolitano is probably the smartest, savviest pol of this lot. She’d make a great candidate in, say, Massachusetts. But she’s got the wrong profile to run for office in stodgy Arizona.
And further…
Napolitano may succeed at playing down her feminist reputation enough to get elected, but it’s also possible that her history will speak louder than her campaign message and land her in defeat.
She’s got a shot, albeit long, at attorney general. But she wouldn’t have had a prayer against Jane Hull.
That November, Napolitano won that race by nearly 30,000 votes. In 2002, she went on to win the governor’s office over Matt Salmon. Oddly enough, that year it was in Massachusetts where the Democratic woman lost to the Mormon Republican.
Goddard isn’t spared either. Silverman derided him as a “bleeding-heart,” a “perennial also-ran” and a “knee-jerk idealist.” She also said:
The “L” word has always been the nastiest word in Arizona politics. In Terry Goddard’s case, “L” doesn’t only stand for liberal. It stands for loser. Goddard is touted as one of the most desirable Dems around, but the reality is that, after two runs for governor, he hasn’t held public office in this decade.
Funny thing was that Goddard sat out the 1998 race, saving his powder for a race four years later where this “loser” won a race for attorney general by a bigger margin than Napolitano did, and his 2006 re-election was a 60-40 romp. He’s seen now as having such an inside track for the Democratic nomination for governor that he seems to have scared Phil Gordon, darling of a big part of the Democratic establishment, out of the race. I guess it’s all about how you define “loser.”
I’ve got to quit checking those Weekly archives.
5 Comments
April 30th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Oh man. As someone who worked on the 1998 campaign I would have to say I probably would agree with many of Silverman’s assessments of our chances that year…
What Silverman obviously missed was the weakness of McGovern - Janet’s opponent after a bloody Republican primary. The joke around the office was that he only had enough cash after the primary to buy a small used car. Janet didn’t have a primary and there was no Clean Elections back then, so she had saved up a warchest to take him on.
And of course we all know that crazy loon Goddard beat in 2002…some Andrew Peyton Thomas. Whatever happened to that guy? Oh….
Amy still writes for the New Times up here, albeit ocassionally, like me she has joined the Mommy Crowd. I bet she is blushing today!
April 30th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
TP: I thought you were referring to a different Amy Silverman New Times piece, which I hated more than this one. (Not being mentioned in this one helped.) Notice how A.S. managed to see all the faults, both real and imagined, in Johnson, Basha, Napolitano, and Goddard — but still took Mark Fleischer seriously and at face value. That’s the kind of journalistic insight that stands up so, so terribly well after 10 years.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
This is why you don’t take seriously New Times political reporters. They have some of the best investigative reporters, on ISSUES, but fail miserably in political endeavours.
Especially since it was the “loser” Goddard who championed their pet issue, Colorado City, and chased them out of Arizona and into the waiting hands of Texas, a state that has the balls to outlaw marriages of 14 year olds. ( Yes, thats still legal in Arizona kids )
May 1st, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Seconding Sam and Hannah’s comments and going back even further, remember New Times supported McCain AND Kyl in 1986, as well as Symington in 1990. When Arizona was a legitimate two party state in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, New Times went out of its way to trash Democrats. Even after 10 years of Republican dominance (thankfully starting to change), they still direct most of their fire at Napolitano, Goddard, and Gordon, with columnist Sarah Fenske recently offering another lovefest to John McCain.
Unlike Tucson Weekly or even the Phoenix Business Journal, they’ve never had a reporter consistently covering state or local politics which I think is why they are so tone-deaf so much of the time.
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I remember reading this article not too long ago, and remembering just how badly the state party recruited candidates and I can’t help but commend the party today for so many of the improvements that began under Jim Pederson’s leadership…
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