It is tempting by many campaigns to put out public polling claiming their guy is in the lead and touting his or her strength. For the second time in a month, Summit Consulting Group has put out a poll touting the strength of State Senator Jim Waring.

Now I like Jim and think he’s a good guy. But he needs to distance himself from Summit’s incredibly flawed polling.

For those of you who aren’t experts on polling, let me explain. In the poll just below as was the case with the poll release around a month ago, Summit isn’t releasing a true ballot question. You can tell this because the undecideds are uncommonly low. In fact, most Congressional races develop late and rare is it that a candidate builds up any type of substantial lead until voters start paying attention.

Yet, at first glance at the press release below, you would think that Jim Waring has a commanding lead in the race. However, if you read the press release, you will see that it is only among voters who have made up their mind. This is probably around 20 to 25 percent of the voters, leaving around 70-80 percent undecided. Now in fairness to Summit, they acknowledge that.

But there is another problem.

If you read further into the press release by Summit, they claim that the poll conducted was 400 interviews with a  margin of error of +/-  5 percent. That’s fine, but the numbers they are citing for Waring only include those who have decided or about 20-30 percent of those interviewed or in other words about 80 to 90 interviews, not 400. The problem with that is that this isn’t a statistically significant number of interviews to mean anything. The margin of error for such a small sample is so large that it means nothing. You can see that in their results with both Crump and Gorman jumping around in the numbers. That is to be expected because the margin of error is so large.

If Summit wants to be taken seriously as a polling firm, then they would do well to release the entire poll and release the number of interviews included in the numbers they choose to highlight.

Finally, in an article in the Capitol Times from last month, Summit head Chad Willems mentioned that he was going to be working for Waring.  Yet in this press release there is no such mention of any relationship.  The reason this matters is that the FEC takes a very dim view of consultants and employees of a campaign doing things independently that could ostensibly be seen as beneficial to a candidate they are working for.  Now Summit may not be working for the Waring campaign, but if they are, then they should disclose it to the recipients of the press release.

…when you have the Arizona Republic working for you?

Arizona Republic assistant editorial page editor Robert Leger’s post on one constituent’s efforts to actually meet with Congressman Harry Mitchell says it all.

The latest gambit in Governor Brewer’s increasingly strained negotiations with the Legislature is a lawsuit she intends to file today forcing the Legislature to send her the recently passed budget that she will presumably veto in an attempt to start the process over with less than three weeks to go.  

The Governor has backed off on her insistence that the FY’10 budget include a tax increase and is now calling for legislation to put the tax increase on the ballot at some time in the future.  I suppose that’s a logical negotiating position on her part – “I’ll give you a no tax increase budget for FY’10, if you give me the tax increase vote in return.”

One problem.  

How does it pass the Legislature?

In theory, you have two somewhat realistic options to pass it in both chambers.  

First, you convince Republican legislators that this isn’t really a tax increase, just a vote to give voters a choice.  You then hope that the desire to finish this marathon legislative session outweighs the reluctance to vote for the tax increase.  Odds of this happening – probably slim and none.  

Second, you try and convince Democrats to provide a large majority of the votes and then try to pick off and/or buy Republican votes to get yourself a majority.  Odds of this happening – slightly better, but it would fly in the face of strong Democrat opposition to the sales tax and their desire for something with a little more, shall we say, oomph in the tax department.  It also assumes that there are enough Republican yes votes, something that is by no means guaranteed.  

This is probably why the Governor wants the budget bills.  Vetoing them serves her purposes in both scenarios.  In scenario one, she can increase the desperation about passing a budget by vetoing these bills.  If these ones are off the table, she apparently believes she is in a stronger negotiating position as the fiscal year nears an end and Legislators come under increased pressure to strike a deal.  

In the second scenario, she is in better position to buy both Republican and Democrat votes for her tax increase if she can play a big role in the crafting of a new budget.  

Fun stuff.  Aren’t you glad you’re not a Legislator?

This coming Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up a proposal by Senator Jonathan Paton to send to the ballot a measure to get rid of Clean Elections.  

I for one, support that measure for the same reasons many do who follow politics in AZ.  I believe that the system is irreparably flawed and serves as a drag on free speech.  I also oppose the idea of using public money for political campaigns.  

But courtesy of Freshman State Senator Steve Pierce there is another reason to get rid of Clean Elections that most of us haven’t thought of.  

From Today’s Capitol Times:

“Clean Elections gives you a lesser quality of people, and I think people should have to raise their own money,” 

Lesser quality of people?

Considering that a significant amount of Senator Pierce’s colleagues have utilized Clean Elections at one point or another in their careers, one can only imagine what Senator Pierce must think about the people he serves with.  

In 2001, a so-called “businessman” from out of state showed up on the political scene claiming he wanted to run for Congress. He was replete the requisite cowboy boots and jeans – apparently out of staters think we are all a bunch of cowboys – and splashed around a lot of money to win a seat in Congress. His ties to the state were minimal at best – he had gone to college here but hadn’t lived in the state for over 20 years. That Congressman was Rick Renzi. Most political followers know the rest of the story.

Now comes news that another “businessman” is looking to do the same thing. Call it Renzi-redux if you will. Jim Ward announced he was running for Congress stating in his press release that he has traveled the district listening to residents to “get a sounding as to the viability of his candidacy” (get a sounding?). That was probably a smart move on Mr. Ward’s part, given the fact that according to property records, he’s only lived in the district and the state for a little over six months. But fair is fair, our Constitution places no resident requirements on running for Congress.

But the topic of this post isn’t really about Mr. Ward. Apparently he thinks that his long time residence in the Bay Area of California is sufficient to understand the needs and concerns of Arizonans. I’m not here to question that.

What I’m wondering is what it is about Arizona that seems to attract these types of candidacies from out of staters? Why do out of staters think they can come to Arizona and despite having very little connection represent our views in Congress?

Do we come off as that small time? A place where someone can show up and splash a little money and be considered a credible candidate to represent our views despite having little to no real ties to the state?

I’m curious what Sonoran Alliance readers think. Feel free to comment.

Yeah Right.

For those readers who had any lingering doubt about the real reasons we have photo radar, I direct you to a brief article in the Tribune.  

Redflex, the real winner in the photo radar scam, sent a lobbyist and count ’em two PR people down to the Tribune to defend photo radar.  

One senses that RedFlex is going to spare no expense protecting it’s cash cow from legislative and citizen efforts to reign in photo radar.  

But hey that’s okay…after all it’s all about driver safety.