Obama’s Labor Nominee Faces G.O.P. Critics in Senate

WASHINGTON — Responding to sharp criticism from Republicans for his work on housing discrimination and voting rights at the Justice Department, Thomas E. Perez, President Obama’s choice to head the Labor Department, on Thursday defended his record and said that if confirmed, his focus would be on tackling the nation’s high unemployment rate.

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the labor committee, cited a scathing report from other Republican lawmakers as he questioned Mr. Perez about a deal he helped broker with officials in St. Paul for the city to drop a housing discrimination lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department’s declining to join two whistle-blower complaints against the city.

“That seems to me to be an extraordinary amount of wheeling and dealing outside the normal responsibilities of the assistant attorney general for civil rights,” Mr. Alexander said.

He later added that he expected Mr. Perez to respond in full to a subpoena from Representative Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, for personal e-mails believed to contain more information about the deal.

Mr. Perez countered that not only had he sought the guidance of ethics experts on the agreement, his had not been the final word.

“The senior career people in the civil division kicked the tires on this case. They looked at it very carefully, they made a very considered judgment that it was a weak case,” he said.

Democrats were eager to voice their support for Mr. Perez, who, if confirmed would be the only Hispanic member of the cabinet.

Anticipating questions about the deal, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, the committee chairman, opened the questioning by leading Mr. Perez through a series of largely yes-or-no queries designed to rebut the Republican report.

“As I said, we have gone through this with a fine-tooth comb, with our lawyers, with our staff,” Mr. Harkin said. “And everything I can see is that you acted appropriately and ethically to advance the interests of the United States.”

Questioning the role of politics in Mr. Perez’s challenges to voting laws, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, brought up the Justice Department’s move to block that state’s voter identification law in 2011 on the grounds that it would discourage minority voters.

“As I look at your management style, it seems to have a political perspective, a political bias in the management style,” Mr. Scott said. “It seems not to be open and not to be balanced and certainly not to be fair.”

Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, released a statement in March vowing to block Mr. Perez’s nomination pending a response from the Justice Department on his accusations of uneven enforcement of voter registration rights in his state.

As expected, many of the questions focused on job creation, with senators from both parties asking about his commitment to the Job Corps, a training program for young people, among others.

“Jobs, jobs, and jobs,” Mr. Perez said, summing up his top priority as labor secretary. “I believe it’s critically important to get Americans back to work, and I believe the Department of Labor can play a critical role.”

The committee plans to take up the nomination again next week.

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At Republican Forum, McDonald Promises to Make the Economy His Focus

Michael Appleton for The New York Times George McDonald

George T. McDonald, a Republican candidate for mayor, can be an uneven performer in public. He likes to explain his economic plan by arguing that the Bronx should produce more applesauce, and he sometimes jokes about commuting by skateboard.

But at a forum in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday night, Mr. McDonald, 68, sought to use his quirky manner to his advantage as he portrayed his two Republican opponents as out-of-touch plutocrats.

Calling himself the “poorest guy sitting here,” Mr. McDonald, who lives in a $1.6 million apartment on the Upper East Side, said he would make reviving the economy a centerpiece of his administration.

“The recession didn’t pass over New York City,” said Mr. McDonald, who runs the Doe Fund, a nonprofit job-training program for the homeless. “It may have passed over your friends.”

Mr. McDonald then turned to a Republican rival, John A. Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery chain. “If you think that money alone is going to win an election,” he said, “go to Connecticut.”

Mr. Catsimatidis grinned, reaching for the microphone. “I’m a man of all the people,” he said. “I’ve been to the South Bronx. I never saw you there.”

It was a striking back-and-forth at a forum largely free of disagreement. Nearly 100 people attended the event, which was sponsored by the New York Young Republican Club.

The other Republican contender, Joseph J. Lhota, former chief of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, largely stayed out of the fray. While he praised Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s handling of city affairs, he sought to distance himself from some of the mayor’s policies, saying he did not support the emphasis on standardized testing.

Near the end of the forum, in fielding a question on how to reduce poverty in New York, Mr. Catsimatidis said he would put Mr. McDonald in charge of homeless programs.

He looked to Mr. McDonald, who was staring into the distance, seemingly unaware of what had been said.

“George, I complimented you,” Mr. Catsimatidis said. “You’re very capable.”

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The Gun Vote and 2014: Will There Be an Electoral Price?

Did the senators who voted against a proposal last week to expand background checks on gun buyers take an electoral risk?

At first glance, it would seem that they did. Background checks are broadly popular with the public. Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks when guns are purchased at gun shows, at gun shops or online. Support for background checks drops when guns are bought through informal channels, or gifts from family members — but the amendment that the Senate voted upon last week, sponsored by the Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, would have exempted most of these cases.

And yet, the Senate did not behave as though this was a piece of legislation favored by 80 percent or more of the public. The analysis that we posted last week suggested that, if anything, senators who are up for re-election in 2014 were less likely to vote for the bill.

It’s worth considering in more detail how the senators’ re-election status might have affected their votes. Doing so yields a more subtle conclusion than we’d reached initially. Senators who are up for re-election in 2014 were more sensitive to attitudes toward gun-ownership in their states. However, this influenced behavior in both directions. Senators running for re-election were especially likely to vote for Mr. Manchin’s amendment if they represented states with low rates of gun ownership, but especially unlikely to do so if they came from states where gun ownership is common.

This can be seen in the chart below. Among the 26 incumbent senators who will face elections next year (this definition excludes those senators who have announced their retirements), there was a near perfect relationship between the states’ rates of gun ownership and their votes. Among the 12 senators running for re-election in states where the gun ownership rate is below 42 percent, all but one (John Cornyn of Texas) voted for Mr. Manchin’s amendment. Among the 14 senators running where the gun ownership rate is above 42 percent, all but one (Mary Landrieu of Louisiana) failed to do so.

One reason it seems senators running for re-election were less likely to vote for the background-check amendment is because those facing elections next year come disproportionately from states with high rates of gun ownership. Some 18 of the 26 election-bound senators are from states where the gun ownership rate is above the unweighted national average of 38 percent, while just eight come from states where gun ownership rates are below that average.

The senators who are not up for re-election next year were still modestly sensitive to the gun-ownership rates in their states, but were more likely to override this for partisan or ideological considerations. Among this group, 14 senators voted against Mr. Manchin’s amendment despite the gun ownership rate being under 42 percent in their states. (All of these were Republicans except for Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, who voted against the amendment for procedural reasons.) Conversely, eight senators (all Democrats) voted for the amendment despite gun-ownership rates above 42 percent in their states — including four of the five Democrats in states where the gun ownership rate exceeds 50 percent.

The same data is presented in another way in the chart below, which reflects the results of a logistic regression analysis on the two groups of senators. (Mr. Reid, because of his procedural vote, is not considered in the analysis.) The chart illustrates the conclusion we had reached before: senators up for re-election in 2014 were much more sensitive to the gun-ownership rates in their states, and it represented a much clearer predictor of their votes.

But while this provides a useful description of how the senators voted, it does not address the question that we posed initially. Were the senators who voted against background checks taking an electoral risk by doing so? Some states, certainly, are more resistant to laws that would restrict gun ownership. Nevertheless, if as much as 80 or 90 percent of the public supports background checks like the ones Mr. Manchin proposed, the bill would be reasonably popular even in states where gun ownership is common.

Sean Trende, of Real Clear Politics, published a series of arguments on Monday that helps to explain the dilemma. At the core of Mr. Trende’s thesis is the idea that the public might not view Mr. Manchin and Mr. Toomey’s amendment quite so literally as the polls imply. Instead, they might view it as a proxy for the senator’s overall attitude toward gun regulation and gun rights — without worrying so much about the details. Polls that ask the public about their broader view toward gun regulation find much more equivocal results. A related consideration is that the National Rifle Association will score the vote on background-checks amendment — so a vote for it could have harmed a senator’s overall record on gun rights as judged by the N.R.A.

A counterargument is offered by Nate Cohn of The New Republic, who suggested that the N.R.A.’s power to influence elections may be overblown — or at least that it shouldn’t outweigh other electoral considerations when a bill as apparently popular as Mr. Manchin and Mr. Toomey’s amendment comes up for a vote.

Whether Mr. Trende or Mr. Cohn is right is something of a judgment call, but it is easy enough to split the difference between them. Mr. Trende is correct that some members of the public may look beyond the literal text of the legislation in deciding how they feel about a bill — either because they are poorly informed about what it does, or because they will attribute symbolic importance to a vote. (He cites the Democrats’ health care bill in 2009 and 2010 as one example: many individual components of the bill polled fairly well, but the overall legislative effort did not.) But even if this is true for many members of the public, it would take a lot to counteract 80 or 90 percent face-value support.

My view, in other words, is that polls showing 90 percent support for background checks will tend to overstate how well the Democrats’ position might play out before the electorate in practice, though public opinion was on their side on this vote.

Moreover, few of the Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2014 are vulnerable for any reason. Only one, Susan Collins of Maine, comes from a state that Barack Obama carried, and she voted for Mr. Manchin’s bill.

In fact, the safety of the Senate Republicans may have enabled them to vote against the amendment, at least in part, for a tactical reason: to protect their colleagues in the House. This is not to suggest that Republicans are likely to lose the House — but there are 17 House Republicans in districts carried by President Obama last year. By preventing the background-check bill from securing the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate, the Republicans may have prevented their House counterparts from having to take a tough vote.

Thus, Democrats are not in much of a position to capitalize on the vote from the standpoint of individual seats in Congress in 2014. To the extent that the issue plays favorably for Democrats in 2014, it is likely to be for symbolic reasons — because they are able to persuade voters that it reflects a Republican Party that is outside the mainstream.

This is not necessarily a hopeless strategy — particularly if Democrats can weave the background-check vote into a broader narrative about the Republican Party having become too conservative. But it does mean that, from an electoral standpoint, the symbolic implications of the vote outweigh the substantive ones. For Democrats to have much of a chance to win back the House — bucking the historical trend of the president’s party faring poorly in midterm years — the Republican Party will first and foremost have to be perceived as out-of-touch on the economy.

View the original article here

The Second Wave

But, let’s face it, the gun issue has its own unique dynamic, which is that the people who oppose gun limits vote on this issue while the people who support them do not.

Moreover, Democrats never made a compelling case that the bill would have been effective, that it would have directly prevented future Sandy Hooks or lowered the murder rate nationwide. Even many of the bill’s supporters were lukewarm about its contents.

The main reason the gun issue won’t significantly harm Republicans is that it doesn’t play into the core debate that will shape the future of the party. The issue that does that is immigration. The near-term future of American politics will be determined by who wins the immigration debate.

In the months since the election, a rift has opened between the Republicans you might call first-wave revolutionaries and those you might call second-wave revolutionaries. The first-wave revolutionaries (the party’s Congressional leaders) think of themselves as very conservative. They ejected the remaining moderates from their ranks. They sympathize with the Tea Party. They are loyal to Fox News and support a radical restructuring of the government.

These first-wave revolutionaries haven’t softened their conservatism, but they are trying to adjust it to win majority support. They are trying to find policies to boost social mobility, so Republicans look less like the party of the rich. They are swinging behind immigration reform, believing that Hispanics won’t even listen to Republicans until they put that issue in the rearview mirror.

The second-wave revolutionaries — like Rand Paul (on some issues), Jim DeMint, Ted Cruz and some of the cutting-edge talk radio jocks — see the first-wave revolutionaries as a bunch of incompetent establishmentarians. They speak of the Bush-Cheney administration as if it were some sort of liberal Republican regime run by Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. They argue that Republicans have lost elections recently because the party has been led by big-spending, mushy moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney and managed by out-of-touch elitists like Karl Rove and Reince Priebus.

The second wavers are much more tactically aggressive, favoring filibusters and such when possible. What the party needs now, they argue, is an ultra-Goldwaterite insurgency that topples the “establishment,” ditches immigration reform and wins Hispanic votes by appealing to the evangelicals among them and offering them economic liberty.

The first and second wavers are just beginning their immigration clash. A few weeks ago, I would have thought the pro-immigration forces had gigantic advantages, but now it is hard to be sure.

The immigration fight will be pitting a cohesive insurgent opposition force against a fragile coalition of bipartisan proponents who have to ambivalently defend a sprawling piece of compromise legislation. We’ve seen this kind of fight before. Things usually don’t end up well for the proponents.

Whether it’s guns or immigration, it is easy to imagine that the underlying political landscape, which prevented progress in the past, has changed. But when you actually try to pass something, you often discover the underlying landscape has not changed. The immigration fight of 2013 might bear an eerie similarity to the fight of 2007.

The arguments that might persuade Republicans to support immigration reform are all on the table. They came on election night 2012. The arguments against are only just now unfolding.

It is just a fact that the big short-term beneficiaries of this law are not generally Republicans: the 11 million who are living in the shadows; the high-tech entrepreneurs who will get more skilled labor. The short-term losers, meanwhile, are often Republicans: the white working-class people who will face a new group of labor-market competition when they try to get jobs in retail; the taxpayers who, at least in the short term, will have to pay some additional costs.

In the past, Republican politicians have had trouble saying no to the latest and most radical insurgency. Even if they know immigration reform is eventually good for their party, lawmakers may figure that opposing it is immediately necessary for themselves.

It would be great if Republicans can hash out their differences over a concrete policy matter, especially immigration, which touches conservatism’s competing values. But if the insurgent right defeats immigration reform, that will be a sign that the party’s self-marginalization will continue. The revolution devours its own.

View the original article here

Lawmakers Plead Not Guilty to Charges in Bribery Scheme

Michael Appleton for The New York TimesState Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a Democrat, arriving at court in White Plains on Tuesday, is accused of bribing Republican Party leaders to put him on the ballot in New York’s mayoral race.

WHITE PLAINS — A state senator and a New York City councilman pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges that they plotted to bribe Republican Party bosses to place the senator on the ballot in the city’s mayoral race.

Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III was charged with Mr. Smith.

Noramie F. Jasmin, the mayor of Spring Valley, N.Y., was accused of accepting money and property.

Four others who were named in the indictment also pleaded not guilty here in Federal District Court.

The plot, outlined in a complaint unsealed on April 2, included fraud charges against State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a Queens Democrat; City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III, a Queens Republican; and the Republican Party bosses Joseph J. Savino and Vincent Tabone. Also charged in the complaint were Mayor Noramie F. Jasmin of Spring Valley, in Rockland County, and the deputy mayor, Joseph Desmaret. They were accused of accepting money and property to advance a real estate development there.

Prosecutors said in an indictment last week that Mr. Smith had arranged for $40,000 in cash to be paid by the developer of the Spring Valley project — actually a federal undercover agent — to Mr. Savino, the chairman of the party in the Bronx, and Mr. Tabone, the vice chairman of the party in Queens.

While those officials pledged to help Mr. Smith gain a spot on the Republican ballot, the indictment said, Mr. Smith agreed in return to help obtain about $500,000 in state funds for road work that would benefit the project.

Mr. Halloran received $15,000 to act as an intermediary among the party bosses and Mr. Smith, according to the indictment. He is also accused of accepting payments from the undercover agent and an unnamed associate while agreeing to steer up to $80,000 in City Council discretionary money to them.

The indictment said Mr. Smith had discussed giving money to other state senators to gain their support for a Senate leadership position.

Mr. Tabone was described in an indictment as saying: “I run the Queens County Republican Party. Nobody else runs the party.”

Mr. Tabone, the only defendant to comment to reporters, said he was an “unpaid party volunteer” and added, “I’ll have my day in court.”

View the original article here

Politics of Paranoia

The politics of the political right have become the politics of paranoia.

According to too many of them, the country is collapsing, and the government is not to be trusted. The circle of safety is contracting. You must arm yourselves to defend your own.

It is no wonder, then, that in this environment, a Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday found that while 47 percent of Americans were angry or disappointed that new gun control legislation in the Senate (including the enormously popular background-checks provision) had failed to pass, 39 percent were very happy or relieved. Fifty-one percent of Republicans had those sentiments, compared with 22 percent of Democrats.

This underscores just how frightened of the government far-right Republicans are.

A Quinnipiac University poll this month found that 91 percent of Americans (including 88 percent of Republicans) said that they supported background checks for all gun buyers. But that same poll found that 61 percent of Republicans worried that if there were background checks for all gun purchases, the government would use that information in the future to confiscate legally owned guns.

Furthermore, a January Pew Research Center report found that for the first time since the question was asked in 1995, most Americans now believe that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms.

According to the report:

“The growing view that the federal government threatens personal rights and freedoms has been led by conservative Republicans. Currently 76 percent of conservative Republicans say that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms and 54 percent describe the government as a ‘major’ threat.”

The report continued:

“By comparison, there has been little change in opinions among Democrats; 38 percent say the government poses a threat to personal rights and freedoms and just 16 percent view it as a major threat.”

Incidentally, 62 percent of those who had a gun in their home thought the government posed a threat, as opposed to 45 percent of those without a gun in the home.

In January, the right-wing Web site World Net Daily, writing about a poll the site conducted with the consulting firm Wenzel Strategies, bemoaned:

“The seeds of a tyrannical government are present in the United States, with a citizenry happy with a heavily armed law enforcement presence and a disbelief that their government could do anything that would make them want to revolt, according to a new poll.” The poll revealed “widespread belief” that the Second Amendment “really is for self-protection and hunting, not for ‘fighting back against a tyrannical government.’”

Fritz Wenzel of the consulting firm is quoted as saying that the poll’s finding “demonstrates the downside of more than 230 years of government stability. This survey shows it is hard for many Americans to think of a situation in which their government would need to be overthrown. Of course, the last time there was a serious fight for the future of the federal government, in the Civil War, Washington won.”

And that’s just the tip of it. Last month, Glenn Beck described the makeup of what he believed was the coming “New World Order.” It did not bode well for America.

“I think you might even have some Nazi influence in the United States, unfortunately, because we’ve had it before. And it will happen there and there, I think,” Beck said, placing dots over the Northwest and the Northeast on a map.

Discussing the Muslim Brotherhood’s “influence,” Beck said:

“I think there’s going to be a slight influence in South America and Mexico and in the United States. I think it is going to be more significant than anyone imagines, and I believe that you are also then going to be co-ruled by a thug-ocracy of this part of the world. And I think it’s going to be, at least in our case, I think it’s going to be China. China will be the balance of our power. They will use Muslim, um, Islam as the real enforcers that they will then help us and whoever is in power in our country. We will be ruled by an American, but it will be a technocrat that will answer to China. And, they will stomp things out and use Islam as much as they have to, to get rid of anyone who’s standing up, I think.”

O-kay.

And Beck delivered this prattle in a suit jacket, not a straitjacket.

This is the constant stream of desperate drivel that has fostered a climate of fear on the far right that makes common-sense consensus nearly impossible.

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House Majority Leader’s Quest to Soften G.O.P.’s Image Hits a Wall Within

WASHINGTON — Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, has been trying for months to remake the image of the Republican Party, from one of uncompromising conservatism to something kinder and gentler.

It isn’t working so well.

On Wednesday, Republican leaders abruptly shelved one of the centerpieces of Mr. Cantor’s “Making Life Work” agenda — a bill to extend insurance coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions — in the face of a conservative revolt. Last month, legislation to streamline worker retraining programs barely squeaked through. In May, Republican leaders will try again with legislation, pitched as family-friendly, to allow employers to offer comp time or “flex time” instead of overtime. But it has little prospect for Senate passage.

So it has gone. Items that Mr. Cantor had hoped would change the Republican Party’s look, if not its priorities, have been ignored, have been greeted with yawns or have only worsened Republican divisions.

“We need to look at these issues through a more human lens and realize government has a role here, especially on some of these pocketbook issues,” said Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, who expressed frustration with the lock-step opposition of the House’s fiercest conservatives. “Have we been successful? No. We’re still trying to find our way.”

The debacle on Wednesday was the worst moment yet. The Helping Sick Americans Now Act sounded like solid middle ground — a measure to actually expand the part of President Obama’s health care law that created a federal “high-risk pool” in which people with pre-existing conditions could band together to buy subsidized insurance coverage. The provision was to be paid for by siphoning money from another part of Mr. Obama’s health care law, the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

But these days, those who linger in the middle of the road end up flattened. The White House issued a stern veto threat to keep the money in the fund, which chased away Democratic votes from the Helping Sick Americans Now Act. The Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee, warned that Republicans who voted in favor of the act would have their scorecards marked down for supporting part of the health care law. L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist, labeled the bill “Cantorcare” — and not as a compliment.

“We often say we don’t need this Democrat big-government program, we need this Republican big-government program,” said Representative Trey Radel, Republican of Florida. “It’s time to say enough is enough.”

In the end, the votes were not there — not even close, House vote counters conceded.

“We absolutely intend to bring this legislation back up,” said Doug Heye, a spokesman for Mr. Cantor.

When Mr. Cantor delivered a “Making Life Work” speech at the American Enterprise Institute in February, his message to his party was urgent and well received. The party, he said, needs to get beyond its single-minded, green-eyeshaded message of fiscal austerity and look to the problems of ordinary struggling Americans. Education, work-force training, health care and medical research have to augment the central issue of fiscal discipline and balanced budgets, he said.

“It was meaningful and good advice to all of us,” said Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania. “I wish more of our members would have heeded it.”

The decision to call off the vote on the health care bill on Wednesday — a rare occurrence in the House — set off a round of recriminations. Some Republicans complained that Mr. Cantor had not vetted his proposals before presenting them publicly as the party’s salvation, then forcing them to the House floor. Others said a large core of the House Republican conference had simply proved unwilling to move beyond the austerity message.

The Republicans’ embrace of such austerity was evident as the House Ways and Means Committee was drafting a bill on Wednesday to ensure that the federal government’s creditors would be the first paid with incoming tax revenues, should Congress refuse this summer to raise the government’s borrowing limit.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

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Meaningless bills costing legislators their credibility

(PNI) The Legislature is on the cusp of passing a bill making gold and silver a form of money in Arizona. Except you wouldn't be able to pay taxes with the precious metals. No merchant would have to accept "specie," as the bill calls it. Nor could anyone be forced to pay with gold and silver. The whole thing is symbolic at best, a bone for the William Jennings Bryan fringe of the Republican Party. And legislators wonder why they struggle to gain credibility? They're dealing in the wrong currency.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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At the Capitol

(PNI) TODAY'S AGENDA

Topic: Opposing Medicaid expansion.

What it's about: A group of state Republican lawmakers, party leaders and various organizations will gather in opposition to proposed Medicaid expansion to talk about the impact it would have on the state economy and health-care system.

State lawmakers expected to attend include Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert; Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City; Rep. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert; Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park; and Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa.

Details: 11 a.m. House lawn, 1700 W. Washington St., Phoenix.

TODAY'S TALKER

Democrat Fred DuVal, a former Arizona Board of Regents chairman, announced Wednesday that he is running for governor in 2014.

DuVal, who formed an exploratory committee in February, is running on a platform of creating jobs and improving education. DuVal promised a "robust and competitive business climate; a workforce with skills for the new economy; (and) efficient government that is accountable to people."

He is the first Democrat to formally announce he is running next year. On the GOP side, former Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman announced his candidacy in January.

-- Staff report

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I'm not going to put (Medicaid) expansion on the floor. The Republican Party in this state has said, 'Don't do this.'"

-- Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert

TWEET OF THE DAY

"From the 'GOP don't dismiss him' file: @FredDuVal has deftly launched Dem bid for AZ Governor. Underestimating him would be a mistake #AZGOP."

-- Political consultant Kurt Davis

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Flake crossed line with gun-check 'no' vote

(PNI) Since 1954, eight years before Sen. Jeff Flake was born, I have been a registered and loyal Arizona Republican. His "no" vote Wednesday on the background-check bill pushed me over the edge. I quit.

Is he so in bed with the NRA that he can ignore what 90 percent of this country's citizens, including many gun owners, really want?

Patricia Maisch yelled from the Senate gallery Wednesday, "Shame on you!" Her actions got her removed from the gallery. Flake's no vote got me removed from the Republican Party voting rolls.

Shame on you, Jeff Flake, on both accounts!

--Bill Adler, Scottsdale

Flake got it right in vote

Your editorial about the gun bill was interesting ("Senators take cowardly exit," Opinions, Thursday).

You got it backward. Jeff Flake is the Arizona senator you should be praising, not Sen. John McCain.

--Al Moore, Peoria

Voters' wishes ignored

NRA money bought the "no" vote for any attempt at reasonable change in American gun laws, just as they have bought Congress. Is this the will of the people these politicians supposedly represent? I sure didn't feel represented Wednesday.

--Mary Ann Bashaw,

Phoenix

Our rights are absolute

Regarding "Gun rights not absolute" (Opinions, Tuesday):

It seems to me that the right to free speech, the right to vote and the rights to assemble and freely associate are absolute!

The only rights that the socialist-leaning left have problems with are the freedom of religion (it's not freedom from religion), and the right to bear arms. They continually chip away at the right to express religious beliefs in school and the right of Americans to possess any gun he can afford!

Let me answer the letter writer's haughty and self-righteous questions about the "need" for assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

I need to fulfill my desire to shoot them! They are fun to handle, fun to shoot, and it's rewarding to improve my marksmanship and proficiency in handling such small-caliber rifles.

Also, there are Americans today living in areas where owning an assault rifle with a 15-round magazine still leaves them outgunned by the gangsters who threaten their families and neighborhoods.

Why does anyone "need" a package of 18 eggs, when a dozen should be plenty?

Who decides? You or some wimpy senators -- or Barack Obama? I say the issue was decided over 200 years ago.

--Rod Hartman, Phoenix

Congress lacks courage

Note to Congress: It doesn't take any courage to do nothing.

--D. Richardson, Phoenix

We need a day of prayer

If we have learned anything from the recent bombing in Boston, it is the fact that we are incapable of stopping this worldwide madness by ourselves.

Our armies can't do it; our president can't do it; our legislators can't do it; and we as individuals can't do it. This is a fact that has been proved over and over.

It is time that we humble ourselves and call upon our God, admitting that we are nothing by ourselves. I don't care who you call God. I don't care what church you may go to, or if you even go, but I do care that you call upon your divine one for help. It is our only hope.

I would ask that we petition our president to call for a 24-hour day of prayer during which all churches would be left open for all to enter for prayer.

I am not asking for a national religion to be established, but I am asking for a concerted effort by all God-fearing Americans to come together in an intercessory day of prayer so God will hear our united voices.

I will pray to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ; you pray to yours.

--William Duff, Mesa

No trust in 'reform'

If you watch long enough, a TV screen can give you a pretty big picture.

In the past decade, I'm sure that more than a thousand newscasts have shown illegal immigrants running across the desert into the U.S. And probably more than a thousand newscasts have shown presidents, governors, senators, congressmen and homeland-security chiefs posing on the desert assuring us that the border has never been more secure.

The number of illegal immigrants making it into the U.S. through the "most secure border ever" is around 12million, earning our leadership the All-Time Least Truthful Award.

Now, led by the well-named "Gang of Eight," the leaders are selling relaxed immigration laws for all the illegal immigrants they allowed in. The first priority named in their sales pitch is securing the border. And this time, they really mean it.

For obvious reasons, there is little trust in them or what they are selling. If immigration reform is defeated, it will be a well-deserved loss.

--Nolan Laughlin,

Flagstaff

Goldwater lawsuit unfair

The Goldwater Institute claims that Gilbert's Freestone Recreation Center is unfairly competing with "private health clubs" in the city ("Goldwater group wants Gilbert to shut its popular rec center," Republic, Wednesday).

The center has been operating successfully in Gilbert since 2002, but now all of a sudden, a "local gym owner" seems to have a problem with its operation.

Goldwater's lead attorney on the case, Taylor Earl, refuses to disclose this "local gym owner," while simultaneously threatening Gilbert with a very public and very bloody lawsuit if they do not cave to their demands.

If you find issue with a beloved community center, have the courage to address the residents of Gilbert directly, rather than scoot nasty letters under the doors of the Town Council.

Reveal the source of this complaint, because otherwise, I find it safe to assume this "local gym owner" is nothing more than a stand-in for national megagyms that can't stand the thought of fair competition.

--Austen Jarboe,

Cave Creek

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Insurance and Freedom

No, the real policy action at this point is in the states, where the question is, How many Americans will be denied essential health care in the name of freedom?

I’m referring, of course, to the question of how many Republican governors will reject the Medicaid expansion that is a key part of Obamacare. What does that have to do with freedom? In reality, nothing. But when it comes to politics, it’s a different story.

It goes without saying that Republicans oppose any expansion of programs that help the less fortunate — along with tax cuts for the wealthy, such opposition is pretty much what defines modern conservatism. But they seem to be having more trouble than in the past defending their opposition without simply coming across as big meanies.

Specifically, the time-honored practice of attacking beneficiaries of government programs as undeserving malingerers doesn’t play the way it used to. When Ronald Reagan spoke about welfare queens driving Cadillacs, it resonated with many voters. When Mitt Romney was caught on tape sneering at the 47 percent, not so much.

There is, however, an alternative. From the enthusiastic reception American conservatives gave Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom,” to Reagan, to the governors now standing in the way of Medicaid expansion, the U.S. right has sought to portray its position not as a matter of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, but as a courageous defense of freedom.

Conservatives love, for example, to quote from a stirring speech Reagan gave in 1961, in which he warned of a grim future unless patriots took a stand. (Liz Cheney used it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article just a few days ago.) “If you and I don’t do this,” Reagan declared, “then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” What you might not guess from the lofty language is that “this” — the heroic act Reagan was calling on his listeners to perform — was a concerted effort to block the enactment of Medicare.

These days, conservatives make very similar arguments against Obamacare. For example, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has called it the “greatest assault on freedom in our lifetime.” And this kind of rhetoric matters, because when it comes to the main obstacle now remaining to more or less universal health coverage — the reluctance of Republican governors to allow the Medicaid expansion that is a key part of reform — it’s pretty much all the right has.

As I’ve already suggested, the old trick of blaming the needy for their need doesn’t seem to play the way it used to, and especially not on health care: perhaps because the experience of losing insurance is so common, Medicaid enjoys remarkably strong public support. And now that health reform is the law of the land, the economic and fiscal case for individual states to accept Medicaid expansion is overwhelming. That’s why business interests strongly support expansion just about everywhere — even in Texas. But such practical concerns can be set aside if you can successfully argue that insurance is slavery.

Of course, it isn’t. In fact, it’s hard to think of a proposition that has been more thoroughly refuted by history than the notion that social insurance undermines a free society. Almost 70 years have passed since Friedrich Hayek predicted (or at any rate was understood by his admirers to predict) that Britain’s welfare state would put the nation on the slippery slope to Stalinism; 46 years have passed since Medicare went into effect; as far as most of us can tell, freedom hasn’t died on either side of the Atlantic.

In fact, the real, lived experience of Obamacare is likely to be one of significantly increased individual freedom. For all our talk of being the land of liberty, those holding one of the dwindling number of jobs that carry decent health benefits often feel anything but free, knowing that if they leave or lose their job, for whatever reason, they may not be able to regain the coverage they need. Over time, as people come to realize that affordable coverage is now guaranteed, it will have a powerful liberating effect.

But what we still don’t know is how many Americans will be denied that kind of liberation — a denial all the crueler because it will be imposed in the name of freedom.

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He Wears the Mask

Last week, Carson came under attack for comparing advocates of same-sex marriage with advocates of bestiality and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. He then cast himself as a victim of political correctness, besieged by white liberals — “the most racist people there are” — who could not countenance his heterodoxy and wanted to keep him on the “plantation.”

The plantation metaphor refers to a popular theory on the right. It holds that the 95 percent of African-Americans who voted for a Democratic president are not normal Americans voting their beliefs, but slaves. A corollary to the plantation theory is the legend of the Conservative Black Hope, a lonesome outsider, willing to stare down the party of Obamacare and stand up for the party of voter ID. Does it matter that this abolitionist truth-teller serves at the leisure of an audience that is overwhelmingly white? Not really. Blacks are brainwashed slaves; you can’t expect them to know what’s in their interest.

Benjamin Carson is that Conservative Black Hope of the moment. His rise began with a meandering speech that mixed policy, humor and victimization in February at the National Prayer Breakfast, mere feet from the president of the United States, who was forced to take his medicine in a way that Clint Eastwood could only dream of. When Sean Hannity interviewed Carson about his speech he dispensed with the policy and simply dubbed the segment “Lecturing Obama.”

Since the dawn of the Obama era, conservatives have been on the lookout for such a man. In 2004 they dispatched Alan Keyes cross-country to take up the mantle of the Conservative Black Hope and deliver an early knockout to Obama. Keyes had never lived in Illinois and his voters barely knew him, and voted accordingly. But it did not matter who he was. What mattered was their plan.

“We needed to find another Harvard-educated African-American who had some experience on the national political scene,” said Steven J. Rauschenberger, a Republican who was then a member of the Illinois State Senate. “We need that because the Democrats have made an icon out of Barack Obama.”

Having seen their icon thrashed in 2004, in 2009 conservatives looked to Michael Steele, the first African-American to head the Republican National Convention, to face off with the first black president. But Steele had an on-again off-again relationship with the party line, and was thus ill suited to be a Conservative Black Hope, even if the hip-hop Republican often talked like one.

In 2010, Allen West, a congressman from Florida, arrived promising to lead black people off the Obama plantation like a “modern-day Harriet Tubman.” More like Harriet Miers; West was defeated in the very next election.

In 2012, Herman Cain took up the cape and cowl, proclaiming that the first black president had “never been part of the black experience in America” and insisting that Obama was “not a strong black man.” But Cain was not a strong presidential candidate, and the wait for the Conservative Black Hope continued. Things were looking up at the Conservative Political Action Committee this year when a black Republican, K. Carl Smith, ran a session for attendees who were “tired of being called a racist.” Among those answering in the affirmative was a man who proceeded to defend slavery.

Not all black conservatives see it as their job to tell white racists that they embody the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. It is certainly possible to oppose Obamacare in good conscience. No one knows this more than Ben Carson. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he may have been the most celebrated figure in the black communities of Baltimore. Carson responded to that adulation by regularly giving his time to talk to young people, who needed to know that there was so much more beyond the streets.

I was one of those young people. I don’t doubt that Carson was a conservative even then. I knew plenty of black people who loved their community and hated welfare. But white conservatives were never interested in them, and they were never as interested in Ben Carson as they are right now. When the presidency was an unbroken string of white men, there were no calls for him to run for the White House. And then he put on the mask.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic, is a guest columnist.

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The Early Word: Calamity

April 07

The White House says a threatened filibuster by Republicans on gun control was an affront to the families of the children who died in a school shooting in Connecticut.

April 06

Dan Pfeiffer, senior adviser to President Obama, is on the Sunday shows, talking about North Korea, the budget, immigration and gun control.

April 06

Political news from today’s Times and a look at the president’s weekly address.

April 05

Scott Brown, who just turned down a chance to run again for the Senate in Massachusetts, is hinting that he might hop over the state line and challenge Senator Jeanne Shaheen in 2014.

April 05

Senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana announced their support Friday.

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The G.O.P.'s Digital Makeover

Tom Edsall on politics inside and outside of Washington.

The Republican Party faces hurdles as it attempts to equal or surpass the Democratic Party’s success in capitalizing on technological innovation to win President Obama a second term.

It was only two presidential elections ago, in 2004, that the political classes were talking about Republican domination of data mining and microtargeting. Now the party is acutely aware of its own deficiencies as it confronts a decisive Democratic advantage.

The Republican National Committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project, a recently released study of the last election, pointedly acknowledged that in 2012

Democrats had the clear edge on new media and ground game, in terms of both reach and effectiveness. Obama’s campaign knocked on twice as many doors as the Romney campaign, and Obama’s campaign had a ballot edge among those contacted by both campaigns. In addition, the president’s campaign significantly changed the makeup of the national electorate and identified, persuaded and turned out low-propensity voters by unleashing a barrage of human and technological resources previously unseen in a presidential contest. Marrying grassroots politics with technology and analytics, they successfully contacted, persuaded and turned out their margin of victory.

The report, commissioned by Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, cited another, subtler liability for the party as it tries to deploy emerging technologies: a conservative culture that stresses hierarchy, authority, command and control over creativity and open inquiry:

Another consistent theme that emerged from our conversations related to mechanics is the immediate need for the R.N.C. and Republicans to foster what has been referred to as an “environment of intellectual curiosity” and a “culture of data and learning,” and the R.N.C. must lead this effort. We need to be much more purposeful and expansive in our use of research and more sophisticated in how we employ data across all campaign and Party functions. No longer can campaign activities be compartmentalized or “siloed” in a way that makes sharing resources and knowledge less efficient.

To that point, greater collaboration and sharing of information is critical. Republicans do not do this very well, but we must if we intend to compete with Democrats who have naturally embraced a more collective approach. Doing so has allowed them to assemble more complete and detailed snapshots of voters — what motivates them and how to better reach them in a way that actually results in votes. The R.N.C. must take the lead in developing an environment in which information is shared and G.O.P. entities work together to ensure greater communication.

The use of high-tech voter contact and turnout techniques is of particular importance in American elections because the percentage of the voting age population that actually casts ballots is so low – in the mid-50 percent range in presidential years, in the 35 to 37 percent range in non-presidential years. A seemingly small boost of 2 to 3 percent can often change the outcome.

Interviews with Republicans who worked on the R.N.C. report, as well as with party consultants who specialize in microtargeting, media research and digital communications, produced universal agreement with the Priebus report. A majority of those I spoke to asked not to be quoted by name because they do not want to publicly fault the strategy and tactics of their own party.

Their criticism of bad leadership decisions included the unwillingness of the Romney campaign – or the McCain team in 2008, for that matter — to open the strategy-making process to hypertargeting pioneers who were breaking new ground,  trawling social media sites and deploying online and offline data to create customized voter appeals.

Republican operatives also criticized the fund-raising and planning during the period when Michael Steele served as R.N.C. chair in 2009 and 2010, and they noted the loss of interest by the Bush White House, and in particular Karl Rove, in tackling the frontiers of data management once the 2004 election had been won.

“We definitely had the head start in 2004,” one Republican involved in the campaign said.  “After that, Bush couldn’t run again, and Karl just stopped caring. We were the Blackberry of the day.”

Reached by phone, Alex Lundry, vice president and research director of TargetPoint, a company at the forefront of microtargeting for the Republicans in 2002 and 2004, pointed to further difficulties:

We had 90 to 95 percent of the data and tools, but we did not have our data sources talking to each other. It’s not about the lack of data, it’s about integrating the data. This takes time and a huge amount of money.

“The trickiest problem, the one that will take the longest time to solve, is the creation of a culture of data and analytics, including training operatives to understand what data is,” Lundry said. And the collaborative nature of “data ecosystems,” he suggested, do not play to Republican strengths.

The Priebus report surveyed 227 Republican campaign managers, field staff, consultants, vendors and other political professionals, asking them to rank the Democrat and Republican advantages on 24 different measures using a scale ranging from plus 5 (decisive Republican edge) to minus 5 (solid Democratic advantage). “Democrats,” the report noted, “were seen as having the advantage on all but one.” As the graph on Page 28 of the report illustrates, most of the largest Democratic advantages relate directly to the integration of technology with “ground war” campaign activities like person-to-person voter contact, election-day turnout and demographic analysis:

Republican National Committee Fig. 1

Several journalists have documented this Democratic advantage. Sasha Issenberg, who wrote “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns,” has described what liberals and Democrats have done to “mathematicize” voter turnout. Right after the 2012 election, Issenberg explained how things have changed:

Within the practice of politics, no shift seems more dramatic than the role reversal between the two parties on campaigning competence. Today, there is only one direction in which envy can and should be directed: Democrats have proved themselves better — more disciplined, rigorous, serious, and forward-looking — at nearly every aspect of the project of winning elections.

During the period of acknowledged Republican technological stasis, from 2005 until now, Democrats not only leapfrogged their opposition, but also used the time to build a private sector training ground. That private sector infrastructure serves both as a resource for innovation, testing and research, and as a source of paying jobs between campaigns for computer and data specialists.

The premier pro-Democratic quantitatively oriented organizations — both for-profit and nonprofit — have become crucial sources of data, voter contact and nanotargeting innovation for Democrats and liberal organizations. These include:

• Catalist, which maintains a “comprehensive database of voting-age Americans” for progressive organizations;

• The Analyst Institute, “a clearinghouse for evidence-based best practices in progressive voter contact,” which conducts experimental, randomized testing of voter persuasion and voter mobilization programs;

• TargetSmart Communications, which develops political and technology strategies;

• American Bridge 21st Century, which conducts year-round opposition research on Republicans and conservative groups;

• The Atlas Project, which provides clients with online access to detailed political history from national to local races, including media buys and campaign finance data and a host of other politically relevant data;

• Blue State Digital, a commercial firm founded by operatives in Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign that now provides digital services to clients ranging from the Obama campaign to Ford Motor Company to Google.

The creation of this progressive infrastructure was driven by a small cadre of activists who saw the 2004 election as a warning that the Republican Party could develop a permanent advantage in the mechanics of getting out the vote unless Democrats mounted a full-scale counterattack.

The leaders of this drive include Mike Podhorzer, political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.; Harold Ickes Jr., former deputy chief of staff to President Clinton; Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and now head of the Organizing Group; Ellen Malcolm, founder of Emily’s List, which supports pro-choice Democratic women; and Mary Beth Cahill, who managed John Kerry’s 2004 campaign and now runs the Washington office of the United Auto Workers.

Podhorzer noted in a phone interview that the liberal Democratic mind-set lent itself to the kind of cooperative mobilization that proved crucial to the technological gains on the left.

The big difference was that there wasn’t an über-consultant like Karl Rove in a top-down way saying, “this is how we are going to win.” It grew out of a group of individuals who had lost faith in the guru model of political strategy.

“Now,” Podhorzer said, “we have a very deep bench.”

Another factor working in favor of liberals is that neighborhoods home to advanced tech are not favorable terrain for the Republican Party, as the Times’s Nate Silver pointed out last November.

Take, for example, Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the county has the highest concentration in the United States of computer engineers, designers, software developers and digital researchers – the skills essential for the tech wars.

In 2012, Santa Clara County voted for Obama over Romney by a 70-27 margin, nearly 3 to 1. Not a good place for the Republican Party to seek loyal volunteers.

Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Fig. 2

Santa Clara County is not unique. The No. 2 in high-tech employment is Boulder County, in Colorado. How did it vote? The map shows a sea of blue:

Boulder County Clerk and Recorder’s Office Fig. 3

Obama’s percentage of the vote in Boulder County, 70.28, was almost identical to what he won in Santa Clara County.

Another crucial source of technology is personnel in the scientific community. Again, this is not a hotbed of Republican and conservative activism. Just the opposite.

A July 2009 Pew Research Center survey found that the partisan leaning of scientists was 55 percent Democratic, 32 percent independent and 6 percent Republican, compared with 35 Democratic, 34 independent and 23 Republican among the general public. Ideologically, 52 percent of scientists polled by Pew described themselves as liberal, 35 percent as moderate and 9 percent as conservative, compared to 20 liberal, 38 moderate and 37 conservative among all voters.

Will today’s advantage give the Democratic Party an edge for the immediate future?

Larry Grisolano, director of paid media for the Obama campaign, warned on Twitter last week:

Caution to Dems: G.O.P.’s tech clumsiness won’t last.  2012 is over. 2016 cutting edge hasn’t been invented yet.

Democrats claimed to have achieved a permanent majority after Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, 61-39, in 1964; again, although with less confidence, in 1976 when Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in the aftermath of Watergate; and again in 2008, when Obama beat McCain, 365 to 173, in the Electoral College. Within two years of each of these elections, Democrats suffered major setbacks.

So too was the case for George W. Bush, who won by a solid three million vote margin in 2004 and promptly claimed that “I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” only to see his party take a bath in 2006.

In fact, the Republican Party is gearing up to take the Democrats on in the battle over technological superiority, just as the Democrats did in the aftermath of the 2004 election. Democrats have some built-in advantages and have found a way to capitalize on them, but the Republican Party and its community of consultants will almost certainly discover its own built-in advantages.

For now the R.N.C. plans to try to replicate what the Democrats and allied liberal interest groups have done. Among the Priebus report proposals that echo established Democratic practices are:

Creation of a new data platform accessible (through rentals, subscriptions, licenses or data exchange agreements) to all qualified Republican organizations and campaigns, approved vendors and research organizations for data enhancement, analytics and application development.

Identify a team of strategists and funders to build a data analytics institute that can capture and distill best practices for communication to and targeting of specific voters. Using the G.O.P.’s data, the data analytics institute would work to develop a specific set of tests for 2013 and 2014 — tests on voter registration, persuasion, GOTV, and voter mobilization — that will then be adopted into future programs to ensure that our voter contact and targeting dollars are spent on proven performance.

The Republican Party needs a new training institute that can benefit all Party committees, state parties, campaigns, and outside groups. This could be established in the form of a 501(c) 4 group to train and develop political/digital talent.

Republican plans differ from those of Democrats in that they assign a central role to the party’s national committee, which would “recruit and competitively compensate talented and committed long-term data staff”; “recruit and hire a chief technology and digital officer”; “create in-house staff training programs for digital recruits to ensure the cultivation of mid-level tech/digital leaders who can effectively administer large programs within the digital team, like email, social content, fund-raising, and digital field organizing”; and “establish an R.N.C. fellows program to recruit data, digital, and tech ‘fellows’ from college campuses, targeting potential graduates in fields such as computer science and mathematics.”

By centralizing control in the R.N.C., the party runs its own risks, which the Priebus report acknowledges:

Our challenge is less of a technology problem and more of a culture problem. As referenced earlier, we need to strive for an environment of intellectual curiosity, data, research, and testing to ensure that our programs are working. We need to define our mission by setting specific political goals and then allowing data, digital, and tech talent to unleash the tools of technology and work toward achieving those goals. And just as with all forms of voter contact, digital must be tested, and we must measure our rate of return.

Even so, the biggest obstacle facing the Republican Party may be how to get its leaders, including those in charge of the R.N.C., to accommodate and accept the freewheeling approach to innovation — the invention of invention — that made the digital revolution now transforming American politics possible in the first place.

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Rubio, Amid Planning, Is Yet to Commit on Immigration Bill

Given the disdain some conservatives reserve for Republicans who consort publicly with Democrats, he had reason to be.

The next time Mr. Rubio is likely to appear with his colleagues in the eight-person bipartisan group could be an even bigger moment, when its members officially introduce joint immigration legislation this month. The probable tableau seems ready-made for problems in the 2016 Republican presidential primary fight in which many expect Mr. Rubio to partake: images of Mr. Rubio, smiling and celebrating alongside Democratic senators and maverick Republicans as he claims co-authorship of an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that many Republicans will reject.

And so the question percolating on Capitol Hill has become: Will Mr. Rubio, an up-and-coming young conservative elected on a 2010 Tea Party wave, ultimately sign onto the immigration bill that he has been helping to draft ever since the November election?

“We have to see if the Boy Wonder plays ball or not,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group.

For now, the answer — among members of the bipartisan group, immigration watchers and even Mr. Rubio’s own staff — is a tentative yes, even with Mr. Rubio increasingly urging caution about racing ahead with any immigration measure as the unveiling draws nigh.

“We understand Marco is not going to be rushed into anything,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the group. “But we don’t doubt his commitment to seeing this through at all.”

In recent days, Mr. Rubio has begun to sound nervous again when it comes to the immigration legislation. He sent a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, counseling against “excessive haste” in changing immigration law. On Sunday, just moments before two of his fellow bipartisan group members were set to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he released a statement that warned, “No final agreement on immigration legislation yet.”

Mr. Rubio finds himself in an extremely delicate position as a rising conservative hero and a proponent of immigration law changes. As much as the fate of the bipartisan group’s legislation hangs on Mr. Rubio, who is perhaps the only member of the group with the conservative credentials to sell the plan to skeptical voters, the fate of Mr. Rubio’s ambitions for higher office are also inextricably bound up with the immigration legislation and his base’s reaction to it.

So far, Mr. Rubio has seen early success wooing grass-roots Republican voters. When he joined the bipartisan group late last year, after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election in part because he was overwhelmingly rejected by Hispanic voters, Mr. Rubio quickly went on a one-man blitz of conservative news media outlets, explaining his guiding immigration principles and winning plaudits from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

“The argument is that it’s not conservative policy to have 11 million illegal immigrants in this country,” said Phil Musser, a Republican consultant and former executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “By showing up and by boldly deciding to engage people who have had their fingers in their ears on this issue, he’s been able to decalcify a process that’s been stuck for a long time.”

He and his staff have studied the mistakes of the last attempt at immigration overhaul, in 2007, and have tailored their pitch to address conservative concerns. Mr. Rubio stresses that strict goals for border security must be met before any illegal immigrants can be put on a path to citizenship. And he talks of refining the current system — from increased enforcement to a workable plan for future legal immigrants — saying he wants to ensure the country does not face another wave of illegal immigrants down the road.

“His emphasis on strong border security and enforcement is a big deal, and I think the Democrats are finally beginning to get that, and I think that is because of his strong leadership and communication skills,” said Mel Martinez, a former Republican senator from Florida who was part of the failed 2007 attempt at an immigration overhaul.

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Final Round Set for Parties in South Carolina House Race

María Belén Chapur’s appearance was a surprise, especially to leaders in the national Republican Party. It might not have been the most strategic move in Mr. Sanford’s attempt at a political comeback. Still, it was how Mr. Sanford wanted it.

Whether national Republican leaders will decide that the former governor is putting the seat in jeopardy and decide to lend more support is only one question in a race that has already been filled with political and personal drama. After defeating 15 other candidates in a primary race and winning a runoff on Tuesday, Mr. Sanford faces Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Democrat with enough celebrity appeal and financial backing to change what could have been an easy victory in the special election on May 7 into a real battle.

“Everybody is really concerned because she’s not a bad-looking lady, she is a good speaker and she’s got some money,” said Jerry Hallman, chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party. “In politics, those things are important.”

The seat became vacant after Senator Jim DeMint announced in December that he was stepping down to take over the Heritage Foundation. Gov. Nikki R. Haley appointed Representative Tim Scott to replace him, opening up the Congressional seat that Mr. Sanford held before he became governor.

Gender, fidelity and experience are already shaping up as themes in the district, which includes Charleston, Hilton Head and some Low Country farmland. Mr. Sanford began his campaign as a kind of apology tour, explaining he had learned much about humility after leaving the governor’s office in 2011, having lied about a trip to Argentina to visit Ms. Chapur. Mr. Sanford said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Although he finished his term, he faced ethics fines, censure by his party and divorce from his wife of 21 years, Jenny.

Now, he has gone on the offensive, portraying himself as a seasoned fiscal hawk in a race against a political neophyte whose most notable credential is her celebrity family. Ms. Colbert Busch’s younger brother is the comedian Stephen Colbert, who has been active in her campaign.

Already the national Republican Party, though not committing to using heavy artillery in the race, is painting Ms. Colbert Busch as too liberal for a district that voted for Mitt Romney in the presidential primary. (Newt Gingrich won the state over all.)

“So far, Elizabeth Colbert Busch has yet to answer any real questions about why she supports President Obama’s failed policies,” said Katie Prill, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “She might be the gem of the Beltway and Hollywood liberals, but South Carolinians are going to be sorely disappointed the more they learn about her.”

Ms. Colbert Busch is leaning on her years as a maritime executive and at Clemson University, where she is leading an effort to develop the state’s wind power industry. She is also relying on several women in Congress, among them Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, the New York Democrat, who began using Twitter to seek donations to the campaign.

Democratic leaders realize the race must be run without error, with special attention paid to women and moderate Republicans who remember Mr. Sanford’s rocky relationship with the Legislature when he was in office and, of course, his affair.

But the national organization probably won’t make a move until the other side does.

“This is a Republican seat in a Republican district, so we’ll wait and see what the Republicans do,” said Jesse Ferguson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Hesaid national Republican organization might not be eager to get involved.

“Having Mark Sanford as the face of the party is probably not the best thing for a party trying to rehabilitate itself with women voters,” he said.

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Midterm Elections Unlikely to Alter Party Balance

Well, get used to the combination of a Republican House with a Democratic Senate and White House. It’s likely to remain that way for the next four years, not just two.

And oddly enough, that might just help Washington lower the partisan temperature and strike a few compromises for a change.

The campaign for midterm elections in 2014 has begun. Late Wednesday, President Obama travels to California to raise cash for the Democratic National Committee and his party’s House campaign arm.

But chances that Democrats can gain the 17 seats needed to recapture control of the House appear remote. Republicans have better prospects of picking up the six seats they need to regain the Senate – but not drastically better.

After midterm “wave elections” in 2006 and 2010, the calmer outlook this time reduces the stakes of electoral competition next year. That, in turn, may expand opportunities for bipartisan action on such issues as immigration, modest gun control measures and deficit reduction.

“We’re going to maintain our majority,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in an interview. But with Mr. Obama not going anywhere either, he added, “I’m committed to seeing ways we can work with this White House, knowing full well we have big differences.”

“I think what you’re seeing emerge now is an appetite for achievement,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who is a solid favorite to win re-election next year. “We want to do some things – or at least try – on a bipartisan basis.”

The ideological and political gap between the parties remains wide in any event. But the lure of seizing control of the House or Senate, and winning the presidency, has widened that gap in recent years by injecting all-or-nothing electoral drama into virtually every high-profile dispute.

In 2006, Democrats used unhappiness over the Iraq war, the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and other Republican setbacks to recapture House and Senate majorities. When the financial crisis hit two years later, they captured the presidency.

In 2010, House Republicans used continued economic weakness and a backlash against Obama administration policies to create their own comeback wave. Last year Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, set his sights on winning control of the Senate and ensuring Mr. Obama’s defeat.

As it turned out, voters last November preserved the existing balance of power. Odds favor their doing the same next time.

As this week’s fund-raising jaunt suggests, Mr. Obama is lending his energies to Congressional Democrats now that he no longer has to campaign for himself. But history and circumstance argue strongly against Democrats retaking the House.

Since voters tend to blame the White House incumbent for their discontents, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but three midterm elections in the past century. The number of times the president’s party has gained 17 seats in a midterm election: zero.

Democratic campaign operatives say they will defy history and gain at least a few seats. Among other factors, they point to strong fund-raising and the Republican Party’s national image problems.

But district lines drawn after the 2010 census circumscribe their opportunities. Charlie Cook, a political handicapper, estimates that fewer than 30 Republican-held seats are even at risk, and Democrats themselves have slightly more in jeopardy.

The midterm electorate tends to be heavier than in presidential years with older voters and whites – both important Republican constituencies. In Senate races, Republicans once again boast an auspicious map of possibilities.

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Obama Must Walk Fine Line as Congress Takes Up Agenda

WASHINGTON — The days ahead could be decisive ones for the main pieces of President Obama’s second-term agenda: long-range deficit reduction, gun safety and changes to immigration law.

With Congress back this week from a recess, bipartisan groups of senators who have been negotiating about immigration and gun violence are due to unveil their agreements, though prospects for a gun deal are in question as the emotional impact of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., has faded and the National Rifle Association has marshaled opposition. And on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will send his annual budget to Capitol Hill intended as a compromise offer, though early signs suggest that Republican leaders have little interest in reviving talks.

Members of both parties say Mr. Obama faces a conundrum with his legislative approach to a deeply polarized Congress. In the past, when he has stayed aloof from legislative action, Republicans and others have accused him of a lack of leadership; when he has gotten involved, they have complained that they could not support any bill so closely identified with Mr. Obama without risking the contempt of conservative voters.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, called this predicament Mr. Obama’s “Catch-22.” And Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said he had often seen it at work since 2010 while negotiating with Republican lawmakers to reach a long-term budget agreement.

At times, Mr. Warner said, Republicans would urge him to get Mr. Obama more involved, saying, “Gosh, Warner, we’ve got to have the president.” Other times, he said, the same lawmakers would plead otherwise, saying, “If the president comes out for this, you know it is going to kill us in the House.”

“Everybody wants him involved to the right degree at the right moment,” Mr. Warner said, “but not anytime before or after.”

The challenge for Mr. Obama became evident as soon as he took office, when Republicans almost unanimously opposed his economic stimulus package even as the recession was erasing nearly 800,000 jobs a month. The author Robert Draper opened his recent book about the House, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” with an account from Republican leaders who dined together on the night of Mr. Obama’s 2009 inauguration and agreed that the way to regain power was to oppose whatever he proposed.

Though Mr. Obama was able to prevail over Republican opposition in his first two years as president because Democrats had majorities in the House and the Senate, that changed when Republicans won control of the House in 2010, giving them a brake to apply to the president’s agenda.

Other than the stimulus experience in early 2009, the moment that most captured that polarization for the White House occurred a year later. In early 2010 Republican senators, including the minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, demanded that Mr. Obama endorse bipartisan legislation to create a deficit-reduction commission. But when he finally did so, they voted against the bill, killing it.

Now the president’s three pending priorities are shaping up as test cases for how he and Republicans will work together — or not — in his second term.

Each measure — on the budget, guns and immigration — in its own way illustrates the fine line that Mr. Obama must walk to succeed even with national opinion on his side. Privately, the White House is optimistic only about the prospects for an immigration bill, which would create a path to citizenship for about 11 million people in the country illegally.

That is because an immigration compromise is the only one that Republicans see as being in their own interests, given their party’s unpopularity with the fast-growing Latino electorate. In contrast, most Republicans see little advantage in backing gun legislation, given hostility toward it in their states or in districts throughout the South and the West and in rural areas. A budget compromise would require agreeing to higher taxes, which are anathema to conservative voters, in exchange for Mr. Obama’s support for the reductions in Medicare and Social Security that they want.

Yet even on immigration, many Republicans are weighing their party’s long-term interests in supporting a compromise against their own short-term arguments for opposing one: antipathy remains deep in conservative districts to any proposal that would grant citizenship. That calculation also holds for Republicans planning to seek the 2016 presidential nomination.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Obama early on outlined elements that he wanted in the immigration and gun measures. Then he purposely left the drafting to Congress. Senior aides, mainly the chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, and the deputy chief of staff, Rob Nabors, check in daily with senators. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stays in touch with his former Senate colleagues about the gun bill talks.

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Reagan’s Daughter Says He’d Have Backed Gay Marriage

Patti Davis, a Los Angeles writer and the onetime rebellious daughter of Reagan and his second wife, Nancy, said in a telephone interview that she never discussed same-sex marriage with the former president, who died in 2004 just as it was emerging as a political issue.

But Ms. Davis, now 60, offered several reasons her father, who would have been 102 this year, would have bucked his party on the issue: his distaste for government intrusion into private lives, his Hollywood acting career and close friendship with a lesbian couple who once cared for Ms. Davis and her younger brother Ron while their parents were on a Hawaiian vacation — and slept in the Reagans’ king-size bed.

“I grew up in this era where your parents’ friends were all called aunt and uncle,” Ms. Davis said. “And then I had an aunt and an aunt. We saw them on holidays and other times.” She added, “We never talked about it, but I just understood that they were a couple.”

Once when she and her father were watching a Rock Hudson movie, Ms. Davis said, she remarked that the actor “looked weird” kissing his female co-star. She said her father explained that Mr. Hudson “would rather be kissing a man,” and conveyed, without using the words homosexual or gay, the idea that “some men are born wanting to love another man.” Years later, in 1985, Mr. Hudson died of AIDS.

Ms. Davis, a former actress who has made news over the years by posing nude in Playboy and, more recently, the magazine More, has just self-published a novel, “Till Human Voices Wake Us,” about sisters-in-law who fall in love and leave their husbands. (She said it was not autobiographical.)

She first shared her views about her father with a friend, Howard Bragman, who has a YouTube show devoted to gay issues and interviewed her about her book.

Ms. Davis is not the only Reagan child speaking out on same-sex marriage. Michael E. Reagan, a conservative commentator and son of the former president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, recently wrote an opinion piece accusing churches of “wimping out” by not fighting harder to block same-sex marriage.

But the younger Mr. Reagan did not address his father’s views, and Ms. Davis said she would not “get into a family feud” with her half-brother.

Mr. Reagan had a mixed record on gay rights. As president, he infuriated many gay people with his slow response to the AIDS epidemic, but as a former governor of California he joined a number of Democrats, including President Jimmy Carter, in opposing a ballot measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from working in public schools.

Ms. Davis said her father “did not believe that gayness was a choice,” although “as a straight man and an old-fashioned man, it’s not like he understood it.”

Ms. Davis’s comments are certain to inflame conservative admirers of her father.

Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist and gay rights opponent, said in an interview that Mr. Reagan — who as governor signed the nation’s first “no-fault” divorce law and later told his son Michael it was his “greatest regret” — would never have stood for same-sex marriage.

“Of course, Reagan did associate with all the Hollywood crowd, and chances are he probably knew a number of gays,” Ms. Schlafly said. “I could understand that he might not have wanted to bar them from a job but that would not mean he would want them to get a marriage license.”

Ms. Davis said she expects conservative discontent with her, adding, “All I know is the heart of the man who raised me as my father.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 8, 2013

An article on Thursday about Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan and his second wife, Nancy, and her view that Mr. Reagan would have supported same-sex marriage, referred incorrectly to Mr. Reagan’s political position at the time he opposed a ballot measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from working in public schools. He was a former governor of California at the time, not the governor.

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Survey Finds Most Republicans Seek Action on Climate Change

It’s time for that national “listening tour” on energy and climate, President Obama. Some evidence comes in a new survey from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University (seen via Tom Yulsman on Facebook). Here’s an excerpt from the news release:

In a recent survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at George Mason University, a majority of respondents (62 percent) said they feel America should take steps to address climate change. More than three out of four survey respondents (77 percent) said the United States should use more renewable energy sources, and of those, most believe that this change should begin immediately.

The national survey, conducted in January 2013, asked more than 700 people who self-identified as Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents about energy and climate change.

“Over the past few years, our surveys have shown that a growing number of Republicans want to see Congress do more to address climate change,” said Mason professor Edward Maibach, director of 4C. “In this survey, we asked a broader set of questions to see if we could better understand how Republicans, and Independents who have a tendency to vote Republican, think about America’s energy and climate change situation.”

The reason a listening tour is the next step, and not a pre-packaged batch of legislation or other steps, is to build on the common ground across a wide range of Americans on energy thrift, innovation and fair play (meaning policies that distort the playing field, with mandated corn ethanol production and tax breaks for fossil fuel companies prime examples).

This might even lead to a new sense of mission in this country, something that’s been lacking since the cold war and space race.

In Mother Jones, Chris Mooney has an interesting spin on the survey, noting that the way global warming was framed probably had an impact on the level of buy-in on the questions.

It’s been clear for years that there are ways around the familiar partisan roadblocks on climate-smart energy policies. In 2009, the “Six Americas” survey by the same George Mason researchers and counterparts at Yale revealed this clearly. I distilled those findings into three slides here.

Here’s a bit more on the survey from the George Mason Web site:

This short report is based on a January 2013 national survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents. We found that they prefer clean energy as the basis of America’s energy future and say the benefits of clean energy, such as energy independence (66%) saving resources for our children and grandchildren (57%), and providing a better life for our children and grandchildren (56%) outweigh the costs, such as more government regulation (42%) or higher energy prices (31%).

By a margin of 2 to 1, respondents say America should take action to reduce our fossil fuel use. Also, only one third of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change, while about half agree with the party’s position on how to meet America’s energy needs.

You can download the report here: A National Survey of Republicans and Republican-Leaning Independents on Energy and Climate Change.

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Poll says half favor Medicaid expansion

As both sides of the political debate dig in for weeks, or perhaps months, of tough negotiations over Gov. Jan Brewer's proposal to expand Medicaid in Arizona, a statewide poll indicates that nearly half of likely voters support the plan but that more than a third have never heard of it.

The poll, paid for by pro- expansion forces, also said that almost half of Republicans surveyed back the idea of broadening health-care coverage to low-income and disabled Arizonans under federal health reform.

Those who identified themselves as "tea party" members, however, oppose the move by a 2-1 ratio, 45percent to 22percent.

The survey of 500 voters was conducted March19-21 by the national polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4percentage points.

The results were shown to The Arizona Republic this week as House GOP leaders finished a series of small meetings with the rank and file, showcasing a preliminary state budget plan that doesn't include Brewer's Medicaid proposal. The governor also has been meeting privately with GOP members who support her plan.

She wants to expand the state-federal program, which insures about 1.2million Arizonans, to provide health insurance to an additional 400,000 and bring in about $1.6billion in federal funding in fiscal 2015, the first full year of expansion. The state's additional matching funds would be raised through a tax on hospitals that treat Medicaid patients.

The Arizona Business Coalition, led by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and the health-care industry, commissioned the poll and released portions of the survey, which lobbyist Jaime Molera said also included questions about Brewer's popularity.

Molera said results showed that the more voters know about the governor's Medicaid plan, the better they like it. He said the poll did not include "push" questions designed to lead respondents.

"It tells me exactly where we're at and what we need to do. … It tells me we're going in the right direction," he said.

Brewer's proposal has sharply divided her own Republican Party, and while most observers believe there are enough votes in the Legislature to win a simple majority, the politics are dicey enough that GOP backers want cover from more members before they vote for it.

Republican opponents, including the House and Senate leaders, are concerned that cost estimates of expansion are way off and that the federal government can't afford it and will eventually renege, leaving Arizona to pay or toss people off the rolls.

"My proposal is, you don't expand Medicaid," said Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert. "There are a million and one reasons I think this is a bad idea."

Among those surveyed, 47percent said they supported Brewer's expansion plan, 17percent opposed it, and 36percent had not heard of it.

The poll also indicated that support for expansion grows among people who say they've heard a lot about the plan.

Nearly three-fourths of those who say they're somewhat familiar with Brewer's plan are supportive.

And it also hinted at strong support for Brewer and her conservative credentials, which supporters say should comfort GOP lawmakers whom local party officials are threatening to unseat in the next election.

"Republicans are getting threatened that they're going to lose their seats," Molera said. "If Governor Brewer is behind something, and certainly behind them … having her behind you is going to be tremendously powerful."

In a separate question, survey respondents were given three choices: Restoring the voter-approved childless-adult program at a cost to the state of $450million; expanding Medicaid to cover more people at a state cost of $150million; and doing nothing to restore or expand the program. Fifty-two percent chose expansion, 21percent wanted to restore coverage for childless adults and 21percent wanted to do nothing.

Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said she remains concerned about the costs of expanding Medicaid and the accuracy of the state's estimates of how many people will qualify. And she questions why states or the federal government would want to expand Medicaid to people earning 133percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000 a year, instead of providing subsidies to help people find their own insurance on newly created online health exchanges.

"I still have some huge reservations because of the cost going forward," Barto said. "I just think we're not doing people any favors by pushing them onto a Medicaid system."

Rep. Heather Carter, R-Cave Creek, who is leading efforts to get expansion through the House, said she believes that the more lawmakers and their constituents learn about Medicaid expansion, the more supportive they will become.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Free shotguns in Tucson? Idea might not be as wild as it sounds

(PNI) A guy in Tucson plans to hand out free shotguns to people living in crime-heavy neighborhoods, and I'm having trouble knocking his plan.

This is NOT an April Fools' joke.

Seriously, it's not.

I mean it.

Shaun McClusky, an in-your-face former mayoral candidate from Tucson, has teamed up with a Houston-based organization called the Armed Citizen Project.

The group was started in Houston by a man named Kyle Coplen. Its mission, as described on its website (armedcitizenproject.org) is "training and arming residents in mid-high crime areas with defensive shotguns, for free ? and measuring the effect that a heavily armed society has on crime rates."

McClusky told me, "Kyle really thought the program out well. I called him up about 10 days ago and said, 'Can we start it here in Tucson?' I speak with two of the council members here on a regular basis. I sent them an e-mail saying, 'If you guys continue to fail to fund public safety, I am going to do this program whether you like it or not.' So, this is on the City Council for failing the public by not funding public safety."

McClusky said that three neighborhoods already have been selected, and he hopes to have the program up and running within a few months. The first step is to hand out leaflets and post fliers asking residents of the neighborhoods to sign up.

Those who volunteer must agree to go through a background check and to take an all-day gun-safety course before they can get a weapon.

"I don't want to arm criminals," McClusky said. "I want to arm honest citizens who want to protect their families. That's the bottom line. And they will go through a full day of training. They will go through a weapons-handling class, a weapons-safety class and also a range-training class. It's better than your average person walking into a store and saying, 'I want a gun to protect my family and walking out with a weapon.' I want to make sure they understand the rules and regulations as well as all aspects of this gun so they can safely protect their families."

The weapon selected will either be a single-shot, break-action shotgun or a pump-action shotgun, depending on availability, McClusky told me.

"These guns are good for personal protection, but gangbangers don't want this weapon," McClusky said. "It's not their weapon of choice. It uses buckshot. It's enough to stop a bad guy, but it will not be like a 9mm bullet that goes through the first person and keeps on going."

The cost per participant is estimated at about $400, perhaps more, depending on the weapon. McClusky said he already has roughly $12,000. The program is funded with donations.

Tucson Councilman Steve Kozachik vehemently opposes the project.

He told the Arizona Daily Star, "To suggest that giving away ? loaded shotguns in high-crime areas will make anybody safer is pure idiocy. This is coming from a purported leader in the local Republican Party, the same group who last year auctioned off a Glock and a rifle as fundraisers. Now they're giving them away in our community? They're totally out of touch with the values of this city."

I sympathize, to a degree. I get the argument that says putting more guns on the streets could compound the problem and there is no guarantee they won't wind up in the hands of bad guys. I get that there could be accidents. Or instances of domestic violence. Or suicides.

I get as well that McClusky is a political provocateur whose motives aren't exactly pure.

But, honestly, isn't the Armed Citizen Project giving gun-control advocates exactly what they've been asking for?

Background checks. Required training. And defensive guns that aren't "assault weapons."

"I won't say how many weapons we hand out in a neighborhood," McClusky said. "I may put three shotguns in a neighborhood. I might put 30. Afterwards, we will put yard signs in several of the entry streets saying this neighborhood is protected by the Armed Citizen Project. If you're a bad guy, are you going to go in there, or are you looking for an easier target?"

You have to admit it's an interesting question.

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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