Christie's race covers political present, future

WAYNE, N.J. — WAYNE, N.J. With the governor election less than a month away, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is telling voters that he might not serve out his full second term if elected.

The admission might hurt any other candidate.

But for Christie, it underscores his popularity as a straight-talking Republican in a Democratic state. And it highlights what's at stake in New Jersey's looming governor election -- a contest as much about Christie's presidential aspirations as the governor's race.

He did not laugh off a question about his political future when asked during his first re-election debate Tuesday.

"I am not going to declare tonight … that I am or I'm not running for president," Christie said.

He later quipped: "I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can do this job and also deal with my future. And that's what I will do."

That's exactly what Christie is doing as he uses his governor election to make the case for a higher office.

Buoyed by polls suggesting he has a commanding lead in his re-election bid, Christie's team is assembling a broad coalition of supporters -- groups of Democrats, union workers, women and minorities that Republican candidates elsewhere struggle to attract. He says his re-election campaign offers a road map of sorts for beleaguered Republicans across the nation as the party works to expand.

"We've got to win elections again. And that's what we're going to show the whole country in New Jersey on Nov. 5," Christie said of his party.

"I thought that the Republican Party was put into effect to win elections. I didn't think we were some debating society or some group of academic elites that sit around and talk about big ideas but don't do anything about them," he continued.

Christie's philosophy aligns him with Republican pragmatists pushing the GOP to embrace political moderation. Despite detailed recommendations by the Republican National Committee to do just that, the pragmatists are losing the debate as the GOP's more conservative wing drives the national discussion in Washington.

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Medieval cadre of GOP in for hard political lesson

Fans of representative democracy know that there are ways to advocate one's beliefs short of threatening and delivering harm to the larger society.

It used to be that one could blame the parade of manufactured crises not on the whole Republican Party but on its unruly "tea party" faction. That's becoming less and less so as what remains of the pragmatic leadership caves in to the extremists' demands.

The GOP's perspective on governing seems to have moved from enlightenment to medieval. It's become the party of pain.

Before I go on, let me salute some individual Republicans for standing up to the insanity within their party: Rep. Peter King of New York, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. You represent the Republican Party of my father.

For all their patriotic posturing, the tea-party bomb throwers don't like America very much. Worse, they don't understand how democratic governments or economies work. Some of their political leaders do know but don't care, using their electorate's confusion to enrich themselves off their bankroller billionaires.

There's nothing to do about these voters. They won't squawk until their own checks -- for Medicare, Social Security, farm subsidies, roadwork -- stop arriving. Tea-party congressional districts tend to be poor, old, rural and on the receiving end. If anyone is a burden to productive America, they are.

And so, President Barack Obama had to cancel a trip to Asia to baby-sit Republican tantrums in Washington. The financial and psychological damage of this shutdown keeps rising.

The Republican Party's staunchest allies -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers -- are now tearing out their hair, demanding a stop to all this ignoramus talk about a debt default being no big deal.

"Our nation has never defaulted in the past, and failing to raise the debt limit in a timely fashion will seriously disrupt our fragile economy and have a ripple effect through the world," wrote the president of NAM, nobody's idea of a liberal.

You have the formerly pragmatic Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina speculating that a default on government debt is a manageable situation. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has his nutty solution: spending piecemeal. If there's not enough tax money coming in during a particular month, he says, we can decide what it gets spent on.

Great, let's have fistfights every month over whether North Cascades National Park can answer its e-mail or not.

America's savers and investors, meanwhile, are given a choice of a kneecapping or punch in the stomach.

Looking forward to 2014, Republicans may have already lost their swing vote. And even districts packed with tea-party discontents may not be so safe as they assume.

Once it sinks in that their checks come from Washington and not from heaven, the hotheads will turn on a dime. And please stop calling them "conservatives."

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Migrant reform: Game of political chicken

(PNI) Two weeks after the U.S. Senate passed sweeping immigration reform, House Republicans pick up the political hot potato this week, and the question of the summer is this:

INSIDE

E.J. Montini: Florists throughout Arizona step up to help a little shop in Prescott fulfill its role in mourners' farewell to the 19 fallen firefighters. B2

Is 2013 the new 2006?

Clint Bolick says it shouldn't be.

Bolick is with that bastion of liberal thought, the Goldwater Institute. He sees immigration reform as Republicans' best hope for getting the things they most desire: a secure border, a better economy and a new system that allows more legal migration of the workers we need rather than the relatives of those already here.

So, will it happen?

"Am I optimistic?" he asks. "No."

Bolick is working with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to explain the reasons, both economic and political, that immigration reform makes sense for Republicans. The two men wrote a book, "Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution," last year, and last week, they co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, making the Republican case for reform.

"I've spoken to a lot of conservative audiences, and when they come into the room, they are dead-set against immigration reform, which they think of solely as amnesty, and they leave being very, very open to the topic," Bolick told me. "I hope that the same arguments will pierce the House Republicans."

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Politicians are deathly afraid of all those e-mails they get, written in capital letters.

Besides, House Speaker John Boehner has said that whatever passes the House will pass with a majority Republican vote. Given that just 14 of 46 Republican senators voted for the "Gang of Eight's" immigration bill, it seems unlikely that reform is on the way.

Bolick, however, says Republicans need to consider the impact of not passing a bill: a continuation of the things they hate -- illegal immigration and a porous border -- and a lost opportunity to boost the economy and reduce the federal deficit.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Senate bill would reduce the deficit by $900billion over the next two decades, given taxes that would be paid by new and legalized immigrants.

The bill overhauls the visa system to reduce chain migration -- which now accounts for two-thirds of all green cards issued as immigrants sponsor their extended family members -- and it increases visas for high-skilled workers. It also expands guest-worker programs, offering immigrants a way to come and go legally.

And, yes, it would give immediate legal status to most immigrants who are here illegally and a 13-year-path to citizenship, once certain border security triggers are met.

That'll be a non-starter in the Republican House; just legalization without a citizenship option is a no-go in the Democratic Senate.

Which leaves us, basically, back to 2006, when reform efforts died of terminal stalemate.

Brace yourselves, America, for one giant game of chicken, 2013-style. Republicans want better border security, but are they willing to agree to a path to citizenship to get it? Democrats want 11million immigrants out of the shadows, but are they willing to forgo a path to citizenship to make it happen?

Yep, 2006 it is.

Bolick says last year's presidential election, with Hispanic voters breaking nearly 4-1 for Barack Obama, was a big wake-up call for the Republican Party. Most House Republicans, however, are far more concerned with their own re-election prospects in 2014.

Bolick thinks their concern is overblown.

"The conservative base of the party, by and large, remains militantly opposed to any immigration reform, and they are extremely vocal and active in primaries, and as a result, they terrify members of Congress who ought to know better," he said.

"But if you look at the landscape, we don't have President Tom Tancredo. We don't have Congressman Randy Graf. We don't have Senator J.D. Hayworth. When it comes down to the actual elections, you find out that this extreme position is also very, very much a minority position."

Bolick says both Republicans and Democrats should have plenty of incentive to forge a compromise that will both solve a long-festering problem and provide a much-needed boost to the economy.

It sounds logical. It sounds laudable, that the men and women of goodwill -- these statesmen we elect -- could put aside their own petty concerns and find that elusive middle ground for the good of the country.

Hey, immigrants aren't the only ones who can dream.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts.arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8635.

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Brewer faces political struggle to expand Medicaid

(PNI) From the political notebook:

A lot of attention has been paid to the substance of Gov. Jan Brewer's Medicaid-expansion proposal. Less attention has been paid to a political and legal question that may be more important in determining its fate: How many Republican votes does it need in the Legislature to be enacted?

The assumption is that all the Democrats in the Legislature will vote for it. They may be tempted to attempt to bargain for something else in exchange for their support. If they are serious about the priority they claim to put on the expansion, they will forgo that temptation.

Republican votes for expansion will be tricky to come by. If Brewer has to sell not only the expansion but what Democrats want in exchange for their votes in favor, it might become a bridge too far.

So, assume Democrats play it straight and Brewer can pocket their votes. If the expansion only needs a simple majority to be enacted, that would require just three Republican votes in the Senate and seven in the House. Not much of a hill.

But Brewer's Medicaid-expansion proposal arguably needs more than a simple majority. Brewer is asking the Legislature to give the state agency that administers Medicaid authority to levy a provider assessment to pay the state's cost of providing Medicaid coverage for childless adults.

In 1992, voters approved an initiative that requires a two-thirds approval from both houses of the Legislature for any "net increase in state revenues." It explicitly includes "the imposition of any new state fee or assessment or the authorization of any new administratively set fee."

That would certainly seem to cover what the governor is proposing. The Governor's Office, however, is arguing that the assessment falls within an exception to the rule for "fees and assessments that are authorized by statute but are not prescribed by formula, amount or limit, and are set by a state officer or agency."

That's a stretch. While there might not be an amount set in the authorization to the penny, there's a clear understanding about its size. The number is in the governor's budget and proposal. Claiming that exception would be a dubious wink and a nod at a voter-approved constitutional requirement.

If the two-thirds approval applies, that raises the number of Republican votes Brewer needs to seven in the Senate and 16 in the House. The hill just became steeper.

There is an informal rule in both the Senate and the House that leadership will not bring any bill to the floor that doesn't have the support of a majority of the majority. That would require nine Republican votes in favor in the Senate and 18 in the House. Even steeper.

Put another way, if "the majority of the majority" requirement prevails, just nine of 30 senators or 19 of 60 House members could block the expansion.

The governor might be able to bargain for an agreement from leadership to bring Medicaid expansion to a vote without "the majority of the majority" requirement as part of a broader deal. But it would require pretty bruising negotiations. Permitting a vote on a Medicaid expansion opposed by a majority of his caucus would be particularly difficult for Senate President Andy Biggs.

My bet is that sequestration at the federal level occurs. Those are the budget cuts Congress adopted on a standby basis if the so-called supercommittee didn't come up with an alternative way to cut the deficit. They were designed to be so unpalatable that the supercommittee couldn't fail. It did anyway, and Congress and President Barack Obama are no closer today than then to agreeing on an alternative.

Republicans don't like the sequestration cuts because they fall disproportionately on defense. The House has passed an alternative that puts more of the burden on domestic spending.

Democrats aren't willing to come up with alternative cuts. They insist on more revenue and fewer cuts overall. It's becoming increasingly obvious to Republicans that the choice isn't between sequestration cuts and some alternative set of spending reductions. The real choice is between sequestration cuts and no cuts.

Despite deep misgivings about the effect on defense, I think Republicans will opt for the sequestration cuts rather than no cuts. At this point, deficit hawks in the Republican Party are stronger than the defense hawks.

Reach Robb at robert.robb @arizonarepublic.com.

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Arizona political icon Steiger dies at 83 <nbsp/><nbsp/>

Sam Steiger, an Arizona icon known for his brutal honesty and wry sense of humor who served five terms in the U.S. House, died Wednesday. He was 83.

Perhaps best known for shooting two burros while he was a congressman and painting a crosswalk between the Prescott courthouse and Whiskey Row, Steiger's long, storied political career began with a bet.

But his friends and family remember him most as a public servant from a bygone era, who worked with the likes of Mo Udall, Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes.

"Those guys met every week, once a week to talk about what was good for Arizona," said Steiger's son, Gail. "He helped a lot of people, just because that's what you did for your constituents."

Born in New York City, Steiger first visited Arizona as a teenager, attended Cornell University and graduated from Colorado A&M. He settled on a Prescott ranch after earning a Purple Heart as a U.S. Army platoon leader in the Korean War.

Voters first elected him to the state Senate as a Republican in 1960 and he quickly established himself as a brash, independent politician. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1964 in what was then Arizona's 3rd District, but took the seat two years later after redistricting made his district more GOP-friendly.

During five terms in the U.S. House, Steiger burnished his reputation as a bomb thrower with frequent attacks against politicians he saw as self-serving tools of lobbyists. He was a staunch conservative who earned praise from hard-line constitutionalists and derision from environmental groups.

In August 1975, Steiger went to investigate constituent complaints about a herd of burros running loose near Paulden. He discovered 14 burros in a pen and said later that they charged at him when he went to check their brands, so he shot two of the animals in self-defense.

The burro shooting prompted a criminal investigation, a civil lawsuit from the burros' owner, and brought picketing children to his congressional office.

Steiger later told the Prescott Daily Courier: "I could find a cure for cancer and they'd remember me as the guy who shot the burros."

The following year he won a bruising GOP primary for U.S. Senate against John Conlan, but lost the general election to Dennis DeConcini.

Steiger's political career largely went south from there. He lost a 1978 race for state Senate and, after switching to the Libertarian Party, got trounced in the 1982 governor's race.

But his populist star would rise again in May 1986, after a state road-resurfacing project eliminated the crosswalk on Prescott's Montezuma Street between the Yavapai County courthouse and Whiskey Row. The Prescott City Council failed to restore it.

Steiger took a striper machine and painted a new crosswalk. Police arrested him and he was charged with criminal damage and disorderly conduct. When police approached to ask Steiger what he was doing, according to an account in the Prescott Sun, the former congressman replied: "A little historical preservation."

The disorderly conduct charge was dropped and a jury took 25 minutes to acquit Steiger of criminal damage.

Steiger returned to state government with the election of Gov. Evan Mecham, but the administration did not turn out well for either man. Lawmakers impeached Mecham and removed him from office three days before a jury found Steiger guilty of an extortion charge.

Steiger was accused of threatening a justice of the peace with his job if he didn't vote to retain a fellow parole board member. An appeals court later overturned Steiger's conviction.

Steiger made his second-to-last run for public office in 1990, switching back to the Republican Party to take on Fife Symington in the primary. Symington went on to win the election, was re-elected in 1994 and then resigned following a bank-fraud conviction which was later overturned on appeal.

Political consultant Joyce Downey, a longtime friend of Steiger, business partner and campaign aide, said he was one of the smartest and funniest men she'd ever met. He was from a different era, she said, where elected officials spoke their minds, regardless of how it might play with voters.

She recalled a campaign swing through Green Valley during the 1990 gubernatorial primary. If he were elected governor, a woman asked Steiger, what would he do about overdue library books?

"Ma'am, I have never given it one thought and I never intend to," Steiger replied.

"I had a hell of a ride with Sam," Downey said. "I wouldn't have missed a minute of it."

During the 1990s, Steiger wrote a book, became a radio and TV talk-show host, published a newsletter called The Burro Chronicles and worked in the Phoenix office of U.S. Sen. John McCain. He served one term as Prescott mayor from 1999-2001. He was sidelined by a stroke in 2002 and spent most of his last 10 years in an assisted-living home near downtown Prescott.

Steiger is survived by his children, twin sons Gail and Lewis, daughter Delia and a grandson, all of Prescott. A memorial service for Steiger has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Nov. 17 at the Yavapai County Mounted Sheriff's Posse House on Sheriff's Posse Trail in Prescott.

Reach the reporter at maryk .reinhart@arizonarepublic.com.

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Political conventions highlight Latino split

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON The Hispanics with the highest profiles in this year's political conventions, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio, stand as opposites in a cultural and political split that has divided millions of U.S. Latinos for decades.

Republicans chose Rubio, who is Cuban-American, to introduce Mitt Romney at the party's convention last week. Democrats, meeting this week in Charlotte, N.C., picked Castro, who is Mexican-American, as keynote speaker, the role that launched a young Barack Obama to national political prominence.

Although they often are lumped together as Hispanics, Rubio and Castro are emblematic of acute political distinctions between Mexican-Americans, who are the largest Latino group in the U.S., and Cuban-Americans, who are the most politically active. Despite their shared language, these two constituencies have different histories in the United States and are subjected to distinctions in immigration policy that go easier on Cuban immigrants.

"Historically, many Cuban-Americans for the last few decades have tended to be a little more conservative. So it's not surprising that you would see Sen. Rubio and the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, Ted Cruz, running as Republicans," Castro said. "And I don't begrudge them for that. I think the policies they espouse are wrong, are not the best ones. But, you know, they're doing what they believe. And I applaud them for that."

Rubio, 41, was born in Miami. His parents left their native Cuba for the U.S. 2½ years before Fidel Castro overthrew the Cuban government. Fifty-nine percent of Cubans in the U.S. in 2010 were foreign-born, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and three-quarters were American citizens.

Julian Castro, 37, was born in the U.S., as were his parents. Almost 64 percent of people of Mexican descent in the country are U.S.-born, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Moises Venegas, a retired Mexican-American educator and Latino community activist in Albuquerque, N.M., said the two groups have little in common besides a historical connection to Spain, and Spanish surnames.

"The Cubans have never been one of us," Venegas said. "They didn't come from Chihuahua or Sonora in Mexico and from poor backgrounds. They came from affluent backgrounds and have a different perspective. The Republican Party also has opened doors just for them."

Pedro Roig, a Cuban-American attorney and senior researcher at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies in Miami, disputed the notion that there is rivalry between the groups. He attributes divisions between Cuban- and Mexican-Americans in part to geography and noted that many in the Cuban community admire Castro's selection as the Democrats' keynote speaker.

In 2008, 9.7 million Latino voters cast ballots in the presidential election, and 5.2 million were Mexican-Americans, about 45 percent of eligible Mexican-American voters, according to Pew Hispanic Center data. When it comes to showing up at the polls, however, Cuban-Americans outpace Mexican-Americans -- some 713,000 Cuban-Americans showed up to vote in 2008, 69percent of eligible Cuban-American voters, the center found.

Obama won 47 percent of the Cuban vote in Florida in 2008.

Immigration is the greatest source of division between the groups, with Cubans having an easier route to legal residency and citizenship. Early migrations of Cubans included upper- and middle-class families, but people who came to the U.S. during the 1980s Mariel boatlift were not as well-off.

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