Vote 2014: Republican Treasurer Debate

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Join us as the Republican candidates running for State Treasurer debate issues relevant to the treasurer’s office.

Ted Simons: Good evening, and welcome to this special vote 2014 edition of Arizona Horizon. I'm Ted Simons. Tonight's show is a debate, sponsored by Clean Elections. We'll hear from candidates competing in the Republican primary for state treasurer. As with all of Arizona Horizon's debates this is not a formal exercise, it's an open exchange of ideas. An opportunity for give and take between candidates for one of the state's most important offices. As such, interjections and even interruptions are allowed, provided that all sides get a fair shake. And we'll do our best to see that that happens. The treasurer's office serves as the state's bank and also manages the state's investments. Three Republican candidates are competing to be the state's next treasurer. They are, in alphabetical order, investment professional Jeff DeWit, former Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman, and former state Republican Party chair, Randy Pullen. Each candidate will have one minute for opening and closing statements. Earlier we drew numbers to see who goes first, and that honor goes to Jeff Dewit.

Jeff DeWit: Thank you, Ted. I am Jeff Dewit, and I have been in the finance industry for 21 years. I'm the only nonpolitician in the race, and the job of the state treasurer is one that handles $30 billion of inflows and outflows a year and oversees about 12.5 billion in our state's investments. When you look at the job title for the treasurer, it's an administrative role and the word you hear the most often is invest. We oversee the investments, we handle investments. To do this job in the private sector, you have to be a licensed professional. For some reason the government doesn't hold itself to the same standards, but I am the only one qualified to do the job in the private sector and I have a lot to offer Arizona, and I am running to be the next state treasurer, our current treasurer Doug Ducey has done a fabulous job and he's been a successful private sector guy. So being a successful businessman myself, I want to be the next in line to do a good job for Arizona.

Ted Simons: All right. Thank you very much. For the next opening statement, we turn to Hugh Hallman.

Hugh Hallman: Thank you, Ted. I am Hugh Hallman, and I'm running for state treasurer because I have the right educational background. Private sector experience, and commitment to public service that will serve you well. I have degrees in economics and accounting as well as political science. Then I went on to law school where I went to the University of Chicago and studied in a special program called the Olin fellowship in law and economics. I studied economics, finance, taxation and securities law. I had to learn to write the kinds of documents that securities brokers only learn to read. I then came back to Arizona, for the last 26 years I've served in the private sector, working with companies to help them through their finance and securities problems among many many other things. Companies you know, like Apple Computer. But I've always committed to the private and public sector experience. I work diligently for many many charities like Habitat for Humanity, but I've also held office. I was a Tempe City Councilman and Mayor of the city of Tempe for eight years where we worked to cut the budget and improve services. I look forward to bringing that fiscal prudence to the state and I look forward to your vote.

Ted Simons: Thank you very much. And now with our final opening statement, Randy Pullen.

Randy Pullen: Hi, I'm Randy Pullen, I'm running for state treasurer. As mentioned earlier, I was the chairman of the Republican Party for four years, a very successful term in fact. Winning every statewide race as well as super majorities in both houses of the legislature in 2010. But more importantly then that, I have 38 years of business experience. I'm a certified public accountant, I was a partner with Deloitte & Touche, my final experience is immense to say the least. And I think I would be the best treasurer the state of Arizona could ever expect to have and I look forward to your support in this election. Thank you.

Ted Simons: All right, thank you very much. We'll now get the conversation started here. Jeff, we'll start with you. Would you change the office compared to how it's being run right now? And if so, how?

Jeff DeWit: There are a few changes. Now so you know the office is run very very well. Dean Martin stepped into an office years ago that did need some changes. He did a great job, implemented many changes. Doug Ducey has expanded that. There are two main things that I can improve on in the office. And they are the two T's, they are Technology and the transparency. So right now if you look at my 14 years as CEO experience of ECHOtrade, we lived on the cutting edge of financial technology. And what I can bring with my knowledge is improving, if you look at the investment side of that office, we're running things on Excel spreadsheets, you look behind the screens and anyone can get a tour if you set it up ahead of time, a lot of Excel, a lot of things with my knowledge it will save us money, make us more accurate and improve our returns, and also the transparency, Doug Ducey or Dean Martin created the open checkbook, Doug Ducey expanded it. And what I would like to do is take it to the next level, if you look right now, at the open checkbook, you can see all the transactions that Arizona does. I want to take it to the next level and put it into balance sheet style reports, and it gives us all a better way to see where the 9.3 billion dollars we're spending is going.

Ted Simons: More of the same, improvement, change, what do you see?

Hugh Hallman: There are a lot of things actually Ted that need to be improved in terms of the technology specifically. The state has not invested not only in the treasurer's office technology but across the board. In the Department of Education, and in other aspects. It's been decades since we've had new technology upgrades. I've actually worked with the kinds of companies that would provide that sort of assistance. But in addition, I think we have to understand that this is an administrative position. I've served in the capacity as the Mayor of the city of Tempe working with our staff to take a city from 1,600 employees to 1,300 and approve efficiencies, we added technology there. I've run a public school. 49 staff members, almost twice the number of staff that are in the treasurer's office and improved efficiencies there through technology. But also improved results while reducing costs. That's the kind of effort I would bring to the state treasurer's office.

Ted Simons: Randy, technology, transparency, what do you see here?

Randy Pullen: Well I think all those are correct. But there's one more piece to the puzzle which is state of Arizona is putting in a new accounting system for next year, it will actually start up this time next year. And I put in the state's last accounting system in 1982 and it's still in place as of today. So I understand the financial accounting system state of Arizona probably better than anybody could ever expect to understand. So I look forward to the opportunity to be able to make sure that the new system the state puts in balances with the existing treasurer's system. Now Jeff referred to the fact that there needs to be update on the investment side. There's no question about that. But let's don't forget the state of Arizona spends $30 billion a year, so the financial accounting side of that is critical. There are 26 people in the treasurer's office right now, half of them are devoted to handling investment side, we have license, professional money managers that work in the Treasurer's office that actually do all the work with the funds that are invested. So your job as treasurer is to manage those people.

Hugh Hallman: And in fact there's another investment professional that's crucial to the role for the treasurer's office, and that's the person that's appointed by the treasurer to the investment board. The treasurer does not actually manage the investments, the staff does with direction from the investment board and those investment decisions are made by that board. What's important about in my view the treasurer's role is that the treasurer remain independent of that decision making process.

Ted Simons: Talk about, real quickly I want to you add to that. The duties of the treasurer, because we've had treasurer debates before, and we've gone off into immigration policy, all sorts of public policy issues.

Jeff DeWit: I'm sure this crew can do that too if you like.

Ted Simons: I'm sure they can. But what is as you see it the duty of the treasurer?

Jeff DeWit: The duty of the treasurer is to act as the state's bank and to oversee the investments of Arizona. That's it. That's the main job of the treasurer's office.

Hugh Hallman: And that's where Jeff and I disagree pretty --.

Ted Simons: Okay I'll get to you in a second here. Please.

Jeff DeWit: You obviously -- Your job if you boil it down to the simplest terms, it's to protect Arizona taxpayers. That's the number one job of the treasurer. You're protecting Arizona taxpayers. In every sense of the word. But they're trying to downplay the fact they don't have investment backgrounds by saying it's not crucial to the job. It is absolutely crucial to the job. To know, to understand what you're doing. Like I said as Mr. Hallman said you oversee the people that actually do the investments to do that in the private sector you're required to have an even more exclusive securities license called the series 24. To do that very same thing in the private sector.

Ted Simons: Hold on here, Randy.

Randy Pullen: If it was important they would require in the requirements that the state treasurer in fact have a license. It's not required. Who better to deal with the state's bank which is the treasurer's office than someone as a partner with a major accounting firm banks Deloitte & Touche audited banks, savings and loans, took banks and savings and loans apart, sold the parts off, reorganized them, who better to do that than myself?

Hugh Hallman: And in fact, I appreciate Jeff's comment that he has a securities license. He's talked about it on his own website as something that one could get by buying a $249 finance book reading the book and taking the practice exams.

Jeff DeWit: I don't know where you get that from. That is such misinformation it's terrible.

Hugh Hallman: It's from your ECHOtrade website.

Jeff DeWit: No, it is not. You're insulting over 100,000 investment professionals across the country. You study for three to four months and you have to be sponsored by a firm to even get that. It's horrific misinformation.

Hugh Hallman: I would be happy to present that to the reporter who is with us today. But in addition, the reality is I took three years to study law in economics, including securities law. The point I was making earlier is it's crucial that the treasurer maintain an independent position from the actual decision making process. So that the treasurer can hold the entire process accountable to protect Arizona taxpayers. The very number one job called out in the statutes is that the treasurer must protect principle at all costs. That's job one is safety, security of the investments. It's as if we have retirees' investment money and we have to protect the principle first.

Ted Simons: Okay, with that in mind, the idea of being-- First of all, do you think that the office of the treasurer here in the past four years or so, has a treasurer been prudent with the state's investments?

Randy Pullen: I think Doug Ducey's done a great job. They actually did some research, they actually looked at the spread of how they were investing the assets and did a research project on that. And in fact the treasurer was even more conservative than what they were suggesting in that study that was done. So I think he's done a very good job, he's made money for the state in terms of return on investment. They've changed the basic allocation which is now 60% stocks and 40% fixed assets. So that's probably the right move at the time.

Ted Simons: Do you think the office has shown a prudent method of investment, A, and B, has it been too prudent? Can you get out there and do a little bit more for the state?

Jeff DeWit: No. I think they've done it right, honestly. Doug Ducey has done a great job. And a lot of that comes back to the fact that he's been so successful in the private sector. We all know his success with Cold Stone Creamery. And no one can argue he's been a very very successful guy. When you take someone like that, a successful person from the private sector, and they make our best elected officials. That's where I want to fall in line too. They're knocking the success I've had with ECHOtrade, but quite frankly I started ECHOtrade in 1999 with just a dozen traders and two programmers and I grew to over 500 licensed professional exchange members by the end of the decade.

Ted Simons: Are you knocking his success?

Hugh Hallman: No. In fact, what really starts this is he likes to knock other people's success. And the reality is, not only --

Jeff DeWit: That's not true.

Hugh Hallman: Not only have I had a successful private sector career but I've always committed to the public sector, you've seen that. As a result I have worked for the residents of the city of Tempe to reduce budgets and improve services. I've worked for a charity that is a school, and it is now one of the highest ranking public schools in the state of Arizona. That's a commitment I've made that I won't apologize for. Mr. DeWit likes to call people who spend their time both in the private sector and public sector career politicians. The interesting thing is he admirers Mr. Ducey who is now running for another office. You can't have it both ways. Either you're a career politician going from one office to another or you recognize the fact that having experience in these jobs is important to serving Arizona's residents.

Ted Simons: Randy, is political experience in this job a good thing?

Randy Pullen: Absolutely. Of course I like to first of all say I've never actually been paid to be a politician. I've always done it for free as party chairman and other positions. But knowing the politics is very critical. And I'll do back to the 2010 situation where the state was essentially bankrupt and we had to work our way out of it. I was in meetings every week with staff at the Governor's office and the legislature, looking at the different ways we could cut back on expenditures and how we're going to get the budget balanced. So -- And I look at going forward, we're going to have a similar situation in the future and the treasurer's ability to be able to work with those other people politically is very very important. I'd like to just say one more thing. I think Jeff did start a very successful company, and I appreciate that. I've started companies too, and I know how hard it is to be successful as an entrepreneur. So I give him credit for having done that. I think it's very important.

Ted Simons: How much input do you think the treasurer should have over legislative policy, public policy? I mean how much should you be involved with that when you got a $12 million or a $12 billion investment portfolio to take care of?

Jeff DeWit: You know I believe the treasurer needs to be really independent from the process. The treasurer needs to concentrate on job number one, which is protecting Arizona taxpayers, and not get caught up in the politics that surrounds obviously the capitol. I think keeping the treasurer as independent as possible is where we need to be. And I want to respond to Mr. Hallman's point, he says that because I say good things about our current treasurer that's now running for Governor that I'm supporting you know some kind of a long-time politician. But no. Neither do we ever knock success, but Randy and I knock when Mr. Hallman tries to run on his background as Mayor of Tempe in balancing the budget, but when you do that by increasing the property taxes on your residents by 70% that's something to knock. I don't believe that the way to balance a budget is to give out government handouts and then raise your property taxes and your fees and everything else that goes along with it.

Ted Simons: I need a response.

Hugh Hallman: I would be happy to respond. First of all, I keep missing out on your first questions which are prudence and other things. Dean Martin has endorsed me for this office because he knows how I handled things as the Mayor of the city of Tempe. When they can't come up with something real to say about my resume stuff gets made up. The city of Tempe froze its property tax when I was mayor, took almost 12 years to get that done. What we did was stop the games that politicians play of letting property value increases allow property tax increases to happen. So we froze the city of Tempe's property tax levy. Is it perfect? No. Why? Because the legislature for example, changed the formula for the amount of property tax that residents pay versus the amount of tax the businesses pay. Ted this is complex stuff. But unless you've actually been involved in it, you can't tell the difference between a property tax freeze and a property tax increase. More importantly, we actually reduced the city of Tempe's budget by more than 18%.

Ted Simons: Randy, do you agree with that?

Randy Pullen: Well no, because I can show you, you can go out to Maricopa County site and you'll see that the -- While the property values in Tempe went down, if you look at the city of Tempe's taxes, you will see that in fact they went up. In fact Mr. Hallman taxes went up--

Hugh Hallman: The fact he just skipped

Randy Pullen: That is, that is --

Hugh Hallman: He just said in fact. When property -- The way our formula works for property tax and this is where everybody is going to get bored. You have property value times rate --

Randy Pullen: No, no. The bottom line is --

Hugh Hallman: Equals your property tax bill.

Randy Pullen: Taxes went up.

Hugh Hallman: The way Tempe's property tax collections went up, was the fact that we expanded the economy. And that's a good thing, that's exactly what Ronald Reagan --

Randy Pullen: The rates went up -

Ted Simons: Did the rising tide lift that particular vote?

Hugh Hallman: The rising tide lifted all votes --

Randy Pullen: Values went down, and taxes up.

Ted Simons: Randy, please.

Hugh Hallman: And now that values have gone up, rates have gone down.

Ted Simons: Hugh, Hugh let Randy speak. Please.

Randy Pullen: Values in Tempe went down, taxes went up. Tax rates went up, and that's the bottom line.

Hugh Hallman: You know what, he had to just correct himself. Tax rates went up. What he's talking about is --

Randy Pullen: No, total property taxes went up.

Hugh Hallman: The game politicians play between property values and rates and what I finally got done for Tempe and I think it should be done statewide, is as values go up, the rate automatically should come down and that's what we did in Tempe. And now that property taxes --

Randy Pullen: Taxes went up.

Hugh Hallman: Now that property values have gone up, what he's showing you is that we have actually --

Randy Pullen: That is the city of Tempe, property taxes went up.

Ted Simons: Okay, what are you showing us there Randy?

Hugh Hallman: What he's showing you is property tax collections.

Randy Pullen: This came off the Maricopa County treasurer's website, who's endorsed me by the way, and you can see every year property taxes in the city of Tempe went up. We're not talking about the state's taxes or the county's taxes. We're talking about the city of Tempe's taxes went up.

Hugh Hallman: And its total tax collections did go up and that is a sign of success. You go -- You go to Tempe -- Ted, let me finish here.

Ted Simons: Okay, please.

Hugh Hallman: He just said trying to make it sound like I increased property taxes on individuals in Tempe. What has happened in Tempe is the economy grew. Go out and look at Tempe. Almost every politician is now taking pictures at our town lake with all of the development that's happened.

Ted Simons: Okay we've got -- Is it fair to say that he increased taxes when tax collections went up, because as he says, things were getting better?

Jeff DeWit: Yeah, what he did was this in Tempe. They did increase their sales tax that went to a popular vote that he pushed there. Now on the property tax level, they took the collection rate from $1.40 per hundred thousand of assessed value up to $2.48. When he says he froze it, what they ended up doing was in 2011 they froze it at 2008 levels. So as property values came down, when everyone expected to now save money on taxes, they were now paying more every year pegged to inflation, frozen at the highest amount.

Hugh Hallman: And that's actually wrong.

Jeff DeWit: The reasons that one of my strongest bases of support comes from Tempe residents, you think as a long-time Mayor and politician there you would have support from your own constituents. But the reason, and the other reason is when they pushed that property tax hike through, they did it in an authoritarian manner, where it didn't even go to a popular vote. And that's another wrong thing that I think politicians do, when they take these things and push them through by a vote of just themselves and not --

Ted Simons: Last point on this please.

Hugh Hallman: This of course is why people get fairly confused, all jurisdictions vote directly on these items. Secondly, property tax values have now gone up in Tempe precipitously and the rates been ticking down exactly as it was intended to. So we don't have property tax increases. People like to confuse the difference between the property tax rate and property tax values when what matters is the bill that people pay and the fact that you can't tell the difference between those things, demonstrates it's too complex an issue for either of you to handle.

Randy Pullen: Let me just sum it up.

Hugh Hallman: I thought it was the last time around Ted?

Randy Pullen: During the years the property values--

Ted Simons: We don't understand what you're talking about, I have to let him respond to that.

Randy Pullen: When property values were going up in those years in Tempe when we had the bubble, they kept their tax rate the same so they continued to have this increase in property taxes. And then when values went down they increased their rate in order to keep their taxes up above where they were.

Hugh Hallman: I will answer myself, Mr. Pullen here --

Randy Pullen: Your property taxes went up.

Hugh Hallman: I voted against the fact that my council would not reduce the property tax rate when property values were going up, because it imposes a property tax increase. Your viewers get that. So the way to finally solve the problem of having council members and other jurisdictions also say I didn't increase your taxes I kept the rate the same, 47 out of 50 years values went up in Tempe. So property taxes went up and I voted against the failure to reduce taxes every year. And do I have to live with that? You bet I do. But I finally got my council to understand that if we froze the bills, everything else takes care of itself. And now that -

Ted Simons: Okay --

Randy Pullen: And that's why he's rated champion of big government by American's for Prosperity.

Ted Simons: I'm hearing him saying that you simply don't understand. You don't understand it.

Randy Pullen: I'm a CPA, I understand this exactly. He has to say that because he has no other way to--

Ted Simons: But what -- What do Republican voters think?

Hugh Hallman: My eighth grade students understand algebra. Rate times value equals bill. If you let the values go up, and don't reduce the rates as they've discussed. Then your bill goes up. You have to fix that.

Ted Simons: What do Republican voters think when they have this conversation going and one candidate, two candidates think one candidate is doing X, the other candidate says it ain't even close to X it's Y, and by the way you don't even understand X, what do they make of this?

Jeff DeWit: I think the best way to boil it down is, you have two of us here with financial backgrounds saying that it did go up, the rate did go up, and one person, a long-time lawyer, slash politician without a financial background saying it didn't. So if you look at it as that, or you can just call a friend of yours in Tempe and ask them, because they all seem to have the same story.

Hugh Hallman: Do you notice how he said it again, when you talk about the rate. That's exactly how my council and other councils and school districts get away with it. They say I didn't increase your rate. I kept it the same when your property values go up. What I did in Tempe was stop that game. So that when values go up now, the rate automatically comes down. As one expected. And so at the very end of my tenure, as property taxes hit the bottom, we froze property taxes on the bills --

Randy Pullen: But they both go up.

Hugh Hallman: No, that's a collections chart Randy.

Randy Pullen: They still go up.

Hugh Hallman: So Ronald Reagan was a failure because he got more money into the coffers as President of the United States by cutting tax rates. You would have called him a failure.

Randy Pullen: You increased tax rates.

Hugh Hallman: We did not increase tax rates. We froze property taxes and then grew the economy.

Ted Simons: All right, okay.

Hugh Hallman: So Tempe property tax collections are through the roof.

Ted Simons: Ok, we are obviously at an impasse here, there's one more thing I want to ask here. A quote from each of you, at least a quote from your campaign on your websites. I want to start with you, Jeff. Quote I look at candidates who want the job, not need a job. What are you saying here? What are you trying to say?

Jeff DeWit: That's a great quote and I'm glad I said that. I've said that, and they've heard me say that lot of times. So I love that quote. You know, what I'm trying to say is this -- What I view, and I apologize I don't want to be you know saying anything negative about my opponents but they are long-time politicians looking for a stepping stone. Mr. Hallman was running for Governor last year and then made a deal to get in this race to get in the treasurer's race. When his background suggests he should actually be running for Attorney General. So instead of this job being a stepping stone for politicians I believe this is someone who should want the job. I'm the only one as I said credentialed to do this job in the private sector. I've been doing finance for 21 years and doing a great job of it. I'm the only one that wants this job and I'm the only one qualified to do this job in the private sector.

Randy Pullen: Randy, the quote from you was Arizona must continue to be a loud voice in standing up to broken policies in Washington. Is that the job of the treasurer of Arizona?

Randy Pullen: The job of the treasurer of Arizona obviously is to, one, make sure all the bills for the state get paid, and two, make sure that the money that the state does invest is handled properly safely, and the way it's supposed to be under statute. But at the end of the day, we are in a terrible situation here where the states are literally almost at war with what's going on in Washington, DC and we in Arizona have stood up in the past and I think we need as a state to continue to stand up to support states' rights and to support what is the correct thing for our citizens to want, which is that we control things at the state level, that's why we have the 10th amendment, and that's why the federal government is way overstepping its bounds and we at the state level need to continue to push back on Washington, DC.

Ted Simons: Hugh, a quote, it's time we balanced Arizona's budget in a real and sustainable way.

Hugh Hallman: Correct.

Ted Simons: Job of the treasurer's office?

Hugh Hallman: It is the job of the treasurer's office. And I'll also respond to Mr. DeWiT here that I'm somehow seeking a job. I've actually retired in a way from my private sector work because I've done well enough to allow my family to continue doing what it wants to do. I think Mr. DeWiT has done similar things. In terms of the treasurer's office, the reason I'm running is because I investigated whether or not I should run for Governor. My kids wrote me a letter and said dad, we'd like to see the state of Arizona do better, you did great things in Tempe; we think you ought to do something. What I realized is almost everything I was talking about were fiscal issues. And when the race got fairly crowded I realized I don't need to be in the big chair. The goal was to provide some service to the state of Arizona, the fiscal prudence that would allow us to balance our budget. We right now have a budget that's about $9 billion in debt. We've run up a $9 billion debt since March of 2008. I did just the opposite in Tempe. We doubled our reserves during the good years so we could make our way through the bad years. I'm going to advocate for that approach for the state of Arizona because we should not be borrowing our children's future to pay for current services.

Ted Simons: We've got to stop right there, because each candidate is now going to give us a one-minute closing statement. Going the reverse order of the opening remarks we start with Randy Pullen.

Randy Pullen: Thank you. I was working on a job with one of my uncles who since passed away a few years ago, and he commented to me one day that growing older, getting lucky is really remembering which room you walked into and why you walked into the room. Well I'm getting older, but I still am pretty lucky at what I do, and I think I can serve the state of Arizona very well going forward. My background which includes business 38 years of finance as a CPA, as well as the former chairman of the Republican Party really suits well to serve in the role as treasurer for the state of Arizona. I look forward to working with the new Governor as well as the leadership and the legislature to balance Arizona's budget and I look forward to helping Arizona grow in the future. And that's why the Governor as well as 20 legislators have endorsed me to be your next treasurer, because they know I can do the job.

Ted Simons: All right. Thank you very much. For our next closing statement, we turn to Hugh Hallman.

Hugh Hallman: Thank you, Ted. Thank you all for the opportunity to be here this evening. I am Hugh Hallman and I'm running for state treasurer because I believe I have the educational background, I have the law degree that's true, but I studied in finance, economics, and accounting among other things, to provide that service to the state of Arizona. I have a public sector record that's demonstrated success. Most people know where the city of Tempe is; most people see that it's now a boom town. The current council members are all now ranked friends of the taxpayers because they have to live with the fiscal policies that I developed over eight years as Mayor of the city of Tempe. Those are the same kinds of policies that I hope to bring to the state of Arizona to get our budget balanced. I've worked with our legislators over the past couple of decades to work on improving how Arizona does its business. My goal is to advocate for you as your chief financial advocate to get our budget back in balance, to get our fiscal house in order. And I look forward to serving you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Ted Simons: Thank you very much. And now, Jeff Dewit.

Jeff DeWit: Thank you. The main thing I'd like to get across in all the meetings we go to is it's a very important job to pay attention to. For the reason that the better your state treasurer does, the less Arizona needs of your taxes. I'm the only one here that's not a politician. I'm the only one here with the resume and the background to do this job in the private sector, and I've had a lot of success over 21 years doing this job in the private sector. I'm the only one here that is standing up to Obamacare and did not support the Medicaid expansion as it's been talked about a lot in this race, that the Heritage Foundation estimates will cost Arizona $2.8 billion by 2022. And I'm the only one fighting against the government handouts, and I'm the only one that hasn't raised taxes. I will continue to do that, I'll continue to fight against tax increases and fight to protect Arizona taxpayers, and I really want to be your next state treasurer and I'm asking for your vote. So please go to my website jeffdewit.com and God bless.

Ted Simons: Thank you all. And yeah the debate goes on. Thank you candidates and thank you for watching this special vote 2014 Clean Elections debate, featuring the Republican candidates for treasurer. Our next debate will take place Monday, July 14th when we hear from Democrats running for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Ted Simons: That's it for now, I'm Ted Simons. Thanks for joining us. You have a great evening.


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