The Arizona Republic‘s Richard de Uriarte and Elvia Diaz, and Paul Brinkley-Rogers from La Voz Newspaper join us to discuss recent stories making news.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Good evening, I'm Jose Cárdenas. Sheriff Joe Arpaio moved his crime suppression patrols to Mesa, building up tension between the Mesa police chief and the sheriff. Presidential candidates reaching out to Hispanic voters in what could be a crucial voting block in the election. Also the Arizona State Legislature wraps up this year's session. These topics and more coming up on Horizonte.
>>Announcer:
Funding for Horizonte is provided by S.R.P. S.R.P.'s business is water and power, but our dedication to the community doesn't stop there. S.R.P. delivering more than power.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Welcome to the Horizonte Journalists Roundtable. Joining me Paul Brinkley-Rogers, columnist for LA Voz newspaper, Elvia Diaz assistant city editor for the Arizona Republic and finally but not least Richard de Uriarte also from the Arizona Republic. Thanks for joining us. There's a lot to talk about, and I want to start with the tension that seems to be building up, it's been there for a while, between the sheriff and Chief Gascon. We saw it in several different ways, most recently the saturation patrols the sheriff launched. Paul, you've been covering that and written a lot about it. Tell us what's going on there.
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
Well, it's a clash of styles I think. We have Joe Arpaio who's well-known to all of us, we have his style of policing, and then we have George Gascon, Mesa Police Chief, who is still a relative unknown I think in the community, who emerged this week in effect to become Arpaio's nemesis again in terms of style. Arpaio flailing about, threatening, inserting his men into Mesa in this crime suppression sweep and Gascon according to Arpaio basically spoiling his day by saturating some areas with Mesa Police, who on the one hand was sort of watching the conduct of the sheriff's deputies and on the other hand especially at the county courts building, keeping an eye on demonstrators and also keeping again an eye on the sheriff's deputies.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
Even so, I think that the Mesa experience compared to earlier saturation sweeps by the sheriff's department in Phoenix, around Pruitt's, 32nd street and up in Cave Creek and Palomino area of northeast Phoenix, the Mesa seemed far calmer, more professional, whereas the tensions obviously you remember at Pruitt's and at Cave Creek, these were really potentially tense and dangerous.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Even though the sheriff accuses Chief Gascon of having all his people out there as a publicity stunt you're saying there's a good police rationale to take control of the situation?
>>Richard de Uriarte:
What I'm saying is that for although the personal back-and-forth that critique that Gascon, who really took a rise in profile on this case much greater actually even than Chief Harris was willing to do in Phoenix that the Mesa experience went smoothly. There wasn't a lot of back and forth. Whereas in Phoenix you were worried, there were some nights you were worried it was going to be out of control and people shouting at each other, along Pruitt's every Saturday for a month. I remember Phoenix officials were very, very nervous about all this. This one worked out fairly well.
>>Elvia Diaz:
But I think the difference is because Gascon was prepared. Remember that he asked the sheriff that he wanted to know when the sheriff was going to go into his town and so he had all the police officers waiting versus in Phoenix just nervous but you didn't see those many police officers congregated in one spot.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
Maybe so, although I think the Mesa people Paul will know better, I think they knew it was coming and they stayed away.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Well, the sheriff gave notice in response to earlier complaints that he wasn't giving notice. Now he said he's not going to give notice next time. What's going on with that? Just to get a fit of pique and anger at Gascon?
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
Again a fit of pique, again because he was somewhat upstaged by Gascon, the difference in style is just amazing, you know, Gascon had this from a layman's point of view, but a very professional sort of approach, hands-on approach to the actual scene, where the demonstrators were, for example, in Mesa. He had done his homework by communicating with the activist groups ahead of time, it was sort of an understanding, don't throw rocks or bottles, in fact when Gascon finally sort of walked onto the scene, the crowd applauded him. "Gascon, Gascon, rah, rah, rah," and surged in his direction as if he was their savior.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
We talk about differences between the two, and they were the subject of a rather lengthy editorial, not editorial, but article in the Republic, comparing Gascon and Arpaio. What was the point of that, Richard?
>>Richard de Uriarte:
Well, because when you have interesting people that we've done Alfredo Gutierrez and Russell Pierce to profile, these were two very, very accomplished individuals, seemingly headed in a collision course. Gascon seems -- he seems ideal for the Phoenix police, kind of the cerebral let's test this out, let's work this, whereas Arpaio is more populace, answerable to the voters whereas Gascon has a chain of command and he's responsible for that and he's not elected.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Did the Republic get any negative feedback on this? Because with all due respect to the sheriff, the comparison makes the sheriff look bad, makes Gascon look very professional, as you said, cerebral, somebody who knows what he's doing in law enforcement, and the sheriff much more interested in publicity.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
Well, you know, I mean, these are very, very volatile vitriolic divisive issues, and you have all wound up in this is Phoenix a sanctuary city? Is Mesa giving away the store to the illegal immigrant community? And why aren't more law enforcement following Joe Arpaio's lead? Interestingly, there was a story a week ago about the hundreds of immigrant drop houses and immigrant -- and illegal immigrants and the smugglers who have been disrupted by the state police's task force which has operated in the classic investigatory situations by undercover agents and the painstaking work of criminal investigations. Still I think people like shows of force, they respond very well, remember Skip Rimsza in late '90s putting the operation "Buckeye Blues," taking police officers and down into south Phoenix, those kinds of shows of force that law enforcement and law and order mean something, I think has a popular sentiment.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Elvia, looks like you wanted to comment on that.
>>Elvia Diaz:
I was going to say, works only for political purposes, what Richard is talking about is that it seems that Phoenix police, state police, are actually arresting more undocumented immigrants than actually Joe Arpaio, but you have Arpaio this huge publicity stunt around him. But when it comes to arresting immigrants I think other police forces are doing a better job in terms of sheer numbers, exactly.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Let me ask you this, and this has to do with the law enforcement aspects. Did Sheriff Arpaio in some sense quote unquote win the latest confrontation? Because we had in the papers just announced that Mesa has adopted the new policy on what their officers will ask people that they detain and it sounds a little bit more like the Phoenix Police Department policy and there will be more active and aggressive Mesa P.D. involvement in immigration law enforcement.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
You know, I think that that issue is moving in that direction, the police forces do have a general popular pressure to be more aggressive in their approach to immigrants. By the same token I think police officers are always trying to balance. We need informants, we need witnesses, and we need a good relationship with neighborhoods, to do our main purpose, which is focusing on combating crime.
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
But the police, the changes in police procedure in Phoenix and Mesa had -- were not the result of anything Arpaio was doing, and I don't think Mesa's announcement today I think that police would -- police are going to be permitted to question people in major crimes about their immigration status, that's got nothing to do with Arpaio, just coincidental I think.
>>Elvia Diaz:
I think Arpaio did have something to did with this, I mean, you have all the conservatives going after phoenix mayor Phil Gordon saying what are you doing, look what Arpaio is doing, your city's not doing anything, you're allowing undocumented immigrants to reign in your city. So I think indirectly he had a lot to do with what this police department is doing now.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Let me ask you before we move on to the state legislative session just ended. Any updates on the recall effort against Mayor Gordon because of his efforts to take on Sheriff Joe?
>>Elvia Diaz:
It's still going, it's too early obviously, and they have until the end of August to collect all the signatures. They tell us that they will be able to collect all of them. It is very difficult to know exactly how many they have collected so far, because we don't know it. They're not telling us, so as of right now it's still moving forward.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Legislative session just ended. One of the longest on record, what was accomplished? We know the budget was approved. But Richard, in terms of the role, for example, that the Hispanic Caucus played what did you see there?
>>Richard de Uriarte:
Well, I think, Jose, that the Latino efforts in the Arizona Legislature are very tied to the fortunes of the Democratic Party, and this year the Democratic Party did pretty well, considering they're in minority in both chambers, probably because in a bad budget year, when cuts are made, people love cuts in the abstract but don't like cuts in the particulars when it gets down to specifics. So when the two Republican majority caucuses were trying to fashion a Republican only budget, it's -- It was harder, failure by fragmentation, you know, some people want more money for this and other people say, well, you can't cut vouchers, vouchers are good, or money -- and so in that way a budget that looks like the Democratic agenda of more reliance on gimmicks, more reliance on bonding and borrowing, seem to carry the day, which is what the Democrats and Governor Napolitano wanted, that really they billed them as bipartisan and they were probably three votes, you know, in one chamber for it and just a few a handful in the other.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Well, one of the issues that was discussed at length this legislative session was employer sanctions, and I want to talk about that. Before we do, there is litigation and there were recent arguments at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on this. And we have a clip of Ted Simons talking to Governor Napolitano about that oral argument we're going to play right now.
>>Janet Napolitano:
I think that's what the Congress has left us with, the Congress and the Administration, by their failure to enact revisions to our nation's immigration laws, basically have said to the states and to cities, you're on your own. And indeed in the federal statute, that is being challenged now, saying that our law doesn't comply to federal statute, well that statute itself says state licensing is not affected and our employer sanctions law is at base a licensing law.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
The issue that the governor is addressing here, the concern that if you have each state doing their own thing in this area, it's going to cause a lot of problems. Any predictions as to how the litigation will end, what the ruling will be of the Ninth Circuit?
>>Richard de Uriarte:
Well, I'm not -- I choose not to predict what the roads, but the overall, the overall issue is going to be a continuation of many states doing a lot of things whether it's on penalizing or sanctions on employers or the enforcement, you're going to see that continue, as states and local jurisdictions are going to get in to the immigration issue, given the absence of federal action.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
And we did have some other related developments very recent ones, and one as I understand, the Goldwater Initiative, which was a much tougher employer sanctions bill, didn't get the signatures that they needed.
>>Elvia Diaz:
They didn't, they dropped us. We were talking with Richard earlier, but, Jose, the bottom line here is that it seems to me that the employer sanctions bill law is not really going to go anywhere, just look at the 1996 amnesty. Politicians and law enforcement saying we're going after employers who hire undocumented immigrants. It didn't happen. We have a law here and for what a few months now, almost a year, and nothing has happened. I mean, no employers have been indicted. You have nine people arrested, specifically under this immigration law. But no employers yet.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
But is the fear of the law having any impact? Are people leaving the state? Are employers not coming here because they don't want to be subject to these penalties?
>>Elvia Diaz:
Absolutely. A lot immigrants leaving not only because of Arpaio but because of this law. I talked to a lot of families who have left and those thinking about leaving, they're afraid of going out. They're basically staying in their homes. It seems to me they still have jobs, those who are here are still finding ways to get hired here in Arizona, although they are very afraid, you know, that they're going to be arrested anytime and so what that means to a family obviously.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
And to that point then the employer sanctions and these kinds of penalizing are having their effect on as a tool for attrition, that you get -- you have fewer immigrants as you make it tougher to be here. Ironically, the nature of the economy when all the immigrants were flooding here, the economy was soaring, if they were so bad for the economy, now they're leaving and the economy's certainly not getting better.
>>Elvia Diaz:
But it's difficult to pinpoint that to undocumented immigrants, we absolutely can't say the economy's hurting because undocumented immigrants are leaving the state, can we?
>>Richard de Uriarte:
No-
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
They may be leaving because of the absence of jobs, you know, not so much because employers are nervous about keeping them on the payroll. But I think the jobs that are available, the number of those jobs are shrinking.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
I think most observers think it's a combination, that you're losing people just because there are no jobs, you're losing people because the atmosphere's fairly hostile here.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
And ironically the Hispanic population continues to grow by natural birth. And it's going to continue that pace. You see now even when you look at school populations, it's heavily -- it's almost majority minority in many, many school districts including the largest.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
One last thing on the legislature, and that is its future. And what impact it might have if we end up with Democratic majorities in one or both houses. Does that keep governor Napolitano here? Everybody's assuming if Obama becomes president he offers her a cabinet position and she's gone. What's the impact of Democratic victories at the state level?
>>Elvia Diaz:
My sense is the governor will leave sooner or later, no matter what. I mean, she obviously has been setting the stage for her at the national level, we don't know what that will be, obviously under an Obama presidency.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
When we say no matter what, we're presuming she wouldn't leave if McCain became president.
>>Elvia Diaz:
well, yes, but even if the legislature becomes Democratic or if it's Republican control, I think either way she's heading to Washington with some sort of position under an Obama presidency. I have the sense that she has been working on this for a long time. She will probably run for the Senate if McCain wins the presidency. My sense is that she will go. Richard?
>>Richard de Uriarte:
This is why they make chocolate and vanilla.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
You're going to have to elaborate, Richard, on that one.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
I don't think that the governor leaves the state in the hands of a Republican governor. I don't think that that's in the cards, Secretary of State Jan Brewer, who would reflect more the GOP Legislative agenda, and that -- they've been one that they've been fighting for the last six years, so and, you know, we can talk about bipartisanship and all this coming together across the aisles, but I don't see that in Arizona legislative scenes.
>>Elvia Diaz:
So that would only be for a year.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
You might have a third which is strawberry-
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
Depending on what -- if there is a President Obama, depending on the sort of job he offered her, she might go anyway if the job was great, like Attorney General, Secretary of Health.
>>Elvia Diaz:
Look at the timetable. I mean, if Obama wins, obviously you have until the beginning of the year. He's not going to be making appointments until a year from now, so she would have just another year in office to leave to a Republican governor.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
What did Janet Napolitano ever do to you? That you want her gone?
>>Elvia Diaz:
Look what she's doing around the nation --
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Yeah, I sense it's not a grudge. But it does take us to the topic of the national elections, and last week you had both of the presidential candidates speaking to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, NALEO. And we've got a clip we're going to show right now of Senator Bob Menendez talking about the importance of the Hispanic vote in this election. Here it is.
>>Bob Menendez:
But this year we have a transformational opportunity. We saw in the primaries record turnout of Latinos and those Latinos mad a very clear decision in both parties as to who they wanted their candidate to be, and now as we move to the general election, with 17 million Latinos eligible to vote, with the greater enthusiasm than we have ever seen, I believe that the road to the white house comes to the Hispanic community. I believe the road to the Capitol comes to the Hispanic community, and we will make a transformational change in this election.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Richard, is he right?
>>Richard de Uriarte:
Could be, I mean, I think this is going --
>>Jose Cárdenas:
We talked about this in other elections, that the Hispanic vote would make the difference-
>>Richard de Uriarte:
And I've never believed it. But certainly if the better campaign will win. John Kerry had a chance, but he didn't do it well. President Bush ran an excellent campaign among Latinos, emphasizing military patriotism, military war record, emphasizing his own affection and roots, and the lack of same with John Kerry. I know that there was one ad where John Kerry's Senate office building is very close to a Latino neighborhood in Boston, and he never visited there. That's, you know, people there is an emotional content to a presidential vote.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Bush had the advantage of being from a border state emphasized that, with the large Hispanic population. John McCain, Paul, does he have a similar advantage coming from Arizona, being out in front in some respects on some of the immigration issues?
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
I think McCain actually has a very good rapport with the leadership of several national Hispanic groups. I've seen him make those speeches, he gets standing room only crowds, and everybody rises to their feet. He gets, you know, says all the right things, he gets big applause, and I think in terms of the Latino voters, my feeling is they're going to lean in his direction more so than Obama, for a variety of reasons.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Do you the majority of the Latino vote will go for McCain?
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
I think there's a distinct possibility.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Wow. Elvia?
>>Elvia Diaz:
I think recent polls show the majority of the Latinos nationwide are leaning towards Barack Obama right now. In Arizona maybe a different story because McCain is from here. Latinos are kind of struggling where to go, I mean, they like McCain precisely because of his immigration stance. He proposed the immigration bill although it didn't go anywhere, but he's sympathetic to those issues, and remember McCain right now will be in Mexico City pretty soon. He's talking about border reinforcement, not talking about the immigration bill he initially gained the sympathy of so many Latinos, then have you Barack Obama who's an African American, and Latinos identify with him just because he's a minority, although there are other racial issues between Latinos and African Americans.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
On this one I'll be the vanilla fudge person. I think that clearly McCain is not your standard issue Republican when it comes to the immigration and just his good record. He's appointed Latinos, they're on his staff here in Arizona, Bettina Nava locally, is very close. But this is a year that the Republican brand is not doing very well. And so I suspect that even though Obama couldn't beat Clinton among Latinos in early primaries, he wasn't as well-known, he might have had that racial uncertainty, but by November if he runs a good campaign, I think Latinos certainly the Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans of them, will be very, very much in a Democratic camp.
>>Paul Brinkley-Rogers:
Hillary Clinton I think has already got to step up to the plate here and make some sort of Latino support for Obama possible, again I think because of the years of McCain in office, Latino leaders especially are familiar with him. And you can tell when he actually makes his presentation to Latino groups, he feels passionately about some issues being of importance to Latinos, it's genuine, not just politics.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
Richard, only got 10 seconds.
>>Richard de Uriarte:
John McCain is not Russell Pierce. He's not Tom Tancredo, he's not this very virulent anti-immigrant that the Republicans work with.
>>Jose Cárdenas:
On that note, John McCain is not. We'll end our show, thanks for joining us on the show. It's been great. A report released at the annual National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Conference predicted what could be a record turnout of Latino voters this fall. The impact of the Hispanic vote on presidential politics next Thursday at 7:30 on Horizonte. I'm Jose Cárdenas. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a safe holiday weekend.
Paul Brinkley-Rogers: Columnist, La Voz newspaper;
