Christopher Conover: Well, good evening everyone once again and obviously you all already know who’s up here on the stage with us. We will introduce all of them in just a moment, but let me lay out the ground rules for this evening as we get going.
First of all, you noticed when you came in 3-by-5 cards on your chair. If you have a question for these gentlemen, I’m sure we’ll talk a lot tonight about economy and jobs and things like that. Think of this evening as a job interview. You all are hiring one of these three men to run the state of Arizona. So as we run through this 90-minute job interview, if you have a question for these job candidates, go ahead, jot down your question, there were pencils on every other seat. We’re assuming you all can go ahead and share pencils at the very least. When you’ve got your question, go ahead and hold them up. We’ve got people who will come around and collect them from you and we will try and get to as many questions as we can this evening as we go through.
The ground rules will be thus.
We will ask the questions of each of the candidates and we’re going to use a very scientific method to determine who goes first, alphabetical order. All the candidates have agreed to that. And each candidate will have 90 seconds to answer the question and then they will have a 30 second rebuttal each, one 30 second rebuttal. We have a timer down front here so the candidates do not have to guess what 90 seconds is. And just so you know, those of you who are going to try and keep time on your own watches, they may go over 90 seconds. If one of these gentlemen is finishing up and we’re at 90 seconds, we’ll let him finish up. We won’t go four or five minutes but we’ll certainly let them finish at least their sentence. They will each have an opportunity to ask each other a question this evening. I know we’re all looking forward to that. And of course we will have your questions through the evening. So without further do, in case you didn’t know who the candidates for the job are. Immediately on my left is Doug Ducey, the Republican candidate for governor. [applause] In the middle we have Fred DuVal, the Democratic candidate for governor. [applause] And on the end we have Barry Hess, the Libertarian candidate for governor. [applause]
Now, I’m really glad you all have clapped and cheered and done all of that. Now I want you to try your best to hold that until we’re finished so we can get through as much as we can this evening. One more group of introductions or thanks, if you will. This evening is sponsored by three groups, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Tucson YWCA. [applause]
Three people in particular that did a lot of work and have filled my inbox and voicemail with plenty of messages in the last few days as they got this organized were Brian David, Lea Marquez Peterson and Kelly Fryer from those three organizations. Please give the three of them a big round of applause for their work. [applause]
We will not have opening statements tonight. We will have closing statements, however. We decided we would just get right into the questions from you all and everybody else. I see people starting to raise their hands with questions so our volunteers will start working their way around to grab those. We’re going to begin with a group of questions from our sponsors. They figured since they sponsored that we would start with their questions while questions are collected from the audience.
The first one is from the Jewish Community Relations Council and again, we will start with Mr. Ducey to answer first, then go to Mr. DuVal, then to Mr. Hess and we will progress kind of down the row through the evening.
So gentlemen, here is the first question:
Under the Federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, recipients of that status were allowed to stay in the country and legally work. Gov. Jan Brewer passed an executive order saying they could not get driver’s licenses. If you are elected, will you continue that policy or will you change that policy to allow them to get driver’s license and why or why not and Mr. Ducey, you get the first bite at that apple and you have 90 seconds.
Doug Ducey: Well, thank you for the question and thank you to the Jewish Federation, to the YWCA and the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce for having me here tonight. I’m honored to be here and it’s great to see such a packed room. In terms of the question, I think this is a tough one and I have a lot of compassion for people who are put in this situation. I think it’s important that we back up a little bit and understand how we got here and there, certainly is a lot of blame to go around and it’s not just the current administration in Washington, D.C. and I think we’d all agree that immigration reform is an issue that should be handled by our leaders in Washington, D.C. and it’s something we’ve expected for some time. But as I said, it’s not just our current administration that hasn’t dealt with it. It’s my own party that was in power before this and didn’t deal with it either. But I think before we’re going to have any extension of privileges or benefits that are due to Arizona families and paid for by Arizona taxpayers, I’ve said the first priority is that we get some type of handle around border security. So I would continue Gov. Brewer’s executive order.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. Mr. DuVal...
Fred DuVal: Thank you, Chris, and I too want to thank you all for having us here. Obviously, as a Tucsonan, it is good to be back with so many familiar faces that I’ve grown up with and to see the great heritage that exists in this terrific institution. This is not a hard one for me, in fact quite the contrary. A Dreamer will give the inauguration…the Pledge of Allegiance at my inaugural, and the first thing I will do as your next governor is repeal the governor’s prohibition on the driver’s licenses. [applause]
Let me explain why. These young adults, they are in our communities, they are our students, they are the young adults of our future, they’re our talent of the future and if we want to excel and compete in a 21st century talent-based environment, we need to make sure that every single person that’s here, legally as they are, has the full capacity to get to work, to get to their military service, to get to their obligations to become the employers that they can…employees that they are and the employers that they will become. It is incumbent upon us to make sure that we enhance human talent that is here and that we maximize their skills and making it…I have many Dreamers that are working in my campaign and to hear their stories about taking two and three buses back and forth between their obligations when they’re simply trying to get to work and be productive members of our society and our economy, it will be the first thing I do as governor.
Christopher Conover: Thank you very much. And Mr. Hess....
Barry Hess: Well, I too want to thank you all for pushing past whatever it is you pushed past to be here tonight and show some interest in your political surroundings and environment. But I think I would have to agree with Mr. DuVal and continue the policy except I would expand it and there are more reasons than just the human interest. It’s the practical side. I think that anybody’s who driving on the road should have a driver’s license and be able to have one and get insurance as well to protect the whole of the community. It’s not just a compassionate issue, although it certainly is, I think it’s been hyped a little bit because we’re not talking about citizenship here. We’re talking about somebody being able to get on in another country and I’ve had the opportunity to travel in many countries and get driver’s licenses in many of those and I think that that is a good solid policy. What we’ve seen happen here in America is virtually appalling because all of our rights are being squashed and I see it too much, too often, especially with this current administration where they’re trying to throw a net over all of us just to catch a few of us and I’m not interested. Thank you.
Christopher Conover: Would any of you like a 30 second rebuttal? Mr. Ducey, we would begin with you if you would like a rebuttal on that.
Doug Ducey: No, thank you.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal?
Fred DuVal: Yeah, I would like to add one point. I certainly agree with Barry that there’s a public safety aspect of this as well. The second is that, look, I think we’ve got to quit demonizing these Dreamers. I mean, we’ve done this with SB 1070, we’ve done this in our vocabulary and we’ve got to quit demonizing the Dreamers. We’ve got to quit doing it in our ads, we’ve got to quit doing it in our vocabulary, we’ve got to quit doing it as a state if we’re going to get on with a talent-based economy and I hope that all the candidates will agree with me. Let’s stop demonizing these Dreamers and let them succeed.
Christopher Conover: All right. And Mr. Hess, would you like 30 seconds?
Barry Hess: Yeah, I would like to reiterate exactly what Mr. DuVal has said, is we’ve got to stop allowing politics to divide us up into groups just so politicians can pit us against each other and offer to referee, which is all they do as a general rule. I think that we really do have to realize that these are people too and I’m all for it.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. Mr. Ducey, you’d like your 30, go for it.
Doug Ducey: Yes. I want to say that a Ducey administration will teach…treat everyone with dignity, kindness and respect. I do think this is a difficult issue, I think it’s specific to Arizona given our situation and I believe we are a nation of immigrants and we are also a nation of laws and that’s how I’ll want to deal with this issue.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. A reminder again, if you have questions, go ahead and write them down and hold them up and we will have people coming around…I like every time I say that hands go up. That’s good. A lot of people are interested in interviewing you all for this job. And that first question came from the Jewish Community Relations Council.
The next questions we have comes from the Tucson Hispanic Chamber and it’s, the State of Arizona has been slower to recover from the recession than many other states. Most businesses in Arizona are small businesses. What will you do to help small business grow? And Mr. DuVal, you get to answer that one first.
Fred DuVal: Yes, thank you. I’m happy to take that question because we got the job report today. Arizona’s unemployment rate went up another point. We’re now a full point above the national average. The comeback that we’ve all been waiting for is not happening. In fact, the jobs that were growing pay less than the jobs we lost before the recession. We are one of the few states that has not recovered its full economic health. We are headed in the wrong direction and we’re not growing as we should. Small business plays a huge role. It is so embedded in the Arizona culture, a small business startup economy, so I’ve got an economic plan which I refer to my website fred2014.com, with a focus on small business entrepreneurial activity where we treat small businesses with lower taxes in order to get launched, to get from the dining room table across the street to the first lease, critically important. Secondly, that we understand that in this small business space, we’ve got to be really good in the innovation, discovery, university-driven commercialization, the new products and ideas that the rest of the world will buy so that we can take those small businesses to maximum growth, maximum capacity and impact in the 21st century. That means that we really need to consider an R&D tax credit, we need to consider angel tax credits, we need to look at those kind of tools that will help us incubate the small businesses that have the potential for the outsize growth. So small business is a huge part of getting this right and then once you build the product development, a governor who then gets on the road to sell it, get around the country, talk to businesses and try to land those businesses that fit our economy and can help us get this job growth back.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess, same question to you.
Barry Hess: Well, I think that we’ve got to encourage business and the best way to do that is through small business and my proposal actually incorporates a few things that all tie in together. One is 9.9 percent maximum transaction tax on all retail transactions. Just to let everybody know, there’s plenty of government to run…or plenty of money to run the government. The second is to completely eliminate all personal income and property taxes, completely eliminate them. The reason we can do this is because we’ll be supplanting the income from the transaction tax. But let’s understand what that means. That means putting so much money into our economy, we’re going to force local businesses to expand and along with that getting rid of a lot of the regulations that now hinder and hamper small businesses. And as an example, just last week, Los Angeles repealed a law against vending in their own state, in their own area. Started over 1,000 jobs in the first three days. That’s the kind of growth we absolutely need, is to get out of the way of businesses by getting the regulations out and going to a flat 4 percent on the gross no deductions taxes on business, so that businesses can actually figure out what their costs are going to be without playing the games with the tax loopholes and allowing for politicians to pick and choose. I think we should invite all businesses, not just the ones that a particular politician finds favor with.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: Yes, kick starting the economy is the issue that animates my campaign and that is why I’ve been endorsed by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and just today the Tucson Metro Chamber and I’m very thankful for these endorsements because I want you to imagine an Arizona, where our local businesses are expanding, where companies out of state look to Arizona as the perfect place in which to do business. I’m tired of politicians talking rhetorically about job creation. Leaders go get jobs. We are right next door to California and we don’t have to talk companies out of leaving that state, they’re leaving by the hundreds. Let’s go get them. We’re already Chicago’s favorite suburb in this state. As governor, I’ll go to Illinois and make the case for what a great state we have. We have a great state to live, work, play, recreate, retire, visit, and, in many places get an education. And we will reform and simplify our tax code, we will lighten regulation and we will have lower liability and litigation for the small business person so that they can grow and thrive. There will be help wanted signs and job creation that results in fulfilling careers and nowhere in the state is this more urgent than in Southern Arizona and Pima County. I’ve been running for governor in the primary for the last 8 months and I’ve seen it down here and I’ve got specific plans for this part of the state which I’ll talk later in the debate.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, would you have…30 seconds if you’d like it.
Fred DuVal: I do. Thank you. Businesses looking to relocate in Arizona increasingly, they don’t get hung up on the tax code. We’ve lowered taxes 24 of the last 25 years. They don’t get hung up that much on the regulations. We’ve got more work to do. Here’s what they ask: One, will my employees have the skills for me to be successful and two, will my children and my employee’s children have a good school to go to? We will not have a long term, successful, sustainable economic growth until we stop cutting K-12 education and begin reinvesting across the full platform. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess, if you’d like 30 seconds you may have it.
Barry Hess: Well, we all agree that education is certainly vital to our future but I would disagree saying that money is the answer. Throwing money at the problem is what we’ve been doing. I’ve seen it for 12 years firsthand without anything but a downward decline so let’s not get too hyped up on the, "Here, I’m going to give you money and make education better," idea. I think it’s more important to allow businesses to come here and then urge businesses to give specific training for the employment that they have available. That way people get a pinpoint education.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: I think to say that taxes aren’t important to how companies make decisions to relocate is shortsighted. If taxes aren’t important, then why is New York State running these commercials guaranteeing 10 years of no taxes if you relocate their company? Why are great American companies like Burger King and Walgreens leaving? It’s because of the tax code. The idea should be to make Arizona the best possible place in the country in which to do business and that does include K-12 education but it also includes a simplification and a more fair tax code.
Christopher Conover: Let me ask, before we move to the next question, a follow up actually that I heard from some folks coming in tonight. They were talking about jobs and job creation and we keep hearing the phrase, though I don’t think any of you actually said it at this point but I’m sure we’ll hear it at some point tonight, good jobs. What is a good job? Mr. Hess, we’ll give you that question first.
Barry Hess: I think a good job is anything that can sustain you at the lifestyle that you decide is what you want. I don’t think there is a dollar figure on it. A lot of people get by on a whole lot less than what we would even call poverty level without complaint and they’re totally happy. So I think we’ve got to stop making these determinations for other people as to what is rich, what is poor, what’s the poverty line because they’re all just completely arbitrary figures that people make up and that’s… And of course when you get into the government social welfare programs, they just keep raising it up and up so as to include more people. I think that we would be healthier and happier with a lot less people on the government dole and those people who have to be on the government dole are the only ones. Right now, we’ve got roughly 50 percent of the population getting money from the government, the most dangerous place I could imagine that we could be if we want to see any kind of innovation and any kind of growth. We’ve got to let the people be free and I think that’s what’s so important is that I seem to be the only one who’s looking out for the next generation, the young people who are supposed to be saddled with all of these incredible costs that have been forced on them. That’s what we’ve got to stand up for and I believe the strongest, best way that we can possibly stand up for the next generation and the only legacy of any value we might leave them, which is their individual liberty and freedom, is to stand up for those principles.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, what’s a good job?
Doug Ducey: My entire life has been spent in the private sector as a businessman. My company was Cold Stone Creamery, the ice cream concept. We started small with a great idea here in Arizona and we grew it to 1440 ice cream stores operating in all 50 states and I saw some people start at entry level and rise to levels of senior management inside the organization. So, I start with a minimum wage job, which I don’t think anyone wants. What people want are fulfilling careers and what I’d like to do is have an economic policy that lifts the level of everyone’s paycheck in this state and you do that by having an environment… No politician, no governor creates jobs. But what a governor can do is create an environment where small businesses and entrepreneurs are creating jobs and what I want to see people do is to be able to leave either an entitlement program or school and find a pathway where they can lead a productive life and have a fulfilling career and feel excitement and joy on Sunday evening or Monday morning as they head off to climb the economic ladder. That’s an Arizona, when I graduated school in 1986, that I found and one that as I built my business I found from 1996 to 2007. Today, we can do much better and I intend to take the proper policies that will grow this economy and spur job creation in a Ducey administration.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Thank you, Chris. I good job is a livable wage job. It’s a job where you have choices. It’s a job where you can provide basic necessities for your family. It is a job where…we’re losing too many good middle class jobs with benefits to minimum wage jobs where parents come home from one, change their clothes, go back out for another, don’t see their kids, have to make tradeoffs between being the kind of parent they want to be and the kind of breadwinner that they need to be. Livable wage jobs are jobs that give dignity, livable wage jobs are jobs that provide opportunity for upward mobility and we’re losing too many of those jobs in Arizona and there is an unquestioned direct correlation between the number…the number of years you have in school and the quality of the outputs of those schools and the quality of your income for the rest of your life is an unquestionable correlation. The cuts…I’ll go back to it…the cuts to our education are devastating our children’s futures and their ability to hold, get and compete for the jobs of a livable wage jobs of the future. We’ve got to stop these cuts. We’ve got to make sure that we are adequately resourcing our schools. We have the largest class sizes now in the United States. One-third of our teachers leave every year. These are not the conditions that are going to bring about the talent and workforce that we want for each of our children that will be able to get, keep and take full advantage of the livable wage jobs coming from an innovation driven economy that we want to build in Arizona.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess, you have 30 seconds if you would like it.
Barry Hess: Yeah, I’d like to say that that’s nonsense in many ways. Let’s think about this here. We’re talking about livable wage as if people are some kind of cattle that we can herd and it’s ridiculous because some people do start at the top. They’re blessed with an opportunity and with the good sense to see it and to seize it so that when we’re trying to teach all of our children, all of the students, to do every single thing in the world, I think it’s a fool’s errand that we actually can diminish the cost. It’s actually so grossly bloated now for education, it’s almost half of our budget for crying out loud. That’s not what a state is supposed to do primarily. Primarily, it’s supposed to be protecting the rights and property of the citizens and providing for good infrastructure. It’s not to get into the idea that we’ve got to teach every single kid to do every single thing. I think it’s far better to pinpoint the education with the actual employers and allow them to make those choices and to give that free education.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: I look at this, if we’re talking about jobs and good jobs, the ability to climb the economic ladder comes from a solid foundation in education where you have skills. Skills like literacy and the ability to read and to analyze and to be successful at the beginning or entry level of a job and to climb that economic ladder and that’s certainly possible in this state. There’s…we’ll talk about education quite a bit tonight, but in the rebuttal I think that a state that is growing and prosperous has a K-12 education system where people are graduating with skills that they can go into the workforce or go on to higher learning and that’s what I want to focus on, those results, as your governor.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Yes, thank you. Both Barry and Doug have talked about this as though there is money just washing around the system and it’s just not what…visit some schools. That’s not what’s going on. Parents are being asked to pay for art classes and sports. Teachers, as I said, are leaving at record levels. Tucson Unified School District, here where I’m an alum of THS, has over 125 classrooms with no permanent teacher. We have cut education deeper than any state in the United States and states that are growing, Utah, Oklahoma, conservative states, liberal states, doesn’t matter, are investing in education, early childhood education through K-12. We withdrew from early childhood education and we now have a third grade reading test where kids are…many of them won’t past, they will be stigmatized with failure. It’s wrong and we’ve got to stop the cuts. Barry’s got philosophical arguments I respect. Doug wants to do tax reform for the higher income Arizonans. I want to invest, as my number one priority, in public education. [applause]
Christopher Conover: You all touched on education and one of our sponsors has an education question and Mr. Duval you actually eluded to the first part of it so I’m going to kind of cut to the chase to keep us moving on here. What will each of you do to support increased state funding to help get Arizona education out of the lower levels of rankings nationwide? Mr. Ducey, you have 90 seconds on that to begin.
Doug Ducey: I want us to think of a kid who’s 18 years old on the day of graduation as they walk across that stage in cap and gown and what do they know and what are they prepared to do after that? This is the importance that I want to put into K-12 education but I think we have some very different views. You see, I see $9 billion that is being spent in this state on K-12 education to spend just over one million children and we are under performing. But this is not an Arizona specific issue. This is happening across our nation. Anyone that’s my age in this audience or older grew up in an America that was number 1 in the world in K-12 education, and so far and away number 1 we didn’t know who number 2 was. Today we’re not on any industrialized nation’s top 10 list. Yet in the state of Arizona, we have three of the top 10 high schools in the country in our state. We know how to educate a child here. I want to take the best practices that are happening at these schools that are excelling both in low-income areas and high-income areas, traditional K-12 and public charter and reapply them. I want to fund and resource what works. It’s supporting the teachers in our classrooms, it’s principals that will make personnel decisions and it’s high expectations for our children. Spending is not the measure of success. If it were, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois would be the finest K-12 education systems in the country, except they’re not. They’re the worst. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: And yet the fastest improving education systems are states like Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah and others that are increasing their investment in education and tying it to higher performance expectations. So, while money is certainly not the only issue, performance is, poverty is the problem and we must be honest about that. Secondly, let me be very granular. There are so many issues in K-12 that we have to tackle but let me focus on the one that has me most concerned which is teacher flight. We are losing one third of our teachers every year. One specific proposal. You need to hear some specifics from us. I will go to the Board of Regents and say, "Any student who graduates in the top third from our university and goes into teaching and stays for five years ought to have their student loans relieved," because it is wrong for smart students to leave the university with a debt load that they can’t make a responsible, economic choice to go into teaching. We want the best of our students to go into teaching because it’s the most important thing we do.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: Well, I don’t know that I would want to keep the money flowing to increase but I would certainly want to make sure that it is adequately taken care of. We’re one of eight states in the country that actually has a state constitutional mandate to provide free or nearly free public instruction and that’s not just for little kids, that’s for everyone. That’s why I’ve advocated for a very strong distance learning program which has already proven itself to be superior to the brick and mortar schools. So the question is, what do we want to come out the other end of our schools? Do we want competence or do we just want to have them put time in. But my focus is always going to be on the progress of the individual students and what comes of it. It is not on preserving the institutional process of education that is so grossly bloated that we’ve got to do something about it to get that money into the classrooms so that teachers don’t have to supplement with their own earnings in order to make sure their kids have proper supplies. I think we’ve got to completely look at education again in a whole new light and let’s see what works. It’s critically important and I know that Doug mentioned…he stole my thunder there. I was going to say, "Wait a minute, the one district that spends more money than anybody is Washington, D.C., and they’re the ones who are trying to elbow us out of being in last place." And keep in mind, Janet Napolitano came on this stage and she told you she was going to improve education. She took it from 46th in the nation all the way to 49th. I’m telling you, it’s not about the money.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, you have 30 seconds if you would like it.
Doug Ducey: You know, I want to see every available dollar go to classroom resources, supporting our teachers teaching and our students learning and I’ve had a passion for this for some time. I’ve served on the board of Teach for America which takes the brightest kids from our best universities and puts them into the toughest situations in districts around our country and they go and get results. And these are kids that could go and work anywhere they want and they choose to teach because they accept the mission of a relentless pursuit of results and they believe that every child should have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. And they don’t do it because somebody gave them debt forgiveness on a college education. They do it because they’re called to do it.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, please wrap up.
Doug Ducey: So I honor the teachers that we have now and I want to make sure we’re properly supporting, not finding a way to put our state and our country deeper into debt.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, you may have a rebuttal if you like.
Fred DuVal: Thank you, yes. We can actually start this right now. There was a lawsuit that was Cave Creek vs. Ducey. It was to take the voter initiative that passed, which instructed the legislature to begin to invest in education based upon the rate of inflation. These investments were not made. The Supreme Court has now decided that it was illegal for the Legislature to withhold these investments, has ordered the legislature to begin payments. Doug wants to appeal it. I want to begin funding it. I want the governor to call folks together and begin to fund it now. [applause] No more lawyers, no more courtrooms, let’s fix this in the classroom not in the courtroom and it begins by, inevitably it is a sure thing that the courts are going to continue with this because it is clear as could be and it’s time for us to begin because we have the opportunity to do it now.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Hess, you have 30 seconds if you would like it.
Barry Hess: Well, I do agree. I don’t think I would put off the appeals for the ruling, that we should go ahead and pay for it. At the same time, I would be asking the citizens to repeal the mandate on spending. That seems to be where the problem is because I’m more interested in competency and that’s what I would like to see, rather than a diploma, is a competency test that anyone could take. It tells what you can do, not what you did do and I think it’s important because in front of my schools or the public schools under my administration, they’re going to have the mission statement and that is going to be to graduate competent young men and women who are capable of going out into the world and making their own way without ever burdening anyone.
Christopher Conover: Let me follow up here. We have… I’m going to break for a moment from the questions form our sponsors because we are getting…and again, if you have questions, please hold them up…I see a couple more hands going up…and we’ll bring them up. We have a question that actually relates to something that two of you brought up so we might as well instead of holding it just go ahead and ask it.
The state has been ordered by the courts, it is being appealed, to pay $300 million to K-12 for past inflation. That…the State Supreme Court will hear that case two days after one of you is elected the next governor. So one of you will have to deal with the state Supreme Court ruling one way or another. If the court rules that the state must pay, how do you balance the budget because you’re going to have to write a budget come January and deal with that? Mr. DuVal, according to my notes, you get first crack at this for 90 seconds.
Fred DuVal: Sure. I’d be happy to take that. First, this is what the rainy day is for. It is for the unexpected crisis. This is an unexpected…well, or maybe expected crisis but it is a crisis nonetheless so we begin there. But that’s not a long term solution. We’ve got to also look at a number of other tools moving through the budget. Let me give you some particulars. A number of states have done the reform in which way the state purchases goods, the way counties purchase goods, bringing that together as we did on the Board of Regents to lower the cost to buy the necessary goods is something we can do quickly that saves money. Secondly, state trust land is now getting back to a decent fair market value. I believe that accelerating some sales of state trust lands can provide us some opportunities. We’re going to have to look at the big spending items. How do you create more prevention and wellness in the Medicaid spend as a second and third year out year kind of strategy. How to look at keeping the corrections costs, which continue to grow at an unbelievable pace, and get those under control? So we’re going to have to have some short term strategies, some medium term strategies and then ultimately long term strategies.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. Mr. Hess, you have 90 seconds on this question.
Barry Hess: Well, I think that I’d have to agree on the rainy day fund to get rid of the immediate problem and also reallocating our lands. I want to reclaim what the federal government has claimed from Arizona, take back our lands and make use of that to make sure that we are well funded in education just exactly like it’s supposed to be. I think that’s really one of the critical factors that people don’t look at is the long term money because it’s going to keep growing and growing and it’s going to eventually absorb our entire budget if we don’t get a handle on education. I’d like to see it brought back down to the 20 percent level of the budget to make it more realistic and to accommodate it and we certainly can through a lot of innovation and technology. I think that’s important but I would stress that I will be asking the public to repeal the mandate for the automatic spending in the increases because it is literally unsustainable.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: Let me say that if the court rules that this money goes back into K-12 education, as governor, I’ll salute smartly and I’ll put the money back into K-12 education. But I want to speak to you for a few seconds as your state treasurer and I want you to remember where the state was in December of 2009. We were bankrupt, insolvent, the largest structural deficit of any state in the nation and that’s saying something in this nation. We were negative $4,730 million in the state’s checking account. We had not a dollar in the rainy day fund. Fast forward nearly four years later, we have $1.4 billion cash in that checking account to pay teachers, fill potholes, provide any essential state service, we have $454 million in a reserve account earning interest and we have an all-time record high of $4.5 billion in our state’s permanent land endowment trust fund. Our state has assets, therefore our state has options. The ruling could be a difference between $80 million a year up to $300 million a year. After we’ve dug out of this financial hole, the last thing I want to do is go back into it so I want to be responsible and I’ll handle our budget like a businessman. I’ll go through it dollar by dollar and line by line. I’ll get rid of lobbyist loopholes and I’ll find ways that our government could be more effective, more efficient and more accountable to you, the hardworking Arizonan so that we navigate through this and improve our K-12 education system. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, you have 30 seconds additional if you would like it.
Fred DuVal: Sure, I’d welcome it. Look, Doug is the state treasurer. I would hope that he would have already gone line by line through the budget and I would hope by our next debate let’s do that. I’ve gone through the budget line by line. I’m just a volunteer running for governor but I’ve gone line by line and I’ve got specific ideas. This is what campaigns do. It’s not secret plans to be told later. This is what campaigns ought to be about is being honest about what the choices are and it’d be nice to tell you that I’m going to cure cancer and guarantee 80 degree weather in the summer but you’ve got to sort of be grounded in reality and what I’m saying is that we should enforce this Supreme Court ruling now, we cannot afford a large tax repeal of the income tax because it will gut our ability to meet our obligations in Medicaid and education.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. Hess, 30 seconds if you would like it.
Barry Hess: Well, I don’t agree obviously about the income tax by any stretch of the imagination but there’s also another fund I think we should be looking closely at for taking money out to provide for the education that the former politicians have saddled us with and that’s the political retirement fund. Maybe…maybe that’s where the money should be coming from in large part because they’re the ones who saddled us with it. But I do think that we should…we have to continue to find ways to educate less expensively and we certainly can. I mean, private school’s half as much as what we spend on our government schools. There’s something fundamentally wrong there.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. Ducey, you have 30 seconds if you would like it.
Doug Ducey: Well, you know, in response to what Fred said, I have gone through the budget line by line and dollar by dollar, Fred. I’ve talked about a state that was negative $730 million and the financial state of the state today is $1.4 billion cash. That’s quite a financial turnaround to go from not a dollar in the rainy day fund for $454 million and an all-time record high in the permanent land endowment trust fund. I’m a chief executive in my past life. I’m going to start as a chief executive, if I’m successful, in this next role. There’s an issue and it needs to be dealt with and I’m telling you specifically how I’ll deal with it. I don’t look at every issue as, ‘Okay, there’s a problem, start spending.’
Christopher Conover: Thank you.
Fred DuVal: Chris, could I respond to that?
Christopher Conover: Everybody gets one on the response. Let me change topic gears and based on the questions here we have lots of education and lots of business questions and economy questions. I’m sure we will get back to but we have two questions, one audience has just been passed up and one sponsor. I’m going to try and kind of combine them together because one of them does link the two together.
Dealing with initially…dealing with poverty which was mentioned earlier. The state has cut back childcare subsidies in recent years. This week it was announced that they did come back a little bit, a small amount, reduced temporary aid to needy families and also put restrictions on a woman’s ability to easily deal with reproductive health issues. What will you do to restore the funding and deal with reproductive health issues? Mr. Hess, according to my notes you get to go first on this for 90 seconds.
Barry Hess: Well, you know, those are kind of issues that eat at the heart and the truth be known, no politician’s going to be able to solve these problems, none of us, as much as we can give you all the happy talk in the world. But the truth is that the best way that we can get rid of the people or get people off of the government rolls is to give them opportunities, to get government out of the way so that they can work and can be productive and can have that measure of dignity that every single person needs and deserves. Ii think that we’ve divided ourselves up into groups too often and we allow the government to tell you who’s poor, who’s not, who’s broke, who’s not and it’s just total utter nonsense and we really have to get back to a more human side of government where there is compassion and where we see…and my administration will not see color, it will not see race, it won’t even see political parties because I don’t care. What I care about are good ideas to move Arizona forward under her constitution and I think that’s the safest ground we should be on instead of trying to fix poverty, I mean, come on, let’s think about that. We’re adults here. We’re not going to fix poverty. What we’ve got to do is give opportunities. People live where they want to live as a general rule and what we’ve seen by all of these welfare programs is simply a measure…to give people enough to get by, never enough to get up. It becomes a captive class of voters and they should all be Libertarians because they’d be free right now.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, before I go to you, just for our volunteers, we have a gentleman in the back with his hand up and I see a volunteer going. Perfect. Thank you. Now Mr. Ducey, you have 90 seconds.
Doug Ducey: Well, regarding poverty, I do care. I’ve driven all over this state into every corner of it and I’ve seen it and I think it’s awful and I think it’s terrible and I think there’s something we can do much better on. 17 percent of our state lives beneath the poverty line and I think first we want to have opportunity. The theme of my campaign is "Opportunity for all, good jobs and a chance to get ahead." That’s been my experience in this state and that’s why I talk so much about kick starting the economy because that’s the first thing we can do to help people climb the economic ladder. But beyond that, there’s people that need more help so I want to make sure that our social safety net is secure and properly funded and that’s why I’m such a fiscal hawk on some of these ideas because I believe it’s about prioritizing the scarce amount of dollars we have so they can go where they can make the most difference. And it’s more than that. You know, we have a deadbeat dad problem in this state. For many single moms who need assistance, it’s because someone is not paying their fair share so the posture of a Ducey administration will be if you’re old enough to father a child in this state, you will be old enough to financially take care of that child and I will use the power of the state to collect the $1.7 billion in unpaid payments to single mothers through garnishing paychecks and that will help strengthen our social safety net. So single moms, help is on the way. [applause]
Christopher Conover: And Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Thank you. Let me begin with that. When I was in the Clinton White House, I started the National Fatherhood Initiative that went after this issue. It’s a very serious, important issue that fathers meet their obligations and I certainly agree with that. Secondly is I believe we did not complete, in the CPS reform, the child support that we need and that is business that we need to tackle next year. Third, poverty. Education lifts children out of poverty more than anything we could do. Number four is, in Arizona, we have conducted a war on women, a war on minorities, a war on gays. SB 1070 was wrong, SB 1062 was wrong and these bad actors…recently Russell Pearce is at it again and he said that we should sterilize women who are…as a precondition of Medicaid. I called for him to be fired from his public assisted job and I hope…[applause] I hope that my colleagues on the stage tonight will join me in saying this war on women and war on gays and war on minorities has got to end. Quite demonizing the dreamers and quit demonizing minorities and let’s…Russell Pearce needs to be held accountable and he should be fired. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Let me ask…these are issues that everybody cares about one way or another. Please try and hold your applause so the folks at the back of the room can hear what the candidates are saying. We begin, I guess with you Mr. Hess. You have 30 seconds if you would like it.
Barry Hess: Well, I just have to reiterate the whole notion. We’re running for governor, we’re not running for God and that’s what everybody seems to think that is going on here. There simply are no answers that can come from the political pulpit for every single ailment in society and certainly poverty is one of those. Education, I think we’ve got to bring back and appreciation for education itself. That’s what drives it, where people will go get education because they want it, not just because they want a little piece of paper that says they sat in a chair for so many days.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, you have 30 seconds if you would like it.
Doug Ducey: I’m good.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Nope. Ditto.
Christopher Conover: Okay. Let me move on here to another sponsor question. It goes back to business.
What role will an…will international relations with Mexico play in your administration? Obviously here we’re 70 or so miles from the border. Mr. Ducey, you get to begin this one.
Doug Ducey: Yes, I want to talk about this specifically for Southern Arizona. In the primary that I was in I spent more time in Tucson and Pima County and Southern Arizona than any other candidate and I was very proud of the result. I more than doubled the vote count of my closest competitor in a very crowded primary and that was because I was down here, because I was talking with hardworking taxpayers and influencers and decision makers and business owners and I actually ran a Tucson specific commercial that talked about the importance of the University of Arizona, saving Davis-Monthan and trade. And I believe that really the way to jump start Southern Arizona’s economy is through a relationship with the governor of Sonora, the governor of Sinaloa and the president of Mexico to really put not only the symbolism of our trade office in Mexico City but the substance behind that. This trade and trucking and transit and tourism that happens at the world class port in Mariposa in Nogales can help pull the tourniquet off of Tucson’s economy and let commerce flow again. I talk a lot about Texas as a state with some best practices of an economy that’s growing. I want you to think of Tucson to Arizona as Austin is to Texas. This is the university town, it’s the innovative town, it should be the entrepreneurial town and it should have a robust economy with opportunity for all and international trade is the way to get there.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Yes. I will go to Mexico City with a bipartisan delegation of business and politic leaders the first week that I’m in office. I’ve already begun working that with Mexican officials because Texas is stealing our opportunities. New Mexico is stealing our opportunities, as is California. There’s a complete architecture around this. We’ve got to fully leverage the deep water port in the Baja, we’ve got to make sure that the port is adequately staffed for meaningful, efficient transport across the border. Third, we’ve got to make sure that the I-11 corridor is on our agenda that goes border to border. Fourth is that we then need to use the full architecture of a multi-modal and multi-directional strategy so that goods and traffic are moving north/south and then east/west into rail highways. We need a full, complex, comprehensive strategy to fully take advantage of the fact that the Mexican middle class economy is growing faster than our own and that this is a bi-national opportunity for both sides of the border in the employment for both.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: Well, I think the international economy is an obvious just because of the geographical location. We certainly need the influence to stimulate our own economy because it’s always going to come back to jobs and there’s no such thing as a jobless recovery. That’s where we’ve got to focus. Not just the movement of goods but on the movement of labor and getting paid for that labor. That’s why I’ve put together a completely comprehensive plan to allow people the free flow of labor to come into this country freely and to work above board so that nobody can say they’re lowballing and so we don’t run into what I’ve’ called the la migra syndrome and that’s when you take a man’s labor after a days work and he’s expecting to get paid and everybody knew he didn’t have his documentation and instead of paying him they say, "We’re going to call la migra." And they steal someone’s labor and that’s despicable. But the whole point of combining with Mexico, we are separate states, separate nations and it is important that we recognize that. So at the same time we’ve got to allow the free flow up…up above and below the border but I disagree with politicians trying to direct where it’s going to go, east/west, the north and south. Why not let it go where the market pulls it because that’s where the strongest pull is going to be. We’ve seen ghost towns because of politicians with other wild, hair brained ideas like that and trying to determine where things should go and then we end up with nothing. The 86, the famous highway to nowhere, and that’s where those plans would lead us.
Christopher Conover: Okay. Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: There’s only one candidate on the stage that build the brand that is known and loved around the country and now the world. I’ve done business internationally. I’m also a member of an organization called Young Presidents Organization that is part of 100 different countries and has 19,000 different CEOs in it. There’s a reason that Leal Marquez Peterson has supported my campaign, that Tony Astorga, the former president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mexico and David Farca, the founder of Touch of History, are leading my Hispanic coalition. I will go to Mexico because it is good policy and it is good for the economy of Arizona and specifically it is good for Southern Arizona and will build those trade relationships that it will allow us to have a more prosperous state and more jobs available that will result in fulfilling careers for our citizens.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, you have 30 additional seconds if you would like them.
Fred DuVal: Sure. I just do want to make a connection here that one of the things that we have done to hurt our infrastructure is the HERF…the cuts in the HERF funds. The HERF funds are the funds that come from the state, go to the cities and counties to build infrastructure. Southern Arizona has been badly hurt by these sweeps of the HERF funds that have been used as a piggy bank to balance the state budget. If we don’t get back into the business of HERF we’re not going to fully take advantage of this Mexico opportunity and of course there won’t be any money for HERF if we do a significant tax repeal at the high end. There simply won’t be money for that kind of infrastructure.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. Mr. Hess, you have 30 if you’d like.
Barry Hess: Yeah. I don’t know why the emphasis is just on Mexico. There’s a whole bunch of geography down below Mexico too. I think we should incorporate an international aspect, not just an across the border aspect to our economy and certainly the biggest influence is going to be Mexico because we’ve seen it. There’s no denying it and it’s something we should welcome along with some serious reform of who gets to cross the border because I’m a firm believer, I don’t care what Washington, D.C. does or says, I think that it’s time for Arizona to resort to self-help. We’ll fix our own border problem and I think we can do that very seriously, without bloodshed.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. Ducey, you have 30 if you would like it.
Doug Ducey: I’m good, thank you.
Christopher Conover: Okay. Well, we’ve reached the point in our program where…think of this kind of like half time. It is football season and the Cats are playing this weekend. So think of this kind of like half time in between your questions and the questions of our sponsors. We’re going to allow each of the candidates to ask one of the other people sitting at the table a question and that person will have a minute to answer. We thought it would be interesting to let them interview themselves for this job. So since Mr. Ducey got to answer the first question, we’ll give Mr. DuVal the first question to ask here and then when we finish up with closing statements we’ll give Mr. Hess the first word on that. So Mr. DuVal, you have the first question of either Mr. Hess or Mr. Ducey.
Fred DuVal: Terrific. Thank you.
My question is for Doug and my question has to do with our homegrown University of Arizona, which I’m so proud to have had so much family history with and Doug has said the universities need to tighten their belt. As a regent, I found…went line by line and found $200 million to cut from our universities. We went through a very, very tough period in the universities. You said that there’s a better model in the for-profit sector of universities and of course if we do an income tax repeal, given that Medicaid is voter protected and corrections is driven by mandatory sentencing, the largest discretionary item in the budget is the university budget. My question for Doug is, how do you save the University of Arizona with your priorities?
Doug Ducey: Well, let me say to s tart that I am a proud entrepreneurial fellow from the Eller School of Management at the University of Arizona and it will be for me about prioritization. Everywhere I’ve gone around this state I’ve talked about economy and our education system with very specific plans in which to fix those programs and to improve them. So any business person has to look at a budget and what’s going to be spent and I think it’s critical that we get the proper spending and funding to our universities but I also want to say for the record, Fred, what I’ve said is that I think alternative models and choice and competition in education is good. Ii haven’t said that they are superior to what I believe are our world class universities here in the State of Arizona but I do believe that a four year degree is not going to be for everyone, not everyone is an 18 year old graduating high school headed to college. I would like to see some flexibility, some choices and I think there are some good models and I think that’s okay. I believe in choice and competition.
Christopher Conover: Okay, thank you. Mr. Hess, do you have a question for one of the two gentlemen sitting to your right?
Barry Hess: No. No, I’m kidding. I already know what they’re going to say. [laughter] But I’ll give a question to Doug.
Doug, you’ve mentioned at some point you wanted to eliminate the income tax and then you backed off of that but more disturbingly I saw a press release that came from your office saying you were the only candidate who advocated for less taxes. How do you reconcile that?
Doug Ducey: Let me clarify that, Barry. I’m the only major can…major party candidate. Yes, you’ve advocated for less taxes and I want to say that I was the first candidate to put out a written plan. I told you that I was trained at Proctor and Gamble in business and in management and the specifics are in my plan and I haven’t backed off my direction one bit. I’ve said I’d like to see a state that has an income tax that is close to zero as possible. But to do that you’ll need several things. The first is a term or two as governor, you’ll need a growing economy, you’ll need a government that’s more effective and efficient and spends its dollars more wisely and you’ll need a plan. But I’ve looked at the other states in the country, the nine that don’t have an income tax, and I think they’re in a better economic condition than we are so it’s a directional, aspirational goal of a Ducey administration and something that I will tell you, you will have a simpler, fairer, flatter and more easy to deal with tax code after a term of a Ducey administration and that’s a commitment that I’m making, not only during the campaign, that’s how I’ll govern.
Christopher Conover: Good news, Mr. Ducey. You get to ask the question this time.
Doug Ducey: I had several choices so I wanted to see what they were going to ask.
Fred, I think in many of these situations I’m beginning to see a mantra, the idea of don’t just sit there, spend something and I hear a lot of ideas that I think will cost quite a bit so I just want to know, can you look this audience in the eye and commit to them like I have that you will not raise taxes.
Fred DuVal: Yes.
Doug Ducey: Thank you.
Christopher Conover: I was going to say, Mr. DuVal, you have about 59 and a half more seconds if you’d like it but you can stop there.
Fred DuVal: Yes, yes, yes. I will not raise taxes. I will not raise taxes. So we can put that one to bed. We will grow and the question will become as we grow, what do we do, which obligations do we meet and this issue of a four plus billion dollar tax repeal which is 40 percent of the state budget is…makes the kind of investments in education and healthcare and corrections and public safety and HERF and all of our priorities impossible. I believe that the necessary balance between targeted tax relief around small business growth and the workforce to get…create the opportunities of the future is the better way to go but no new taxes. Read my lips.
Christopher Conover: Let’s see, we’ve heard that somewhere before.
Fred DuVal: Oh, yeah.
Christopher Conover: Back to your questions, the interview if you will for the next CEO of Arizona. You brought up taxes in this little…this halftime if you will. The projections are that in two years the state will have an $4,800 million deficit…projections from the joint legislative budget committee. What specific actions will you take to balance the budget and Mr. Hess, it is up to you to begin this one.
Barry Hess: Well, I think a lot of it is going to have to do with cutting some of the long term contracts that are already in place that drive that kind of growth. We’ve got to be able to be flexible and reassess at every step and that’s going to be critical to our future I think economically. But the idea that we can’t eliminate the income tax is ridiculous because the rules…we make all the rules. We own the place. We can…we created the rules and we can un-create the rules. For me it’s a simple matter, a group of people, us getting together, calling ourselves government and then saying we’re going to go steal other people’s money, that’s theft. It’s a simple moral thing. That’s why I need to eliminate the income tax because theft is still theft, even by government, even if they come with a gun and even if they say it’s for the children because it’s not for the children. I think we’ve got to get past that one hurdle and once we do, when we understand and we get a creative governor who can work outside the box, all together, that’s when Arizona is going to start to prosper and not a minute before.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, if you are governor, what will you do to solve this projected $800 million deficit we’re looking at two years down the road?
Doug Ducey: The first thing you have to do is you do have to grow this economy. If you want to close this budget gap, if you want to have the resources available for the K-12 system that our children deserve, you must grow this economy but how do you deal with the crisis right now? Well, I think my tax plan is being somewhat distorted, imagine that in a political race. I want to say the foundation for my tax plan is that…a tax code that looks like somebody actually wrote it on purpose. My philosophy on taxes is that’s your money, you earned it and I want you to be…to keep more of it. So how do we deal with the budget as it is right now? Now hear me on this, we have 80 plus agencies that report directly to the governor. That’s how they’re structured, okay? I think there may be some opportunity to reorganize, to restructure them like we do in the private sector so it is more streamlined and our government is more effective, efficient and accountable to the taxpayer. The other thing we have is 27 percent of our state’s workforce is eligible for retirement four years from now so we don’t need to get rid of any one. What we need is disciplined hiring and a good use of technology so that we can grow our private sector and have our government running better to serve you, the citizen.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Sure. Thank you. I gave you some of the particulars in the earlier discussion of the budget and let me start with that. But beyond that, you’ve got to be very careful about government reform. There’s absolutely opportunities to do government reform. I was around state government when we created DES and it was, "Let’s pull all of these agencies into one unit," and what got lost? Children’s Protective Services. We lost our accountability so sometimes pulling departments together makes sense and frankly sometimes for accountability reasons it doesn’t. Third, let me talk about these states that don’t have income taxes. Texas, energy taxes. New Hampshire, one of the highest property taxes in the United States. Nevada, gaming taxes. They tax…the tax simply gets shifted and if we repeal the income tax in Arizona, I assure you it will come out in your property taxes as school districts try and keep their schools open. It will come in the form of sales taxes where we already have one of the highest sales taxes in the United States which is hurting our economy. So let’s be clear what happens on these things is that it is…and then it allows folks in the governor’s office to say, "Well, we didn’t raise your taxes, the local counties or school districts did." You’ve got to be candid about what your obligations are to the public sector and how it is that you’re going to pay for them.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess, would you like 30 additional seconds?
Barry Hess: Sure. I think it is important to have candor in these discussions and you should understand that my transaction tax completely replaces if not enlarges the amount of money that the legislator…Legislature will be able to spend so this is not a get rid of things just for the money’s sake but I have a problem with the whole moral aspect these guys seem to jump over is we’re back to that theft thing. And the same thing is true of property taxes. We should eliminate the property taxes along with them and if that means we’ve got to close some schools, then yes, we’ve got to close some schools.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, you have 30 seconds if you would like.
Doug Ducey: I’m good. Thank you.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Fine. Thanks.
Christopher Conover: Moving on to another question from the audience, what can a new governor do to protect the border that the current governor hasn’t already tried and Mr. Ducey, I believe we begin with you on that and you have 90 seconds.
Doug Ducey: I think…I start on this with a view to our federal government, that I believe their first role is to protect the citizens and I think by any measure they have failed the State of Arizona and I was here at a dinner in Tucson earlier this year where…it was called the Brian Terry Dinner and I sat with his mom and his sister and you may remember that Brian Terry was the Border agent that was murdered at the border and the lady that was honored at that dinner was Sue Krentz and her husband Bob was murdered at his ranch. So I do come at this by the people that have been affected by the lack of action by our federal government.
As governor, what can you do? Well, I think you can look at the Department of Public Safety, the $300 million that we spend there. And I’d like to focus on the trouble that happens at the wide open and unprotected part of our border, the drug cartels and the human trafficking. I’d like to partner with county sheriffs and I’d like to partner with county prosecutors to affect this. I thought you had 90 seconds to answer these questions
Christopher Conover: 90, yes.
Doug Ducey: That was 60. Can I have my 30?
Christopher Conover: Oh, sorry. Yes, you sure can.
Doug Ducey: So I’d like to partner them and I would like to aim where the crime is happening. There’s also I think a real issue. We have over 4,000 Border agents in this state but they’re not on the border and they’re not in border counties. They’re in Pinal County and they’re in Maricopa County so I would love, and I will reach my hand out to the federal government to work with them on these issues. We can…we must address this issue and I’ll do everything I can as governor to do it responsibly. And I think I talked about this so responsibly in the primary that I actually received the endorsement of the Arizona Republic and I don’t think that’s something that would have happened unless I brought a measured tone to this that would keep our relationship with our largest trading partner times four, which of course is Mexico.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, you have 90 seconds.
Fred DuVal: Thank you.
Christopher Conover: And we’ll give it to you all at once.
Fred DuVal: Very good. All at once, very good. There are two issues here. The first is we’ve got to fix a broken immigration system and second is we’ve got to secure the border. They are two important things we must do. We must do it as a state and we must do it in combination with the federal government. I will tell the president he needs to come to the border. He needs to talk to the dreamers, he needs to talk to our business community, understand what’s happening in our agricultural sector, what’s happening in our tourism sector. He needs to understand this issue because we need leadership from both parties to get this done in a sustainable, comprehensive way. The McCain Bill, which I support, doubles the amount of Border Patrol. It adds 4,000 Customs and Border Protection agents. It goes after securing the border. In addition, the state does have to focus on these drug cartels, on the way they finance their activities using the tools of the banking department. We do have to do a better job with the task forces with the federal, county and state resources, with a more focused effort on the border to be sure. But we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and it is high time that we do this in a way that is a sustainable, balanced, comprehensive answer to meet our economic needs, our family needs and our security needs.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: Yeah, I think it’s funny how the current governor and all the past administrations, they say, ‘We’re waiting for the federal government to do something. That’s the reason we haven’t done anything ‘cause they haven’t done anything.’ It’s a pass the buck game. We’ve got to solve the problem ourself. I think Fred is absolutely right. It is a two-pronged animal that we’ve got to deal with and one of them is immigration. And the irony is, I’m a Libertarian for crying out loud and I’m the only one who has a plan that can actually shut down our border to all illegal crossing, drug runners or terrorizers or anything else. And my whole reasoning isn’t because I want to shut down the border, it’s because of…it’s a human thing. Over 260 people are found dead in our deserts just trying to find this thing we call America. For me it’s a matter of conscience. It’s not just a mere inconvenience. Fred’s going to talk them all out of coming. I think that’s wonderful. I don’t know how good that’s going to go and passing the buck isn’t going to happen. But I would think that we need to close down the border to illegal crossing, all of those, and open the doors wider so that anybody who doesn’t present a threat or contagion to Americans is more than welcome to come in and help stimulate our economy and to heck with Washington. Who cares what they say at this point? Anybody want to take advice from them on anything? Maybe we can go to war with Mexico or something. I don’t know.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, you have 30 additional seconds if you’d like it.
Doug Ducey: I’ve said my peace.
Christopher Conover: Okay. Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: I think Barry just got the quote of the night.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess, would you like an additional 30 seconds?
Barry Hess: No, I’ll pass this time.
Christopher Conover: Well, there’s a saying that all politics is local and this is a local question. Some of us live in Vail in our retirement years.
Do you support or oppose the opening of the Rosemont Copper Mine and why? Mr. DuVal, you are first up on this one.
Fred DuVal: The Rosemont Copper Mine is going through, as it needs to, a full panoply of reviews, Forest Service, Wildlife, water reviews and I have confidence in our public sector but I want them to be rigorous. This is a magnificent, beautiful part of Arizona with a history of tourism, with a magnificent landscapes. It does not strike me as an ideal place to have a mine. I’m highly suspicious of it but do trust that the government agencies will do as they must and will insist that they do it vigorously before the mine goes forward.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: Well, yeah. Just…just as one of the biggest concerns about the border in this whole building a wall nonsense… Incidentally, I don’t advocate building a wall. My plan incorporates a proven technology that for 50 years has never been penetrated. It’s actual real stuff and you don’t have to have it there. But when we’re talking about the whole idea of the borders, we really have to bring it back to humans. We’re crossing the border. We have ranches that cross the border, we have all kinds of different intermingles in the animal crossings, the migrations is one of the big ones. I just wanted to make sure that was clear. And I’ve…oops, sorry.
Christopher Conover: No, you were on 90 seconds on Rosemont.
Barry Hess: Oh, on the Rosemont.
Christopher Conover: So use the remainder of your time on that. That’s all right.
Barry Hess: Got me going. No, I agree with Fred. Actually this is really strange because I do agree with him that we’re going to have to rely upon the experts and try to minimize the damage to our natural resources and the natural beauty. Arizona’s got a heck of a lot to offer. And oh, wow, we’ve got 30 seconds left, good lord. Part of that goes into a plan that I have for a top to bottom, right up the medians of I-10 and I-17, a top to bottom, high speed monorail system, a six track one, a world class tourist attraction as well as something that would allow people in Tucson to work up in Flagstaff. Wouldn’t that be something great to have? We don’t need so much more infrastructure as that and part of the plan to finance it by the way is publicly financed but not through taxes.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. Ducey, on the Rosemont Mine.
Doug Ducey: The theme of my campaign is Kick Starting this Economy.’ So I want you to know that I’m pro job creation, I’m pro copper and I’m pro mining. The only caveat I have on any mine in this specific question is how will it affect the water supply. I want to make sure that of course in a state like Arizona we protect the water supply. But I think that these reviews are taking entirely too long and I think there’s got to be a reasonable amount of time. We’re letting the federal government throw a wet blanket on the golden goose of the American economy and if we want to have jobs available, we have to ask government to do its job and then get out of the way and let the market work. So I want to see job and job creation and I believe that mining and copper…copper’s one of the Five Cs and I’m going to be supportive of it.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, you have an additional 30 seconds if you’d like it.
Fred DuVal: Think we’ve covered it. Thank you.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess?
Barry Hess: No, thank you.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey? Let me come back….the question out of the audience actually back to something that one of the sponsors had asked. We had a two part question earlier on poverty and women’s reproductive rights. We talked a lot about poverty. This question comes back to that. Very simply, where do you stand on the state’s role in abortion rights? Mr. Hess, you get to begin that.
Barry Hess: Wow! Here…I have to protect life and I happen to be a pro-life candidate personally but politically it’s not something the government should be involved in at all. It’s an issue of conscience. I think it’s deplorable when people say they want government to fund things that are immoral like taxing, along with others and the abortion question is one that wrestles on all of our consciences and it’s not something that’s ever, ever going to be settled politically. There’s not going to be a final answer. We’ve got to work and I hope that we’d all agree we’d work together to try to minimize the need for them in whatever way is possible. If only more education, some sort of sense of responsibility amongst the young folks in many cases. We’ve got to help them dis-create the problem but trying to solve it through government I think is completely immoral and it’s way beyond government’s functions and I wouldn’t allow a dime of taxpayer money to be spent on abortions. I couldn’t do it. There’s a moral aspect.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: I am pro-life and I was endorsed by Arizona right to Life. I also want to say as an elected leader, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on every issue but I will state my positions clearly, I will treat everyone with kindness, decency and respect and I’ll listen. So you know where my position is but I’ve told you the themes that animate my run for governor. It’s around kick starting our economy, it’s around fixing our K-12 education system. These are issues that a governor deals with every day when they wake up. On some of these other issues, a governor doesn’t make that decision for you. These are decisions that are made by the people and that’s how I’m going to go forward and that’ll be my focus as your governor if I’m successful in this pursuit.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Yes, thank you. I am unabashedly pro-choice. I believe that a woman’s decision to control her reproductive choices are hers to make in consultation with her family and her doctor, her medical advisers. I believe that Arizona has headed in the wrong direction. Cathi Herrod and others who are supporting, Doug, have been relentless in restricting women’s reproductive choices across the full panoply of medical services, health screenings and a variety of other things and it has been bad policy. The capital V in DuVal stands for veto on these issues of reproductive choice. I feel very strongly about it and will insist upon it with the Arizona legislature that we stop restricting and we stop this war on women’s reproductive choice. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess, you have 30 additional seconds if you would like them.
Barry Hess: No, I’m good.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: I would say Fred loves to point out members of my coalition and I have built the broadest coalition of anyone in the race and I’m proud of that and I’m going to continue to add to that coalition. He forgot to mention Randy Johnson, the Big Unit, who won the World Series for the Arizona Diamondbacks or the captain of the Coyote, Shane Doan in addition to many other political and business leaders. And just like not everyone in my coalition is going to be somebody that I agree with, I don’t believe that Raul Grijalva or Rod Blagojevich or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid are the ones that speak for you on every issue, Fred.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, you have 30 seconds.
Fred DuVal: Oh sure. Be happy to respond to that. Nor have I invited them in to endorse me as you have Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin. [applause] I mean…the…you know, many of our Spanish speaking families have a phrase. ‘they say, ‘Who you stand with defines who you are,’ and look at…I’ve built a…if you want to talk about coalition, many of you may have seen I bought a full page ad in the Arizona Republic recently with over 200 Republicans, over 20 former Republican elected officials, who said, ‘I have worked with this guy. He knows how to build bipartisan collaborative strategic outcomes. He helped build AHCCCS on a bipartisan basis. He helped built…helped lead the Phoenix freeway system on a bipartisan basis.’
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, your time on this one’s up.
Fred DuVal: Yes, it is. So that’s a coalition. It’s pulling everyone together around the future of the State of Arizona.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Hess, you wanted 30 seconds on this.
Barry Hess: Yeah, since we’re talking about coalitions, I mean, all the speculation in the world, all these other people who are going to vouch for you, I’ve done it. Just last year, many people don’t even realize this, just last year the Republican leadership tried to bump all third parties off of the ballot and when I told them we’re going to send it back as a citizen’s referendum, they laughed because there’s been over…it’s been over 35 years and over 35 tries, all unsuccessful until ours. We brought together the entire political spectrum from the Greens and the Liberals all the way over to the ultra conservatives and we sent it to the ballot. So what did they do? They repealed it so that you wouldn’t see their lack of integrity and character on the ballot and that’s just wrong.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess, thank you. We are wrapping up here quickly on our time. This is a question, actually we’ve gotten a couple of versions of this so I’m going to try and put them all together. Will you specifically include support or increase support for adult education funding which one person in the audience says "picks up the slack for K-12 failures". And I have Mr. Ducey going first on this one for 90 seconds.
Doug Ducey: Well, as I’ve said, I think this idea of prioritizing our budget with education being one of those priorities. I was actually able to spend the day yesterday at Pima Community College taking a look at the aviation program they have there and everyone that graduates out of that two year program walks across the jetway as an…employed by Boeing or by Bombardier so, I mean, talk about a return on investment and also a great way to sell companies to come here so that these people, wherever they are in terms of age or on the economic spectrum, can get their training and find a job. To me, when I see that kind of education, that’s the results oriented, outcome base type of result that I want to have that improves the quality of life for our citizens. So yes, I want to be supportive of that type of program.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Yes, thank you. When we were faced with $400 million of budget cuts to the universities, I came up with a brand new model. Some of you may know it and it’s available to adults and available to all students called aztransfer.com and today you can go online, you can take courses…I went to the community college presidents and the university presidents and said, ‘We can’t any longer afford two systems. It’s too expensive.’ Now those courses are all online, students can navigate and get their degree at one third lower cost no matter what your age, no matter where you are in the State of Arizona taking courses from multiple institutions. And a student at the University of Arizona walked me out of a tuition hearing and explained to me his life where every single dollar was on a piece of paper and he explained to me why it was that it was going to be difficult to stay in school because of these budget cuts. We built this arizonatransfer.com and he went back to school five years after dropping out. He was forced to drop out. He went back into the University of Arizona and he got his degree at one third less cost this May from the University of Arizona because we thought outside the box, we innovated and we now have a national best practice. [applause]
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: Well, I think it’s part way there I think what Fred’s little plan is but I’ve already taken a greater step. I’ve been taking courses for free at MIT and Harvard. Free. We don’t need to overly fund adult education. I think this would become an insignificant issue if people would value education for education’s sake. And incidentally, one of the great innovations has come up. For a couple of hundred dollars MIT will actually test you for competency. It’s like having an MIT degree, one of the most competitive schools in the world and you can put your name on it. I think that’s incredible. We’ve got to get the appreciation for education back and stop trying to throw money at it and think that solved the problem because it didn’t solve the problem and it’s not going to solve the problem. We can, like Abraham Lincoln, how much did it cost for him to get educated? I mean, come on, let’s be serious here. For adults, let’s put it all together so that people want to go out and learn. The appreciation for education is what we need, it’s not more dollars and for adult education just making it available to them, access to this education. That makes a whole lot more sense than setting up a big ‘ole program and more bureaucracy and more tax drain because that’s what we’ve got to get rid of, the tax drain.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Ducey, you have 30 more seconds if you’d like it.
Doug Ducey: I’ve said my peace, thank you.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Only to say Fred’s little experiment was 28,000 students are now enrolled in arizonatransfer.com so a little bit more than a little.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: Well, yeah, it’s true. I know when Jan took what I had, the first distance learning program which is now called K-12, they didn’t want it to succeed but the good thing about distance learning is that after a year involved, students immersed in it, they end up about two and a half years ahead of their brick and mortar counterparts so we have to look at what do we want to come out the other end. All I want to see is our public instruction and our constitutional mandate being upheld to provide free or nearly free public instruction so that everyone has access and competency tests to measure it.
Christopher Conover: We’re going to wrap up our questions here tonight with one more question from the audience. It says, ‘Lake Mead’s water level is at an all-time low. Arizona’s water supply is threatened. What is your plan to maintain an adequate water supply for Arizona and how would you fund it?’ Mr. DuVal, you are first on this one.
Fred DuVal: This is indeed a growing crisis. A quick little piece of history. So when we divided up the Colorado River with the seven lower basin states, Arizona was required to take the first short falls in those years where the drought resulted in insufficient water for all seven state's needs. Those days are now here and we must get after this issue. There are a number of things we need to do. We’ve got to look at whether cloud seeding will work in the Rocky Mountains, we need to look at the tamarisk tree. I know that sounds rather odd but it is a highly consumptive tree that lines the bottom of the Grand Canyon and consumes a lot of water. We’re going to have to look at irrigation reform and whether or not there are ways in which we can meet our agricultural needs with better consumption and conservation. And we’re ultimately going to have to get into a conservation understanding in the State of Arizona for us to align our water draw with the available water that’s going to be available in the Colorado River.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: Well, they say water is gold when you live in a desert and that’s true but I think that we’re looking at it all wrong because it seems to me, I happen to have been in Libya, the world’s largest aqueducts where they brought water here rather than worried about rationing it or using new laws to say how much you can and can’t. Why wouldn’t we be capable of mimicking that exact same thing? Bring water into the desert so the problem goes away in the long term. These short term solutions are just silly as far as I’m concerned where they just want to say, ‘You can’t use water on Tuesdays because your last name starts with a consonant or something.’ And that’s how they start these things and I want to get government out of it because the people will solve their own problems and so will the private sector. Every single time you get government out of the way and if there’s a problem it creates a vacuum and a vacuum nature abhors a vacuum and so that we will find a way around it. And we probably haven’t even thought of the way that will actually work most efficiently to continually supply us with water. It’s not just a single program, I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of different alternatives for each of us to consider and we haven’t even thought of them yet. So in order to lock…if we decide to lock ourselves in to all these rules and regulations, we’ve destroyed innovation and we’ve lost any chance of seeing something that we could have seen without them.
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. Ducey.
Doug Ducey: Regarding water in Arizona, this is something in our past we have been very good at and we stand on the shoulders of the leaders like Carl Hayden and the Udalls and John Rhodes and most recently John Kyl, who I’m proud to have as the policy adviser to my campaign, and we’ve seen great innovations in technology like the CAP project, SRP and the Roosevelt Dam and I think there are some things that are in our future but what do we do immediately? Well, I like the For Forest Initiative that would somehow thin our forest to allow precipitation to get through our northern forests so that it can get to the ground. Our forests are being choked and they’re resulting in things like the Yarnell Fire. We’re seeing more frequent fires that are burning hotter than ever before. If we thin these forests, we get a healthier forest, we’ll fill our lakes and aquifers more quickly and we’ll have a better environment. It really is one of the rare opportunities in public policy where you can get a win for forest health, a win for fewer fires and a win for market based forces through this forest initiative. And then as been said, I believe there’s technologies, whether it’s something around a modern day aqueduct or a desalination plant that will help us with this water but it’s something we’ve been very good at in the past and elected leaders have to come at this from a responsible perspective to plan for the future. Step one is the For Forest Initiative.
Christopher Conover: Mr. DuVal, would you like an additional 30 seconds?
Fred DuVal: Yes, only to add that the other element of this, I was part of the groundwater code in 1980 and it is very important that we look at our own groundwater resources as part of a comprehensive strategy on water. We are…it has served us very well in terms of managing our growth but needs to be updated as part of a comprehensive, smart, long term water strategy.
Christopher Conover: Mr. Hess.
Barry Hess: I’m fine.
Christopher Conover: And Mr. Ducey. 30. You’re good? Well, we have reached the end of your questions. Thank you so much for coming out and interviewing the future governor of Arizona since we can’t get them to come and sit individually in all of our kitchens and talk with us for hours on end. We now have the opportunity for each of you to give a one minute closing statement and as we end this evening we will begin with Mr. Hess. You have one minute to wrap it up.
Barry Hess: Well, thank you. I just…I hope that what you’ve taken away from this tonight is you see that the…my esteemed competitors, they offer you a higher diving board is all but I’m going to tell you that the swimming pool is still empty. And I will ask you to come up to my website which is hessforgovernor.com. There’s a lot up there. It’s a comprehensive plan. It’s a vision for the future of Arizona where everything works together. Speaking of which, working across the aisle. That’s the one thing where I have the distinct advantage over either of my competitors and that is I have the ability to work with both the Democrats and the Republicans without fear of political reprisal or repercussion. They don’t. And that’s really something that’s important because gridlock is what’s killing Arizona in the legislature. So I hope that you’ll find, if you’ll come visit my website, take a look, see the whole plan. I think that what you’re going to find is…are much better ideas for a much better Arizona. Thank you all very much. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. Ducey, you have a minute to wrap it all up.
Doug Ducey: I want to thank you tonight for having me here in your hall and I appreciate the sponsors for putting this on. My name is Doug Ducey and I do want to be your next governor. I’m honored because I believe that Southern Arizona is hurting and needs urgent attention to its economy so I couldn’t be more proud tonight to be endorsed by the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. I have a clear agenda as your next governor. I want to kick start our economy so that we have job creation that results in fulfilling careers and an improved quality of life for all of our citizens. I want to be an independent voice for our state in terms of how we improve K-12 education and rather than doing all the things that have failed over the last four decades, let’s focus on outcomes and results as we spend those dollars and support our valuable teachers inside these classrooms. And I want to get Arizona out from underneath the thumb of the federal government and take charge over the direction of our state because I know we’ll go in a better direction. Dougducey.com, @dougducey on Twitter and Doug Ducey on Facebook. Help me spread the word and thanks for having me. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Thank you. And Mr. DuVal.
Fred DuVal: Thank you very much and let me close as well. What a joy to see all of you and be in this magnificent facility. I grew up here of course and with the Solots and the Diamonds and the Pits and so many of you that have made this magnificent facility possible. It is a wonderful asset to a Tucson community that we love. But I’d like to finish with a story. I came here in the early ‘50s, my father was asked to start the medical school here in Tucson and those of you who were here will remember it was a very big deal winning the medical school and everyone was talking about it because the legislature only gave a million dollars to the U of A to start it. The rest of it had to be raised privately. One day we drove into a gas station at the corner of Country Club and Speedway and the guy knocked on the window and said, ‘Are you the doctor that’s on TV talking about the medical school?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ Four guys go into the mechanics bay, they come out with a greasy Folger’s can filled with tips and he says, ‘Doctor, it’s not a lot of money but we know that what you’re doing will change this town and this is our part to make it better.’ The moment for us is to embrace a talent, knowledge based economy that assures that every child, no matter what human package they come in, has a chance to be all that they can be and we can build that by working together. Thank you very much. [applause]
Christopher Conover: Thank you to all three of our candidates for participating and thank you to all three of our sponsors, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Tucson YWCA and thank you for all of you coming out tonight to learn a little bit about whoever will be the next governor of Arizona. Good night. Drive safely. [applause]
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