Monday, August 18, 2008

Governor 0 for 2 on initiatives

The State Trust-Land initiative has been officially kicked off the ballot. It joins the transportation tax increase as initiatives supported by the Governor that are having a hard time making it onto the ballot. It appears that the same lawyer who is representing the Transportation plan will also be working to get State-Trust back on the ballot.

With the Medical Choice initiative making it back, Napolitano backers may be able to save her initiatives as well. The question is, how do they sell their issues to the public starting from such a depressed position?

Let's assume for a minute that one of them makes it back. The first thing that opponents will say is that these guys had to sue to get their ballot heard. What is their response going to be? If they had started to educate the public before now and had people to stand up and come to their defense, perhaps they could withstand such negative statements. However, odds are, they are going to roll out the Governor to come to their defense because its easy and she is popular.

In this case, that is not going to be enough to get them over the hump. First, she is going to have a prominent role in the presidential race, so she is going to be busy and she is going to turn off a significant base of the Arizona folks who are voting for McCain. Second, with such complicated issues, voters are going to want to know the details and how it impacts them. That isn't something you start doing after the primary. That is a process that takes a little while.

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