Should progressives vote? Of course!

In the 2022 election, the Arizona legislature continued to have the narrowest of Republican margins, 16-14 in the Senate and 31-29 in the House. As in the previous legislative session, where they had the same margin, it has not (and did not) keep them from passing the most viciously reactionary anti-person bills that they could. But there was a big difference. Arizona elected a Democratic Governor, who set a record vetoing many of these bills, including those almost banning abortion, forbidding treatment for trans children, decreasing funding for public schools while increasing private school vouchers, destroying the environment, etc.

It makes a big difference. And it demonstrates that voting IS important. I know a lot of people who say it doesn’t change the basic system, and it doesn’t, but it can make a real difference in preserving the non-fascist parts of that system, and importantly, in the lives of many Americans. A lot of the folks urging non-voting live in states that will go Democratic even if they, and their friends don’t vote, such as California, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, etc. And while few of them live in very “red” states, it may not matter there – they’ll go Republican anyway. But in “swing” states like Arizona it makes a big difference. While the GOP held their narrow margin in the legislature and even flipped two congressional seats (going from 5-4 Democratic in 2020 to 6-3 GOP in 2022) through gerrymandering, they cannot gerrymander the statewide vote; thus our Democratic governor – and Secretary of State and Attorney General and all statewide offices.

Of course, the Republicans can try to manipulate the vote, who is eligible to vote, and how the votes are counted (see “Kari  Lake”), disenfranchising many, and that is another big reason to turn out to vote and turn them out! It is bad enough that we have an undemocratic Electoral College resulting largely from an undemocratic allocation of Senate seats (Wyoming, population 585,000, has 2; California, population 39 million, has 2. And each of the 52 Congressional districts in California has more people than the whole state of Wyoming!) At this point we are still able to have non-gerrymandered statewide votes that elect better state officials and control the state electoral vote.

There are more states where this can make a difference than the “usual suspect” swing states of Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and maybe a couple of others. I used to live in deep “red” Kansas, where the legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, but the voters elected a Democratic governor, which they do sometimes to limit legislative excesses – because the governor is elected statewide and not subject to the gerrymandering of legislative districts.  And in 2022, 60% of votes in a statewide referendum rejected an anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution. In nearby Missouri, a former swing state, the GOP controls the legislature, governorship, and statewide offices, and has used their power to gerrymander and further limit the influence of urban centers like Kansas City and St. Louis. Other states, including Ohio, can be in the same situation. Referendums have had significant clout in many states like Arizona, which is, of course, why the legislature continues to try to overturn them, to make them harder to pass, and has even tried to outlaw them. Their approach is “if democracy doesn’t go your way, limit it”. And stack the courts. Twice in this 21^st century, 2000 and 2016, presidents have been elected with a minority of the popular vote, and at least in 2000, the election was essentially decided by the Supreme Court. For the first 20 years of this century, only once did a Republican win the popular vote (George Bush in 2004) but they have held the presidency for 12 of those years.

We need to continue the struggle for human rights, against climate change, against destruction of the environment, and for the rights of workers, drastically limiting the amount of control that corporations and billionaires have, and the wealth that they have that leads to that control. Voting for Democrats is not enough to make it happen. But it is the most likely method we have of maintaining a system that permits the organizing and other work to make progress, rather than criminalizing it.

Bad driving in two cities

When I moved to Tucson a few years ago, people told me to be careful because the drivers here were really bad and it was dangerous. My first thought was that driving anywhere is dangerous, and there are terrible drivers everywhere. No, they said, it is worse here, from a number of factors together. First of all, there are a lot of old people driving, both retirees who live here (like me) and the “snowbirds” who come down in the winter.

There are also the students from the University of Arizona, who drive crazily because, well, they are young. Which means that they are, at least in their own minds, immortal. Practically, it means they take risks. This turns out to be partially neurologic, in fact. The brain doesn’t completely develop until the mid-to-late 20s, and the last part to finish developing is the frontal lobe, the seat of both executive function and judgement. So when you ask the 19 year old what they were thinking when they drove into that intersection with other cars, they can answer, honestly, “thinking?”

Most of the students come from other cities, as do the retirees, and the snowbirds, of course, live somewhere else most of the year, so they add to the problem by not necessarily being familiar with Tucson traffic characteristics. So winter is the worst time. And Tucson has a lot of dangerous characteristics, like, for one, suicide lanes, extra lanes where people can take lefts. In either direction. Or wait for an opening. Leads to a lot of accidents.

Tucson drivers do a lot of stupid and dangerous things, but I think that the classic move has to do with the fact that virtually all stores in town are in strip malls. One might drive to the exit, and wait for a gap in the traffic to take your right (or left). But – what if there is no car coming right then, and if you slow down, maybe one will. So you come in fast to the street and, if there is no one coming, you can make your right turn. And if there is, you slam on your brakes. Problem is only for the person driving in the right lane, who sees someone coming at them from the parking lot on the right very fast, and doesn’t know if they will stop or even can, so slows quickly, possibly creating more problems.

But I also drive in San Diego, where no one says that the drivers are terrible, but it is just as dangerous because they also do really stupid things. It is a little different there, though. In San Diego everyone thinks that they are a great driver, and, with their really expensive fast cars, can zip in and out of traffic. And so create lots of dangerous situations. They’re not that good. Driving between Tucson and San Diego it’s mostly I-8 and mostly in empty desert with little traffic. Going fast is fine. But west of Alpine it is an urban freeway, and different rules (should) apply. And if the signature move in Tucson is coming fast from your right out of a parking lot, the signature move in San Diego is passing on the right. A truly bad idea, and almost routine in that town.

Of course, neither Tucson nor San Diego drivers believe in using their turn signals. Perhaps they forget, or don’t know if they’re actually going to turn. Certainly you don’t since they don’t use them! I think it is also, at least in part, not wishing to let other drivers know their plans. If they did, you know, they might take advantage. And cut you off. Or pass you on the right. Gotta be pre-emptively aggressive, right?

Wrong, of course. Dangerous is dangerous. Driving dangerously because you think you are a terrific driver, as San Diegans do, is especially dangerous.

But seeing the very large woman coming toward me in a motorized wheelchair, going the wrong way in the bike lane at night with no lights? That was in Tucson!

KU and Arizona basketball: Comparing the fandom

The University of Kansas, in Lawrence, and the University of Arizona, in Tucson are both big basketball schools with very successful teams that regularly appear in the NCAA tournament; currently Kansas is ranked #7 and Arizona #9 in the AP Top 25. I lived in Kansas City, 40 miles from Lawrence, and worked for KU (at the KU Medical Center in KC, KS) for 15 years, and now have been back in Tucson (second “tour”) for over a year, so I’m in my second basketball season. I think I am ready to comment on some of the similarities and differences between Kansas and Arizona fans.

The similarities, of course, include large numbers of incredibly avid and passionate fans, who are regularly stoked by good teams and good coaches. Kansas has, so far, won or shared the championship in the Big 12 (now down to 10 teams, but still frequently referred to as the strongest conference in the nation) 13 straight years. Arizona is not quite as dominant in the Pac-12 (which, in fact, has 12 teams), with teams like UCLA to compete against, but is currently leading that conference. No team has the conference record of Kansas, but there are a number of other incredible dynasties, some of which (Kentucky, North Carolina) have won even more NCAA championships. The enthusiasm and noise level at both “The Phog” in Lawrence and McKale Center in Tucson is deafening. KU almost never loses at home (this year, though, it has twice) prompting an NBA scout I know to say it is less rewarding to see them at home than on the road because they always win at home. Plus they both have red and blue as school colors; I don't know why in Arizona, but KU was founded by New Englanders who were mostly graduates of Harvard and Yale, thus the "Crimson and the Blue".

But other schools have terrific home crowds; even smaller college (or really, university) towns can fill a stadium with loud cheering supporters; West Virginia U in Morgantown and Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum in Ames, and even Kansas State’s Bramlage Coliseum in Manhattan (the “Little Apple”) are well-known to be difficult places to win even when the teams are not having their best years. (My Big-12 bias based on following them).

But back to KU and Arizona. Neither has to depend solely upon residents of a small college town; Tucson’s metropolitan area is 1 million, and Lawrence is 40 miles from KC. But this may provide two reasons for the difference that I see in the ubiquity and degree of enthusiasm I see; it is more widespread in Arizona. More people wear Arizona shirts. More people, or at least a higher percentage of people, talk about the basketball team as “we” (as in “we didn’t shoot free throws as well as we should last night against USC”). This is not to deprecate Kansas fans at all; I see it as a result of a very big city starving for any other sports outlet.

After all, while the KC metropolitan area is quite a bit bigger than Tucson (2.1 million, #30, vs Tucson’s 1 million, #53), the Kansas Jayhawks have competition. For starters, there are incredibly popular professional football (the Chiefs) and baseball (the Royals) teams in KC. Also, the KC area is more than half in Missouri and so there are lots of U Missouri fans. Even if Mizzou hasn’t the track record of KU in basketball, many of its fans still see the two schools as bitter rivals (despite Mizzou’s departure from the Big 12 to the Southeast Conference, which one wag noted was appropriate because, of course, Missouri had been a slave state, even though, like Kentucky, it didn’t join the Confederacy). So there is more competition for the sports enthusiast. Sure, there are professional sports teams in Phoenix (including an NBA team, the Suns), but Phoenix is over 100 miles away, far to go for a game. And besides it is Phewnix, which is seen by many Tucsonans as a place to hold ones nose. Talk about rivalry!). The Kansas City Star, as well as the Lawrence Journal-World, covers KU basketball extensively, but nothing like the Arizona Star. Even in the off-season there are very often articles (i.e., several times weekly) about U of A basketball, and in season they are at least daily, often, especially after a game, 3 or 4. Big recruits at KU will be covered off season in the KC Star, but then their sports pages are more full of Royals or Chiefs. 

Of course, Kansas is the only team in the nation called the Jayhawks, with one of the most recognizable logos in sports, while Arizona is just one of at least 9 “Wildcats” in NCAA Division I, several of which are also perennial basketball powers – Villanova is currently ranked #1 in the nation, Kentucky as noted is always a national contender, and even in Kansas there are the K-State Wildcats (Northwestern would be the next most prominent).

So both schools have great basketball teams, and both have rabid fan bases, but the combination of the size of Tucson and the lack of sports competition makes Arizona Fever much more omnipresent than KU fever. And me? I will certainly root for Arizona, as well as for KU. But, should they meet in the NCAA, I still will say “Rock Chalk!”

Dog walking in the desert

So it’s been a few months of living in Tucson, through what passes here for winter (needing a fleece and sometimes even a windbreaker for a morning dog walk) to an early Spring, with midday temperatures in the 90s in March, to a more typical Spring in late March, with mornings in the low 50s going up to about 80. Terrific weather for both walking the dogs and going hiking, and beautiful with flowering plants, encouraged by heavy rains earlier in the winter. Learning (and sometimes re-learning) the names of flowers and shrubs: Arizona daisy, and mariposa lily, and lupine, and owl clover, as well as the common cacti and agaves and brittlebush and greasewood, and flowering ocotillo. Most of the cacti are not yet in bloom, but the buds are there. Not too many hikes to take dogs on -- Catalina State Park is one, but federal lands are out.

Walking the dogs has moved up a bit as you no longer have to wait until 7am for daylight; Arizona does not do daylight savings time, so it just gets light earlier. Out before 7 is quieter, in the wonderful gift of the Rio Vista Natural Resources Park that starts close by and goes up to the Rillito River (or, more often, dry wash) path that is a great asset, and joins with a whole series of other trails to make a bike loop almost around the city. Of course, also walking and running; however, the dogs and I stay to the dirt paths most of the time (although when there was water in the Rillito the dogs would splash in it).  The park borders houses (or their lots) at several edges, including a stables and several horse properties; horses also use the dirt paths. There is quite a network of paths through it, so we can vary our routes, and some of the quietest spots, where you are most likely to see a hummingbird or have a Cooper’s hawk fly by your face with a bird in its talons, are along the border fences. There is also a labyrinth to walk around to force calming, and great views of the Santa Catalina Mountains.

There is a more developed area, with parking lot and children’s playground and a big grassy area where people take their retrievers to throw balls; mine are part retrievers, but don’t retrieve at all, so we just tend to walk across or around it, to the part that is really fascinating for them, the myriad ground squirrel holes that they can dig their snouts into – and sometimes, if given the opportunity, dig away at crazily and so intently that it is almost impossible to distract them. Human hunters of buried treasure would be shamed. They see, but rarely chase, the actual ground squirrels or cottontail rabbits that abound in the park. There are coyote packs in the park, but so far we have had no direct encounters; I have seen one occasionally but the dogs have not. We do see the scat, but it doesn’t interest them all that much. We see lots of birds, quails scurrying across the ground, hummingbirds flitting in the bushes, cardinals and pyrrholoxia and even vermillion flycatchers (sometimes difficult to distinguish in bright sun), phainopepla (like black cardinals), finches of all colors. And hawks, but most are Cooper’s hawks that eat smaller birds, mostly medium sized ones like mourning doves, although this has not noticeably affected the doves' numbers; they are ubiquitous, distinguishable because their heads are too small for their bodies.

 

Morning is good for longer walks; we do pretty long afternoon walks also, but when the afternoon temperatures got above 90, we pushed off the later walk to 5 or later (if not cool, at least there is a bit of shade).Before 7am the paths are quieter, with fewer dog walkers, but they start to appear in larger numbers by that hour. There is a definite age pattern to who walks dogs when; in the early morning almost all older, as are the dog-free walkers, like me with sunscreen and often a hat. No one below 40, almost none below 50. On Sunday, as we drove off to hike at about 9am, we saw lots of young people (virtually all women) walking and often running with their dogs. The old folks are done by then. When the younger folks walk their dogs during the week, when I assume they are working (or going to school) I have yet to determine. Maybe they run with them later.

Anyway, I’m liking (so far) the time to do this granted by retirement. There is also more time to read the paper and be made crazy by the news, and sometimes to just have general anxiety, but if it gets too bad, I can just take the dogs for a walk…

Kansas Government has become yet more conservative

I know that there are not many people who consider themselves conservatives who read this blog. Largely, this is because there are not very many people who read this blog altogether. So nothing I say is going to surprise anyone, nor is it likely to change any minds. Still…

I moved to Kansas in 2002. I knew it was a conservative, Republican state. While I’d grown up in New York and lived much of my adult life in Chicago, I’d spent a number of years in Texas before coming here, so it wasn’t as if I was unused to conservative, Republican states. I also knew that there were a lot of good, hard-working, progressive people in Texas and there were certain to be those in Kansas, particularly in the Kansas City area. In Texas I lived in San Antonio, a Democratic city with a series of Democratic mayors, many of whom were progressive young Latinos like Henry Cisneros (before my time), Ed Garza, and now the dynamic leader Julián Castro. While the Governors, since Ann Richards, and Senators, since Lloyd Bentsen, were Republicans, my Congressman, who live in my neighborhood, was the venerable Henry Gonzáles, followed after he died by his son Charlie. While there were conservative  Congressmen from the area, Gonzáles was not the only progressive; Ciro Rodríguez maybe was more so.

And my state legislators made me proud. Also Latinos and Latinas, mostly young, they were unafraid to take on the big issues. In 2003, shortly after I left, Democratic members of both the Texas House and Senate left the state to try to block a redistricting plan that would favor Republicans. In each house, they were led by the people who represented my district, Leticia van de Putte in the Senate and Mike Villarreal in the House. While Texas as a whole has continued to move so far to the right that Governor Rick Perry’s pick to succeed him was defeated by a Tea Party candidate, and the Republican state platform calls for an end to the teaching of “critical thinking” in the public schools, good things continue to happen in San Antonio. When the Arizona Department of Education recently closed down the Tucson Unified School District’s Hispanic Studies program (Tucson is another place I’ve lived, a relatively progressive part of a very conservative state), it banned the poetry of Carmen Tafolla. Mayor Castro named Ms. Tafolla the first Poet Laureate of San Antonio. His brother, Joaquín Castro is running for Congress. The state representative from the district next to mine, Trey Martínez Fisher, is leader of the Democratic opposition in the state house.

When I moved to Kansas, I chose to live in Kansas City, KS. The “other side of the tracks”, it was not only near work, it was not the suburbs where most of my colleagues lived. In Johnson County, the wealthy county to the south of “KCK”’s Wyandotte County, everyone had to register Republican to have a say in the election. Wyandotte was, and still is, one of only two Democratic counties in the state (the other being Douglas, where Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas, is located). We even had a Democratic congressman, Dennis Moore. A “blue dog” Democrat, yes; he was from Johnson County, but at least not breaking my until-recently string of never living in a congressional district represented by a Republican. In 2010 Moore retired, and was replaced by a conservative Republican.

When I first voted in Kansas, in 2002, I was shocked to find that there was no one running against then-and-now incumbent senator Pat Roberts. Knowing little about Sen. Roberts but strongly favoring the democracy that requires contested elections, I wrote in the name of a colleague. In 2002, Kansas was pretty conservative. It was led by Republicans, but had a history of support for core government functions such as education. The legislature was about 1/3 Democratic, 1/3 moderate Republican, and 1/3 “conservative” Republican. When I visited the Capitol the morning after the end of the longest-running legislative session to date as part of a KU-sponsored tour, we were addressed by a panel of commentators. One was the Lieutenant Governor, a “moderate” Republican, who, obviously exhausted, was strongly critical of the right wing of his party. Yes, he called them “the black helicopter crowd”. He noted that “moderate” were moderate because sometimes they liked to do things like go to their kids baseball games, or fish or hunt or do something besides “plotting in basements”.

Things have not gotten better. While that year we elected a Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas had a history of electing a Democrat every 3-4 governors, while never ever turning over control of the legislature), the legislature became more conservative. Thomas Frank published his popular book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” in 2004 while Sebelius was still governor giving his perspective on the rightward turn of the state, which included the replacement of long-time liberal, Jewish Congressman Dan Glickman from Wichita, named by President Clinton to be Secretary of Agriculture, by a string of very conservative congressmen. It has become much more so now. Conservatives replaced moderates as Speaker of the House, and later were replaced by more conservative challengers. In 2010, Sam Brownback, the very conservative US Senator and former Presidential candidate, was elected governor. The House strongly supported his agenda, but the Senate, in a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats, blocked several initiatives. With his support, and the support of lots of money from Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers’ (they are from Wichita) funded group Americans for Prosperity (indeed, much of the COC money comes from AFP), conservatives ran against virtually every moderate Republican incumbent in the Senate.

The primary was yesterday, and it looks like most of them won. They only needed 3-4 Senate seats and got a lot more (presuming, of course, that the winners from yesterday are not beaten by Democrats in the general election, a pretty safe assumption). Even the long-time Senate President, rancher Steve Morris of Hugoton in the far SW corner of the state, looks like he is headed to defeat. Governor Brownback, the COC and the Koch brothers win. Health care and education, the two big items on the state budget, look like they will lose. Republicans sometimes accuse Democrats of “never having met a tax they didn’t like”; in Kansas this is untrue, but that the current Republican majority never met a tax cut they didn’t like is true. No matter how Draconian. After years of recession and state budget cuts stemming from inadequate revenue, projections were for a rise this year. The governor proposed, and the legislature passed new big tax cuts, especially (surprise!) for the wealthy. (The Senate also; word is that they thought they were “calling the House’s bluff”, but wrong. No bluff!) So this year’s and next year’s cuts in education and Medicaid funding will be even worse. And, of course, the Governor will not take federal money for Medicaid.

Why? Part of it is probably the trend that Thomas Franks pointed out is true and Kansans are getting more conservative (although at this point, the group elected are not “conserving” anything; they are simply destroying). A lot of it is likely that the big money contributions are effecting voters through their dominance of the voters’ main source of information, TV (and make no mistake; despite the media’s efforts to portray contributions by unions to the moderates as balancing, the funding from AFP and COC and others for the conservatives was several times higher). And a lot of it is that there are not many people voting, probably less than 20% in this primary according to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (himself an arch “conservative”, author of the Arizona immigration law). Voter turnout in this country is low, turnout in primaries is lower, and turnout among more “Democratic” constituencies such as the poor and minorities is lower still. The efforts to disenfranchise these folks by techniques such as photo-ID requirements (falsely sold as a counter to the non-problem of voter fraud) and decreasing the number of polling places (from having less state money) are likely to increase the problem.

I admit I didn’t vote; as a Democrat in Wyandotte County there were no races being contested for me. But I still usually would make a symbolic appearance, and this year, with no Democratic candidate running in the primary for Congress to oppose the Republican incumbent, I could have, as in 2002, written in my colleague. But my polling place, moved from the church down the street to farther-away-but-still-on-the-way-to-work a few years ago, has now moved a couple of miles in the opposite direction. I have a car, and even after a long workday would have definitely gone if there was any chance that my vote would have mattered. But a lot of folks don’t have cars or ways to get to the polls, or photo ID for that matter, and these are major obstacles to a large voter turnout.

I believe in democracy. If the majority of people want to vote for folks I disagree with, that is their right, even if it is not in their interests. It is too bad if they are convinced to do so by misleading-to-lying attack ads funded by billionaires. But efforts to restrict voting by any means, ID, or fewer polling places, or making it more difficult to register, or not having advance voting, is absolutely wrong.

Back in San Antonio, there was advance voting, and we could vote at the supermarket weeks before Election Day. Anything that gets more people to the polls is good, and a true expression of our democracy.