Columnist Stephen Lemons at Phoenix New Times reviews the primary results and offers advice to Democratic candidate Fred DuVal on how to deal with his Republican opponent, Doug "Dicey" Ducey.
DuVal will need to shed his bland, happy-go-lucky image and make like a UFC champ on steroids if he wants to survive the Republican pummeling that's already begun.
Ducey and his proxies, like Arizona Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham are painting DuVal as a liberal tax-and-spend lobbyist with a weak résumé.
To this end, the Republican Governor's Association has begun airing TV ads dissing DuVal.
The RGA is airing an add blaming DuVal for single handedly causing a huge increase in tuition at UofA during his tenure on the Board of Regents. What the ad does not say, and the GOP does not want the public to recall, is that the state legislature cut the hell out of state support to higher ed. AZBlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona reviewed the data. For succinctness, I will summarize using my two prior states, North Dakota and Texas, as reference points.
During 2008-2013, ND actually increased higher ed funding by 16.5%, TX decreased its funding by 22.7%, and AZ decreased by a whopping 50.4%. (Data are adjusted for inflation and expressed as funding per student.) It then should surprise no one that higher education in the states reacted to compensate by way of tuition increases. Tuition rose in all three mentioned states: ND by 9.3%, TX by 17.8%, and AZ by 78.4%.
Although the data are recent, the trends in state funding and tuition amounts, and the underlying dynamics, are not. In the mid-1990s, I chaired a statewide committee in ND that looked at some of these trends and it was clear that the historical commitment to state funding of higher ed was eroding, and not just in ND. The reaction by universities was to pare back wherever they could and then raise tuition. Therefore, in my view, the RGA charge that just one individual was responsible for one instance of a long-term national trend is completely unwarranted. The much-needed and very public push back needs to explain the contribution of funding cuts by the legislature to tuition increases.
One approach, taken by AZBlueMeanie, reminds us, and the legislature, of "its constitutionally prescribed duties under Ariz. Const. Art. 11, Sec. 6: “The university and all other state educational institutions shall be open to students of both sexes, and the instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible“; and under Ariz. Const. Art. 11, Sec. 10: “[T]he legislature shall make such appropriations, to be met by taxation, as shall insure the proper maintenance of all state educational institutions, and shall make such special appropriations as shall provide for their development and improvement.” Court rulings aside, it is hard to see how the legislature has lived up to its obligations. Its avoidance of proper revenue (taxation and appropriations) has denied its educational institutions "proper maintenance."
Another push back comes from a Republican business woman who served with Fred DuVal on the Board of Regents (requoted from AZBlueMeanie's post):
Anne Mariucci, a Republican business leader and former member of the Arizona Board of Regents, today responded to the Republican Governors Association ad attacking Fred DuVal.
“I’m a Republican and I need to correct the record about this highly inaccurate political attack on Fred DuVal,” said Mariucci. “I worked by Fred’s side to save our public universities when the Arizona legislature decimated higher education during the Great Recession. They cut our public universities deeper than any state in the country, forcing tuition increases on Arizona students.
“Fred DuVal actually kept the doors of education open to students from working and middle class families by increasing financial aid for students, developing more partnerships between community colleges and universities, and developing new campuses in rural Arizona.”
“Fred and I personally developed the formula requiring the universities to reduce costs before raising tuition, and Fred was always the loudest voice in the room to protect students from unnecessary tuition hikes. To cast him in any other light is just wrong.”
Yet another way of dealing with this is to take on Dicey Ducey's proclaimed policies regarding revenue and expenditures. He wants to kill the income tax and still properly fund UofA. But he has no reconciliation of these two incompatible goals. On this and his other policies, Ducey is Dicey. Lemons sums it up with advice to DuVal and his campaign:
DuVal must respond in kind, exploiting Ducey's shortcomings, both personal and political. Go on the offensive and stay on the offensive.
Ducey as Governor would take AZ on the same slippery financial slope as a dish of his ice cream on an Arizona day. Last night, at the "Fredquarters" rally in Tucson, Fred gave a ferociously good speech on what he is about and how his policies are vastly superior to those of Ducey. Lemons is right. That message needs to be in front of the voters every day until November 4th.