Columnist Tim Steller's Fave Five

Tim Steller's opinion: 'Clean' label doesn't fit PAC-aided mayoral candidate Regina Romero

Regina Romero has touted it throughout the campaign:

“I’m the only Democrat running as a clean elections candidate.”

She said that during the editorial board meeting with the Arizona Daily Star, and she’s highlighted it frequently in person and in ads.

And she’s right — technically. Romero is the only candidate who is using the city’s matching-funds program that limits the amount candidates must raise by matching their fundraising up to a limit. This year, mayoral candidates in the public system can raise up to $130,684, to be matched by the city.

But in these days of booming outside spending on elections, that only tells half the story. And the second half of the story tends to negate the first half.

As my colleague Joe Ferguson reported, Romero has been, by far, the biggest beneficiary of outside spending for her or against her opponents, Randi Dorman and Steve Farley.

Already, outside groups are spending more money to benefit Romero than her campaign will, considering the city’s spending limits.

By the end of July, one group, Chispa AZ PAC, had spent $155,618 on Romero’s behalf. Chispa is the Latino outreach arm of the League of Conservation Voters.

Another group, United 4 Arizona, has spent $140,606. That group is funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Together, at a total of $296,224, they’re already exceeding the city’s spending cap for public candidates in the mayor’s race. That cap is $261,369 total, between the money the candidate raises alone and the matching funds from the city.

And the outside spenders are probably not done yet.

Now, legally, Romero and her campaign cannot coordinate with any outside groups. And I am not claiming they are coordinating. But they would hardly need to.

In the case of Chispa, executive director Laura Dent is Romero’s former chief of staff, who left in January 2018 after seven-plus years in the office.

They don’t have to talk to be on the same page.

In fact, in an ironic twist, even some of the outside groups have touted Romero’s status as the only publicly funded candidate.

“Steve Farley rejected the clean elections program and relies on private, wealthy donors,” begins a 30-second video ad by outside group Mi Familia Vota. “Regina Romero is running a clean campaign, taking no corporate or PAC money.”

A mailer from Chispa AZ’s PAC put an even sharper point on the irony. It says, “Regina knows corporate interests have too much power in politics. She is running clean, taking NO corporate money and NO PAC money.”

Yes, a PAC was advertising that Romero doesn’t take money from PACs.

I asked Romero about this seeming contradiction on Tuesday. She wasn’t happy that I was taking up a critique that Farley has been making against her campaign.

“If Steve would have gotten the endorsements that I have received, from women’s groups, groups representing working people, environmentalists, he would not be complaining,” she said. “This is just a tactic because he did not get these endorsements.”

She went on to say why she believes her public-financing choice is still a valid and important claim.

“Clean elections does two things: We don’t need corporate money, or special interest money, because it doesn’t get matched,” she said, referring to the fact that only individual contributions are matched by the city.

“The other thing clean elections does is it caps the amount of money that you can spend. That’s important because elections have gone crazy with the amount of money that candidates have to raise in order to win. It tempers the amount of money in a political race.”

This point is starting to become harder to accept. If outside groups are just going to exceed the amount of money spent by publicly funded candidates, then it doesn’t seem to me the system is limiting spending at all.

Farley, by the way, last reported raising $217,010. Of that money, two $500 donations raised eyebrows the most among Democrats. They were from auto dealer Jim Click and his wife Vicki, perennial and partisan supporters of Republicans nationwide.

Farley has also benefited from about $26,036 in outside spending from a group called Tucson Together, funded primarily by the Tucson Firefighters PAC.

Dorman had raised $170,011 as of her last filing. The most controversial part of her finances so far has been the high number of donations from out of state, especially the New York City area where Dorman is originally from.

All three of the candidates, it turns out, have endorsed the Outlaw Dirty Money proposition, a constitutional amendment that could be on next year’s Arizona ballot.

That ballot initiative would require any group spending $20,000 or more on a state race or $10,000 or more on a local race to disclose the original source of any donation of $5,000 or more. It would also outlaw structuring donations to avoid these requirements.

If passed, the amendment would make it easier to know whose money, exactly, is going into outside campaigns like the ones for Romero.

As it is, though, if you want to find out, for example, where Chispa’s money comes from, you go to the disclosure form that discloses only that the group has received $500 or more from Arizona List PAC, League of Conservation Voters, Inc., Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona PAC and UFCW Local 99 PAC.

The original sources of the donations made by these groups? That’s a whole other research project.

Steller's opinion: Hispanic Chamber runs aground as former leader sails on

Tim Steller is the Star’s metro columnist. A 20-plus year veteran of reporting and editing, he digs into issues and stories that matter in the Tucson area, reports the results and tells you his opinion on it all.

The Tucson Hispanic Chamber went from a modest business group to a prominent political player in the last decade, propelling some former leaders to high public positions.

But its apparent success masked financial problems that have become clear since Lea Marquez Peterson left as president and CEO last year, first to run for Congress, then to accept an appointment to the Arizona Corporation Commission.

It’s gotten bad enough that bills as small as $1,500, for an economic-development association membership fee, have gone unpaid. A fellow Tucson nonprofit even sued the Hispanic Chamber in April over a $13,500 unpaid bill for an event in December.

“They paid the $1,500 deposit,” Scott Marchand of the Pima Air and Space Museum told me. “They did a dine-and-dash on the $13,500 balance.”

The two sides are in negotiations to set up a payment plan, but it’s not the only debt, or the only payment plan. The chamber is also on a payment plan to pay back the Hilton El Conquistador for an event held at that resort last year.

Small-business owner Matt George, of Commotion Studios, told me via email, “They owe me money and have for about a year.” When I asked him to elaborate, he declined to give details but said, “I am the ‘small fry’ and definitely getting the short end of the stick.”

It’s not that unusual that a local nonprofit runs into financial problems, and in most cases it’s probably not newsworthy. But the Tucson Hispanic Chamber under Marquez Peterson became something of a juggernaut, expanding to Nogales, Sierra Vista and Douglas, growing to over 1,000 members. It was named the “chamber of the year” by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in 2013. And her role at the chamber ultimately made Marquez Peterson the first Latina to occupy a statewide elected office, when Gov. Doug Ducey appointed her to the commission, replacing Andy Tobin, in May.

The chamber made a profitable decision to ally with Ducey’s 2014 campaign, and after he won, the relationship grew even closer. In February 2015, Ducey hired Juan Ciscomani from his position as vice president of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber, making him director of the governor’s Tucson office. Ducey has given him increasing responsibilities, most recently elevating him to the position of senior advisor for regional and international affairs.

In May 2015, Ducey announced the creation of the Arizona Zanjeros, a group of CEOs and business leaders tasked with marketing Arizona to other business people. He named Michael Bidwill, president of the Arizona Cardinals, and Marquez Peterson as chairs. In December 2015, the Tucson Hispanic Chamber entered into a “strategic partnership” with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, integrating their memberships and drawing Marquez Peterson closer to the heart of Ducey’s power center.

These moves raised the profiles of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber and of Marquez Peterson, but some discontent was brewing about the direction of the chamber, as it increasingly appeared more of a vehicle for the president’s prominence. Luis Parra, a Nogales attorney who left the chamber board in 2015, told me the group seemed to drift from its purpose.

“There came a point where I felt there wasn’t enough focus on the true mission of a chamber of commerce, which is to help entrepreneurs and startups. There was too much of a focus on growing the chamber as much as possible.”

Marquez Peterson took a leave from the chamber in August 2018, she told me, taking 50% of her salary ($113,300 in 2017) while she ran as the Republican candidate for Congress in Southeastern Arizona’s Congressional District 2. She stepped down altogether after losing the election.

When we talked Thursday night, Marquez Peterson denied responsibility for the chamber’s financial troubles.

“When I left the chamber, we were not in any tough financial situation,” she said. “We did not have lawsuits pending.”

When I asked the chamber board’s chair, Laura Oldaker, about the chamber’s financial situation, she made much the same point. Via email, she said, “We have experienced the ebbs and flows that any business organization undergoes. Our organization went through a dramatic change in leadership, and as a result, there have been learnings and course correction. We take ownership for that.”

What Marquez Peterson said about lawsuits is true, but concerns about the chamber’s financial reporting and signs of trouble go back years. Priscilla Storm, a Diamond Ventures vice president who was on the board from 2011 to 2014, is a big fan of the chamber and its mission. But she told me via Facebook, “While on the Board, I routinely abstained from approving the monthly financial reports.” That might have been a warning sign.

More recent tax filings, and a memo from a new bookkeeper, also narrow down the time when the recent trouble really began. In the April 16 memo, headed “Status and Recommendations,” bookkeeper Melissa Armstrong reported to the chamber board that, “The financial health of THCC began to decline in 2015. Consulting costs dramatically increased while corporate sponsorships began to decline.” She also noted that the chamber had been paying for past events with new events, a bad practice she’s hoping to remedy.

The chamber’s 990 tax filings back up Armstrong’s analysis. Surging expenses turned the chamber’s net income from a positive $93,825 in 2014, to negative $64,998 in 2017. The debt-equity ratio, a common measure of a company or nonprofit’s financial health, went from a healthy 0.40 in 2014 and 2015 to an unhealthy 9.6 in 2017, raising doubts about the group’s ability to pay its bills. The 2018 tax filing is still not available.

Lydia Aranda stepped into this situation in 2018. First, she assumed the role of Laura Ciscomani, Juan’s wife, who had been the director of corporate sponsorships but was hired by the Arizona Chamber in June as its director of development. Then, in December, the Tucson Hispanic Chamber named Aranda its new CEO, replacing Marquez Peterson.

Things didn’t go well, and neither the board members nor Aranda would explain to me what exactly the problem was, but the financial troubles were becoming obvious. The Pima Air and Space Museum sued April 23.

“We made a lot of effort to work with them congenially to settle it up,” Marchand said. “We got a lot of runaround, some evasiveness, and they just went dark.”

Aranda is no longer on the job. Now Oldaker is trying to steer the chamber back to financial health. The board has hired Isabel Georgelos as administrator and is trying to reduce expenses, she said via email.

“Isabel is currently leading the Tucson Hispanic Chamber’s team, which we have downsized to a small strategic core team. We are focusing on continuing to support our small business members while strengthening our relationship with our sponsors and community partners. We have also reduced our events to a handful of signature events that serve our member base,” she said.

That’s good — it would serve the Tucson Hispanic Chamber to move beyond the delusions of grandeur that, in retrospect, marked Marquez Peterson’s tenure. Just as important, perhaps, will be to move beyond the rose-colored memories of her era to the recognition that it was not all that it seemed.

Steller column: Tumamoc scare reveals Tucson veteran's amazing life, tragic end

Walkers fled Tumamoc Hill Tuesday night, some of them in an armored SWAT vehicle, while Tucson police evacuated other people from “A” Mountain.

There was a man in crisis somewhere in the area, a man police feared was armed and potentially dangerous. But at the same time police were scouring the west-side hills for a potentially dangerous man, others were rushing to the scene, seeking to help him.

The man had posted pictures of himself on Facebook, sitting on a hillside overlooking Tucson just before sunset, saying goodbye. The fact that he was a trained sniper and Iraq War veteran with a gun, nestled atop a hill, heightened the concern.

The fear was unjustified.

He was Kevin Howard, known also as Kane Harley and Hawro Christian. His story could make a movie, but it would have a tragic ending, as it turned out Tuesday. Despite efforts to reach him, Howard, 30, killed himself on a hillside near those familiar Tucson peaks, as police and veterans narrowed in looking for him in the dark.

It’s widely known that suicide is a major problem among American veterans, with studies showing there are an average of 20 cases per day. Cara Gaukler, a suicide-prevention clinician at the Southern Arizona Veterans Administration Healthcare System, said the system has many different ways of helping veterans, but shame still keeps some from seeking help.

“The reason a lot of people don’t talk about suicide is because it’s very stigmatizing,” she said. “There’s a lot of shame involved in it. That prevents people from coming forward and telling people how they’re feeling.”

What made Howard’s story so astonishing was how he spent his recent years. After four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, part of the time deployed to fight in Iraq, he joined the French Foreign Legion.

Not finding much action there, he went to Syria and fought the Islamic State group with Kurdish and Syrian Christian militia groups for more than a year. He spent months in close combat in places like Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate, before finding his way back to the states in 2017.

What probably made him more vulnerable than most combat veterans was his upbringing. A ward of the state, Howard grew up in boys’ homes in California, his friends told me. He only got to know his mother in recent years.

“He was a very kind, loving and compassionate person who lived his entire life in pain because he didn’t have a family,” said Donnie Farmer, who was a superior to Howard in the Marine Corps and in 2017 hosted and helped Howard at Farmer’s family home in Oregon.

“There’s no closer bond between people than when you go to war with them,” Farmer said. “That sense of family was what he was chasing.”

Family is an easy thing to take for granted if you have it. But it’s a yawning void if you don’t.

“He had a really (crappy) childhood,” said friend Michael LeRose, from West Virginia, who helped Howard make connections in Syria. “His goal in life was just like me — to be kind. To give a voice to people who didn’t have a voice.”

The Iraq War experience wasn’t easy, but it gave him a new purpose.

“I fought in Iraq, in 2006-2008,” Howard told reporters visiting the Syrian front line in 2017. “I lost friends there. To me, this is a continuation of that fight.”

A British man who met Howard in Raqqa, Michael Enright, told me Friday that in the Syrian War, “You’re doing something that is totally and completely all-encompassing. You have no energy for anything but what you’re doing. You’ve already made your decision you’re willing to give up your life.

“Some people when they’re deployed to war don’t do a lot of fighting. We did. Kane did.”

An in-depth ABC News report from 2017 portrayed Howard as motivated by defeating the terrorists who had attacked civilians around the world. He had engraved on some of his bullets the names of places where Islamic State-inspired attacks occurred: Manchester, Orlando, Paris.

“This isn’t really a mission of vengeance,” Howard told foreign correspondent Ian Pannell. “That’s a dirty word. This is more like justice.”

But the militia experience spiraled downward for Howard and his fellow American volunteer, Taylor Hudson. They tried to leave and were detained by their own militia, the Los Angeles Times reported. Eventually, Howard went to Iraq, where he was detained again before making his way home with the help of the State Department.

The transition to life in the states was rough. He lived in Farmer’s place for a time and bumped around the West before settling in Tucson with a fellow former volunteer in the Syrian militias. Miranda Neubert also lived in the house at the time, she told me via Facebook.

Howard was able to get regular treatment from the VA, and the Wounded Warrior Project helped him find a home near the hospital, she said. But depression afflicted him.

“He had severe PTSD, which he managed as much as possible,” Neubert said.

When he posted the alarming images on Facebook Tuesday, saying goodbye and mourning a lost romance, friends like Farmer kicked into action.

At his computer in Oregon, Farmer was able to pin down where Howard had taken his photo on the hillside and tried to help police and volunteers in Tucson get there. “If anyone is in Tucson Arizona and can access this area immediately please call me ASAP,” he posted at 7:50 p.m., along with a picture of a map, his finger pointing to a hillside near “A” Mountain, just above Panorama Circle.

The alarm also went out on a Facebook page for Marines called Mendleton.

Stefan Rivenbark, 24, of Marana was one of the Marines who answered the call. As police searched closer to “A” Mountain, Rivenbark, who returned home from four years of service last year, walked in the darkness up the hillside just north of the road.

“I grabbed my light and started climbing up the mountain. I was running up, calling out to Kevin,” Rivenbark said. “‘Kevin, this is Sgt. Rivenbark, U.S. Marine Corps.’ I made it about halfway up when I heard two shots fired.”

In the echoey spaces, the shots sounded like they were further away, but as it turned out, when Rivenbark went back the next day, he realized he was only about 30 yards away. Howard had undoubtedly heard him calling.

Afterward, in videos posted for Howard’s friends, Farmer assured them there was nothing more they could have done.

Now he and others are helping pick up the pieces, making arrangements to come to Tucson this week and return to Oregon with his ashes. A GoFundMe site has been established to raise money for an escort from Tucson and for a memorial service in June in Oregon.

Those supporting the campaign are flung far from Tucson, which was just the last stop in an interesting, ultimately tragic life. The list includes not just fellow Marines and other friends but members of an international detachment of Peshmerga — a Kurdish unit in Syria.

In their comments, some called him “brother,” but others used the word “heval,” the Kurdish phrase for friend and comrade.

Steller column: Government underreach endangers flowing S. Ariz. waters

Cienega Creek could become Dry Cienega Gulch.

The San Pedro River might turn into the San Pedro Wash.

And the federal government’s response would essentially be a shrug.

No government agency is accepting responsibility to prevent two massive projects southeast of Tucson from drying up their adjacent, rare flows of desert water. Certainly the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for issuing clean-water permits to both projects, is not.

So, it’s unclear that anyone will. You can’t expect a company that will make big bucks off draining a river’s water supply to decide on its own not to do it.

The Rosemont Mine, which received a key permit March 8, is just one of two examples of government underreach in the defense of water.

The projects are so close to each other that you could practically see the one, The Villages at Vigneto housing development in Benson, from the ridge above the other, the Rosemont Mine in the northern Santa Ritas.

The problem in both cases is one of “scoping,” as they call it — determining the scope of government regulators’ powers over a project. In both cases, they’ve decided not to go far enough to protect those rare, flowing waters.

The plan for The Villages at Vigneto is to put 28,000 homes and around 70,000 residents on about 12,000 acres of rural land south of the developed portion of Benson, along Arizona Highway 90.

The project would rely on pumping groundwater, which is allowed because of our lax state laws permitting essentially unlimited pumping outside the five active management areas and ignoring the connection between groundwater and surface water.

The endangered San Pedro River flows nearby — increasingly shallow and occasionally intermittent as the climate warms and dries.

Once upon a time, the U.S. Geological Survey was going to figure out just what impacts this supersized development would have on the last remaining flowing river in Southeastern Arizona. But the study would have cost $1 million, and its funding was cut in 2010.

Up to today, no government agency has done that fundamental work.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service once worried about the impact that sucking up groundwater for 70,000 new residents would have on the river and wildlife. Back in 2016, the service took the position that federal reviews must consider the impact of the entire project on protected species and the river.

The service sent the Army Corps of Engineers a stern letter to this effect as the Corps considered a Clean Water Act permit requested by the developers.

But then the developers, El Dorado Holdings, claimed they could build the project without obtaining that permit, by building without filling in washes.

And the service changed its mind. In November 2017, the service sent the Corps a submissive letter saying that the Corps’ position was right. Only the project’s impact on the washes it must fill in order to build the development should be considered in deciding whether to issue the permit.

“If they say, ‘We’re gonna build without the permit,’ then we have no reason to not believe them,” Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor Steve Spangle said at the time. “The fact is, the Fish and Wildlife Service does not have expertise on what other development could happen without a permit. Therefore we have to rely on the intent of the developer, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers.”

I should explain here that it’s clear the project really does need the clean water permit. If the developers don’t build on filled washes in the property, then the whole concept of the development falls apart. So, the service was gullible in accepting the developer’s claim.

But that’s the basis on which the Army Corps’ analysis has moved forward — considering only the impacts of dredging and filling washes on the project property, not the evident draw-down of the aquifer and possible disappearance of the San Pedro. So in October, the Corps issued the necessary permit, although no government agency has ever figured out what impact the mega-project will have on the river.

In February, environmental groups sued the Corps demanding — guess what — a comprehensive review of the effects of the development, including its impacts on the river and the St. David Cienega, the last remaining marshland along the San Pedro. Apparently in response, the Corps suspended the permit, though they’ve done so before and reinstated it.

About 20 miles to the west, just over the Whetstone Mountains, Cienega Creek flows north through a preserve, and eventually dwindles into the desert.

The Rosemont Mine poses a different sort of groundwater-pumping risk if the pit is dug high above the creek in the Santa Ritas.

To dig the mile-wide pit, the company has to pump groundwater out of the aquifer below it, producing a groundwater “sink” where levels are lower than in surrounding areas.

The U.S. Forest Service acknowledged the likely effects of the mine on Cienega Creek and selected the mine alternative that was likely to reduce flows the least back in 2013. Since those years, the federal focus on water has only narrowed.

The Army Corps of Engineers, in this case, too, is responsible for the crucial clean-water permit. In 2016, the Corps’ Los Angeles office recommended against issuing the permit, saying it was against the public interest and could degrade surface water including Cienega Creek.

The Environmental Protection Agency also made clear it thinks the mine could destroy the surface water of the Cienega watershed, as my colleague Tony Davis found through public-records requests.

“The Rosemont Mine will degrade and destroy waters in the Cienega Creek watershed containing regionally rare, largely intact mosaics of some of the highest quality stream and wetland ecosystems in Arizona,” one EPA memo said. “These environmental consequences are substantial and unacceptable.”

But the Corps chose to narrow what it considered in deciding whether to issue the clean-water permit this year. It focused on the dredging and filling of 40 acres of washes on the mine site for construction of facilities.

The attorney who has been involved in litigation against both the Villages development and the Rosemont mine, Stu Gillespie, told me the Corps’ decision “creates a huge loophole for mining.”

“They’ve either abdicated their jurisdiction with the Clean Water Act or turned a blind eye,” he said.

That’s left people like Gillespie, environmental groups and tribes to try to protect the surface water through lawsuits.

But it shouldn’t be that way. We have environmental laws and government agencies that are supposed to protect that rare, flowing water in the desert.

Steller column: Border agents' union gambles with interests of members, nation

Leaders of the union representing Border Patrol agents have taken gambles before — they endorsed the improbable presidential candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 GOP primary.

But that’s nothing compared to the gamble they’re taking now, dragging their 12,700-or-so union members and the whole country into the bet with them.

The top leaders of the Tucson-based national union have taken the position that union members should go without paychecks and the government should partially shut down in order to leverage greater funding for border walls from Congress. It’s like a twisted version of a strike: Agents will work without pay until Congress gives them what they want.

The 3,000-plus agents in Southern Arizona are scheduled to miss their first paycheck of the shutdown Jan. 11, though they will undoubtedly receive back pay whenever the shutdown ends. Missing a check or two, of course, still hurts as bills come due.

Brandon Judd, the union president who worked a decade stationed in Naco, and Art Del Cueto, the vice president originally from Douglas and stationed in Tucson, have given President Trump the backing he needs to stand firm on the shutdown. Without these agents endorsing Trump’s move, it would be hard for the president to claim that relevant interest groups think his promised barrier is worth this bother. The union representing CBP port inspectors, for example, is firmly against the shutdown.

But there they were Thursday — Judd, Del Cueto and fellow union vice president Hector Garza of Laredo, Texas — standing at the podium with Trump in the White House briefing room. The briefing was apparently a spontaneous outgrowth of a meeting Trump had with them that day. But they freely gave Trump the backing his shutdown requires — and thereby, perhaps unwittingly, gave Border Patrol agents responsibility for the increasingly painful move that is leading to damage at federal lands, federal grants and loans withheld, and sick-outs by TSA agents at airports.

“Anywhere you look where we have built walls, they have worked. They have been an absolute necessity for Border Patrol agents in securing the border. We need those physical barriers, and we appreciate President Trump and all of his efforts in getting those physical barriers,” Judd said, turning and acknowledging the president when he said Trump’s name.

Judd added testily: “There’s also a lot of talk on this shutdown that federal employees do not agree with this shutdown. I will tell you that’s not true.”

How Judd could speak for hundreds of thousands of federal employees outside his union — people who his union put into this predicament — was unclear. A recent poll showed 71 percent of federal workers oppose the shutdown.

After Judd, Del Cueto came to the podium and said: “We are all affected by this shutdown. We have skin in the game.”

But you have to wonder what the rank-and-file of their union really stand to gain from the leaders’ gamble.

The agents’ union itself has long questioned spending on border walls. Even after Trump took office, in March 2017 the union put out a response to his proposed border spending, delicately questioning the need for spending on walls: “Although we welcome these additional resources, we fully understand that resources for border security are not unlimited. Tough choices will have to be made as to which investments will have the greatest impact on border security, and this includes funding for ‘the wall.’”

In Senate testimony that same month, Judd said, “We don’t need a great wall of the United States. We don’t need 2,000 miles of border wall. I will tell you, however, that a wall in strategic locations is absolutely necessary.”

His perspective at that time dovetailed nicely with research in 2016 by a team of Arizona Daily Star reporters who traversed the entire border and concluded that almost all the stretches of border that could benefit from barriers already had them. My own reporting in 2017 found wasteful, unnecessary fences built at the base of impenetrable mountains in Southwestern Arizona at a cost of $3.2 million per mile.

And agents themselves, when they volunteered ideas for improving border safety in their areas of the Mexican line, mentioned a fence or wall in less than 5 percent of 902 suggestions collected by Customs and Border Protection, Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee reported in March. Improved border security has not meant big spending on a border wall, even in the opinion of agents and their union, until now.

So, considering their previous stances, I don’t buy that the union leaders have suddenly realized they were wrong about the wall before, and that the $5.6 billion Trump is demanding for border barriers is not only necessary now, but makes shutting down the government worth it. I suspect the union is engaged in a high-stakes quid pro quo, helping Trump in this crucial political moment in exchange for Trump helping them somehow.

Neither Del Cueto nor Judd would speak with me for this column. They represented 12,719 union members as of the last federal filing, in 2017, down from a high of 14,595 in 2012.

As president, Trump has shown no great sympathy for the bread-and-butter issues of the federal workforce that you would think would be top priorities of the Border Patrol agents’ union. Last May, for example, he issued an executive order that limited some federal union representatives to spending no more than 25 percent of their work time on union business. On Dec. 28, Trump ordered a pay freeze for federal workers, voiding what would have been an automatic increase for Border Patrol agents and hundreds of thousands of other federal workers.

While the union leaders do have “skin in the game,” as Del Cueto said, it’s not as much skin as the thousands of member agents who are not top union officials. An annual report for 2017, the last one filed, shows Judd made $16,800 in annual salary from the union, along with $83,366 in “disbursements for official business” — presumably the expenses of traveling the country as union president. Del Cueto also made $16,800 in annual salary but only took $8,142 in disbursements for official business.

So, while the top union leaders do have their salary as agents at risk, they have an additional, smaller source of salary that will help. And their prominent role during the Trump presidency has likely expanded their career opportunities. Judd’s political prominence and connection to Trump have made a national name for him that could ease him into a new, public career outside the union, even elective office if he chooses to pursue it.

Del Cueto, too, has made a national name for himself that could benefit him if he were to leave the patrol. Beyond the Green Line podcast, he also appears on national TV shows and has networked with anti-legal-immigration groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, whose conference he attended.

The rank-and-file agents they’re leading into this risky political and financial position are not, of course, getting exposure and future career opportunities from the shutdown. They’re shouldering the financial risk that Judd, Del Cueto and Garza are putting on them, possibly to make some sort of deal with the president.

On his most recent, weekly Green Line podcast, Del Cueto advised agents to tighten their belts.

“By the time you listen to this show, it’s a couple of days before New Year’s Eve,” Del Cueto said. “So you may want to hold back on that champagne. You may want to lean more toward Natty Light — Keystone Ice if you’re really a rock star.”

It was a joke, of course, but Del Cueto’s broad perspective was puzzlingly that of a person who was receiving the effects of the shutdown, not helping impose it in the first place. In fact, he, Judd and the union leadership are central to making the shutdown happen and keeping it going.

So, what are the member agents going to get out of this? Yes, some new barriers in some areas could be useful, maybe making their jobs marginally easier or safer. But the gamble ought to win the rank-and-file a lot more than that to make it worthwhile, and not just advance the careers of the top leaders.

If they don’t get something more, the members know who to hold accountable — and so do the rest of the American people hurt by the union’s political gamble.