It was always going to be a hard challenge for anyone to beat Tucson Mayor Regina Romero as she runs for re-election this year.
But with two opposing candidates, is it even possible? Wouldn’t just one opposition candidate bring a seemingly impossible task into the realm of the barely possible?
When you look back at 2019, it makes you wonder.
That year, Romero’s hardest run was in the Democratic primary. She won 50% of the vote to Steve Farley’s 37% and Randi Dorman’s 12%.
In the general election that year, Romero won 56% of the vote, to independent Ed Ackerley’s 39% and Green Party candidate Mike Cease’s 4%.
It was a three-way race then, but with a Green Party candidate who didn’t win a large percentage of the vote.
This year, the opposition front is even more divided. Ackerley is running again as an independent, but this time there is a Republican, Janet “J.L.” Wittenbraker, likely to win a bigger slice than Cease did as a Green.
It’s something that Pima County GOP Chair Dave Smith has been thinking about. He was happy the GOP recruited candidates for all the city elections, but recognizes the big challenge that a three-way race presents.
“We need to sit down as a group with shared interests and decide,” Smith said, alluding to the opposition camps. “I think we need to talk about our goals and objectives.”
He set Labor Day as around the time when a candidate should drop out, if they’re going to.
Ackerley’s strengths as an opposition candidate are that he has decent name identification, due to his previous run and his long business career in Tucson. He also had raised more money, almost $20,000, than the Republican candidate, as of their last filings.
Wittenbraker’s campaign had raised more than $12,000 as of the last filing in late July, but about $9,000 of that was loans from the candidate to the campaign.
As a Republican, Wittenbraker has a big advantage in that there’s a party structure ready to help her out, Smith noted.
Wittenbraker told me she’s reached out to Ackerley on this topic.
“I am the strongest candidate in the race and have mixed party support behind me, including a highly motivated grassroots movement,” she said via text. “Let’s hope Ackerley doesn’t let his ego prevent him realizing the electoral reality.”
For now, Ackerley’s not interested. Asked about the idea of one candidate dropping out, he said by text: “I am in it to win it!”
Pima County Democratic Party Chair Eric Robbins called Romero “a strong candidate as it is.”
“It would be daunting for anyone to challenge her,” he said. “A divided field does not help anybody running against her.”
Former Sen. Melvin dies
Former state Sen. Al Melvin, a three-term Republican from SaddleBrooke, died Aug. 2.
Melvin served in the state Senate from 2009 to 2015 and ran unsuccessfully for the statewide offices of governor and Arizona Corporation Commission.
Born in Helena, Montana, Melvin graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and served for 30 years in the U.S. Naval Reserve, retiring as a captain. That’s why he was known in Arizona political circles as “Captain Al.”
He also had a parallel career in international trade and transportation, working for shipping companies in South Korea, Japan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
Al Melvin
Melvin, along with his wife Kou, was a devoted Catholic and brought a social conservative approach to his time in the state Senate. His friend Paul Parisi noted his interests went well beyond social issues, though.
“Al was an expert on nuclear power and was an advocate at the Capitol for small nuclear reactors to strengthen the electric grid,” Parisi said via email. “He also was a leader in desalination, championing a plant in Baja with aqueducts to Arizona.”
Former Pima County GOP Chair Bill Beard noted that the two of them disagreed on some issues but bonded over their love of basset hounds.
“The public perception of Al Melvin was that he was Mr. Social Conservative, and he was,” Beard said. “But he also understood that practical matters do come to play in a lot of things that happen in the political world.”
Services have not yet been set.
South Tucson name change?
The South Tucson City Council discussed Tuesday whether to change the city’s name as part of a rebranding effort.
The upshot? Not now.
Mayor Paul Diaz suggested it would be a worthwhile exercise to ask the community whether it would like to change the city’s name in an effort to improve the city’s image. The little city of 5,000 is surrounded by Tucson.
Other cities have rebranded themselves, though that mostly took the form of new slogans or new logos, a staff member noted. Name changes have been rarer, but even Phoenix changed its name. It was first known as Swilling’s Mill.
Several council members argued that the town has more immediate problems to worry about than the city’s name.
“All of our energy, all of our staff’s time needs to be put toward making that fire department and the police department work at optimal levels,” Council member Roxanna Valenzuela said.
So for now, the square-mile city of South Tucson will remain South Tucson.
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