For a political novice, Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik seems to have a good sense of the way the wind is blowing.
In 2009, Kozachik ran his first political campaign as a tea-party fixture, speaking at the burgeoning movement's first rally on April 15 and at others later.
"We need to start cutting back on government overreach," he told a cheering crowd in Presidio Plaza.
Now, facing his first re-election campaign, the tea-party energy has fizzled and Kozachik has formally switched to the Democratic Party. Coincidentally, that's the same Democratic Party that dominates Tucson politics, holding a 43 percent to 24 percent registration edge over Republicans, with another 31 percent registered as independents.
Kozachik insists it was the Republican Party that changed, not him. But a look at the politics of 2009 makes you wonder.
Local tea partyers such as Trent Humphries and Jill Henderson carried a heavy workload on his behalf and could point to his victory by 1.5 percent as their first election triumph.
"Any news media (coverage) he got was either because of us or the business interests who stood up for him," Humphries, a co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party, said Tuesday. "Steve was a very awkward campaigner."
Henderson helped link Kozachik to the tea party and an allied group, Smart Girl Politics, both of which supported him.
"He was basically unknown," Henderson said. Without them, she added, "He would have had a heck of a time getting name recognition."
In his Jan. 11 letter explaining his decision to change parties, Kozachik wrote, "Over the past two election cycles it has become clear that the local and Arizona state Republican Party is being driven by a small, but vocal faction that has taken it far to the political right."
To the extent that's true, couldn't we identify that faction as essentially, the tea party, the same faction that carried him to election in 2009? Remember when Russell Pearce was elected president of the state Senate in November 2010 and identified himself not as a Republican but as "tea party Senate president-elect"?
And anyway, wasn't the Republican Party's rightward drift apparent by then?
In 2009, as Kozachik ran for council, tea-party members held repeated rallies against then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, where some called her a socialist and a traitor because of her vote in favor of cap-and-trade legislation and her possible support of health-care reform. (This was before she voted for Obamacare in March 2010 and the glass door to her office was shattered by rocks.)
That same year, Republicans in the Legislature were beginning their campaign of meddling with Southern Arizona, launching bills for a state takeover the Rio Nuevo project, a forced change in how Tucson conducts elections and to eliminate the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American Studies program.
This meddling with home rule is a tendency Kozachik is now fighting, arguing to the Legislature that it should let cities make their own gun laws.
Kozachik acknowledges being involved with the tea party in 2009 but says his agreements with it were limited to fiscal conservatism. Republicans and tea partyers knew even then that he was a moderate on social issues such as health care, he said Tuesday.
"The party loved the fact that they had somebody who was going to watch the checkbook," he said.
Humphries acknowledges that Kozachik was open about his moderate stances on social issues, but he says there was an understanding he would not focus on them in office, sticking instead to guarding taxpayer money. Kozachik's recent support of gun-control efforts contradicts that commitment, Humphries said.
"As far as guns are concerned, I had no idea that proposing a gun buyback would bring the kind of reaction it did," Kozachik told me. "I thought it was quite benign."
As to his decision to switch parties, Kozachik insisted, "I wasn't sticking my finger in the air to find out what the political winds would say. It was very personal."
But maybe he doesn't even have to stick his finger in the air. Maybe his political instincts are just that good.
Contact columnist Tim Steller at 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com
