Coming back to square off after the feds
failed last week to provide a plan to
save the Colorado River water supply,
many water experts said it
was a failure of leadership.
Democratic Congressman Greg
Stanton of Phoenix pointed a finger
directly at President Joe Biden in
a letter to the White House.
He said, I am deeply disappointed that your
administration chose to sit on the sidelines,
and I urge that I treat this crisis with the
level of urgency it demands immediately.
Without that, we risk catastrophe.
In the American SW,
it's become a question of political will who
will lead the West out of this water crisis,
joining us to talk about
all that and much more.
Our political insiders attorney
Christine Jones, a former Republican
candidate for governor and Roy Herrera,
a Democratic election law attorney
at Herrera Arriano in Phoenix.
Welcome back to square off.
Good to see you both.
Good morning before we get started.
The usual disclosures.
Anybody have anything to disclose
about connections to the topics?
We're going to be?
Blessing today,
Roy,
I'm counsel to Senator
Kelly and his campaign. OK,
connect to the campaign, Christine,
closures this cycle. OK.
And we're going to start with you, Christine.
Let's start with water because you did
a lot of homework when you ran for
governor on the whole water issue.
Very well briefed on it.
What tells you about the situation
we're in right now and the need
for political leadership at this
point to get out of it.
It sure seems like an issue of leadership.
And I don't disagree with Congressman
Stanton when he talks about the
notion that the administration.
Asked to get behind this.
But it's not just the administration,
and it's not just the state,
it's both and so the governor,
both senators,
the congressional delegation,
and probably either the Secretary
of the Interior or or that person's
designee from the Board of Reclamation
really need to hammer this out.
One other thing that I think we should
consider as Arizona is California has
such an enormously disproportionately
powerful position with the speaker of the
House and a huge Congressional delegation,
California.
Needs to step up,
but California doesn't want to.
They produce a lot of food
and they use a lot of water.
So the sort of basin states are
going to need to band together,
not just Arizona,
but all of them to sort of combat
this power structure in California.
And to be clear,
no one is saying this is easy.
This is probably the heaviest
lift we may have ever seen.
It's a super heavy lift
and it's very detailed.
And I love to hear people in the
legislature talking about the long game.
You know, we're going to put a
desalinization plant in whimis
or whatever, a 20 year plan.
That does not help us today,
and the Board of Reclamation gave
a briefing yesterday that says
we're out of power generation
on Lake Powell in one year.
This is a today's event,
so the long game is great.
Casting a vision for the future is great,
but they really need to
step up and do this now,
Roy. Our Democratic senators
have bragged about how much
money they set aside through the
infrastructure bill and other means
to deal with the water crisis.
Why? Aren't they stepping up?
Why aren't Senator,
Senator Cinema and Senator
Kelly stepping up to add their
voice to getting something done?
Well, I do think
what you mentioned is the $4 billion
drought resilience fund that's
in the Inflation Reduction Act.
I think that's a step in the right
direction and that's something
that Senator Kelly champion.
That's why it's in the bill.
But it's only a step in the right direction.
There needs to be leadership.
To Christine's point,
there hasn't been that.
I agree with Congressman Stanton.
There's been a failure of
leadership by this administration,
prior administrations, this governor,
I think, to deal with this problem.
And it's a problem that's going to be hard.
It's going to take many, many years
that we're going to be addressing this.
We heard there's going to be a 21% cut next
year for the water that Arizona can use.
It's not like that's going
to be the last cut.
We're going to be looking at
cuts for years and years.
And what is that plan?
Because California,
to Christine's point,
is not experiencing a cut next year.
So the basin states are going to
have to band together to counteract
the political power of California
to address this for Arizona.
Should Senator Cinnamon
Kelly play a role in this?
I'm sure they're doing that.
I would assume so behind the
scenes and certainly in the
inflation Reduction Act,
Senator Kelly did that,
but it's going to take a lot of people.
There's a lot of stakeholders.
And in particular,
the next governor that we have here
in the state to negotiate with
these other states going forward.
That is one of the big issues for the
next governor and something to think
about as folks cast cast their vote.
Now let's go to decision
2022 and the headlines.
Democratic candidate for Governor
Katie Hobbs is now having
second thoughts about debating.
Republican Carrie Lacob,
spokesman told me she wants
changes in the format for the
traditional debate on Arizona PBS.
We have one of those every two
years and all the major races Hobbs.
Doesn't want voters quote to hear
regurgitated lies about the 2020 election.
Roy, is that a fair request from Katie Hobbs?
As I
understand the request,
the request is to make the format easier
for there to be actual, robust debate.
A robust discussion about
public public policy issues.
I watched the Republican combinatorial
debate and what I saw was just people
yelling at each other and really
no substantive discussion about
the problems that Arizona faces.
So I assume what the Hobbs
campaign is requesting is a format
where we can actually have.
That kind of discussion.
I cannot imagine a scenario
where we don't have a debate.
And I mentioned you before,
maybe that's old-fashioned.
It'll have to happen in one
shape way shape or form.
But they're going to be negotiating
on how so that Arizonans can
see the contrast clearly between
the two candidates
and negotiating isn't unusual.
However, Katie Hobbs did not
participate in the Democratic
debate during the primary.
So there's that history.
Christine, is this Katie Hobbs
way of slowly backing out?
She has until, I think,
Friday to RSVP.
It feels a little.
Like that's where she's going with it,
but I think it's a huge mistake in a
basically dead heat race statistically
not to show up and not give people the
ability to contrast her from her opponent.
To Roy's point, we probably could
and should change some of the rules
Ted Simmons has been doing this
for decades, right?
And we haven't really had a problem with it,
but if people are going to talk over
each other and it interrupt each other,
maybe those are fair negotiating
points backing out of the Clean
Elections Commission debate,
which has to be the most level playing field.
Of any debate ever.
I think it's a huge mistake
on the part of the Hobbs camp
and a real lost opportunity.
We'll have to see what happens there.
Let's end with Governor Doug
Ducey building his own wall,
stacking empty shipping containers
and the gaps in the fence near Yuma.
The wind apparently blew one stack away.
They've since been put back up, we're told.
But Roy, is this Doug Ducey giving
the middle finger to Joe Biden?
Well, yes. I mean,
that's his attempt to do so.
And I think that's what we've
been seeing on border issues for
the last few years from this.
Governor, I think it's just funny to me
that the wall has already fallen over.
You know, the shipping
containers already fallen over,
so people could just walk right around it.
But it's all, you know,
and I say this in general and,
you know, there's,
there's criticism even of my
own party that the border and
immigration have become issues that
people just take photo OPS with and
they just don't treat seriously.
When we do need to address this issue,
we haven't addressed it in almost 3040 years,
so there needs to be serious compromises
and serious comprehensive reform so
we don't have to go through these
photo OPS of of fences on the border.
You know, we've
come to call it Border theater.
There's a lot of that,
however, on a serious note.
Some of these shipping containers
are blocking a large gap in the
fence that's become a a freeway,
frankly, for migrants to walk through
claim asylum near Yuma and Yuma
year over year has seen the largest
increase of border encounters,
more than any other spot in the southwest.
So could this, you know,
rather rudimentary solution
actually be a solution?
It sure looks like it. And if that's.
A solution that was that easy to implement.
I have to ask why wasn't it
done eight years ago the the the
very week that Doug took over?
But I do think that the political
machinations are significant here.
I think Senator Kelly was down just a
few days before at that exact point.
And saying, oh the Biden
administration is going to fix this.
Then the 9th floor came in and said no no,
no, no, let us take care of
it with shipping containers.
So the theater is is obvious,
but it really needs to stop
because to Roy's point.
Congress needs to do Congress's job here,
and they have been ignoring it for decades.
It's really not that hard to fix because
most of the people that are in this
country illegally are visa overstayers.
That's an easy solution to fix.
Enough of the theater, right?
Fix. OK and by the way,
if you were going to put
up shipping containers,
stagger them like Legos so they
don't fall over.
But apart from that and my
construction expertise here,
apart from that, talk to each other,
right.
This is a place where Kelly and cinema
really would talk to the Republicans to
say this is a serious problem in our state.
Arizona needs to take this seriously.
And again,
with the water,
another opportunity to show leadership.
Got
to end it there. Christine Jones
and Roy Herrera, thank you so
much for joining us. Thank you.