Get ready to vote for U.S. Rep. in District 1

The race for Congressional District 1 is considered one of the most competitive in the nation, with both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee trying to boost their party’s candidate to victory.

Republican Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu and Democratic former state Sen. Tom O’Halleran both want the open seat, vacated when Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick decided to try to unseat long-serving Republican Sen. John McCain.

A fixture in Pinal County politics, residents in other parts of the district might know Babeu best for walking side-by-side with then-presidential candidate McCain in a political ad when McCain uttered the phrase, “Complete the danged (border) fence.”

O’Halleran is better known in the northern part of the state. He is a former Republican state lawmaker who lost his seat in 2008 when he was challenged by Prescott rancher and businessman Steve Pierce.

Two years ago, O’Halleran attempted to get his Senate seat back by running as an independent. He now identifies as a Democrat, and easily defeated his Democratic rival in the August primary.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan online newsletter that analyzes elections and campaigns says the race is too close to call, labeling it a “Democratic toss-up.”

THE DISTRICT’S

BIG ISSUES

Shortly after learning he had won the Republican primary last month, Babeu shifted his focus to what he called the single largest issue in the district — coal.

Less understood in the southernmost part of the vast district, Babeu said the Environmental Protection Agency has overstepped its mandate by announcing mandatory cuts in the use of coal for power generation.

Such proposals could close the coal-powered Navajo generating station, putting thousands out of work, constricting regional energy supplies and likely fueling increases in energy rates.

Speaking out against the EPA has solidified a Republican base wary of federal mandates and has served as an attack against O’Halleran, who once served as a consultant to environmental groups.

“There are 3,000 jobs directly connected to the four coal-fired generating stations in Arizona,” Babeu said. “They are all in District 1.”

O’Halleran also opposes the EPA’s mandates, saying they were made without being part of a national energy policy and without concern to how they would affect rural communities.

“This is not that competitiveness is taking us out, this is government coming in … without any concern about you, the school district, the fire district or the community around these power plants,” he said. “Some of our best jobs in the district are either at the power plants or at the mines on the Navajo Reservation.”

Both men believe in climate change, with O’Halleran saying he pressured the Bureau of Reclamation to include climate change in its modeling system for the Colorado River more than a decade ago.

Babeu says he wants to see the coal industry adopt new technology to cut pollution. However, he believes it would take more than a decade to bring new energy sources like natural gas to rural Arizona.

O’Halleran notes that even Hillary Clinton has an energy plan using coal.

“Everybody has talked about it,” he said.

BABEU: TIME TO ACT

ON IMMIGRATION

On the campaign trail, Babeu still gets questions about getting comprehensive immigration reform through Congress. He remains optimistic that Congress will tackle the issue next year.

“So many people have asked me that same question, ‘Is this ever going to get resolved?’” said Babeu. “The most important issues in this country seem to percolate to the point that is becomes a crisis for us to finally act. I think we are there now.”

The biggest issue, for him, continues to be securing the border against possible terrorists sneaking into the country.

“Securing the border has a new meaning now, and not just because of illegal immigration or drug cartels that we’ve really focused on,” he said. “With the advent of ISIS and terrorists, it stands to reason that if this volume of people are crossing undetected with military training and all of the financial resources at their disposal, that they can get in just as easy, if not easier.”

He stopped short of saying how often he believed such people were crossing into Arizona from Mexico.

“I am not saying that there is a mad rush of these individuals. What I am saying is that it should raise eyebrows,” Babeu said. “All of us should want a sovereign, secure border because of that.”

Babeu has had his share of political scandals, including allegations that abusive disciplinary practices were used on students at a private school he once ran in Massachusetts and media reports that the fierce opponent of illegal immigration had a romantic relationship with an immigrant.

Babeu has dismissed the attacks as thinly veiled political hit pieces, going so far as to file a bar complaint against Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark for her allegations that Babeu attempted to thwart an investigation into the school.

Babeu ran the school 15 years ago.

The primary was also hard on Babeu, as two of his sisters endorsed one of his Republican rivals, Wendy Rogers.

“Paul thinks only of himself and his political career at the expense of others. He does not care about the people whom elected officials are called to serve,” sister Veronica Babeu Keating said in a prepared statement.

O’HALLERAN: I HAVEN’T CHANGED; THE GOP HAS

O’Halleran’s break from the Republican party happened years ago.

“My values haven’t changed. This is what I’ve done all along,” he said. “What has changed is the party I was with.”

His core issue is how GOP leadership slashed education funding in 2009 when facing a state budget crisis.

O’Halleran said he was devastated that the Legislature was willing to sacrifice K-12 education as well as money to community colleges and the state universities rather than making cuts elsewhere.

“It is short-sighted and not the direction our country should be going in,” O’Halleran said.

Additionally, the Legislature dismantled reforms he helped to enact regarding Child Protective Services by gutting funding.

“Tearing apart families is not leadership,” he said.

He said he ran for Congress once learning that his friend Ann Kirkpatrick, with whom he served in the Legislature, was running for another office.

“I ran because I feel that Congress has let people down,” he said.

Topping his political priorities is a jobs plan that focuses on education, job training and improvements in infrastructure — particularly broadband internet service — in rural parts of the state.

He believes high-speed Internet access is essential for education and small businesses to survive and to allow rural Arizonans to compete in the 21st century.

PHOENIX — The question of when to cut taxes pointed up the sharp division between the two contenders to replace Ann Kirkpatrick in Congress.

During a televised debate Wednesday, Democrat Tom O’Halleran said one of his priorities is “living within our means.” But the former Republican state legislator said it can’t all come down to that.

“Investing in our future is a priority for me,” he told host Ted Simons of KAET-TV, the Phoenix PBS affiliate. “I’m not going to just haphazardly cut across the board when we have education issues to deal with, addressing our infrastructure needs, addressing the security of our nation.”

That drew criticism from Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who is the Republican nominee in Congressional District 1.

“When you hear these key words as ‘investing,’ that’s code for more of the same,” he said. “More of the same is not going to fix our country,” he said, referring to a $20 trillion national deficit.

Babeu said the key is growing jobs in this country.

“How we do that is we cut taxes,” including collapsing individual income tax brackets and cutting corporate taxes, he said.

He dismissed arguments that lower taxes will mean less money for government.

“If you believe in that concept, I’m not the guy to vote for,” Babeu said.

O’Halleran countered, “Paul hasn’t cut taxes in his career. I have.”

Babeu responded that there’s something else he did not do: switch parties.

O’Halleran was a Republican for the eight years he represented much of the same area in northern Arizona that is part of the sprawling Congressional District 1. He was ousted when Steve Pierce defeated him in the 2008 Republican primary for state Senate.

Two years ago he registered as an independent in an unsuccessful bid to regain his state Senate seat. He now is a Democrat.

O’Halleran brushed aside a question from Simons that his shifting political labels show the lack of commitment to any set of ideals.

“It’s the same ideals I worked on before,” he said. O’Halleran said he consistently represented what he called the will of his district’s residents even if it meant disagreeing with the Republican Party or legislative GOP leadership.

In 2004, House Speaker Jake Flake stripped O’Halleran of his chairmanship of the Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture because he had worked the prior year to get more money for Child Protective Services, money the GOP leaders did not want.

“So the idea that I’m not going to fight for the citizens of Congressional District 1 is just ridiculous,” O’Halleran said.

Babeu, however, said if residents really thought he was representing their interests they would not have turned him out of office in 2008. He suggested voters didn’t like the spending measures O’Halleran supported.

O’Halleran was unapologetic about how much the state budget increased while he was in office, a figure Babeu put at 64 percent.

“We had almost a million people enter this state while I was in the Legislature,” O’Halleran said. “We had a 27 percent inflation factor.”

And he defended his votes to put more money into K-12 education, community colleges and universities.

Babeu insisted that more spending is never the answer.

The sheriff said his budget is now 8 percent less than it was two years ago even as the county has grown rapidly. He said the key is living within the money that’s available.

After the debate, Babeu continued to defend his fiscal philosophy. “What works is reducing taxes and cutting regulation,” he said. “This is something that is proven with a free market capitalist society (that) works.”

O’Halleran said that’s overly simplistic. “There are times where tax cuts are counterproductive to the ability of us to move forward as a nation, to make sure we have our schools in order, that our children have opportunity, that our roads are in place, that border security is in place, that our military’s strong,” he said. History, he added, has shown that simply cutting taxes does not stimulate the economy.

During the half-hour televised debate, both said they support the Second Amendment right to bear arms. But O’Halleran, a former Chicago police officer, said there have to be reasonable limits to keep weapons out of the hands of terrorists and felons.

Babeu said he disagrees and instead sides with the National Rifle Association, which endorsed him, and which is opposed to a blanket ban on weapons purchase by those on terrorist or no-fly lists.

Tom O’Halleran knows firsthand the price of putting the common good above party politics — and how he’s handled that experience is one of the primary reasons to send him to Congress.

Twelve years ago, O’Halleran was a Republican in the state House, representing a district in Northern Arizona. He had power and influence, but he went against his party leadership by working to increase funding for Child Protective Services.

The Republican leadership took away his chairmanship of the Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture. He lost the 2008 primary, and, two years ago unsuccessfully ran for the seat as an independent.

The party affiliation may have changed — he’s running for Congress as a Democrat — but his core values and priorities have not. This is a quality we look for in a candidate: allegiance to a moral center instead of political ideology or party labels.

He is running against Paul Babeu, a tea-party Republican who is now the Pinal County sheriff. Babea’s extreme right-wing views on government, social issues, gun rights and immigration are helping to cause gridlock in Washington. Electing another hardliner will make the problem worse.

O’Halleran grew up in Chicago and was a police officer and later a government bond trader there. He retired to Arizona in 1994, “got bored very fast and got involved in local community issues, like water.” He lives in Sedona.

He ran for the state Legislature and said he was disheartened by what he saw at the Capitol. “I saw how legislators treated citizens who had traveled hundreds of miles to speak” about the budget or other priorities.

Leadership should be about bringing people together, O’Halleran said.

He and fellow Republican Pete Hershberger of Tucson formed a coalition with Democrats and moderate Republicans to allocate more money to protect neglected and abused children through Child Protective Services (now known as the Department of Child Safety).

“The Republicans’ leadership didn’t want to do anything with it,” he said. Both men lost their chairmanships, but the legislation passed.

We see the spirit of service in O’Halleran. He is clear that success is a choice to make: “We need collaborate effort — and we make it a priority or not.”

Consistent with his approach, O’Halleran has identified infrastructure — including broadband in rural areas, possibly powered by solar — as a top priority. Infrastructure isn’t glamorous, but it’s a necessity. That’s the kind of nuts-and-bolts thinking that prompts us to endorse Tom O’Halleran for Congress.