GOP gubernatorial candidates discuss ways to strengthen families

ANNE BRADY
Associate Editor

All three candidates in the Republican primary race for governor are running on platforms that involve strengthening families in Arizona, but each has a slightly different take on how best to do that.

Incumbent Gov. Jane Dee Hull said, in a written statement provided recently to Jewish News, that government should do what it can to support parents in caring for their children, and she pointed to KidsCare - a program she proposed that will merge state tobacco tax revenue and federal money to provide health insurance for poor children - as a good example of a program providing such support.

"This kind of support for parents who are fulfilling their responsibilities is the best way government can strengthen Arizona families," Hull said.

Hull's critics have labeled KidsCare as socialized medicine and yet another example of government expansion of ineffective social programs funded with tax dollars.

Candidate Charles Brown, a Mesa business owner whose campaign literature stresses that "family is the foundation of society," said in a recent interview that the best ways to support families are to tax them less and to promote private solutions to social problems.

"Government has been reacting to broken families with social welfare programs that have actually sustained family break-up," said Brown. "If you take someone off assistance, they'll generally go live with their family. The system makes it hard for them to get help from their families.

"The biggest problem families have is they're over-taxed. No. 1, give them back their money."

Jim Howl, a former television weather forecaster, said in an interview last week that he supported the covenant marriage bill as a way to strengthen families, and that he would support eliminating what he called "the marriage tax penalty," but he also agreed that family values in general can't be legislated.

"You just have to be a cheerleader about it," said Howl. "Make it a top priority to make sure that schools, businesses, churches and synagogues all realize that this (strengthening family) is the key to our success down the road."

(The covenant marriage bill established an optional, alternative marriage license in Arizona that, when granted, establishes a marriage from which it is legally more difficult to get divorced.)

In addition to KidsCare, Hull championed Students First, the public-school, capital-expenditure funding plan recently affirmed by the Arizona Supreme Court as constitutional. Now that Arizona has an acceptable plan for funding school building construction, "we can focus on what takes place inside the classroom," said Hull.

Among other things, Hull said she believes in providing parents with opportunities to select from public schools, charter schools and even private schools.

"All parents must have the ability to select an educational environment that best meets their child's needs," said Hull. "Charter schools and vouchers cannot replace our system of public education, but we must avoid the 'one size fits all' approach to teaching. Charter schools and vouchers give parents an ability to find the most appropriate environment for their children."

Arizona already has an extensive selection of charter schools funded with public money. Vouchers would allow parents to pay part of the tuition at a school of their choice with public money, as the money that normally would be spent to educate a child at the public school in his/her neighborhood would "follow the child" to the school of the parent's choosing.

Howl called vouchers "a Band-aid or a way to say, 'We're not happy; we want competition,' but that's not the answer."

"Public schools only reflect what society is," Howl observed. "When I was growing up in the '50s, it wasn't like this. In the last 30 years, it's all collapsed. ... It all boils down to (that we) have to strengthen families."

Brown stressed that "the most important education a child receives is in the home."

"The kids with behavior problems come from less-attentive home environments," said Brown. He supports charter schools "as a good way to keep choice and alternatives" in the system, but said he is unsure of his position on vouchers, as he hasn't studied the issue enough to have decided.

Hull said other approaches to improving education that she supports include strengthening teachers' authority and "getting the state out of the business of micro-managing local schools."

The winner of the GOP primary will face Democrat Paul Johnson, former mayor of Phoenix, Reform Party candidate Scott Malcomson, and the winner of a Libertarian Party contest between former Maricopa County Supervisor Tom Rawles and Mesa activist Katherine 'Kat' Gallant. Some analysts are predicting that Rawles, a former Republican, could pull as much as 15 percent of the vote in the general election.

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GOP gubernatorial candidates discuss ways to strengthen families

ANNE BRADY Associate Editor

ANNE BRADY
Associate Editor