Trouble Next Door

In Kentucky on Tuesday, political neophyte Wallace Wilkinson, a college dropout who became a conservative millionaire businessman, came out of nowhere to win the governorship. Our good neighbors in Arizona may wish their Bluegrass cousins well with political newcomers.

Arizona went last year from having one of the nation’s brightest and most politically adept governors to--well, something quite different. Gov. Evan Mecham, a conservative millionaire businessman who had never held public office before, came out of nowhere to win the Arizona governorship after upsetting the long-favored candidate in the Republican primary and slipping through to victory in a three-way general election contest. He has infuriated many Arizonans by canceling the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday declared by his predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, and by committing a number of other outrageous acts and waging verbal warfare on liberals and homosexuals--words he tends to utter in the same breath.

A recall campaign has produced about 400,000 signatures with only 217,000 valid names required to trigger an election next spring. And now Mecham is under investigation for failure to disclose a $350,000 campaign loan. Republicans in the legislature are exploring possible impeachment charges. Even Barry Goldwater says Mecham must go.

Californians have fought with Arizona over water for enough years that they know better than to meddle in the affairs of their Grand Canyon State friends. With the advantage of some distance, however, they might observe that a Mecham resignation would have the benefit of saving Arizona the cost of a special election. And certainly both Californians and Arizonans are all for fiscal responsibility.