Arizona’s Chaotic Politics: Black Eyes, Dead Burros and Audacity : Elections: Impeached former Gov. Evan Mecham is running again. At the same time, a new wave of issue-oriented politicians is emerging.

It is politics as usual in Arizona.

Bob Barnes, a conservative Republican running for governor, has challenged his counterparts to submit to lie-detector tests on a variety of unsubstantiated items he regularly alleges--ties to organized crime and dishonesty the most discreet among them. He offered to recommend good polygraph examiners.

Sam Steiger, a one-time horse-trader and five-time congressman with a fondness for red suspenders, is billing his gubernatorial campaign as “old Sam’s last roundup” and seriously downplaying his past, which includes an overturned conviction for theft by extortion and the controversial shooting of two burros.

Former Gov. Evan Mecham, impeached in 1988 halfway through his first term, is running again, still blaming unnamed “power brokers” for his unprecedented fall from office and vowing that 10,000 members of a conservative “Mecham Militia” will march him to the governor’s chair.

And Fife Symington, a wealthy real estate developer, has dispensed with party unity and declared war on Mecham--with the approval of former Sen. Barry Goldwater Sr., the legendary conservative who by today’s Arizona standards would be a pretty fair moderate.

With a flair that is becoming almost predictable, Arizona Republicans are celebrating what they call diversity and what gleeful Democrats call fratricide. In a state that is frequently--and erroneously--thought of as a Republican stronghold, the 1990 elections are promising to be as subtle as a shoot-out here on high-rise-lined Central Avenue.

“They’re going to make us out as idiots and ready for the fruit farm,” Mecham’s longtime aide Max Hawkins groused recently.

But if Arizona politics is in part an exercise in chaos, it is also a demonstration of the changing interests of a maturing Sun Belt state.

A new generation of politicians is hoping to appeal to swarms of young high-tech professionals. In contrast to the perception of conservatism and the growth-at-any-cost imperative of past years, Arizonans are rallying around the complex issues of the environment, transportation woes and struggling schools.

“We’re starting to realize--no offense--that we don’t want to be another Los Angeles,” said Michael C. Crusa, state director for U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.)

There is also a bipartisan urge to salve the wounds of the last several years--and there are many.

A years-long economic slump has battered the state’s ego and threatens to dry up its bank accounts. A series of political misfortunes have tarnished its image: There was Mecham’s impeachment, and the nationally aired debate over his cancellation of a paid holiday honoring civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Then came the collapse of the savings and loan empire of Phoenix-based Charles Keating and allegations that the state’s two senators pressured federal regulators to go easy on Keating.

“We have a black eye and a bloody nose,” said pollster Earl de Berge, whose surveys have found widespread dissatisfaction with the state’s political leadership. “Our image has gone right into the toilet.”

While they rank well behind Republicans in voter registration, Democrats here are more optimistic than they have been in years--and the stakes this year are higher than they have been in a decade. Arizona stands to gain one and perhaps two congressional seats in 1992, and the party that emerges the victor this year will be able to draw the boundary lines of those and other seats. National party leaders from both sides have promised to make Arizona a well-financed battleground.

Ask most Arizona politicians and they swear they would rather trudge through a low-key contest. “The passion this year clearly is to stop having Arizona be a subject for one-liners on the Carson show,” said former Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard, the leading Democratic candidate for governor.

But spice appears to be a perennial ingredient in the mix, a reflection in part of the independent streak the state has long cultivated. Where else could a man who was impeached by a Legislature led by his own party run again and have a better-than-long-shot chance of winning the nomination?

There is, regularly, an almost purposeful contrariness. For example, while other states are clamping down on gun ownership, Arizona’s Legislature is considering loosening restrictions.

“The only thing that binds everyone in Arizona is independent Western thought--you can’t tell me not to buy a gun, you can’t tell me how to drive a car,” said Crusa.

The recent right-wing bent to the state’s politics, however, seems to have arisen more because of the silence of more moderate voices than an actual increase in conservatives. Pollster De Berge said that a recent survey indicated that fewer Arizonans consider themselves ultra-conservative since the Mecham tumult.

This year, following a pattern established throughout the 1980s, Arizona will grow at a rate more than double that of the nation as a whole--faster even than California. According to statistics gathered by Arizona-based Valley National Bank, more than 800,000 people moved to Arizona between 1980 and 1985; by the end of this year, the population is expected to reach 3.7 million. Once here, new residents have been extremely mobile and apolitical, denying themselves roots and denying politicians any strong sense of where they want to be led.

But many civic leaders argue that they see the hastening of a progressive movement in the state, with the first signs an increased interest in the environment and in activist neighborhood organizations. Hence, the candidates for governor are playing to such attitudes and deliberately focusing on Arizona’s future, not its recent past.

All but one, that is--Mecham, predictably. Hip-deep in the hubbub again, making his sixth run at the governorship, the slightly built, bespectacled former car dealer betrays no sense of calamity. Traveling from the piney reaches of northern Arizona to the desert towns of the south, he is following the same path he did four years ago when he won the governorship by mounting a low-key campaign while other candidates slammed each other mercilessly.

Mecham was removed from office in April, 1988, on grounds of misusing public funds and obstructing justice. Later, he was acquitted of a separate criminal charge of failing to disclose a $350,000 campaign loan. His departure turned the state over to then-Secretary of State Rose Mofford, a Democrat who earlier this year decided not to run for a full term.

Most times, Mecham, 65, keeps to his major campaign themes--no new taxes, cuts in state spending, strict anti-drug laws, and an emphasis on conservative “family issues.” But his mix of bite and bitterness is never far from the surface.

“Sure, I’m not a perfect candidate,” he told several dozen Republicans the other day at a noontime lunch forum. “I’m not perfect and when I was in the ring with all of the detractors from the outside throwing rocks, it was easy to see that Mecham wasn’t perfect.

“But golly, it’s fun now,” he said, his face losing its smile. “It’s just real, real comfortable to have half a dozen more people in the ring now, and guess what? There are no perfect candidates! And I’ll be darned if the majority isn’t going to say, well, old Mecham is perfecter than the others and I’m going to win this election.”

Despite his efforts, the kinds of comments that marked his abbreviated tenure as governor occasionally arise--most recently when a small Phoenix newspaper quoted Mecham as saying that the state’s attorney general and a long-time nemesis, Bob Corbin, was “one of” Arizona’s drug lords. Though Mecham denied using those words, Corbin threatened to sue. “A font of endless shame and embarrassment,” the Arizona Republic called Mecham.

But Mecham has continued to find some success running as a populist against insiders and, at least for the primary in September, Mecham is not out of the race by any means. Polls show him with the support of 12% to 14% of the electorate, but most experts believe him to be twice as strong. And with five Republican candidates running, it might not take much more to win.

“He has a good hold on 20%,” said pollster De Berge. “There are enough people in the Republican primary that 20% to 25% can win.”

But few other than Mecham and his supporters give the former governor any chance of winning a general election.

Republican Symington and Democrat Goddard are two candidates in the race reflective of the new breed of politicians rising here. Generationally and stylistically, they are far removed from the Mecham-inspired image of the last several years.

Symington, 44, is a political novice and ideological moderate whose career as a developer is already being used against him by Democrats playing to environmentally conscious voters. He has been running for a year, has won the endorsement of Goldwater and wants to help Republican Party politics recover from what he calls “a total loss of dignity.”

Goddard, a year younger, won election to his fourth term as mayor of largely Republican Phoenix last October and is running in the first partisan race of his career. In a state where rural and urban friction is widespread, his challenge will be to overturn suspicions about him in areas outside his Phoenix base, political experts say.

Rather than enunciate specifics, Goddard has spent much of his time traveling areas of the state where he is not well known, seeking advice from local representatives. It is not always successful; at a recent Flagstaff forum he appeared unfamiliar with two of the first issues brought up by questioners.

Both candidates have struck moderate tones, decrying the controversies of the Mecham years.

Goddard, at present, has no serious opposition. But besides Mecham, Symington faces a troublesome challenge from Steiger, whose curmudgeonly image is far from Symington’s slick and upper-class persona.

Steiger, who ran for governor in 1982 as a Libertarian, has vulnerabilities that in a less-forgiving state would have knocked him from contention. While serving as a congressman in 1975, for example, he shot and killed two burros he claimed had attacked him. More than a few eyebrows were raised when it was learned he had shot the animals in the rear.

He was convicted seven years later for abusive language toward a patrolman who stopped him for speeding twice in three days. And, most recently, a conviction for theft by extortion--arising from an alleged threat to a parole board member--was overturned by the Arizona Court of Appeals.

“Colorful is the kindest adjective,” he said of himself.

But he remains a winsome and witty campaigner who says his motivation is to run against the political consultants and image-makers who have come to dominate politics, an approach that some politicians believe could be attractive.

The two other Republican candidates, longtime Maricopa County Supervisor Fred Koory and state legislator Bob Barnes, have been less successful to date.

With divisive issues such as abortion yet to be thoroughly debated, Republicans are openly worried that the primary may so damage their nominee that Goddard will win by default. But no one here is taking bets on anything.

“If we’ve learned anything in the past half-dozen years,” said Goddard, shrugging off optimism, “it’s that we’ve got one of the most volatile political situations in the nation.”