In a State of Disarray : Some say Arizona’s predilection for electing mavericks is a legacy of the Wild West. Others place the blame for its political shenanigans on citizens who view government with skepticism.

A small revue is playing the loft at the Mill Avenue Theater in Tempe, a red brick and adobe college town a few dry miles east of here.

“Guv: The Musical,” plays off the strange history and disordered present, the frequently corrupt and often unbelievable nonsense of Arizona politics.

With such a fertile and constant fount, say the show’s producers, their two-hour belly-laugh could outlive the Grand Canyon.

“We opened expecting to last six weeks,” says co-founder, co-producer, co-author and co-star Ben Tyler. “We’re now in our second year and fourth rewrite, and we’re sold out three weeks in advance.

“Just as soon as we think we’re running out of steam, something else happens.”

And that steam certainly has blistered Arizona’s image.

In 1988, Gov. Evan Mecham was impeached just weeks ahead of certain recall. Last year, several legislators pleaded guilty to accepting bribes for votes. And the state’s two U.S. senators were accused of trying to influence federal investigations of a fellow Arizonan: savings and loan swindler Charles Keating.

This year, Gov. J. Fife Symington III--a Baltimore blueblood and Phoenix developer elected to replace an appointed governor who replaced the impeached governor--is a defendant in a federal government suit for his role in a savings and loan collapse. Not to mention a highly suspect affair of state, allegedly involving the new governor and his assistant for international relations.

Two recent polls show that only 20% of Arizonans think Symington is doing a good job and 39% want him to resign.

“All states suffer problems,” says the Republican governor, talking of his current difficulties in and out of office and the enduring bedevilment of his predecessors. “We just seem to be a little more colorful in our celebration of the problems.

“Maybe it is that we . . . develop more electrifying personalities around here.”

Others think Arizona’s political shenanigans are more hydro than electrical and come from something in the water. Or maybe, as one song in “Guv: The Musical” says: Arizonans march to a different beat because their drummer has been out in the sun too long.

More serious thinkers believe the state’s predilection for mavericks is today’s legacy of yesterday’s wildly Western ways.

Still others say a perennial lack of state leadership has continued the political vacuum that brought carpetbaggers in the late 1800s. Or possibly Arizona’s typically transient population simply does not give a damn about the politicians it elects.

“This definitely is a weird electorate,” notes Penny Pfaelzer, a political campaign publicist in Phoenix. “Arizona is the curiosity of America. . . . It’s like a comedy show out there.”

David Bodney, editor of New Times, a muckraking Phoenix weekly, does not view Arizona’s tweedy politics as a century of happenstance. A lawyer who specialized in First Amendment rights before turning to journalism, Bodney sees similarities between today’s Arizona and the South before the Civil War--less the heritage of the South’s antebellum wealth, culture, architecture and lifestyle.

“It doesn’t strike me as any surprise that in the post-Civil War era, Arizona established itself as a new home for liberal capitalism,” he says. Such freewheeling is traditionally accompanied by a denigration of civil rights and the full menu of cultural, social and political oppression. “And nobody has put the stopper on that notion in Arizona, which continues to be a haven for the fast-buck operator who remains marginally regulated by state and local government.”

Such an environment, he says, breeds a population that distrusts politicians and tends to forget a government’s capacity for positive change. That allows powerbrokers to work pliable lawmakers into “controlling the things they fear, the limitations on their power and opportunities to make wads of cash.”

Opportunists stifled in stricter states, Bodney concludes, still migrate to Arizona for “a second, third or last chance . . . and government isn’t standing in the way to limit nefarious conduct.”

Others--in particular public officials who might be blamed for doing little to improve the situation--say there really is nothing rotten in the state of Arizona.

They like to point to adultery allegations against presidential candidates, cocaine use by big city mayors, sting operations in Sacramento, Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts, Brock Adams in Washington and David Duke in Louisiana.

Symington says his state’s problems are no more substantial than trendy criticism and media sensationalism kept alive by the towering notoriety of Mecham--”an extremely aggressive fellow with his points of view.”

“But if you look at the basis as a state,” he adds, “we are an extremely attractive place in which to live and raise a family and in which to do business.”

Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson--at 33 the youngest mayor in the history of metropolitan America--recites a litany of Arizona’s better leaders:

“Barry Goldwater. (Supreme Court Justice) Sandra Day O’Conner. Mo Udall. (Late Arizona Senator) Carl Hayden. John J. Rhodes. What we (Arizona) have contributed to the nation is significant. We are not the sinkhole of politics.”

Mecham, a Republican, continues to see himself and the state as victims of gay and civil rightists, misunderstood intentions, Democrats, drug dealers and evidence manufactured by a pernicious media.

“The state got screwed royally, and I got hurt bad,” he says of his fall.

Mecham still defends his acts and statements in office. To counter what he considers an alien media, he recently purchased a printing press and plans to publish his own tabloid newspaper. And despite impeachment, he hasn’t ruled out a return to the governor’s office.

“I’ve got more friends than enemies,” Mecham says. “Unfortunately, not in such high places. And I feel sorry for . . . these people who make fun of me without knowing what I’m about. Shame on them. Not shame on me.”

His view of the national perception of Arizona? “Who cares? I’m not particularly enamored of some of the other states. Besides, that (image) is a figment of the press’s imagination.”

Many more observers see recurring denominators in the fraying of Arizona.

For one, its demographics shift faster than the Yuma dunes.

“For every three people who come here, two will leave in two years time,” says Rob Melnick, director of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University. “So roots are not quite so deep, there is not so much stability in in our institutions, so you get the Lone Rangers like Evan Mecham.”

Washington urbanologist and syndicated columnist Neil Pierce, who has studied Arizona and who led a team in 1987 to assess and plot the present and future of Phoenix and Arizona, agrees.

“The state is a place of so many newcomers, birds of passage either on their way to Los Angeles or ricocheting back. Within such a population there is no civic stability or sense of place,” he says. “It’s an adolescent place, and like all adolescents (it’s) awkward, thrashing about, searching for an identity. And often, it’s the wrong identity.”

Arizona also suffers a shortage of institutional memory and integrity, says Terry Goddard, a former Phoenix mayor and Democrat who lost the 1990 governor’s race to Symington.

In part, he blames the state’s media, particularly the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette. These newspapers traditionally reduce editorials to canards, he says, and favor reportage short on analysis. The electronic media feed off an inadequate print media and that produces “a community of strangers . . . and nobody wants to pull it together.”

Goddard says it’s a bleak cycle: An inattentive press allows election of self-serving politicians; their weaknesses in office create a disillusioned electorate. “And when you (electors) have that kind of disappointment, how long are you going to play (vote)?” he asks.

“We think we do a good job of informing the electorate,” responds Bill Shover, director of community relations for the Republic and the Gazette, the state’s largest newspapers with a combined circulation of 415,000. “But there are those who disagree with that, and Mr. Goddard is entitled to his opinion.”

Still another view is offered by Republican Burton Barr, former majority leader of the state House of Representatives, who sees Arizona’s retiree vote as the pivotal and controlling mass in any state election. There are 800,000 registered Democrats in Arizona, 895,000 registered Republicans--and 478,000 persons over 65.

“They are traditionally Republican from Iowa, Nebraska and even California,” he says. “They are in favor of no government. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. They are there, they all vote, they will tip the scales . . . and Mecham was their kind of guy.

“And when the other candidate is not that strong, the ultra-conservative will always win.”

Yet Bruce Babbitt, a two-term Arizona governor before running as a presidential candidate in 1988, is a Democrat. “Bruce Babbitt had it all,” Barr responds. “He was young, strong, popular, attractive and moderate. But Babbitt barely just beat ‘em.”

Compounding Arizona’s ultra-conservative power, believes Sam Steiger, is an inherent weakness in the party structures.

“Unlike the urban East, the machinery of both parties in Arizona is nonexistent,” he says. “All you need is money and a desire to run, and that attracts highly individualistic people who want to run.

“And that explains the Ev Mechams and the Fife Symingtons.”

Steiger was a five-term Republican congressman from Arizona. He became Mecham’s special assistant and later was accused of threatening a state official, but his extortion conviction was overturned on appeal.

Steiger now heads the Phoenix office of U. S. Sen. John McCain and relishes his reputation for opining with the grace of a blunt bullet.

On Mecham: “A man originally driven by principle who rapidly became driven by vengeance; a lousy political horse to ride.”

On Symington: “Thought he could defend himself against federal charges better as governor. But it actually made him a juicier target.”

Don Dedera, journalist, outdoorsman, devout Arizonan and author of more than a dozen books on the state and its history, recalls interviewing former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth in the late 1980s and asking for his take on Arizona’s Angst .

“He said: ‘An almost total lack of leadership,’ ” Dedera recalls. “That really hurt.”

Paucity of leadership, Dedera believes, grows from a lack of commitment. And lack of commitment is the dead weight of any state with corporations guided by absentee landlords.

Motorola has an important presence in Arizona, but the electronics firm is headquartered in Illinois. There is out-of-state control of Sperry, Honeywell and Greyhound. Even the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette answer to owners in Indianapolis.

That, Dedera says, reduces corporate support, financial and executive, of a city’s arts, sports, institutions and future.

“The whole thought that we are in the hands of outside interests permeates the society, and they (outside interests) are above it all,” he says. “We need to go back to that old world commitment to making something unquestionably whole into becoming absolutely precious.”

Many Arizonans look back to the ‘60s and the ‘70s as the good old days when Ditat Deus was a just motto for a state that God clearly was enriching.

Barry Goldwater was a presidential contender and the state was booming like desert thunder. Washington knew other Arizona lions who roared: Carl Hayden, Mo Udall and John J. Rhodes Jr.

“We did have the golden era of Arizona,” remembers Rhodes. “And at the right time when we were able to accumulate enough seniority in the right place to do some really remarkable things.

“Then we got old and retired. We tried to pass on the mantle, but it just didn’t happen right.”

Some say the spunk ran out of the Arizona Spirit.

It used to be a tough, cruel place, they claim, one that began because cowards stayed home and the weak died on the trail. Then it grew through freedom and fresh chances, with open arms for anyone willing to become a partner in a state.

That same laissez faire, however, enticed the land swindlers, powerbrokers and those who in 1976 killed an investigative reporter in a car bombing.

Enough, says Babbitt, is enough.

“We have created an urban culture where we can no longer turn our backs on problems,” the former governor claims. Arizona today is two million people jammed into Phoenix, smog, a school system needing reform, a 9.6% unemployment rate and a flat economy geared to being a branch office of California.

“Rugged individualism isn’t going to solve these problems,” Babbitt says. “But involvement by community groups and government can . . . and will if they take the process seriously.

“That is the optimistic belief I share with others . . . that we are on the threshold of shedding this incredible past of ours.”

Dedera is another optimist.

Last year’s sting operation involving legislative bribery, Dedera says, “cleaned out a lot of people, those free-spending lobbyists, the bag men and women.”

Seen on video, heard on audio, there was a tangible revulsion of Arizona’s political system. In the aftermath, “young, quality, honest people seem to be coming forward to lead,” he says, alluding to Phoenix Mayor Johnson and other political newcomers. “To go back to that old word: They are committed.”

Meanwhile, back at “Guv: The Musical,” the state’s old frailties continue to amuse audiences, and Tyler is looking for little ways to improve his show.

He has contacted former state senator and bribery suspect Carolyn Walker who, on police tapes, said her ambition was to “die rich.”

Awaiting trial, she is now baking cookies and selling them at Phoenix flea markets.

Tyler’s idea is to have Walker sell her cookies during intermission at the Mill Avenue Theater.

A sign over her booth would read: “The Cookies to Die Rich For.”