Arizona Political Race One for the ‘X-Files’

If elected secretary of state, Frances Emma Barwood pledges to increase Internet access to state records, improve voter registration procedures and demand an explanation for any UFOs sighted over Arizona.

Barwood, a former city councilwoman and vice mayor, says she’s a serious candidate for the office that in Arizona is one heartbeat--or one guilty verdict--away from the governor’s office.

But she may have a hard time shaking the spacey reputation she has won with her unrelenting demands for the military to explain strange lights in the skies above Arizona that caused a stir last year.

Her main campaign theme is getting people to trust their government again. And part of that is getting the military to confess if it was responsible for the lights.

“I’m sure that government can find out,” she said. “I really would love to know.”

People from Tucson in the south to Kingman in northwestern Arizona called authorities and groups that track UFO sightings last March 13 to report lights. Many callers said the lights were in a boomerang formation.

Radar screens showed nothing and officials dismissed the reports. Military officials later hinted that the lights were flares dropped over a training range south of Phoenix.

Barwood, who wrote to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to demand a military investigation, said she didn’t see the mysterious lights herself and has no personal position on extraterrestrial life.

“It wouldn’t faze me one way or another, because if there is, God created them.” she said. “He is God of the universe.”

Barwood has become a hero to UFO buffs. She was a fixture in mainstream media accounts about the lights and was featured by radio host Art Bell, whose show is an outlet for conspiracy theories, supernatural claims and similar notions.

And she didn’t do much to distance herself from that part of her past when she kicked off her campaign surrounded by UFO researchers. Her campaign manager is Stephen Bassett, a lobbyist in Washington for UFO aficionados.

The Arizona Republic ran a cartoon of her and the movie character E.T.

The Tribune, a newspaper serving suburban Phoenix, featured a cartoon of the starship Enterprise flying through the space between Barwood’s ears.

Atty. Gen. Grant Woods, who has a weekly radio program, played the “Woody Woodpecker” theme as he discussed Barwood’s candidacy one day recently.

Dull-sounding as the office may seem, the secretary of state takes over as governor in Arizona if the elected governor cannot serve. Rose Mofford was secretary of state before she succeeded recalled Gov. Evan Mecham, and Jane Hull, the current governor, was secretary of state before succeeding convicted felon Gov. Fife Symington.

Barwood narrowly escaped being recalled from the City Council by voters angered at approval of an electronics plant in their neighborhood, and political pollster Earl DeBerge said he did not expect she would do well at the polls with a UFO platform.

“We’ve looked at UFOs as an issue, and most voters think that’s a bunch of hooey,” he said.

Barwood certainly wouldn’t be the first controversial candidate in Arizona. In one of his four runs for governor, Dave Moss campaigned on a platform of digging a 51-mile canal from Yuma through Mexico to the sea.

There was a run on unusual candidates for governor in 1988, when Mecham was being recalled, and even rock star Alice Cooper announced he was considering a run. More than 100 people took out nominating petitions, among them a death row inmate.