Arizona special election: Finish line

Arizona special election: Finish line

By ALEX ISENSTADT | 6/12/12

TUCSON – Democrat Ron Barber and Republican Jesse Kelly launched a final effort to lock up votes here Tuesday as the special election for former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s seat hurtled to a close.

The race for the southern Arizona seat, which has been vacant since Giffords announced her resignation in January to focus on her recovery following a January 2011 assassination attempt, ranked as the most high profile contest on a day when six other states cast ballots in House primaries.


Barber, a 66-year-old former Giffords aide who was also wounded in the shooting, appeared at a downtown Tucson polling station with the former congresswoman and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, at around 10:30 am local time. Barber had already cast his vote in the race, but said he wanted to accompany Giffords to the polls.
“I don’t think we’ve left any stone unturned,” Barber told a group of reporters outside the church where Giffords cast her ballot. “I’ve been all over the district since the day I announced my candidacy.”
Jesse Kelly, meanwhile, appeared outside a polling station in nearby Oro Valley to talk to voters and receive well wishes from supporters. A 30-year-old Iraq war veteran who works at his father’s construction business, Kelly later showed up with his family for lunch at a Tucson diner, where customers greeted him with a smattering of applause.
Barber headed into the final day of the race as the frontrunner. An survey released Monday by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm based in North Carolina, found Barber leading Kelly by a commanding 53 percent to 41 percent margin. But in a district where Republicans benefit from a 26,000 voter registration advantage, both campaigns said they believed the race was far closer than that.
Kelly, who narrowly lost to Giffords in a hard-fought 2010 battle that wasn’t decided until several days after the election, expressed confidence in his prospects and said he believed the outcome of the race would be clear on Tuesday night.
“We feel great, from what we understand the Republican turnout is very heavy,” he told several reporters. “The voters seem motivated, and that’s good for us.”
National themes dominated the contest. Republicans painted Barber as a pawn of President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders, with the National Republican Congressional Committee airing a series of TV spots calling the Democrat a “rubber stamp” for the president and his agenda.
In a district with a significant senior population, Democrats slammed Kelly over a series of statements he made in the 2010 race in which he expressed a desire to phase out entitlement programs. Democratic groups ran TV ads using a clip of the Republican calling Social Security and Medicare a “Ponzi scheme.”

Barber said Tuesday he believed the entitlements-focused message he used could serve as a template for Democratic candidates across the country.
“I think it’s been a lingering issue for a long time that’s become more focused in the last four months of this campaign, but I think it has national resonance as well,” he said.

But as voters cast ballots on Tuesday, there were also reminders that Obama, who is unpopular in the 8th District, could prove to be a drag on Democrats running in moderate-to-conservative districts.
Outside the polling station in Oro Valley, Darwin Thornton, a retiree, said he cast his ballot for Kelly because he was convinced he would oppose the president’s policies.
“You can just feel the tide is turning against Obama and the Democrats who support him, including Mr. Barber,” Thornton said.
The special election provided some closure to a painful chapter for Tucson, where 17 months ago a deranged gunman nearly killed Giffords while she was holding a Saturday morning meet-and-greet with constituents outside a Safeway supermarket. Six people lost their lives in the attack and more than a dozen others were injured.
Giffords was largely absent from the special election until its final days, when she flew in from Texas, where she is living with her husband and undergoing rehabilitation, to campaign for Barber. She attended a get out the vote rally on Saturday night and made stops at Barber’s campaign offices on Sunday and Monday. Mark Kelly also provided several interviews to local and national reporters in which he expressed his support for Barber.
On Tuesday, the Democratic nominee said he was thankful for Giffords’s support but said he didn’t want it to appear as if he should be anointed to her seat.
“This is not Gabby’s seat. This is not my seat. This is the people’s seat,” Barber said.
Jesse Kelly, wearing a black polo shirt and khakis as he greeted voters in the 100-degree heat, didn’t respond directly when asked whether the emotional backdrop had altered the dynamics of the race.
“The emotions that we’ve heard are the emotions of people who want to get back to work,” he said. “And that’s where the campaign has been focused.”
The winner of the special election will serve the remainder of Giffords’s term and must run in November to compete for a full term.