Phoenix Archives - Page 10 of 42

Being Number Five

I remember in 2006, when Phoenix passed Philadelphia in a Census estimate to become the nation's fifth most populous city. As a columnist for the Arizona Republic, I accompanied then-Mayor Phil Gordon and a delegation to Philly. The Philadelphians were very gracious. At one event, they talked about visiting Phoenix where City Hall "looked like a building where honest business was being done." The City Hall that the statue of William Penn stands atop had seen its share of big-city corruption. Not knowing Phoenix's abundant history of criminality, they sounded envious.

Even so, it was obvious wandering around Philly, with its great urban bones, energy-filled downtown, corporate headquarters, extensive rail transit and commuter-train system, and world-class cultural and educational institutions, that any comparison with Phoenix was apples to gravel. Still, even though I had begun to assemble powerful enemies writing about the city's reality and pushing verboten projects such as light rail (WBIYB), I felt proud. My hometown was America's fifth-largest city!

You can take the boy out of Phoenix but you can't take Phoenix out of the boy. For much of its existence Phoenix wanted above all to get big. And now it was.

The city fell back to sixth place in the 2010 Census, but with the latest numbers it's back to No. 5, probably to stay. Many dreams and ambitions have been realized over the past near-decade. Downtown is filling in, thanks to the ASU campus. It sports a handsome convention center and new hotels. Roosevelt Row is a destination, not a handful of Resistance members fighting to survive. T-Gen and the biomedical campus are there and growing, although not at the speed I had wished. We built light rail (you bastards) and it will be extended. All this in the face of thuggish opposition by the right and the city's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Jon Talton June 14, 201740

Phoenix

The Confederacy and us

It would be most misguided to try to erase Confederate monuments and memory from Arizona, as some black leaders are suggesting. We need more monuments to African-Americans in Arizona, more African-American history taught about Arizona and the nation, more about all the rich strands of e pluribus unum — not today's neo-Soviet attempt to rewrite and eradicate the actual past.

As it happens, the Civil War and the Confederacy are critical elements of Arizona history. The CSA created the first Arizona Territory, claiming the lower half of New Mexico Territory which at the time contained both future states. The Stars and Bars flew above Tucson. An Arizona delegate sat in the Confederate Congress throughout its existence. When Union forces pushed most Confederate units out of Arizona, Abraham Lincoln took Jefferson Davis' clue and created a separate Arizona Territory.

Before secession, Davis played an important role in Arizona. As U.S. Secretary of War, he was instrumental in the Gadsden Purchase, acquiring land south of the Gila River, including Tucson, from Mexico. Davis supported a southern route for the transcontinental railroad that eventually became the Southern Pacific. The SP was essential to the development of the territory and state, connecting it to the nation. It is hardly surprising that Davis was memorialized with a stretch of highway. Cases can be made for all six Confederate monuments in the state. Phoenix, especially, was as much a Southern as a Western city for much of its existence. This accounts for a pleasant friendliness that's sometimes found, like the citrus blossoms. But with that also came segregation for the first half of the 20th century. Such is history.

Jack Swilling, the most important of Phoenix's founders because he understood the true significance and potential of the prehistoric Hohokam canals, was a Confederate officer. He deserted after Richmond demanded that he confiscate supplies from his neighbors. He helped the Union as an Indian fighter and discovered gold, which was sent to Lincoln to show the importance of Arizona. In Phoenix after the war, he became fast friends with John Y.T. Smith, a former Union officer who was growing hay near the Salt River to supply the Army at Fort McDowell. Such was the reconciliation, replayed countless times across the land, that made a new united nation possible. Like it or not.

Jon Talton June 7, 201750

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Big Town

Big Town was a brand of melons and vegetables shipped by MBM Farms and Zeitman Produce from the Salt River Valley in its days as American Eden. One of scores of colorful labels on wooden crates, it had a stylized version of the Phoenix skyline in the background.

But I can't help wondering if it also caught a bit of the moment in 1950, when Phoenix entered the ranks of America's 100 largest cities. It was No. 99, with 106,818 people in 17 square miles. Phoenix landed 62 people ahead of No. 100 Allentown, Pa. But it was behind Scranton, Wichita, Tulsa, Dayton — not to mention its Southwest rival El Paso, No. 76.

In 1950, the nation's fifth most populous city was Detroit. According to new Census data, Phoenix has once again surpassed Philadelphia to claim the No. 5 spot it had by estimates in 2006 but lost in the 2010 count. I'll have more to write about this later.

For now, I want to linger on that moment when the Census Bureau made it official: Phoenix had crossed 100,000. The big town was definitely a city now, if not a big one (Even now, Phoenix has many characteristics of a small town, especially in power and power relationships).

As you can tell from the geographic size of the city, this Phoenix was convenient and walkable, with a true urban fabric. At 6,714 people per square mile, it was much more dense than today's 2,798. Surrounding it were citrus groves, farms, and small towns mostly dependent on agriculture (Tempe 7,684, Mesa, 16,790, Glendale 8,179, Gilbert 1,114, Scottsdale 2,032, and Buckeye 1,932). Arizona's total population was 756,000. Phoenix boasted an abundant shade canopy from the narrow streets to the enchanting canal banks. Downtown was the busiest central business district between El Paso and Los Angeles. As many as 10 passenger trains served Union Station in the golden age of streamliners.

Jon Talton June 1, 201731

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Maryvale begins

Through the first decades of Phoenix's history, housing was built on an almost artisanal level. Sometimes one at a time. Other times a dozen or two. Along with such fashions as the bungalow and period revival style, this is what gives the historic districts north of downtown their unique quality. It took decades, for example, for today's Willo to be filled with homes.

After World War II, heavy demand for housing — hardly any had been built during the Depression and World War II — and federal loan guarantees sparked a nationwide residential building boom. This was especially true with new suburbs, built on the Levittown mass-production model. With builders such as Ralph Staggs and John Hall in the lead, subdivisions just outside the 17 square miles of the city began to grow. By the mid-1950s, subdivisions averaged 180 houses, according to historian Philip VanderMeer.

In 1954, John Frederick Long began quietly buying nearly 70 farms west of Phoenix. A Phoenix native, Long worked on the family farm, spent four years in the Army Air Forces during World War II, and came home to several failures as an aspiring businessman. In 1947, he married Mary Tolmachoff, who also grew up on a farm in the Valley. With a GI loan and some savings, they built a house on a lot on north 23rd Avenue.

Before even moving in, the Longs received an offer to sell the house for almost double the cost of $4,200 in materials. This launched him as a homebuilder, first on a very small scale. But with Phoenix growing — a sharp post-war recession had been reversed by the infusion of Cold War defense spending — Long had a vision for something much bigger.

Jon Talton May 18, 201714

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix

Great expectations

The local media have paid much attention to a nascent technology cluster in downtown Phoenix. Most recently came an Arizona Republic story headlined, "What's Driving a Downtown Phoenix Tech Boom." It reads in part:

A San Francisco tech company that announced an expansion from Silicon Valley to downtown Phoenix last week cited a lively business climate and a light-rail stop as primary factors in choosing the city.

Representatives of a semiconductor packaging company moving its corporate headquarters in May from California to south of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport said the city is cost-effective and has the workforce they need. These recent examples are part of what Phoenix leaders say is a flood of tech industry leaders and startups looking to open in the city. Mayor Greg Stanton highlighted the growth in his State of the City speech on April 25.

Stanton said the number of tech companies downtown has nearly quadrupled in the past five years. He credited adaptive reuse projects in the Warehouse District and new tech hubs as a source of the success.

Good for Phoenix. I hate to be the one who suns on the parade, but a reality check is necessary. For one thing, the top of the story lacks that basic of journalism, "How big is big"? As in, a quadrupling of companies from a baseline of one leaves us with not too many firms. Also, what is "tech"? When metropolitan Phoenix gets credit for technology jobs, they usually turn out to be call centers or back-office operations. Most pay poorly. By contrast, Seattle's tech jobs are actually undercounted because the tens of thousands of well-paid Amazon headquarters positions are classified under retail by statisticians.

Jon Talton May 3, 201752

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

The architects

One of the troubles with Phoenix is that most of the metropolitan area has been built up over the past two decades or so. The result is a deadening sameness of off-the-shelf architecture for house-builders and retailers, the boxes you'd find in newer parts of anywhere, with some faux Spanish-Tuscan crap attached. This is added to plenty of boring cookie-cutter buildings erected from 1960 through the 1980s. And Phoenix has more than its share of prominent architectural disasters.

That's too bad because Phoenix was once known for its great architecture, from office and government buildings to the magical period-revival homes of the historic districts, and especially its effervescence as a capital of Mid-Century Modernism.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) established his Taliesin West architecture school and home far out of town in 1937. A few Wright houses are left here, although contrary to popular myth he didn't design the Arizona Biltmore. The great Wright commission executed here was intended as the Baghdad opera house. You know it as Grady Gammage Auditorium (above), built after Wright's death.

But many more applied their calling here. This is an incomplete list, and I'm sure our smart commenters will have more:

The Deco masters and classicists:

Royal Lescher (1882-1957) and Leslie Mahoney (1892-1985) are responsible for some of Phoenix's most majestic public buildings, especially the 1929 Art Deco Phoenix City Hall (Edward Neild of Shreveport worked with them on the Maricopa County Courthouse portion). Lescher & Mahoney also designed the Orpheum Theater, Brophy College Chapel, the U.S. Post Office at Central and Fillmore, El Zariba Shrine Auditorium (former home to the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum), the Phoenix Title and Trust Building (today's Orpheum Lofts), Hanny's, St. Joseph's Hospital, the Phoenix Civic Center, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the tragically lost Palms Theater and many schools and landmarks.

Lee Mason Fitzhugh (1877-1937) and Lester Byron (1889-1963). The firm of Fitzhugh & Byron was the architects behind such landmarks as First Baptist Church (finally being renovated), First Church of Christ, Scientist, George Washington Carver High School, and the Lois Grunow Memorial Clinic.

Albert Chase McArthur (1881-1951), a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright, moved his practice from Chicago to Phoenix in 1925. Here he designed his most famous work, the Arizona Biltmore. Less well known is that McArthur also was the architect for several houses in the Phoenix Country Club estates and elsewhere.

Jon Talton April 18, 201764

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The ideology of the cancer cell

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell — Edward Abbey

The closed-loop belief system of the local-yokels is that as long as Phoenix is adding people, it can't be that bad. End of discussion. Thus, when the Census Bureau announced that Maricopa County was the nation's fastest growing for the year ending July 1, 2016, it set off earth-shaking, sheet-clawing growthgasms. The gain of 81,000 was still below the pre-recession trend line — even accepting the yokel "logic" — but there we have it. Everything's fine!

Phoenix has operated by this hugely subsidized Ponzi scheme for decades and there's no indication anything will change until the roof really falls in.

As in, when overshoot makes it impossibly costly to sustain such a large population in a frying pan. When the Republicans make retirement a pre-New Deal cruelty so that people don't have the means to retire, much less to the hot climes of "the Valley." When the GOP succeeds in cutting so much federal funding that welfare queens such as Phoenix slink to the national homeless shelter. When climate change makes the place unbearable. The recent calamities of the Great Recession, where Phoenix was an epicenter, did nothing to give a moment of clarity. Even an outmigration wouldn't change things. The boat-rockers who advocated a different city and state were long ago run off or silenced.

Jon Talton April 5, 201743

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Overshoot

Exurban sprawl in the Verde Valley, which competes for water resources with the Salt River Project.

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" — Edward Abbey
I was reading an Arizona Republic story about the state seeking ways to "prop up" Lake Mead to "forestall painful and chaotic shortages for at least a few years." The number that sat me back was that Arizona draws 40 percent of its water from the Colorado River.

For an old-timer like me this is an astounding statistic. In 1960, Arizona took very little water from the river. Greater Phoenix, which constituted 50 percent of the state's population, received all its water from the dams and reservoirs on the Salt and Verde rivers. The rest of the state was heavily dependent on ground water, the pumping of which was already a longstanding problem, with a few other renewable river sources. But the entire state held 1.3 million people — less than the population of today's city of Phoenix.

What nobody wants to discuss is when does Arizona hit population overshoot? With more than 6.8 million people, a population that places it in the ranks of such states as Massachusetts and Washington, one could argue it already has. This is particularly true considering the combination of an over-subscribed Colorado and the growing stress of climate change.

It's virtually a forbidden topic. Even after the housing collapse, Arizona's economy remains a one-trick pony dependent on adding more people, building more sprawl, creating a Sun Corridor from Benson to Flagstaff. The local-yokel boosters mounted up to attack Andrew Ross' superbly researched and well argued book, Bird on Fire: Lessons From the World's Least Sustainable City, precisely because he crossed the line. He asked the existential questions about the vast Ponzi scheme. I did the same as a Republic columnist, despite being warned from the most powerful levels: Don't write about water. I did and I was out.

Jon Talton February 6, 201752

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Jack August, an appreciation

Historian Jack August in the Arizona wilderness he so loved (Photographer unknown).

When I was a popular columnist at the Arizona Republic, it felt as if everyone outside of the Kookocracy (I coined the term), including many of the most prominent people in Phoenix, became my friend. "I never thought I'd read this in the Republic!" they would say about my writing, truth-telling about the Ponzi-scheme economy, the crash to come, the lost beauty, policy blunders, and Phoenix's forgotten and ignored past. "Don't worry, you'll have a place with us" if you get fired, some promised. I was not fooled.

When the pressure became too much and the Republic kicked me out as a columnist, they almost all melted away. Instantly. Like drops of water on a high-summer sidewalk. I was not only dropped but shunned. Later, some would resurface if they needed something, but that's human nature not friendship. I can count the genuine friends who stuck with me on two hands. Jack August stuck. He was that kind of man. Crisis reveals character.

His death at age 63 is a staggering loss for Arizona, for all who knew him. He was a towering figure as a historian of a state that suppresses its past, where so many newcomers keep the home of their heart in the Midwest and crow, "There's no history here." He was an irreplaceable counterweight to these toxins. He was a mensch who gave full measure to the term "a gentleman and a scholar."

I first ran across Jack long before, in an appropriate way, pulling one of his books out of the shelves at Flagstaff's sadly lost McGaugh's bookstore and newsstand downtown. This was on a visit, showing my girlfriend my home state with no expectation I would ever live here again. A title caught my eye, Vision in the Desert, by Jack L. August Jr. The book chronicled Carl Hayden's leading role in the long fight for the Central Arizona Project. Susan bought it for me and I read it on the plane as we crossed the country.

My mother had spent a decade working on the Arizona v. California lawsuit and the CAP, mostly for the Arizona Interstate Stream Commission but also for the lead attorneys, Mark Wilmer and Charlie Reed. I knew my water history. One of my dreams was to write a history of Arizona's fight for the Colorado River, especially the outsized personalities, back stories, and intense days-and-nights of work fueled by uppers and booze as David took down Goliath. Vision was impressive and I wondered: Who is this Jack August?

Jon Talton January 23, 201719

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix

Innovation district

The City of Phoenix has smartly engaged Mary Jo Waits to help craft an innovation district plan for downtown. For newcomers, Waits was the driving force behind the Morrison Institute's most consequential reports in the late 1990s and 2000s, especially 2001's Five Shoes Waiting to Drop. It was prophetic. So was her warning that Arizona would become the "Appalachia of the 21st century" if it didn't change course. I collaborated with her in the "meds and eds" strategy to build off TGen, and later did some work for her when she was at the Pew Center on the States. The city could not have chosen a better, more knowledgeable and visionary person.

She asked me to write a case study on the innovation district in South Lake Union, adjacent to downtown Seattle. So this is what follows, with some parting observations for Phoenix.

When I first started coming to Seattle in the early 1990s, the South Lake Union neighborhood was a run-down collection of low-rise commercial buildings and the remnants of industrial structures from when it was laced with railroad tracks. This was once a gritty maritime district — logging, ship repair, canneries — around the south edge of the lake, which was connected to Puget Sound by the ship canal.

Aside from having the headquarters of the Seattle Times, SLU as it became known, had little to recommend it. The area had been wounded in the 1960s when Interstate 5 was rammed through, tearing it apart from Capitol Hill. And blocks of car dealerships, parking lots, and the occasional seedy bar separated it from the downtown core.

In the early 1990s, Seattle Times columnist John Hinterberger suggested turning part of SLU into a large central park, something the city's core lacked since voters had rejected a visionary 1911 civic plan. The 60-acre "civic lawn" would be framed by high-tech companies, condos, and restaurants. The Seattle Commons attracted widespread business support, including from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who was accumulating property there. But the famous "Seattle Process" intervened. Many feared it was a giveaway to Allen. Voters rejected the Commons in 1995 and 1996.

Jon Talton January 18, 201723

Phoenix

In the doldrums

Back in the 2000s, Phoenix was always at or near the top of the Milken Institute's list of best-performing cities. The local-yokel boosters made much of this. In reality, the metric was based on job growth and Phoenix looked pretty good, powered by the housing boom.

What a difference does the housing crash, Great Recession, and better measurements make. A few years ago, Milken retooled its survey. Now Milken uses a wide variety of yardsticks to present a more accurate and comprehensive look at how metropolitan areas are doing. In the new 2016 Best Performing Cities, metro Phoenix comes in at 46th.

Going deeper, Phoenix's five-year job growth ranked 40th; five-year wage and salary growth 63rd; short-term growth 76th; five-year high-tech GDP growth 56th (one-year was 110th); high-tech location quotient 56th, and the number of highly concentrated tech industries 63rd. It's not a pretty picture, especially when we're talking about the sixth-largest city and 13th most populous metropolitan area

At the top were Silicon Valley, Provo-Orem, Utah, Austin, San Francisco and Dallas. Among other Western peers was Seattle No. 10, Denver No. 13, and Portland No. 14. Blue "socialist" California won six of the top 25 spots among major metros. By comparison, Tucson was No. 155. Among small metros, Prescott was No. 33, Flagstaff 81, and Yuma 146. Bend, Ore., led the small metros.

Jon Talton December 28, 201620

Downtown & central Phoenix Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix’s Roaring Twenties

If this photo shows a busy little city from the Roaring Twenties, that's exactly what you found in Phoenix during this transformative decade. Town to city, horses to cars, less Wild West and more sophistication — Phoenix had been moving this way for years. But in the 1920s, they became solidly entrenched — even Town Ditch was covered. The first "skyscraper," the seven-story Heard Building, right, opened in 1920. By the end of the decade, it had several taller and more impressive siblings that remain some of the city's most treasured and beautiful buildings. Central Methodist Church (ME South) on the near right would move to a handsome new structure at Central and Pierce.

The nation entered the decade with Woodrow Wilson as president. But he was incapacitated by a stroke and his wife, Edith, was protecting him from most visitors and essentially carrying out most of his executive duties. America was disillusioned by the outcome of the Great War, the Palmer Raids and the "Red Scare," what was seen as Wilson's overreaching, and two decades of the Progressive Era. Voters (including women, for the first time) eagerly embraced Ohio's Warren G. Harding as the next president. He promised a "return to normalcy," forever wrecking the correct word "normality." Harding freed the Socialist Eugene Debs, who Wilson had imprisoned for opposing American involvement in the war.

The Great War had brought changes to the Salt River Valley, especially with the booming demand for cotton. By 1920, it had turned into a bust and Phoenix was suffering through the national recession. Things would soon turn around as the economy expanded and America embarked on, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, "the greatest, gaudiest spree in history." It was the Jazz Age, with the experiment of Prohibition sidestepped with speakeasies. Prohibition was hardly observed at all in the non-Mormon towns of the West. In Phoenix, bars, borthels, and gambling dens operated in the open, sometimes making payoffs to the city. This wide-open environment soon attracted the Mafia, including Al Capone.

The Phoenix of the 1920s was expanding out of the half-mile footprint of the original township. In the previous decade, the city had surpassed Tucson to become the most populous place in Arizona. With more than 29,000 people in 1920, Phoenix would grow nearly 66 percent over the next 10 years. Residential neighborhoods expanded a half mile north of McDowell, west of the Santa Fe tracks at 19th Avenue, and east as far as 16th Street. These were gradually incorporated into the city limits, which expanded from five square miles in 1920 to 6.5 square miles a decade later.

The mansions of "Millionaire's Row" still graced Monroe Street, but the central business district was moving north. Elegant bungalows lined the streets north of Van Buren into the fancy new Kenilworth District north of Roosevelt Street and eventually the Period Revival neighborhoods just beyond McDowell, including Palmcroft. Many of these were reachable by the streetcars.

Jon Talton December 19, 201611

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Trump and Arizona

Ah, I remember those palmy days when Hillary was going to win Arizona, when Donald Trump's vicious attacks on Mexicans would awaken the sleeping giant of the Hispanic vote. I was skeptical and shamed for that thoughtcrime on Facebook (from which I am taking a holiday).

Reality shows that Trump won 49.5 percent of the vote in Arizona vs. 45.4 percent for Clinton. She won only four counties (Apache, Coconino, Pima, and Santa Cruz). Significantly, Trump carried Maricopa County, the state's most populous and, after its fashion, urbanized. Trump won nearly 6 percent fewer votes here compared with Mitt Romney in 2012, but metro Phoenix was one of very few major metropolitan areas that went plurality red. Most went resoundingly majority blue. The New Confederacy is solidly anchored in Arizona.

Now it's time to pay the piper. Will America merely come to be more like Arizona over the next four, eight, or unlimited number of years? No the consequences will be more serious and disastrous than most can imagine, certainly not those living in Brightsideistan. So, some early looks at Arizona vulnerabilities:

• The Affordable Care Act. Trump and, especially, the Republican Congress have vowed to repeal Obamacare without an immediate replacement. Arizona was one of the few red states to take part. As a result, nearly 180,000 Arizonans were covered by the ACA in 2016. If repeal happens, they will have no health insurance.

• Universities. If Trump carries out his consistent campaign promises to severely curtail immigration and slap big tariffs on Chinese goods, the results could be catastrophic for Arizona universities. Thousands of foreign students could stop coming here, with the loss of tens of millions of dollars in tuition. In addition, austerity from the GOP Congress has been hurting research funding for universities. Only President Obama has kept university R&D money coming. With Republicans completely in control, universities — already starved of state funding — could see a huge loss of money from Washington.

Jon Talton December 7, 201669

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Air conditioning and Phoenix

The first air-conditioned building in Phoenix was the Hotel Westward Ho, in 1929.

The common narrative is that Phoenix's spectacular growth was made possible by air conditioning. But that's only partly true.

Some of the hottest places in America held big cities in 1930, when air-conditioning units were large and expensive, confined to the largest buildings with money to spend. Among them were New Orleans (458,762), Dallas (269,475) Houston (292,352), and Atlanta (270,366). These cities suffered not only very hot, but also humid, summers. Phoenix, by contrast, had a population of only a little more than 48,000 that year. Even El Paso, the city that Phoenix leaders aspired to surpass as the business capital of the Southwest, held 102,421 people.

Before the beginning of the great post-war migration to the yet-to-be-named Sunbelt, the Intermountain West was lightly populated and a magical place unknown to most Americans outside of movies. The entire state of Arizona had a population of fewer than 436,000. The Intermountain West population was about 3.7 million out of a total U.S. population of 123 million. In other words, those seven states had fewer people than today's metropolitan Phoenix.

The great impediment to Phoenix's growth was not as much heat — note the cities above — as isolation. Cut off from the east and north by nearly impenetrable mountains, and from the west by forbidding desert, Phoenix was far from natural routes of commerce or travel. This began to change as branch lines of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads reached the emerging agricultural empire of the Salt River Valley in the late 19th century (the railroads' main lines had been built through northern and southern Arizona). This changed dramatically with the completion of SP northern main line through the city in 1926. Along with new highways, this forever broke through Phoenix's seclusion.

Jon Talton November 21, 201652

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Brewer tells the truth

The national progressive echo chamber had quite a fit last week when former Gov. Jan Brewer brushed off the suggestion that Hispanics would cause Hillary Clinton to win Arizona. "Nah," she told the Boston Globe, "They don't get out and vote. They don't vote." The thought police pounced, condemnations flooded Facebook, and a Twitter lynch mob gathered at such a racist statement.

But she told the truth. Rare for her, perhaps unprecedented, but accurate for once.

Hispanics made up 30 percent of the population of Maricopa County in 2014, compared with only 16 percent in 1990. Yet in that critical election, their voter participation rate was in the single digits. And it can't be explained away by saying that low-income people vote less. The low-income Anglos vote religiously and conservatively.

Brewer, an accidental governor when St. Janet read the future and decamped for D.C. and then California, did much to help ensure this. As Secretary of State, charged with overseeing elections, she was also chair of the state Bush re-election committee in 2004. I'm sure polling locations were abundant and well handled in majority Latino precincts. Then, running on her own, she defeated the eminently better-qualified Terry Goddard on the strength of her backing the anti-immigrant SB 1070.

As I have written before, SB 1070 had little to do with illegal immigration and everything to do with ginning up the old Midwestern-immigrant Anglo GOP base and intimidating Mexican-American citizens. And one of the dirty secrets was that not a few older Mexican-Americans, who had seen their neighborhoods, schools, and culture most destabilized by the wave of illegals in the 2000s, quietly supported the bill, too.

But the problem of low Hispanic turnout predates the embarrassing, finger-in-the-face-of-the-president Jan Brewer, a woman who would drive down the class level of the trashiest trailer park.

Jon Talton October 24, 201663