Election results for local offices in the City of Tucson and the surrounding Pima County show that metro Tucson is now bluer than ever, even as blue as Berkeley, Ca., but without Berkeley’s money.
Revised lyrics to Bobby Vinton’s hit song are in order, as follows:
Blue on blue, heartache on heartache
Blue on blue, now that Tucson is through
Blue on blue, heartache on heartache
And I find I can’t get over losing you.
Don’t take the above as a partisan lament. After all, this independent has voted for Democrats at times. Moreover, there are some Democrat municipalities that have widespread prosperity, a high-wage economy, exceptional schools, low crime, visionary government, a good transportation network, and roads that are nicely paved and beautified.
Sadly, Tucson isn’t one of them and, with the election results, probably never will be. That explains the word “through” in the revised lyrics. “Doomed” would have been a better word, but it doesn’t rhyme with “you.”
The problem isn’t necessarily that Tucson is so Democrat. Rather, the problem is that it has been under the control of one party for decades. Whether in business or politics, monopolies eventually self-destruct through hubris, arrogance, denial, and in-breeding.
The antidote is competition. But political competition is thwarted in metro Tucson by the city’s founding charter, by the left-liberal influence of the Tucson-based University of Arizona, by demographics that I won’t describe for fear of being misconstrued, by so much of the local economy being dependent on government money, and by so much of the metropolis being an unincorporated county, a jurisdiction that is headed by politicians and administrators who are joined at the hip politically and ideologically with their counterparts in the city.
Together, the City of Tucson and the unincorporated county comprise nearly 90 percent of metro Tucson’s nearly 1.1 million population.
The political situation—and the economic results—are quite different two hours up the interstate in metro Phoenix, where competition abounds between its 28 municipalities and its population of 4.5 million people. The competition is constructively channeled, however, by the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), which ensures cooperation and funding between jurisdictions on transportation improvements and other matters.
By contrast, metro Tucson’s Regional Transportation Authority can’t get its act together and is a half-century behind MAG.
Amazingly, the majority of Tucsonans don’t have either heartache or heartburn over any of this. They’re delighted that Tucson is not only blue but now also blue on blue.
Mr. Cantoni can be reached at [email protected].