http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...insider04.html
AZ Senator Blames New Orleans For Hurricane, Doesn't Think Feds Should Help
Sept. 4, 2005 12:00 AM
Political Insider is a tongue-in-cheek look at the past week in Arizona politics.
Those sensitive bleeding hearts over at KFYI-AM (550), the Valley's popular conservative-dominated talk station, showed on Wednesday morning how much Arizona really cares about the people of New Orleans.
Talk show host Barry Young was on the air with U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl talking about the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina about the exact moment the Big Easy was drowning under 20 feet of water. Young was in favor of a strong national response to help the disaster-stricken area, but many of his listeners were not, sending him e-mails questioning whether it was the government's and the rest of the nation's responsibility to clean up the area and rebuild the city.
Young was calling those e-mailers "wacky," but Kyl, surprisingly, took a different position. Or, to put it mildly, he did not wholeheartedly agree. Here's an audio clip provided by the station:
"Barry Young: I'm taking a pretty liberal course on this. I'm thinking it's everyone's responsibility to do this. I think every government asset we have needs to go into it somehow.
I don't know, how big is New Orleans? . . .
Kyl: I heard it was the 35th-largest city.
Young: That's a big place.
Kyl: But they built it a lot under sea level.
Young: But that's not new though, this goes back hundreds of years. In fact they say the first people who lived there lived there 10,000 years ago. Now, it flooded 10,000 years ago, but the engineering was there back in French colonization days to pump it out and clean it up.
Kyl: It's a great question, Barry. You need to explore it. Because the question is if people know year after year after year a natural disaster occurs in a particular place and people continue to build there and want to live there, should they bear the responsibility of buying insurance or should everyone else bear the responsibility? Good question. I think you ought to ask your audience.
Young: Then there comes the question of let's say we put it all on them to buy their own insurance and let's say the insurance people take a look at them and say you're nuts. We're not going to sell insurance there. You know why? It floods there.
Kyl: Right. And that's kinda what happens and that's why the federal government does come in and pick up a lot of the tab.
Apparently GOP Chairman Matt Salmon wasn't tuning in. He put out an e-mail alert to the party faithful later that afternoon with details on how to contribute to the Red Cross and other relief agencies.
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Forget the fake punt, we're running straight up the middle . . . The e-mail came our way late one night this week. In big, bold, red letters, it read: "Join Us For an Exciting Announcement About Arizona's 2006 U.S. Senate Race. It's time for Arizona to have a Senator who speaks for all of us."
Were the Democrats trying to recruit GOP maverick John McCain to switch parties and run against Sen. Jon Kyl?
OK, our interest was piqued. This has to be a mistake, right? Arizona Democrats couldn't be this transparent. This had to be a bait and switch. They couldn't be telegraphing their playbook a week early, could they? Don't they want to catch the GOP off guard when former party boss Jim Pederson ends the worst-kept secret in politics and finally announces his Senate run against Kyl?
We scrolled down. The announcement happens this Wednesday at the Casa Grande City Hall. Hmmm, Pederson is from Casa Grande. It doesn't take Columbo to figure out this one.
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