The League of Women Voters hosted a debate on Thursday, Sept. 29, between Republican Ken Bennett and Democrat Mike Fogel, the candidates for Arizona State Senate in Legislative District 1.
The debate at the Verde Campus of Yavapai College was moderated by Clarkdale Mayor Robyn Prud’homme-Bauer.
Bennett broke the ice before the debate when he exchanged remarks in Japanese with a guest from the Japanese embassy, prompting a member of the audience to remark, “We know where he did his mission!”
Bennett is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and was raised in Prescott. He served four years on the Prescott City Council, eight years in the state senate, and six years as Arizona secretary of state.
Fogel identified himself as a “citizen candidate” and a lifelong activist who has been walking picket lines since he was a boy. A career educator, he has served as a high school teacher, basketball coach, assistant principal, principal and school board member.
Education
Both candidates chose to focus on education funding for much of the debate.
Bennett and Fogel both favor suspension or repeal of the aggregate expenditure limit, which restricts how much K-12 schools can spend in a year.
“There’s no use appropriating money in the general fund and then not allowing the school districts to spend it,” Bennett said.
Fogel placed the greatest emphasis on an overall lack of funding for public education, noting that Arizona ranks last in the nation for the percentage of GDP that it spends on K-12 education and that Chino Valley is in the bottom 5% of the state for school funding. He repeatedly emphasized that the only way to improve education in Arizona is to increase per-pupil funding, which will enable increased teacher salaries and smaller classroom sizes.
“We’re still at the bottom of per-pupil funding in the nation, which means we’re not competitive,” Fogel said.
With more people moving into the state, he argued, overall increases in the state’s education budget are “meaningless” because the per-pupil funding does not increase in that situation. He referred to a “systematic defunding of Arizona’s public education” attributable to structural deficits created by Republican legislatures that have funded education “irresponsibly” for 30 years, particularly in Yavapai County.
Fogel also claimed that Arizona schools have never recovered from the post-Great Recession budget cuts of 2009-10.
Bennett concurred with Fogel on the need for increased per-pupil funding — although Fogel kept saying that “Ken keeps avoiding the per-pupil funding factor” — and increased pay for teachers.
However, he attributed these issues to mismanagement rather than lack of funds.
“We must use the money that we have better,” Bennett said.
He pointed out that with average per-pupil funding at more than $13,000 per year, given a classroom size of 25 students, each school should be receiving at least $325,000 per classroom — but the average teacher’s salary is just over $55,000.
To remedy the problem, Bennett proposed that schools implement priority-based budgeting with teacher salaries as their first priority, only allocating funds to other areas after teachers have been paid adequately. He also stated that more funding should go to districts that are currently underfunded to close the gap, perhaps $2 for every $1 that better-funded districts receive.
The two likewise differed sharply on school vouchers.
“Where a parent wants to send their child, I think a significant chunk of that funding should follow that decision,” Bennett said.
Fogel disagreed vigorously: “Corruption is at the heart of the school choice program … The monies that are flowing to for-profit charter schools are not accounted for … and it turns out we taxpayers are being ripped off. For-profit charter schools are simply wrong.”
Water Policy
Water management policy ran a close second to education in importance for both Bennett and Fogel.
Fogel stressed that Arizona’s water resources are in crisis, described the Verde River as “dying,” and stated that one of his legislative priorities would be enabling the Arizona Department of Water Resources to monitor the amount of water being taken out of large wells.
“We can only manage what it is we measure,” he said, pointing out that only 13% of the state’s area is currently being monitored for water use. Bennett observed that this 13% of area includes 85% of Arizona’s population.
In addition to better monitoring, Fogel called for modernization of the Groundwater Management Act of 1980, more effective incentives and penalties for recharging or not recharging water sources, and a focus on water-neutral development, using rainwater collection and wastewater treatment to permit continued development and construction without affecting groundwater levels.
He declared that augmenting local water supplies with out-of-state resources would not be economically feasible in his audience’s lifetimes.
While Bennett disagreed with Fogel’s description of the Verde River, he expressed support for water-neutral development in addition to importing water from other states. He predicted substantial savings in water use if the federal government were to manage forests at a rate of 30 to 40 trees per acre rather than 300 to 1,000, and if the number of septic systems in use could be reduced.
Bennett expressed confidence that the Prescott water management area can reach “safe yield,” or break-even between use and replenishment, within the next five to ten years.
“We’re not close to safe yield and we’ll never have it in the next five years unless we take drastic measures,” Fogel countered.
Election Security
On election security, both candidates agreed that the electoral process in Arizona generally works well, but also that it could be improved by abolishing the secret ballot.
Bennett proposed that counties be required to disclose four pieces of data related to elections: A list of all registered voters by name and address before the election, a list of who voted after the election, the images of the ballots scanned by voting machines that could be compared with those lists, and finally the tabulation spreadsheet of all votes.
He also suggested that mail-in ballots not be counted until they can be confirmed by phone.
Fogel agreed that the legislature should enact Bennett’s disclosure program “to ensure confidence,” but added that the only reason such a remedy is necessary is due to baseless allegations of fraud by Republicans.
“This is disruptive to the democratic process and our democratic republic,” he said. “The exhausted majority of people that I have been canvassing with and talking to are tired of this, and it needs to go away. And the only way that’s going to happen is to make sure that we vote for Democrats up and down the ballot.”
The two briefly sparred over the advisability of election audits, with Fogel criticizing the state for having spent $9 million on a third Maricopa County audit of 2020 presidential election ballots in 2021 “that became a joke in the United States.”
Bennett served as the Arizona State Senate official liaison to the Maricopa County auditors.
Bennett reminded the audience that the secretary of state’s office does not have the power to audit county elections, and commented that if an election comes down to a difference that is proportional to two votes out of 800, “what’s wrong with an audit?”
Criminal Justice Reform
Bennett and Fogel found additional common ground when discussing criminal justice reform.
Fogel proposed increased educational programs in prisons, while Bennett referred to mentorship for first offenders.
Both identified economic suffering as the main cause of increased crime rates.
For Fogel, however, the primary sources of this economic suffering are an economy not adapted to the needs of the working class and poorly-constructed state tax policies.
If the economy is working for all people, he said, “we’re going to see crime reduced.”
For Bennett, economic suffering is primarily the result of poor national policy choices, such as inflation and pipeline cancellation, although a lack of opportunities for career and technical education in society also contribute to it.
“We have to reinforce to our young people that there are consequences to their actions,” Bennett said. “If they break the law, they will be punished,” a declaration with which Fogel tacitly agreed.
Abortion
Both candidates expressed standard positions on abortion.
Bennett acknowledged that abortion should be permitted in cases of rape or incest, provided that the offense is immediately reported so it can be prosecuted, but otherwise “life is sacred … once a life is created, I think we need to protect that life unless we need to save another …. Abortion shouldn’t be used as birth control.”
“Banning abortion in any shape or form is government overreach,” Fogel countered. “Government shouldn’t be in the business of taking away individual rights … We just need to leave … that private decision up to the mother … and whatever relationship that person has with her creator.”
He also advocated for vasectomies as the most effective form of birth control: “That procedure would prevent a lot of abortions.”
Energy Policy
On energy policy, Bennett declared himself willing to consider all possible sources of energy, including clean coal, nuclear, and natural gas, “and not politically pick and choose winners and losers because of different political agendas.”
He pointed to California as an example of the risks of dependence on renewable energy, claiming that the state experiences about 21,000 instances of brownouts per year, each with a cost of about $1.5 million to the economy.
Fogel similarly supported a balanced approach, but stressed that Arizona needs to have “better utilization” of its abundant solar resources, as only 9.2% of the state’s energy currently comes from solar. He suggested providing incentives to public schools to install solar panels and noted that it would be necessary to transition away from fossil fuels.
At the conclusion of the debate, Fogel thanked Bennet for the opportunity, calling it “a bucket list item” to debate someone of his stature.
“Never dreamed I was on somebody’s bucket list,” Bennett joked, drawing a final laugh from the crowd.
