And Away She Goes

For a great many Arizonans there was but one silver lining to Barack Obama's stunning victory over John McCain last November: The new president took our Democratic governor with him to the White House.

Janet Napolitano had no problem getting elected, or re-elected, governor despite a clear advantage for Republicans in voter registration numbers in Arizona. It must have been those pesky Independents who turned the tide for her (twice).

While she did not govern as a liberal in the classic sense, she was still a Democrat, and her sheer presence in office was enough to curb the most rabid of conservative sensibilities in the state legislature. There was a tacit understanding that Janet's pro-business stance insulated her from becoming a target for the usual ideological attacks. Some on the left considered it a flaw, actually.

Now she serves as our nation's third Secretary of Homeland Security. One of her first acts as a federal employee was to issue a report saying, in a nutshell, that right-wing militant groups were growing in number and that violence was a likely prospect for our future. Republicans across the dial went ballistic.

They accused Napolitano of trying to "chill" freedom of expression and whatnot. They took umbrage with the perceived stereotype of the GOP as a bastion for Klansmen and the like... And then came the killing of a Wichita abortion doctor - while he was in church - followed by a deadly armed rampage at the Holocaust Museum in D.C., heinous crimes committed by conservative extremists.

Napolitano's prescience will be missed by all Arizona voters, and if she can keep her head above water, her blinders-off method of dealing with reality will serve the nation well. She certainly takes the notion of homeland security more seriously than either of her predecessors.

Her gubernatorial substitute, Jan Brewer, has already tilted the lance against her own Party with a couple of tax increases - something Janet studiously avoided. More recently, she had to file a lawsuit against the legislature for failing to forward to her the latest budget, in accordance with the state Constitution.

Brewer already seems tired of the gamesmanship that always goes on in Arizona (it seems we just don't pay our lawmakers enough) and isn't likely to run for office in 2010. Nobody knows what sort of fruit will be borne by the next electoral season. We have before us a blank canvas, a terrifying thing in any red state, to be sure.

As for Napolitano, she's already used to the potshots, and won't have the time to deal with such trivia anyhow. She'll be lucky if she can even get around to reforming our color-coded terror alert system. Hurricane season's just around the corner.

pH 6.18.o9