Interview with Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano

On Sunday afternoon, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano stumped for the Obama campaign as part of an economic town hall sponsored by the UNR Students for Obama. State Treasurer Kate Marshall summarized the state of the current state budget and then introduced Napolitano to a small crowd in the theater of the new Joe Crowley Student Union. You can see why Napolitano was on the short list as a possible vice presidential pick for both John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. She is a pragmatic, no nonsense kind of politician who, as a two-term Democratic governor in a conservative state, has successfully worked with state Republicans to enact downright progressive policies on education, health care, and the environment even as they call her “Governor No” because of her numerous vetoes. For more about the career of Napolitano, read The American Prospect’s profile from July. Besides being a award-winning two-term governor, Napolitano served as Anita Hill’s attorney in 1991, was appointed as a U.S. Attorney, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and is a breast cancer survivor. What’s not to admire?

I was lucky enough to get a short one-on-one interview with Governor Napolitano before the town hall which I’ve transcribed below.

On the recent Department of Justice report concluding that the White House engineered the U.S. Attorney firings:

JN: “I haven’t read the whole report, although I have read the executive summary which is the last chapter of the report. I think it is appalling that decisions where made about US attorneys, not based on performance, but based on purely extraneous material, political pressure and the like, and I couldn’t help but contrast it with Janet Reno. I was a U.S. Attorney under Janet Reno and if she got wind that the White House or someone in Congress was trying to call about a case, exerting pressure about a case, she was on it immediately to protect the U.S. Attorneys working on a case. In other words, she understood that, yeah, a U.S. Attorney is a presidential appointment, a political appointment, but once you’re in that job it’s a very different type of job and you have to be so rigorously non-partisan. It looks like Attorney General Gonzales was not a wall between the White House and the U.S. Attorneys, but a funnel.”

MTM: From the reports, it seems as if he wasn’t “there.”

JN: “He says he wasnt there, but he was there in an October meeting where he signed off on things but he doesn’t remember. Well, if he doesn’t remember, he’s the head of the department. These are your presidential appointees, these are your lead prosecutors throughout the United States of America. The Attorney General of the United States not knowing what’s going on? Not acceptable. Not acceptable performance.”

MTM: I really wanted to get your perspective on that report as a former U.S. Attorney.

JN: “Plus, we lost one of ours (Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton)”

MTM; “We did too.” (Daniel Bogden)

JN: “He was a good guy, a good prosecutor. He actually worked for me as an assistant U.S. Attorney, a very good lawyer, and it turns out that he was probably fired because he disagreed with them about a death penalty case.”

On the Western Majority Project:

JN: It’s a coalition of western governors and senators; Senator Reid, myself, Governor Richardson just to give you a few examples. It’s designed to look at western issues that often don’t get comments in a national campaign, and also to help establish our presence beyond any one of us as an individual.

On Sarah Palin’s as McCain’s running mate:

“I’m opposing Palin’s candidacy, not because she’s a woman, but because she’s running with John McCain. John McCain shouldn’t be the president of the United States. I support Barack Obama and she’s there to support the candidate who I believe will not support a lot of issues that really effect a lot of women: equal pay for equal work, children’s health insurance, childcare, Head Start, you name it, he has a terrible track record. That’s why I oppose Sarah Palin. She’s on the wrong ticket”

On the advantages western states may find in the Obama economic policy:

JN: “Western states are young, growing states with young, growing economies. They’re perfect for Obama. He has a great plan for small business, exempting them from capital gains tax for example. He has a great plan for energy and investing in green energy and energy jobs which would just be wonderful for this region of the country. And so his economic plan to me fits well into where our region is in terms of our economic history.

Here’s the unedited video of Janet Napolitano on Sarah Palin:

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