Tilting against giants

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Mary Fan

Consider Alan White. He is running for Arizona governor. You may know his opponents: Republican Gov. Jane Hull and Democrat Paul Johnson whose attacks and counterattacks play and play again during costly prime-time commercial breaks and TV and newsprint event coverage.

But you probably don't know Alan White. He's an independent - an official write-in candidate. He's spent a couple hundred on his campaign. His own money. His number is listed in the Arizona League of Women Voters' smart voters' guide. His home number. No campaign manager. No party fund-raising engines. No office headquarters.

Just a very enthused man on the phone - yes the candidate calls back himself - and his 1-year-old gurgling in the background. His son talking with a 3-year-old's bell-like voice, the ice cream truck twinkling in the background.

"Parties are basically just political employment services," he says. "We've been taught that you need to belong to a party to be elected.

"But you don't have to be that way," he adds.

You just don't get the money, you just don't get the air-time.

"I knew the odds would be against me," he says. "Reality, if I lose I've got a lot of other things to do. People like to consider us as fringe candidates, not worth mentioning. They say, 'They have no chance in hell and so what's the point?'

"But it's not improbable for me to win."

His just one of several names you don't hear as election time draws near.

In the hotly contested District 5 Congressional race in our own backyard, for example, we've all heard of Republican incumbent Jim Kolbe. We've all heard of his challenger, UA professor and Democrat Tom Volgy.

We know they disagree on just about everything. We know Tom Volgy paints Kolbe as the congressman who's spent too much time stewing in the special interest quagmire of Washington, D.C. We all know Kolbe thinks Tom Volgy the Ivory Tower professor whose progressive reforms will wither under the harsh ray of reality.

We could even draw crude caricatures of the two if asked.

But do we know of the two other names next to the big two on the ballot? Do we know of Reform Party candidate Robert Connery Sr, do we know of Libertarian Party candidate Phil Murphy?

How are we to? Pima County has 159,327 registered Republicans, almost matched by 159,108 Democrats. Libertarian Party registered voters number only 4,047. Reform Party registered voters number only 117.

Think of this in terms of money multiplied. Think of this in terms of weight when it comes to news coverage.

Think of the odds.

Libertarian candidate Murphy ran in 1994 as his party replacement candidate. He ran on $2,300 and two dozen T-shirts and he lost. He received less than 9,000 votes.

"It was pretty bad," he says.

Think of the raw confidence and hope.

Murphy, who has multiple sclerosis, a condition aggravated by stress and heat, two things that accompany hard campaigning is campaigning hard again.

"I was perceived as the drunken Irish brawler," he jokes. "I'm an idiot and I'm a political hack and I live in Tucson."

He's also raised more than $12,000 and is launching a media blitz this weekend of 500 television commercials. He's also made the cover of Tucson Weekly. A mark of how far he's come since 1994. "The Weekly who wouldn't even give you the time of day before is now being nice to you."

Yes, there are odds. No, this third-party candidate is not bending to them.

"I am not in this to go out and fall on my sword," Murphy says.

Cervantes is smiling. Quixote lives again.

They may not win. It may or may not be in our best interests for them to win.

But in an arena crusted over with justified cynicism bred by entrenched party systems, jaded expectations and proscribed courses of political maneuvering, how romantic.

How necessary.

Mary Fan is a journalism and molecular and cellular biology senior and perspectives editor of the Arizona Daily Wildcat. She can be reached via e-mail at Mary.Fan@wildcat.arizona.edu.