I apologize for stating the blatantly obvious but today, jobs are the number 1 priority for all Americans, but especially Arizonan’s.  Since the beginning of the recession, our state has bled a larger portion of our jobs (9.9 percent loss) than any other state in the country, a tragic honor.  That is 305,000 livelihoods lost by our families, friends and neighbors since December 2007.  And that doesn’t even count people who have taken wage cuts, part-time work and lower-paying jobs.  Those of us fortunate enough to have an income see the despair in these real faces every day.  I say this with great remorse as it touches everyone in some fashion but decimates a lot of good people and families.  So, how is our history of conventional Arizona working out for us today?

Why do we find ourselves in this tragic position?  It can be attributed to our historic live-for-today frontier mentality coupled with our historic over-reliance on growth which made a lot of money for a few people.  But that is a subject for another page.  We are where we are.  There is no purpose in focusing backward except to ensure that we don’t repeat the mistaken strategy of the past, again.

I take great delight that several new groups of forward-focused civic leaders and positive-minded experts are stepping forward with brilliant plans to crush the mold of the past and rebuild the Arizona economy from the ground up.  They have put their outlines in writing and are well published.  Any reader will recognize that these long-term templates for the future will work superbly.  There is just one problem.  The political establishment will not abandon the special interests that benefit from business as usual.  Plans for a successful future are destined to sit on the shelf while current partisan politicians are at the wheel.  The two choices are simple.    The voters can choose to stick with the power bases that have put us in this position and will do so again and again.  Or, they will vote for an Arizona Renaissance that will be ushered in by a new generation of un-obligated leadership that will rally our most brilliant minds (that are standing by waiting for the green light) for an outside-the-box leap forward into a prosperous future.  In November, we will choose between those two options.

Under this candidate’s leadership, we will step with two feet at once.  The left foot will address the immediate employment crisis and the right will execute the long-term strategy for perpetual prosperity. 

The present crisis  -  STOP THE BLEEDING.  We can not continue loosing jobs, although we are projected to do so through at least 2010.  Present employers, particularly high-paying ones are the State’s partners.  We better start paying very close attention to how we can make life easy for our partners for our mutual success.  That does not include handing them a check.  However, it may include providing job-specific classes at a community college, fast-tracking permits, eliminating red tape, and a multitude of other accommodations.  We can no longer sit by passively and wave to these employers as they drive out of Arizona.  The State must have a team of industry-retention professionals that are constantly asking high-paying employers how we can make life easy enough that they will continue paying high wages to Arizona citizens.  Let me make a weak analogy to the hospitality industry.  If a guest is visiting one of our five-star resorts, they are inundated with offers to park the car, clean the golf clubs, carry the bags, fetch drinks, etc.  What ever it takes to make that customer want to come back again and feel good about spending money, a lot of money.  Today, we need to make sure that our present employers feel appreciated and are ecstatic about paying high wages to a lot of our citizens.  This candidate does not condone gifts of cash, rebates, or the like to lure employers to the state by offering bribes, particularly when it results in a bidding war between cities within Arizona.   Rather, we will create a climate that makes employers want to be here.  In that regard, the data on business exodus proves that Arizona is presently the largest job-retention failure among all 50 states.

For the State as a whole to be prosperous and for the citizens to enjoy a high quality of life, we must be able to afford the services that the citizens ask the State to provide.  Unfortunately, that requires a corresponding level of the bad word, taxes.  At risk of offending someone with political incorrectness, the cold fact is that people being paid low wages are not in a position to pay substantial taxes.  But the larger burden of operating the state thus falls on employees that are paid higher wages.  According the State’s currently published data, the Federal Adjusted Gross Income of 65.59 percent of the citizens is less than $50,000 per year.  Those 65.59 percent of the citizens contribute 12.85 percent of the state income tax liability.  Also, intuitively, employees earning higher wages make more purchases, thus generating more sales tax revenue.  For the benefit of all, we want our current citizens to be employed in high-paying not low-paying jobs.

Though the Phoenix metropolitan area ranks the fifth largest in the country by population, it ranks 54th in high-tech GDP.  Meanwhile, the State of Arizona ranks dead last in the nation for job growth.  Folks, this isn’t working!  The self-destructive history of Arizona is that this state has always attracted low-wage employers.  Though I offend the beneficiaries of such industries, we must stop trying to attract low-wage jobs.  For obvious reasons, this has reduced the standard of living for all Arizona citizens in good times and has been catastrophic in bad economic times like the present. 

The long-range strategy for prosperity has to be focused on attracting high-wage employers.  As many of our forward thinkers have exhaustively told us, such a strategy includes an education system that provides highly-educated and properly-educated residents for a hiring pool.  It also includes a renaissance state government that streamlines logistics and thus enables the employer to be more profitable here than somewhere else.  The State and high-paying employers must coexist in a mutually-beneficial partnership.  Such a relationship is not uncharted territory in Arizona as the City of Chandler has been a pioneer in this type of business development. 

In the 1970’s, Chandler set aside a large tract of land known as the Price Corridor which became a campus of semiconductor and high-tech industries.  The City then provided utility hookups, streamlined permitting and whatever other strategic assistance that would make the campus an easy location decision for the targeted high-paying industries.  It then fought the insistence by developers that homes be built within the corridor.  This pioneer of business incubation continues delivering lucrative results to the residents of Chandler today.  Mesa and Surprise are developing similar “business accelerators” today but where is the State?  As your Governor, if a CEO wants to bring high-paying jobs to Arizona, he/she and I are going to be sending a lot of time together. 

Perhaps the best all-time model of success is Research Triangle, a project begun by the State of North Carolina.  At that time, wages in the State were about 40% below the national average.  The State created the non-profit Research Triangle Foundation on a 7000-acre campus.  The goal was “to encourage and promote the establishment of industrial research laboratories” which then partnered with research facilities at the local universities.  Today, that campus is home to 170 leading-edge companies employing 42,000 high-wage citizens.  What do we do to recruit such industries other than send a brochure of a saguaro cactus and beautiful sunset?

Just as a broker recommends that you diversify your investment portfolio in case one industry turns sour, the same is true of the portfolio of industries in Arizona.  Historically, we have grossly over-relied on the home construction industry.  How is that over-dependence that our prior leaders and their power backers perpetuated working out for us today?  Even the semi-conductor industry that we are over-dependant on has dramatic swings that periodically burn our employment base.  In the future, it is essential for sustainability that we design our employer portfolio with diversity to smooth out the industry-specific business cycles.

This country was founded on individualism and freedom.  Free for a single creative person with initiative to build and sell a better mousetrap.  This entrepreneurial spirit has enabled this country to lead the world in innovation that has generated our economic superiority and bestowed great benefits to all of mankind for over a century.  While we cherish large business, it is the small businesses that can quickly blossom with advancements that grow high-wage jobs exponentially.  Recognizing the potential of these small businesses to yield great rewards for the State, we must create a world-leading incubator.  That means providing a physical, intellectual and logistical environment that will enable such firms to explode with success.  I am not speaking of giving grants to someone that wants to open a restaurant and hire low-wage employees.  We need firms that can take an idea and rapidly sell it around the world in leading-edge applications.  I propose creating an incubator campus environment with every State resource serving to remove obstacles and fuel fast-track achievement.  Not just focusing on one discipline such as biotechnology, we must enable lines of opportunity in all directions.  The intellectual resources of our universities will be channeled to the effort as partnered enablers.  We must think young with the stars as the limit. 

Perpetual prosperity for the future   Perhaps Rome wasn’t created in a day but creating a prosperous economy can’t wait for very many days.  Unfortunately this involves long-term strategic planning and methodical execution.  Notice, I did not say bureaucracy.  We have the brilliant minds ready and waiting with plans already in hand.  Immediately after my election, a grand assembly of the new generation of forward thinkers will convene.  Within a month of my inauguration, the road map to economic excellence will be in front of the legislature for enactment.  Meanwhile, as we say in the non-bureaucratic private sector, we are burning daylight.

A fair question at this point would be, “How will you get any movement on any topic, especially this one, from a partisan legislature with a proven record of paralysis?”  Being non-partisan and with no obligation to special interests, I am in a unique position to be a unifier of all parties.  In fact, my staff will be a team of the brightest minds, greatest ambition and outside-the-box thinkers that can be attracted without regard to party affiliation.  But let me be unmistakably clear, I have no interest in assembling a group of so-called tsars that will formulate my agenda in the back room and jam it down the publics throat.  I most clearly understand and respect the limits of constitutional power and the concept of separation of power.  The Governor’s does not have constitutional powers to enact policy.  Rather, the Governor and the Legislature, though distinctly separate, are true partners in the business of State.  That said, the Governor is obligated to provide strong but sensitive and respectful leadership that will unify the Legislature and cause all parties to move forward in unison.  I am not naive enough to believe that all matters of State will have unanimous support among Legislators.  After all, debate and dissent are foundations of the demographic process.  Skilled leadership by the Governor in unison with Legislative leadership will create the environment for fruitful progress.