Blog For Arizona

Grijalva Endorsement Press Roundup

New of Rep. Raul Grijalva's endorsement of Howard Dean for President has made a considerable splash. I think we can look at this as another turning point in Dean's Arizona campaign. From here on out Dean is no longer an insurgent in Arizona; he emerges now as a top tier contender. Look for him to roll up more and more official support now that Grijalva and Volgy has expressed their confidence in him. From here on the campaign's momentum is established, and guiding it, not getting it moving, will be the challenge for we organizers.

Dean's official blog gives mention to the event. The comments from the blog include a large number of Arizonans for Dean and are worth reading. The Tucson Citizen ran two stories, one by C.T. Revere and one by an AP stringer focusing on Dean's speech. The Arizona Daily Star ran a feature story by C. J. Karamargin. The Phoenix Business Journal picked up the story of the endorsement but focused on the story of Lieberman's now defunct RV trip, noting that Lieberman would not himself be on the tour. Rather Arizona House Minority Leader John Loredo and Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox would serve as proxies on the tour.

The Arizona Republic ran a piece based on a phone interview with Dean. Besides the Grijalva endorsement, the story features an announcement of the hiring of Frank Costanzo as Arizona campaign manager ( Congrats Frank, now that you have a salary we're all gonna bug you to take us out for drinks and dinner! ) and a statement of funds raised from Arizona so far.

"As of June 30, Dean had raised about $105,000 in Arizona from more than 1,300 contributors."

These numbers continue the pattern of large numbers of small contributors, in this case about 80 dollars per donor on average, whose money is eligible for Federal matching funds.

Many of the news channels covered the event, the best of the coverage being provided live by channel 4, with brief pieces throughout the rest of the day and evening. Unfortunately local news stations have notoriously lousy web sites. Here are the few that have online coverage (though none have streaming video); Channel 4, and Channel 11.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 8/19/2003 12:50:00 PM