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On the Trail

Stump Series  Pagan & Lujan
Professor Eduardo Pagan (left), ASU's Bob Stump Endowed Professor of History and a host of the PBS Series "History Detectives" led the first of the Bob Stump Dialogue Series with State Representative David Lujan. The series honors the memory of of one of Arizona's US Representatives, Robert "Bob" Stump who served in the congress from 1976 until his retirement in 2002. The dialogue is a series of open ended questions about leadership followed by a Q & A session with the audience.

David Lujan waits in the back of a Glendale middle school classroom. The state legislator is listening to agenda items, leaning against the wall and scanning a stream of e-mails on his Blackberry. He glances up at the woman sitting in a teacher’s desk at the front of the room, the leader of the District 10 Democrats meeting. Raised hands approve budget changes. Upcoming events are announced. And Lujan waits.

He is the man of the hour, slotted to end the meeting with words about his part in the race for Arizona Attorney General, scheduled for a primary vote in August. It’s 8 p.m. and this is Lujan’s second stop of the night. The legislator-by-day, campaigner-by-night spent his day at the Capitol, where battles raged over the state budget. As the sun set, he packed up his car for a night of campaigning across the Valley.

At the leader’s cue, Lujan takes a breath and steps forward. Any trace of fatigue is wiped away, stored for another time.

He begins his speech.

“My name is David Lujan,” he says, “and I am a candidate for Attorney General.”

Meet the Candidate

Tonight, Lujan is scheduled to appear at two district meetings: one in Scottsdale and one in Glendale. Then, he’ll drive back home to downtown Phoenix for the Phoenix Union High School District override election celebration — all in three and a half hours.

“Sometimes having a helicopter would be nice,” he jokes, driving to his first stop of the night.

The 45-year-old attorney is no stranger to state politics. In 2004, he was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives. He is currently the House Minority Leader and has served as Assistant Attorney General. He is also a staff attorney for Defenders of Children, a group of attorneys that provides legal services to victims of child abuse.

Lujan’s positions on boards, organizations and committees fill a resume, but it all started at Arizona State University. The Phoenix native received a bachelor’s degree in marketing in 1993 and a law degree in 1995.

But as he introduces himself as a candidate, Lujan puts more emphasis on his personal stories than his professional accolades. He tells the bits of his history he knows will resonate with the voting congregation at district meetings — almost exclusively white-haired women and bespectacled men.

“I’ll be more than just the people’s lawyer,” Lujan says. “I’ll be their advocate and their voice. It’s what I’ve done my entire life. It’s something actually that my parents taught me at a very early age.”

Lujan’s parents were Tucson High School graduates. His father served in the Navy in World War II. After his military service, Lujan’s father attended University of Arizona. Before Lujan was born, his parents moved from Tucson to Phoenix to raise their five children.

This month, Lujan tells the crowd, his parents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. The aging audience responds with “Ahs” and “Ohs.”

Lujan says his parents taught him to volunteer and give back to the community.

“I think it’s because what [my parents] taught me that, shortly after I got out of law school, a lawyer I was working with at the time asked me if I wanted to be a big brother, and I said yes,” he says.

In the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America program, Lujan was matched with 6-year-old Joey, a child from a home filled with domestic violence, drug abuse and alcoholism. Lujan served as Joey’s mentor for six years. He coached his little league team, attended his school functions and took him to sports games. But as Joey grew older, his home life was getting worse.

Before Joey entered high school, he asked Lujan if he could move in.

“It was the greatest decision for both Joey and me, and it changed our lives in a tremendous way,” Lujan says. “The proudest moment in my life was last May, when, because I’m also on the school board, I was able to speak at his graduation and hand him his diploma as he walked across the stage at his high school graduation.”

The audience nods their heads and flashes warm smiles as Lujan shares this part of his history.

Behind the Curtain

Joel Edman is watching the clock. Lujan is scheduled to appear in Scottsdale at 6:30 p.m., but the legislative session ran late today. The candidate and his campaign manager should have just enough time to drive from Lujan’s downtown Phoenix home to the Scottsdale library without being late. On the way, they discuss campaign logistics in Lujan’s car. Edman noticed one of Lujan’s opponents uses almost exactly the same phrase as him on her website. After listing replacement synonyms, reading from their imaginary thesaurus of political trigger words, the two settle on calling Lujan a “champion at the state Capitol.”

On the campaign trail, it’s clear the legislator calls his own shots. There is no Lujan think-tank or large staff behind the curtain; early in the campaign, there was only Joel Edman.

While Lujan is no stranger to Arizona politics, Edman is no stranger to campaign work. The 22-year-old ASU graduate has been working on campaigns since he was in high school. As Lujan’s current campaign manager, Edman helps keep the wheels of the campaign turning. By day, he plans, coordinates and schedules. By night, he drives.

Edman met Lujan after graduation, in the summer of 2009. At the time, Lujan told Edman he wanted the recent graduate to work for him, though he wasn’t ready to have a campaign staff. But when Lujan officially entered the Attorney General race on Jan. 12, Edman was clearly attached.

Edman says he has worked his a fair share of campaigns, but none quite like Lujan’s.

“As I drove back from Prescott last night, it hit me,” Edman says. “This really is statewide. That means a lot of logistical issues and a lot of getting out all over the state. There are so many more groups you need to speak to. And there are long nights.”

Edman is accustomed to those long nights. During his senior year, he was the ASU Tempe campus organizer for the Arizona Students’ Association. There, he learned how to balance college life with being a key player in the largest student organization in the state. Now, the 22-year-old juggles similar roles.

“It can be tough,” he says. “You have to force yourself have a life. You really have to set boundaries for yourself or you’ll go crazy. I’ve learned that even if I have a few things left on the to-do list, I just have to say, now I’m going to hang out with friends.”

Even though he manages the campaign’s operations, Edman’s business cards omit the traditional “campaign manager” title. Edman is heading to Harvard Law School in August and will not be able to complete his work with the campaign.

While he runs daily operations for Team Lujan, Edman has also been preparing for his own departure. He has hired staffers and is constantly garnering volunteers to build the campaign’s base.

“That will be the next new challenge and opportunity,” Edman says, referring to the new faces working beside him. “Integrating them into everything and making sure we all stay in touch, trying to hit the ground running and bumping up what we all can do.”

Ross Meyer, a graduate of ASU Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, was one of the first staffers hired after Edman. Meyer worked with Lujan at Defenders of Children, traveling with him to Colorado City, Ariz., the former home of several polygamist communities.

“I wanted the experience of working on a campaign that I couldn’t get from reading Politico,” Meyer says. “It’s a 24/7 job. There are no set hours; one day you could work 15 hours, another day four hours.”

Meyer says he feels lucky to be a part of the team. ”David is such a genuinely good person. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.”

Campaign Morale

The long night is over, it seems, as Lujan and Edman walk from the Wyndham Hotel lobby, where dozens of Phoenix teachers and administrators mingle and celebrate the override election that stopped $4.5 million from being deducted from the district’s budget. Lujan has been a member, and periodic president, of the Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board since 2002. But after hours of shaking hands and collecting donations, the candidate is ready to go home.

At the end of this long night, Lujan still hasn’t eaten dinner. He stops at a McDonald’s on the way home. He says it’s his second night going through the drive-thru; he jokes it can’t be healthy to eat at 10 p.m. every night. He places his order: two hamburgers with no pickles, a medium soda and fries. In the line of cars, he sighs and waits for his dinner.

This is a different kind of campaign for Lujan. Like Edman, he sees his campaign now in terms of the whole state.

“We can’t go door-to-door. We have to find new ways of reaching out,” Lujan says. “You can’t even compare a state campaign to a district campaign.”

Still, the change excites Lujan. “It’s neat meeting new people, going to places in the state I haven’t been before,” he says.

To mentally survive the race, it takes more than Lujan’s persistence in driving across the state and speaking at hundreds of events — the campaign has to have a little optimism.

“In the primaries, it’s about who works for it the most and who manages to organize the best,” Edman says. “We can go out to as many different events as possible, but we’re still going to talk to a small percentage of people who are going to vote.”

Edman is optimistic about the power of young voters and volunteers, who have come in droves from campus organizations like ASU Young Democrats. They phone-bank almost nightly, calling massive amounts of people across the state. Soon, they’ll be heading out to neighborhoods, spreading pamphlets and talking to anyone who will answer their doorbell.

But November’s general election, Edman says, is a whole different animal.

“There are so many things that go into the general election that we can’t control — like if Democrats don’t turn out because they feel like they’re not getting the change they want in federal elections,” Edman says.

“We also don’t know who our opponent will be. If it’s Andrew Thomas, he might be in jail before election day,” Edman says, referring to the former Maricopa County Attorney under investigation by the State Bar of Arizona. “If it’s Tom Horne or any other candidate, it’s a whole different race, too … I’m optimistic, but there are so many variables.”

For Lujan, the days are long and the nights are unforgiving. But he persists, seemingly unfazed by the incessant cycle of the meetings, the greetings and the events. This, after all, is the life of a political candidate.

“He’s a trooper,” Edman says. “I can’t believe it when I look at a schedule. He usually has a breakfast at 8 a.m., and a speaking event that ends at 8 or 9 at night, and he never seems that tired.

“The other night, when we went through McDonald’s on the way home — that’s probably the most tired I’ve ever seen him.”

Edman manages Lujan’s campaign schedule, and he says he tries to make sure the candidate has a couple of hours off on Sundays to recharge.

“I know I have to do that,” Edman says. “Yesterday, I slept in and didn’t do anything until noon. That was my weekend.”

What’s Next The campaign’s immediate goal is to get its petitions in. In order to get his name on the primary ballot, Lujan must get enough signatures from Arizona Democrats who support his run for Attorney General.

Meanwhile, the Lujan team is collecting donations to help fund the campaign. Lujan is running a clean election, asking for $5 donations from voters as opposed to accepting large donations from special interest groups.

“The idea behind clean elections is that it forces candidates to spend time talking to voters,” Edman says. “The reason we have David out at an event every single night is because that’s our way to reach out to voters. The amount we get from clean elections is plenty of money, but it’s not gobs of money that allow us to throw up a bunch of television ads and then watch things happen. You really have to organize volunteers and talk to people one-on-one.”

Lujan will continue working in the legislature during the day and hitting the road at night. Though his Democratic audience seems smitten with the politician, Independent voters may need some more swaying down the road.

Jonathan Cochran, an ASU senior studying history and secondary education, attended one of Lujan’s appearances at the West campus.

“It will take some more convincing for me,” the registered Independent voter says. “Education is important to me, and it’s important to him, but I need to see action from politicians when it comes to the state’s jobs and budget problems.”

Edman agrees Independent voters need to be part of Lujan’s focus in the future, should he succeed in the primaries.

“The job for Democrats statewide is to point out, especially to Independent voters, that we’re in this mess because Republicans have been running the state for 40 years,” he says.

As for Edman, the future is bright. While disappointed to leave Lujan mid-race, he is looking forward to new beginnings in Boston. ”I don’t want to do campaigns for my whole life,” he says. “Not because I don’t like it, but just because I feel I’ve experienced everything I need to experience.”

Edman sees unnecessary barriers creating convoluted mazes in the American government.

“On all levels of government, there are more barriers than I ever would have thought to keep the status quo in place,” he says. “After law school, I want to work on government reform issues that make progressive policies easier.”

He pauses, takes a sip of coffee, and smiles to himself.

“If you asked me that six months ago, I would have had no idea.”

Outside the District 10 meeting, a man stops Lujan to shake his hand. “Well, David, you look like an Attorney General,” the man says. Lujan thanks him, makes small talk, and excuses himself; slightly behind schedule, he and Edman need to get to the Wyndham. As Lujan walks away, the man calls out: “How do you hold up during all of this?” Lujan turns toward the man and with a grin and a wave and answers, “Not much sleep.”

However true that is, the candidate walks into the cold night, toward his next destination. His hands are in his pockets and his head is up. Lujan knows what he’s got himself into, and he’s not afraid to face it, head on. Contact the reporter at jessica.testa@asu.edu


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