Older voters were driving force in Pima County’s RTA election

Older voters were key to the overwhelming approval of the RTA Next ballot propositions in the special election that wrapped up Tuesday.

While some votes remain to be counted, Tuesday night’s results showed that more than 61 percent of Pima County voters who marked a ballot supported Prop. 418, a 20-year, $2.67 billion regional transportation plan, and nearly 59 percent supported continuing a half-cent-per-dollar sales tax to pay for it.

Remaining to be counted are an unknown number of ballots that were dropped off on Election Day or which arrived in the mail too late to be verified by election officials yet, but they are not expected to change the outcome. Turnout was about 31%, according to preliminary figures.

Related: With 60% in favor, Pima County voters give big thumbs-up to RTA Next

Joe Wolf, the campaign consultant for the pro-RTA campaign committee Pima Connects, told reporters Wednesday that his analysis showed that as of last Friday, March 6,  more than four out of five voters who had cast ballots were older than 50. He said 62 percent were older than 65 and another 21 percent were between the ages of 50 and 60.

“We knew this was going to be an older electorate,” Wolf said.

He added that 44 percent of the voters were Democrats, about 32 percent were Republicans and the remainder were not associated with the major parties. Roughly 53 percent were women and 47 percent were men.

Wolf said that the campaign advertised heavily on television to reach those voters as it burned through nearly all of the $1.4 million it raised for the effort.

Big donations came from business organizations. The Arizona Chapter of Associated General Contractors contributed $240,000, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council contributed $73,100, the National Association of Realtors contributed $100,000, the Sundt Companies Inc. contributed $50,000 and Jim Click Nissan contributed $43,961. (Find the entire list of contributors and expenditures here.)

Wolf said the seven-figure budget was vital to the passage of the measures.

What the Devil: Steamroller: RTA Next wins big, paving over Doomerism in Pima County

“We knew this was going to be an incredibly difficult task,” Wolf said. “Ballot measures in Tucson are very tough.”

The big challenge, Wolf said, was persuading voters to support the sales tax that paid for the plan. He said the campaign’s initial polling showed that more than 60 percent of voters like the plan, which included about $1.5 billion for roads, $726 million for transit and various smaller amounts for safety improvements, wildlife crossings, administration and other elements. That was polling in the 60 percent range.

“People really liked what was in the plan,” Wolf said. “There was something in there for everyone.”

The troubling number was support for the sales tax. Those surveyed were split, 44-44 percent, over whether they would vote in favor, with another 12 percent undecided.

“That is not a great place to be,” Wolf said. “You really don’t want your initial ballot test to be under 50 percent. It’s gonna be very, very hard when people see that and their first blush is not overly favorable. So we knew we had a tough task.”

The RTA campaign message was designed to persuade voters that their taxes would remain the same because they were already paying the current RTA half-cent sales tax first passed by voters in 2006. It also stressed the importance of voting yes for both Prop. 418 and Prop. 419 in order for it to pass.

“You can’t vote for one in the other, right?” Wolf said. “It takes two. That was a very big part of our messaging.”

While the television ads and mailers played a major role, Wolf said that the campaign also worked on the grassroots level, with supporters visiting small groups such as neighborhood meetings and other organizations to argue in favor of support.

“We needed broadcast television,” Wolf said. “We needed a streaming campaign. We needed a large umbrella (of people) to go out and talk to as many people as possible and make sure that that message really sunk in. … We needed digital, heavy digital and streaming TV advertising. That is all expensive. Of course, we needed that target communications as well, which we can do with digital and direct mail.”

Wolf said he was “so thrilled” that the campaign delivered 59 percent of the vote in favor of Prop. 419.

“We feel very validated in these turnout numbers and ultimately where we landed at the end of the day, having Prop. 418 over 60 percent and having Prop. 419 starting at a place at 44% in a dead heat (and ending up) being within 2 (percentage) points of Prop. 418. That’s an incredible result. … Clearly, our message worked,” he said. 

Alejandro Angel, a Connect Pima co-chair and a principal at engineering consulting firm Psomas, said moving the numbers was a heavy lift because “85% of the people thought that passing this would increase their taxes. So there’s a huge misperception that this would increase taxes. And we had to educate people on that. We had to educate people on what RTA was, because only 13% of the people knew RTA had a plan when we started doing polling last year.”

Angel said he was glad the election was over. The ballot propositions had him on the opposite side of some of his friends — he’s on the board of the Living Streets Alliance, which was one of the loudest opponents of RTA Next.

“I work with other community groups, and it’s just been tense over the last few months,” Angel said.

Angel said the outcome left “my faith restored that there is a silent majority out there that is not weighing on everything, that the NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) or the BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) or whatever you want to call them – the people that oppose everything – it’s a smaller group. So at the end, I think that the broader population saw the value of infrastructure and what that brings to our community and our quality of life.”

Longtime local environmental leader Carolyn Campbell said she was also heartened by the passage.

“Yesterday’s vote really showed me and the organization I am involved with – or have been involved with for quite some time, the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, who also came out in support of this – that environmental issues such as wildlife linkages and transportation projects can go hand in hand,” she said.

Campbell said environmental groups would remain vigilant about ensuring that future roads projects were “compatible with things such as the Desert Conservation Plan and the environmentally sensitive roadways design. Because when the projects get voted on, that is not the end of the road for people, so to speak, for people that are watching this and making sure that not only the dollars are spent wisely, but that they are done in an environmentally sensitive manner.”

The win for both propositions came after years of contentious battles over the fair distribution of RTA dollars, personal (and personnel) squabbles that led to the firing of an RTA executive director and the hiring of former Tucson City Manager Mike Ortega to head up the RTA, and even concerns about the basic governing structure of the agency itself, which is run by a nine-member board that includes representatives of Tucson, Pima County, Oro Valley, Marana, Sahaurita, South Tucson, the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui tribes and the Arizona State Transportation Board.

Opponents of the proposition raised far less than the seven figures spent by supporters. As of Feb. 21, opposition campaign Tucson Deserves Better reported raising less than $7,500, which was spent on yard signs. The opposition campaign was also active on social media.

The Pima County Republican Party, which opposed the effort with campaign signs, did not file a campaign finance report.