Why the battle for Arizona governor is being fought in your kid's classroom Opinion: #RedforEd turned what might have been a quiet re-election campaign into a full-blown fight for Arizona's top leadership spot.

Editorial board | Arizona Republic

Show Caption Hide Caption Who is running for governor in Arizona? Here is what you need to know about everyone running for governor in Arizona this year.

One of the greatest challenges to Arizona executive authority came in the form of 50,000 school teachers and supporters marching on the state Capitol in April and demanding better pay and working conditions.

Their historic strike rattled the gubernatorial election, and brought greater doubt to its outcome. It also forced a Republican governor and Legislature to figure out how to pacify legions of red-clad protesters.

The battle began before the walkout

Even before the strike began, Gov. Doug Ducey was staggered. He promised to raise teacher pay by 20 percent by 2020, complicating a budget that originally sought to raise teacher pay only 1 percent in the coming year.

Sensing the governor had been wounded, an insurgent from the governor’s own party suddenly entered the Republican primary and accused Ducey of busting the budget. At the same time, Democratic candidates for governor argued Ducey had brought this chaos upon the state by failing to boldly raise funding for Arizona public education.

What’s at stake?

#RedforEd has become a political force and is now advancing a ballot initiative that would hit Arizona’s wealthiest 1 percent with some of the highest marginal income tax rates in the country. Gov. Ducey argues there is no need to raise taxes to make teachers whole.

Democratic candidates have lined up behind the tax-the-rich ballot measure, and would radically remake the way we fund our public schools. The Invest in Ed proposition would force the wealthy few to shoulder the entire burden of boosting education funding by an estimated $690 million annually.

If it makes the ballot, this will be a major point of contention between Democrat and Republican candidates for governor in the fall.

Who is the incumbent?

In a year when the political establishment is under siege, Gov. Ducey is the epitome of establishment rule. He is a former CEO and technocrat focused on incremental change.

He boasts that he took over state leadership at a dark hour when Arizona faced a billion-dollar deficit and a flagging economy and has succeeded at steadying the fiscal ship. He now presides over one of the fastest-growing states in the nation enjoying higher-than-average job growth.

Under constant assault for his education policy, Ducey counters that he has increased education funding by $2.7 billion in his first term, without raising taxes. He took an ax to government red tape, chopping through some 700 “burdensome regulations” equivalent to $50 million in tax reductions, he argues.

Who is the Republican challenger?

Ken Bennett once was the establishment. After six years as secretary of state and eight years as a state senator, including four as Senate president, Bennett was an anchor of moderate to center-right politics, a model of bipartisanship and good nature. He was widely liked and respected by both parties.

But his entry into the Republican primary when the governor was on his heels and his demand that Ducey not appoint Cindy McCain to her husband John McCain’s United States Senate seat has cast him in a darker light.

Who are the Democrats?

In many ways the Democratic Primary in Arizona is reflecting the splits in the Democratic Party nationally, as a new breed of populists challenges the party’s establishment figures.

Steve Farley: He has spent 12 years in the Arizona Legislature and looks and sounds every bit the wonk, but behind the Clark Kent eyewear and hair goop is an accomplished artist, who created his own art form converting photographs to glazed ceramic tile.

Farley is the establishment in this race and perhaps nothing splits him from his opponents more than his refusal to raise taxes. By ending corporate sales tax loopholes, there is plenty of money to restore the $1.1 billion cuts in education since 2009, he said.

While Farley would defend immigrants and DACA students, he is a strong proponent of border control even though he abhors a wall. His social values are progressive. He would work to close the gender pay gap and advance the Equal Rights Amendment. In our meeting with candidates, Farley distinguished himself with his detailed knowledge of Arizona’s critical water challenges.

Arizona governor candidates answer 5 questions you wouldn't think to ask Candidates Ken Bennett, Doug Ducey, Steve Farley, Kelly Fryer and David Garcia answer questions you might not ask them in the azcentral studio.

Kelly Fryer: Kicking butt and taking prisoners, that’s Kelly Fryer’s attitude. She represents the new insurgency in the Democratic Party that demands change. If Farley is reluctant to raise taxes, she won’t hesitate to first overturn Proposition 108, the 1992 measure that required super-majorities to raise taxes, then push to increase revenues to generously fund public education.

The CEO of YWCA of Arizona, Fryer is the daughter of working-class parents in rural Indiana and the first in her family to go to college. She is pugnacious, yet endearing. A progressive to her soul, she would make community college and state university education “as close to free and 100-percent debt-free” for all Arizonans.

A foe of charter schools, she says they should be “accountable, transparent and rare.” But she doesn’t explain how she might tell parents of 186,000 Arizona charter school students that their choice is misplaced. That’s Fryer. She’s not here to apologize. She’s here to fight.

David Garcia: If there is a transcendent candidate in this race, it is David Garcia. A hybrid of both the establishment and the young lions pushing the Democratic old guard, Garcia is stalking Doug Ducey, accusing him of corruption, holding him responsible for the sexual assault of a migrant child in an Arizona detention center.

He has picked up the guerrilla politics of Donald Trump, but Garcia has also proven his establishment bona fides. His biggest achievement to date was winning Republican-dominated Maricopa County in the 2014 Superintendent of Public Instruction race. Progressives will recognize a friend in Garcia’s policy positions: Fund public education, equal pay for equal work, Medicare for all, defend the Dream Act youngsters.

“The days of attacking immigrants in Arizona are over,” he says. And it's here that Garcia excites the possibilities as a Latino man who is a formidable challenger for the governor’s seat only two cycles after Arizona passed its draconian immigration law, Senate Bill 1070.

How to make your vote count

The Arizona Republic Editorial Board met with all the candidates for governor on the ballot in the Republican and Democratic primaries.

Doug Ducey: In the GOP race, Doug Ducey is the clear choice, the candidate to support if you want someone who balances all the competing priorities in a $10 billion budget. While Ducey has drawn intense criticism in his first term because he did not do more to restore education funding, he did not ignore the public schools.

Many Democrats dismiss Ducey’s Proposition 123 as meaningless, but it plowed billions of dollars into the public school system when the economy was still sluggish and there was no other politically feasible way to get big dollars to the schools. Prop. 123 earned the support of virtually the entire public school establishment and put an end to the education-funding lawsuit. Even before the #RedforEd strike, teachers were seeing on average 5 percent raises in their salaries.

But if Prop. 123 was Ducey’s masterstroke, his capitulation to #RedforEd did damage to the fiscal discipline he had otherwise exercised throughout the first term. He no doubt did it to defuse the teacher strike, but if he is re-elected, he will need to pursue more permanent funding solutions for the public schools.

David Garcia: In a year when education is issue one, Garcia comes as the best prepared Democrat to lead on this front. As a professor at the Arizona State University teachers college he has focused for years on the challenges that face public schools. He would make a large play for new funding for education. While he has not mastered all the critical issues that face the state (his answer on water policy, for instance, was lacking) he is bright and capable and no doubt a quick study.

Most importantly, he inspires as a leader. Since running for schools' chief in 2014, he has raised his game. Garcia is a dynamic speaker and campaigner who is winning support because he is willing to fight for change. For Latinos, he offers hope that the halls of power in Arizona will be more open to them.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic's editorial board. What do you think? Send us a letter to the editor to weigh in.

READ MORE: