Janet Napolitano | Arizona

By Terry McCarthy

Governing a hard-core Republican state like Arizona is a steep proposition for a Democrat. Janet Napolitano likes the steeps. A former mountain climber who has hiked the Himalayas and summited Mount Kilimanjaro, Napolitano, 47, has pulled herself to the top job in Arizona--and many think she hasn't stopped climbing yet. Positioning herself as a no-nonsense, pro-business centrist, she has worked outside party lines since coming to office in January 2003 to re-energize a state that, under her predecessors, was marked by recession and scandal.

In her first week on the job, Napolitano took on the state's budget-deficit crisis. She presented a proposal that eliminated the $1 billion deficit without any tax increases. She persuaded moderate Republicans to vote the bill through with the minority Democrats. Now Arizona's economy is booming, with a projected budget surplus of more than $300 million and 4% job growth, the second highest in the nation after Nevada.

Napolitano has promoted social benefits like all-day kindergartens, a prescription-drug card for seniors and an innovative education policy that focuses on developing skills to ensure that students are better prepared for jobs. She has co-opted Republicans to support her agenda through several lures, including cutting business property taxes. And when she wanted to give a children's book to every first-grader in the state, she bypassed the system completely and over three years has solicited the $445,000 needed from private donors.

The one issue Republicans think they can use against the popular Napolitano is illegal immigration, because the huge number of border crossings have left many Arizonans feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Her critics claim she came to the problem late, but she seems to have navigated it deftly. Last November angry voters passed Proposition 200, which in part provides that undocumented aliens receive no state welfare benefits that they are not entitled to. Napolitano opposed it, as well as several bills that targeted illegal immigrants. Instead, she looked to the systems and people that make illegal immigration possible: she ordered state contractors to ensure that their employees are legal, set up an undercover unit to catch forgers of identity documents and demanded the Federal Government, which is responsible for immigration, reimburse the $217 million Arizona has spent since 2003 on imprisoning undocumented aliens convicted of crimes. In mid-August she declared a state of emergency in Arizona to direct more funds to protecting border areas from illegal crossings.

Even as she runs a state of 5.7 million people, Napolitano has traveled extensively to strengthen her political connections around the country. A lawyer, she first attracted national attention in 1991, when she represented Anita Hill in her sexual-harassment case against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. In 2000, just three weeks after mastectomy surgery, Napolitano addressed the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. The pain was so bad, she says, she could barely stand up, but she knew the nation was watching. Four years later she was being mentioned as a potential running mate for John Kerry and was given a prime-time spot to address the party's convention in Boston. This summer Napolitano was picked as vice chair of the National Governors Association, the first woman to occupy that position in the group's 97-year history. "I don't think ambition is a bad thing," she says. Like all mountaineers, she knows that the view from the top is the best.

With reporting by Reported by David Schwartz/Phoenix