MONEY MAN GETS BEHIND 5 PROPS

What 77-year-old man named John will have the most significant impact on
Arizonans in the next week?

Astronaut John Glenn? Wrong.

John Sperling, the founder of the University of Phoenix, will spend more
than $1 million -- more than any single contributor -- to persuade voters to
vote for or against five of the 14 statewide propositions on Tuesday's
ballot.

>From medicinal marijuana to stopping the Legislature from thwarting voters
to enabling all voters to participate in candidate nominations, Sperling
puts his money where his mouth is. And the self-described activist and
self-made man has plenty of money and mouth.

But he is also a portrait in contradictions:

While building a half-billion-dollar fortune on the idea that private
colleges are the best way to enhance the nation's workforce, Sperling
continues to live in the same relatively modest Phoenix home he bought when
he moved here from the Bay area 22 years ago (although he's renovating a
$1.5 million fixer-upper at the base of Camelback Mountain).

Twice divorced (he last was married more than a quarter-century ago), he
maintains a close relationship with his son, Peter, 39, an executive in the
Apollo Group, Sperling's umbrella firm for a half-dozen business and
philanthropic ventures.

He is one of the state's richest men. Only his son and Bennett Dorrance, the
heir to the Campbell Soup fortune, rated higher on this year's Forbes 400.
Yet Sperling believes in higher income taxes for the wealthy so they can
contribute more to social services.

He spurns fast cars, yachts and other material trappings of the rich in
favor of scientific and educational pursuits. Even his major occupation is
based on the ideal of making people smarter, richer, more productive and
socially conscious.

On no subject is Sperling more passionate than his quest to end the war on
drugs, which he calls "a social disaster wrought by a bankrupt policy."

His goal is to switch the nation's emphasis from warehousing addicts through
the revolving door of the criminal-justice system to providing drug users
with the medical treatment they need to become healthy, self-supporting
citizens.

His $900,000 contribution to support "no" votes on Propositions 300 and 301
has helped make The People Have Spoken the best-funded issues committee in
this election.

Defeating both propositions would reinstate the medical use of marijuana and
diversion programs for drug abusers.

Rounding out the campaign's $1.6 million war chest are fellow
philanthropists George Soros of New York, a currency trader; and Peter
Lewis, head of a Cleveland insurance firm, each of whom contributed $366,000
to the cause.

Sperling, who for 20 years was a professor of economic history at such top
colleges as the University of Maryland and Ohio State University, has done
his homework. For more than a decade, he has studied the drug war as if
pursuing another thesis, reciting statistics that show that the effort has
failed and people are fed up with it.

But his convictions are also backed by personal experience. He cites a rich
New York banker-friend whose life was saved because he smoked marijuana to
stimulate his appetite, relieve nausea and ease pain during radiation
treatments.

In 1996, nearly two-thirds of the voters in Arizona and California approved
ballot measures that allowed doctors to prescribe marijuana for victims of
cancer, glaucoma and other diseases.

The Arizona measure also established a beefed-up diversion program so that
non-violent drug offenders could be given therapy instead of prison time.

But the Arizona Legislature last year moved to scrap the citizens
initiative. Lawmakers said voters were confused and the measure was just the
first dangerous step toward drug legalization. A new citizens measure put a
freeze on the Legislature's action until the voters could again decide the
matter Tuesday.

"I think this might be the first small step in reforming our national drug
policies," said Sperling, who is also supporting drug-medicalization
measures in other states.

Sperling says that the $350 billion spent each year on illegal drugs is
going to drug lords in this and foreign nations, who in turn use their
wealth to corrupt police, border agents, judges and politicians.

Just as President Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex,
Sperling warns of a bureaucratic-industrial complex that has resulted in
laws and enforcement measures that have given our nation the highest rate of
imprisonment in the industrialized world.

The cabal, he said, is composed of police and prison guards, their unions,
the construction firms that build prisons, the private firms that run the
growing number of private prisons, the food and other commodity firms that
supply prisons, and the politicians whose campaign coffers are filled by all
those who benefit from the current system.

Sperling's greatest scorn is reserved for the Arizona Legislature, which is
why he and his son are the principal contributors -- $425,000 -- to the
Voter Protection Alliance, a committee supporting a "yes" vote on
Proposition 105, and a "no" vote on Proposition 104.

Both propositions would make it more difficult for the Legislature to
overturn citizen initiatives, as lawmakers did with the 1996 medicinal
marijuana measure. But Proposition 105 is more stringent.

"Here's a Legislature that is just totally indifferent, not only to the will
of the citizenry, but also to a bankrupt (drug war) program," Sperling said.

The fifth ballot question influenced by Sperling is Proposition 103, which
would enable the 14 percent of Arizona voters registered as independents or
affiliated with small parties to vote in the primary election of their
choice.

Sperling initially gave $50,000 to Open Primary Elections Now to promote
Proposition 106, which would have enabled any voter of any party to vote in
any primary election. But that measure failed to make the ballot. Backers of
Proposition 106, including Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Johnson
and Republican Attorney General Grant Woods, then shifted their support to
Proposition 103.

Including independent voters in the primary elections, Sperling hopes, will
produce more moderate, higher-caliber candidates to run in future general
elections.

Sperling was in the news last month when a Texas paper reported that he gave
$2.3 million to a Texas university to clone his dog, Missy.

Only one problem. Sperling said he doesn't have a dog, or a cat or any other
pet. He said the cloning involves the pet of California friends. But the
professor never speaks out of school, and declined to name them.

Steve Yozwiak can be reached at (602) 444-8810 or at steve.yozwiak@pni.com
via e-mail.

Checked-by: Don Beck