PHOENIX (By Chip Scutari, Arizona Republic) November 14, 2004 — Janet Napolitano turned into an international saleswoman last week during her five-day blitz of Britain. She was part hard-charging CEO, part cheerleader and part cross-continental networker. The movie version could be titled An Arizona Whirlwind Gov'nor in London.

Whether meeting with the chairman of British Airways, promoting the Grand Canyon or mingling with bioscientists or mining giants, Napolitano made one thing clear: Arizona wants British business and tourism. And it wants it now. Napolitano was the first Arizona governor to make a trade mission to England.

Some Republican skeptics in the Arizona Legislature criticized Napolitano for making the trip. They said Napolitano should visit Mexico, Canada or Asia because there's more potential for trading partners in those regions. She dismissed the criticism as the latest example of partisan wrangling at the Capitol.

Instead, Napolitano structured the trip like a general manager who is putting together a long-term game plan for a new baseball franchise. Similar to sports teams that build through an annual draft and the free-agent market, Napolitano worked on several fronts. She wanted to increase Arizona's profile by connecting British and Arizona businesses, promoting trade, tourism and biotech, while schmoozing with British government officials.

Clearly, Napolitano saw this trip as a catalyst to bigger things down the line. Her goal is that the trip will help generate millions of additional dollars in tourism and business thus driving up airline sales for British Airways. Part of her trip encouraged scientific collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Phoenix-based Translational Genomics Research Institute, better known as TGen. The institute's building near the Arizona Center is scheduled to open in late December.

Arizona needs the publicity in England. Many people on the streets of London still think that the Grand Canyon is situated in Nevada or Colorado, according to Napolitano. That drives Napolitano absolutely nuts. Her pitch to British tourists went like this:

"When I left (Arizona) on Sunday, it was 80 degrees and sunny," she said, laughing heartily. "We are going to re-introduce the people of the U.K. to the Grand Canyon. And to remind everyone that it's in Arizona and not Nevada."

The tangible benefits of her trip, and the potential payoff, will not be felt for more than a year. But they could be huge. Here are a few possibilities as a result of Napolitano's overseas trip:

• Air travel. British Airways could move its Phoenix-to-London route back to seven days a week. That amounts to a $100 million impact to the Valley. Most of that depends on business traffic.

• Tourism. Thanks to savvy timing by staff, Napolitano sold the unique beauty of the Grand Canyon during the week of the World Travel Market, the largest travel show in the United Kingdom. Napolitano promoted an IMAX Grand Canyon movie that will be seen in six cities across Great Britain in April.

• Biotech. Napolitano and a top TGen scientist, Dietrich Stephan, laid the groundwork for a new exchange program between TGen and gene hunters at Cambridge. They will be working on finding cures and making "smart drugs" that can help people with a variety of serious health problems, such as prostate cancer and Alzheimer's.

Stephan, TGen's director of neurogenomics division, said the England trip would produce long-term benefits for Arizonans.

"Once we are in our new building, I want to create a scientist-to-scientist dialogue to establish some links," the soft-spoken Stephan said. "Then to start working on real projects.

"The ultimate thing will be that I'm going to tell you that you're going to get Alzheimer's disease 20 years from now. The next thing that will follow is that we're also going to give you a drug to take that's going to prevent that."

Napolitano also hit 10 Downing St. (the British version of the White House) to meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief of staff and homeland security adviser. She also spent 90 minutes with the Duke of York, better known as Prince Andrew.

Because Napolitano's visit came so soon after the re-election of President Bush, British television, radio and newspapers were eager to get her analysis of the 2004 election. She gladly obliged, appearing on some of the top-ranked television and radio shows in England. British journalists, like most of the British public, are fascinated by American politics and wanted to know how Napolitano hopes to survive in a "red state," the color code that signifies a Republican state on the electoral map. Wherever she went, Napolitano was bombarded by questions about her political future. It didn't hurt that her picture is in the current edition of Time, mentioning her as a possible presidential contender for 2008.

But in every interview, Napolitano stressed that 2006, her re-election year, is much more important than the next presidential contest. And she focused more on plugging her state.