Ethics, Arizona style

The political honor system … That guy had a badge … And Sasquatch watch.

One Arizona lawmaker warned families that ICE was nearby. Another called Muslims “savages” who are trying to subvert American culture.

Only one of them is under an ethics investigation.

That’s largely because Arizona is one of just a handful of states without an independent ethics committee that holds legislators accountable. Instead, Arizona’s lawmakers police themselves.

In Arizona, the Secretary of State and Attorney General have jurisdiction over misconduct complaints, like campaign finance and lobbying violations, while legislative Ethics Committees look into specific violations of each chamber’s sprawling code of ethics.

Both the House and Senate’s ethics committees are comprised of five lawmakers appointed by legislative leadership who stack them with members from the ruling party. Right now, both committees are led by Republicans who have final say on which complaints merit further investigation.

The National Conference of State Legislatures’ map of states with ethics commissions.

So when Freedom Caucus Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman declared Democratic Sen. Analise Ortiz should be expelled for reposting a notice about ICE activity near an elementary school, the Senate ethics committee obliged by launching an investigation.

Two-thirds of Arizona’s lawmakers have to vote to expel a lawmaker, so an Ortiz expulsion won’t happen under the current legislative makeup. Hoffman knows that, and suggested other punishments like taking away her committee assignments, office, parking spot and keycard access.

Republican Sen. Shawnna Bolick, who heads the Senate Ethics Committee, sent the complaint to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Arizona and said its findings “will inform the committee’s next steps” when it reconvenes in January.

Meanwhile, eight days after that Hoffman complaint, House Democrats announced an ethics complaint against Republican Rep. John Gillette for his overt Islamophobia, including calling Muslims “fucking savages” and “terrorists” from “shithole countries.” (The complaint doesn’t get into the 42 accusations of violent and improper behavior Gillette racked up before he was a lawmaker.)

Republican House Ethics Committee Chair Lupe Diaz rejected the complaint for “weaponizing” the ethics process.

If the contrast between these two recent cases leaves you wondering how Arizona lawmakers can be judged so differently for their behavior, there’s a lot of context to explore here.

But the best way to change a well-established system is to understand how it was built.

And it all starts with a fistfight.

Disorderly, indeed

Two Democratic lawmakers — Reps. Sidney Kartus and Frank Robles — were the first to get the boot from Arizona’s Legislature.

In 1948, Kartus invited steelworkers onto the House floor without permission. Another House member, Al Spikes, objected to the workers’ presence, and Robles called him a communist. Spikes punched Robles in the face.

Lawmakers convened a special committee and decided Robles and Kartus incited the whole thing, then voted to expel them for “trafficking in human misery.”

Alvin Sidney Kartus (left) and Frank Robles (right), from the Arizona Memory project.

The Legislature’s standing ethics committees didn’t exist yet, so the pair’s expulsion was carried out by a special committee empowered under the Arizona Constitution to “punish its members for disorderly behavior” and expel them with a two-thirds vote.

The broad “disorderly behavior” clause wasn’t really tested until Kartus and Robles were expelled, while the colleague who threw the first punch kept his seat.

The same problem persists today. The ethics rules governing lawmakers are filled with ambiguous language, and definitions don’t take shape until a heavily political process decides how to interpret them.

The ethics era

In the 1970s, Arizona joined a nationwide wave of transparency reforms after the Watergate scandal.

Lawmakers created an official Arizona Ethics Board in 1974, comprised of eight governor-appointed members who only had oversight over elected state officials.

A 1979 performance review blasted the board as powerless to investigate even basic complaints. The board became the first victim of Arizona’s sunset law that mandates legislative review to reauthorize state agencies.

It’s not entirely clear when the Legislature formalized its current self-policing ethics system. But it is clear how ineffective it’s been for decades.

In 1985, columnist Tom Fitzpatrick criticized the House Ethics Committee’s lack of action on the overlooked transgressions of Republican House Speaker Frank Kelley, who he said married the House librarian on New Year’s Day in the legislative chambers. He paid himself $20 for entering Capitol grounds on a holiday, per Republic archives.

“But without a whimper from any of these legislative eunuchs, Kelley drew a salary of better than $50,000 per year from SamCor, the state’s largest hospital chain, all through the eight years he served as speaker of the House,” Fitzpatrick wrote.

Another Republic editorial summarized the issue in 1986, after Sen. Bill Davis received a slap on the wrist from the Senate Ethics Committee for financial mishandling.

“The Davis probe revealed some interesting things, not the least of which is the crying need to produce an accurate yardstick by which lawmakers’ conduct can be measured.”

What now?

Longtime Republican lawmaker John Kavanagh’s new book, State Legislatures: An Owner’s Manual, has an entire chapter dedicated to ethics. The new Senate majority leader outlines several issues, like that the ethics rules are “vague about what constitutes misconduct,” and that “the partisan nature of politics (is an) obstacle to the fair and efficient enforcement.”

“It is also problematic that legislators are called upon to vote for the censure or even expulsion of friends and coworkers. Such relationships would disqualify jurors in court, but not legislators in ethics proceedings,” Kavanagh writes.

To be fair, Arizona’s ethics system isn’t completely for show — it has delivered real consequences when things got bad enough.

• The House expelled Republican Rep. Don Shooter in 2018 after an independent law firm found evidence of years of sexual misconduct.

• In 2023, Republican Rep. Liz Harris was ousted after inviting an insurance agent to present testimony that state and local officials were involved in a complex scheme with a Mexican drug cartel and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

• Democratic Rep. Leezah Sun resigned last year before her colleagues could vote to expel her. The House Ethics Committee found she committed a “pattern of disorderly behavior,” including threatening to throw a lobbyist off a balcony and interfering with a child custody case. She was recently given two years’ probation for violating that lobbyist’s restraining order, and Sun currently chairs the Tolleson school board.

Those cases were severe enough to fit the Legislature’s vague definitions of misconduct. But under the same rules, the ethics chair can still decide that openly racist behavior online isn’t “unbecoming of a public official.”

Luckily, Kavanagh’s new book suggests a solution:

“One solution to the legislative ethics enforcement problem is the establishment of independent ethics commissions.”

From deputy to death wishes: Republican Rep. John Gillette’s troubling past as a deputy sheriff in Illinois has resurfaced after he called Muslim people “fucking savages” and said a congresswoman should be “hanged,” Ray Stern writes for the Arizona Republic. The Kingman representative had dozens of complaints against him between 1995 and 2009 while working for the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office. House minority leader Oscar De Los Santos dug up Gillette’s tumultuous past to show his history with violence, including complaints of “alleged battery, sexual assault” and “excessive force.”

The Hitler Youth Group Chat: Young Republican leaders from across the country — including the chairman of the Arizona Young Republicans and the organization’s events chair — have been saying some of the most racist shit you’ve ever heard in an online group chat that got leaked to Politico.

“If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr,” one group-chatter prophetically wrote.

No-Play List: Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport is facing backlash after refusing to play a video from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, per KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky. Sky Harbor is one of a handful of airports across the country that won’t play the video that blames Democrats for the federal government shutdown. The Phoenix airport said playing the video would violate airport policy. The operational hub for “ICE Air” — Phoenix-Mesa Gateway — also refused to play the video because of its political nature, Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports for the Mirror.

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Coming to a liberal city near you: Democrats and Republicans are split on the role of the National Guard and the president’s power, Stacey Barchenger reports for the Arizona Republic. As President Donald Trump continues his spree of deploying the National Guard to major U.S. cities, Gov. Katie Hobbs has joined fellow Democratic governors in condemning the “unprecedented overreach.” Two of Hobbs’ Republican opponents in the upcoming gubernatorial election, Rep. Andy Biggs and Karrin Taylor Robson, have both sided with the president, who claims he’s deploying the National Guard to stop crime in major cities.

OK, Judgey: A judge rejected activist’s efforts to void the voter-approved Secure the Border Act, or Prop 314, which allows local police to arrest people who cross the border at a location other than a port of entry, per Capitol Scribe Howie Fischer. Part of the law mirrors a Texas measure that’s currently under review by federal appellate courts. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Valenzuela said the provision can stand, despite arguments from Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) and the Arizona Center for Empowerment, which argued that tying Arizona’s law to the Texas decision voids Arizona’s lawmaking power. They also brought up an estimated cost increase of $178 million if Arizona is responsible for the custody of people accused of illegally crossing the border. The organizations fighting against Prop 314 said they plan to appeal.

In other, other news

Glendale has sent out almost half a million dollars in invoices for additional public safety at the Charlie Kirk memorial held at State Farm Stadium last month (Shawn Raymundo / Arizona Republic) … Mesa is preparing regulations for new battery storage sites that will help stabilize the electric grid during peak demand, but that can explode or cause environmental damage if handled or disposed of improperly (Cecilia Chan / East Valley Tribune) … And Scottsdale has given up its fight against casitas, which can be turned into short-term rentals, after a new state law permits the building of such structures (Tom Scanlon / Scottsdale Progress).

In an era of political gridlock and economic uncertainty, a new Education Forward Arizona poll shows something rare: growing bipartisan support for postsecondary education.

For the third straight year, voters across party lines back the state’s Achieve60AZ goal of ensuring 60% of working-age Arizonans hold a degree or credential by 2030. They also endorse elected leaders advancing proven solutions, like dual enrollment, the Promise Programs, and expanded job training access.

The poll also shows growing concern about Arizona’s universal voucher program.

A majority of voters familiar with Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) view the program negatively. More than 75% say they’re worried about fraud, misuse, and the lack of oversight, but 80% support various proposals to fix the issues identified in recent reporting.

While Education Forward Arizona supports the concept of school choice, these findings show that voters demand accountability and integrity in ESA reporting and taxpayer dollar usage. Without reforms, the ESA program risks eroding public trust in education funding.

In short: Arizonans expect their education dollars to be spent wisely, and they want state leaders to act on increasing access to education after high school.

You can see all of our poll’s findings, and read more here.

As we mentioned yesterday, Arizona had its annual Sasquatch Hunt over the weekend — and we finally saw the photos.

The Kingman Daily Miner shared two photos of the “sighting.”

And while we don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, we are wondering how to volunteer for the job of wearing the Sasquatch costume.