Leadfoot lawmakers

Get out of jail free … You’re fired … And Nicole’s cats finally help out.

If you had a Get Out of Jail Free card, would you give it up willingly?

That’s the question Arizona lawmakers are wrestling with as they consider tweaking the state Constitution’s legislative immunity clause that has allowed several of them to get out of speeding tickets lately.

Soon, you may get to decide whether lawmakers get to keep that card. Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen is trying to get a measure on the ballot next year that would let voters decide whether lawmakers should pay speeding tickets like everybody else.

The state Constitution gives lawmakers immunity, except for a short list of violations: “treason, felony, and breach of the peace.” They also aren’t “subject to any civil process,” so they often cite the clause to get out of petty traffic violations.

The state House even hands out stickers lawmakers can put on their licenses to tell police they can’t be ticketed.

Two Republican senators were pulled over in January while speeding, but legislative immunity shielded both of them from getting a ticket. A third was pulled over last year and claimed that police were politically targeting her for driving her Tesla more than twice the 35 mph speed limit. She avoided a ticket for months while the Legislature was in session, but was eventually ticketed and had to go to traffic school.

But the problem isn’t new: For as long as lawmakers have been writing traffic laws, they’ve also been flouting traffic laws.

Nor are attempts to reform legislative immunity new. Legislative immunity has survived a half-dozen attempts to reform it over the past 15 years unscathed.

This time around, Nguyen sponsored HCR2053 to add “all traffic violations” to the list of offenses for which lawmakers can be prosecuted.

Nguyen argued that immunity was designed to block law enforcement officers from making political plays, like stopping a lawmaker from getting to the Capitol for a vote.

But when Nguyen looked for examples of that happening in recent years, he couldn’t find any.

“If you go back 30 years ago, I don’t think you can find a single case of a bill being prevented from being voted on because of a traffic violation,” Nguyen told the House Judiciary Committee, where the measure passed despite objections of three Republicans.

We also read through decades of newspaper archives to see how lawmakers use immunity when they get pulled over.

What we found was a lot of drunk driving, a few lawmakers who accepted the consequences of their actions, and a lot more who tried to wriggle out of even minor speeding tickets.¹

If Nguyen’s measure does make it to the ballot, here are some examples to keep in mind as you figure out how to vote:

The cases that set off the current uproar

A few recent cases set the stage for Nguyen’s measure.

Republican Sen. Mark Finchem was pulled over around midnight on Jan. 25 going 48 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone in Prescott. Two days later, Finchem wrote a letter to the Prescott police chief on official state letterhead. He cited legislative immunity and asked that the citation “be voided and stricken from the record.” Prescott police obliged and the citation was dismissed, although there’s a chance the citation could come back after the legislative session ends.

Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman was pulled over last month on U.S. Route 60 for driving 89 mph in a 65 mph zone. Hoffman says the trooper recognized him as a state senator and didn’t give him a ticket.

Former Republican Sen. Justine Wadsack was pulled over last March going twice the speed limit on a street in Tucson. She immediately told the police officer she was a legislator and claimed she was going 71 mph in a 35 mph zone because the battery in her Tesla was about to die. The officer didn’t give her the ticket right away. Tucson police waited until after the legislative session to do it, which prompted Wadsack to claim “political persecution.”

The worst offenders

As reporters and lawmakers mulled over those three recent cases, another infamous case bubbled up in the background.

Former Republican Rep. Paul Mosley was pulled over in 2018 for driving 97 mph in a 55 mph zone. Mosley bragged about driving 120 mph in the past, and claimed legislative immunity.

The Mosley incident was so egregious that it prompted former Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, to issue an executive order saying state law enforcement can consider criminal speeding a “breach of the peace” and cite lawmakers. It doesn’t require state troopers to issue citations, it just gives them the option.

Gov. Katie Hobbs cited the executive order recently when she said legislative immunity shouldn’t protect Hoffman and Finchem.

One of the most bizarre incidents we found in newspaper archives comes from 2011, when Senate Majority Leader Scott Bundgaard got into a late-night fight with his girlfriend on the side of State Route 51 in Phoenix. At first, he claimed he couldn’t be arrested because he was a state senator. Police arrested his girlfriend instead.

But he later called for doing away with the “archaic” legislative immunity, saying “I am not above the law.”

The ones you forgot about

1988: Before she was governor, Jan Brewer was a state senator. That helped her out when she rear-ended a minivan on Interstate 17 and then failed a series of field sobriety tests. She told the state troopers she drank two scotches, but she denied being intoxicated. When troopers learned she was a senator, they drove her home and didn’t file charges. The incident didn’t get much attention until 2010, after she was sworn in as governor.

2009: It took former Sen. Frank Antenori (and current Cochise County supervisor) three years to resolve a ticket he got after a photo radar caught him driving 57 mph in a 45 mph zone in Tucson. He claimed legislative immunity and asked for a hearing, which he didn’t attend. It wasn’t until 2012 that he paid the $312 fine to a collection agency, which came to light as he was trying to resurrect legislation that would help drivers avoid getting tickets from photo enforcement cameras at intersections.

Newspaper columnists had a field day with misbehaving lawmakers back in the day, particularly in the early 1970s when former President Richard Nixon was in the throes of the Watergate scandal.

Our favorite piece of writing from back then was by Jeff Smith, a columnist for the Arizona Daily Star. On July 11, 1974, he put together this description of the night Rep. Helen Carlson, a Tucson Democrat, was arrested for drunk driving in Phoenix.²

Carlson “led three motorcycle patrolmen and a squad car on a 60-mile-per-hour chase down Central Avenue, twice was stopped but took off again, refused to yield to an emergency vehicle, jumped a raised median, was stopped, finally, by a squad car blocking the street, had to have her car disabled by having its electrical system disconnected, locked herself in the car so the officers had to break in the vent window with their pistol butts – and was hauled off to jail in handcuffs while she cussed-out the arresting officers. Rep. Carlson pleaded not guilty to all charges.”

“She admitted having five scotches that night, but said she was not drunk. She claimed that as a legislator, during the Special Session on Education Financing, she was immune to arrest for drunk driving. The reason she did not stop for police, she said in court, was that she ‘assumed they knew’ she was immune.”

Smith went on: “A cop is cruising Central a half-hour after the bars close and a car screams by at 60, leaping the road divider like Evel Knievel, cutting off an ambulance, threatening public life and property – but the officer spies the legislator’s license plate and tells his partner, ‘Don’t sweat, Joe Bob, it’s just another one of those lawmakers elected by the people to serve their interests, and if we stop her and violate her legislative immunity we’ll be interfering with the important work she was sent here to do.’ Sure.”

We’re going to throw in an honorable mention for Bernie Wynn, a columnist at the Arizona Republic. In his May 11, 1973 column, Wynn poked fun at the lawmakers who would no longer have immunity after the legislative session ended.

“Sen. Zigzag, for example, may have been able to cite legislative immunity to arrest during the session if apprehended while weaving down a Phoenix thoroughfare.

“A state senator, eh?” the bored local cop would ask, “Well, Senator, you just hop into this little ole paddywagon and I’ll see you safely to your cell.”

High and dry: Ten employees from Arizona’s rural development office were fired as part of President Donald Trump’s mass federal layoffs, including a man who administers loans for rural public works projects, the Republic’s Laura Gersony reports. Joshua Abbott said he helped kickstart foundational infrastructure projects like sewer and water service and returned tens of thousands of dollars from delinquent borrowers. The head of Arizona’s rural development office called the layoffs a “drop in the bucket” that won’t really affect anything.

“I have literally done nothing but give back to the government,” Abbott said.

Keeping her friends close: Gov. Katie Hobbs created a position that pays $170,000 for Dana Allmond, a former legislative candidate in Tucson who went on to work as (never-confirmed) director of the Department of Veterans’ Services, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reports. The new job is at the Department of Economic Security and is funded by federal stimulus funds. The creation of the new position sparked the ire of Sen. Jake Hoffman, who oversees the Senate’s Committee on Director Nominations.

Back in town: Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was back in Arizona yesterday to ask lawmakers to fund a study of an African plant that could help veterans with traumatic brain injuries, KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky reports. The psychoactive compound found in the plant, known as Ibogaine, is highly restricted in the United States, but it’s used medicinally in Canada and Mexico. The $5 million in funding would come from HB2871, which already passed the House Appropriations Committee.

New trope incoming: The Trump administration is preparing to bring back a policy known as Title 42 that would allow officials to quickly expel migrants for public health reasons, CBS News reports. The measure was used extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Internal documents show Trump officials want to argue that migrants are bringing in communicable diseases like tuberculosis.

Shoot ‘em down: A bill that would give law enforcement officers legal immunity for property damage after shooting drones out of the sky is moving through the Legislature with bipartisan support, per the Republic’s Ray Stern. There are security concerns about drones flying near military bases and reports of cartels using drones to carry drugs across the border, and Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes recently said she wants officers to disable drones or “frankly blow them out of the sky with guns." Republican Rep. David Marshall said he’s successfully shot drones down using birdshot, but the Federal Aviation Administration warned police could still be subject to criminal charges for shooting drones down.

Sanctuary secured?: Immigrant advocates scored a small victory on Monday when a federal judge in Maryland granted a request to limit how federal immigration officials operate at houses of worship, the Arizona Mirror’s Ariana Figueroa reports. Quakers and other religious groups wanted a nationwide injunction against arresting immigrants at churches, which were off-limits until Trump officials reversed course soon after the inauguration. But the judge only applied his ruling to locations run by the groups that sued.

Big bucks in the works: Apple is taking a bite out of the Phoenix area with a multi-billion dollar plan to boost research and manufacture advanced silicon, among other high-tech projects, Axios’ Mike Allen, Ben Berkowitz and Jessica Boehm report. Apple plans to invest more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years.

Unfortunately, Apple is not investing $500 billion in local political newsletters. So we’ll just have to grow the Agenda the old-fashioned way — by begging you generous readers to please click this button.

Politicians love to put their animals to work when it comes to campaigning.

Gov. Katie Hobbs’ dog Harley told Hobbs’ followers that February is a “ruff month for fundraising” and lent her “a paw” to ask for donations in a recent campaign message.

But newsletters could use some help this month, too.

These are Nicole’s cats, Burt and Helly. Your paid subscription keeps their bellies full and they’d love a few extra treats.

1. We found other stuff, too, like Rep. David Burnell Smith in 2006 claiming legislative immunity for misusing Clean Elections money.

2. When Smith died in 2013, the Star memorialized him for his “pull-out-the-stops, devil-be-damned, sometimes profound and nearly always entertaining columns.”