Lobbying 101

From college to the Capitol … Swing state syndrome … And Grok gets it right.

Republican Rep. Selina Bliss this week welcomed four college students to her small third-floor office, which is adorned with signage displaying the text of the Second Amendment and her “Legislator of the Year” award from the Arizona Citizens Defense League, which champions the right to bear arms.

The students told her they don’t want the state to regulate what pronouns they can be called, or to withhold funding from universities that teach about diversity, equity and inclusion.

Instead of directly disagreeing with the students, Bliss asks for the bill numbers and looks up the legislation like a pharmacist checking a prescription status. Republican Sen. David Farnsworth’s DEI bill passed by a 4-3 vote in the Rules Committee, which decides a bill’s constitutionality. So it might have legal trouble, she told them.

Kyle Nitschke, co-executive director of the Arizona Students’ Association, spoke at a press conference before students took off on their lobbying endeavors Monday.

The students were hopeful when they left the lobbying experience. It went as well as it could have, even though they know Bliss will vote with her party.

“I wish that she would have given us more concrete answers on the things that we were asking,” said Ella Shaffer, a freshman studying philosophy. “I suppose we could have asked her a little bit more straightforwardly.”

Welcome to lobbying 101: The first lesson is that lawmakers are tough to pin down.

More than 70 students from five of the state’s universities and colleges traveled to the Capitol Monday to lobby their lawmakers on bills that directly impact students. It’s an annual exercise of the Arizona Students’ Association, or the ASA.

More students showed up this year than on past lobbying days. The stakes are higher.

Mikah Dyer, a freshman at ASU studying secondary education, said the Trump administration's calls for disbanding the Department of Education have made students, especially those who are the first ones in their family to attend college, worry about their financial aid.

“This is their chance to kind of climb the economic ladder, get a chance for their family,” he said. “So I think that's why people are coming out, trying to find spaces where they can have that opportunity.”

The student members go through two days of training before they descend on the Capitol to lobby for things like higher education funding and creating a statewide sexual assault kit tracking system.

And while the students, who are mostly progressive, didn’t get a lot of satisfying answers from Bliss, they found at least one area of agreement with the Republican lawmaker.

The sexual assault tracking system students lobbied for comes from Bliss’ bill, HB2581, which she told students she was inspired to sponsor partly because she previously conducted rape exam kits when she worked in healthcare.

An hour after Bliss met with the students, another ASA group went downstairs to meet with Democratic Reps. Cesar Aguilar and Anna Abeytia.

The college students got along much better with the younger, more progressive lawmakers.

Aguilar took notes as four college students told him their priorities. His office is decorated with a large “Black Lives Matter” sign and a pride flag, and he agreed with the students that Republican’s DEI and pronoun bills shouldn’t be advancing.

Plus, Aguilar is sympathetic to the students’ experience. He told them about his lobbying experience when he was an ASA member in college, and the frustrating meeting he had with Republican Sen. John Kavanagh.

Abeytia, a new lawmaker, joked that Republicans are more concerned about letting golfers bring their own beer to the course than actionable change. The entire room laughed.

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Every year, the ASA students talk to lawmakers about bills they support and oppose with the hope their personal experiences will influence how legislators vote. But this year, one ASA student got as far as creating legislation.

Watch Miranda Lopez’s testimony here.

Miranda Lopez, a University of Arizona student getting her master’s in public administration, did extensive research on a bill to cap public university presidents’ salaries. While president raises have increased by nearly 30% over the last four years, she said, student workers and faculty rarely get pay increases.

“They're signing these huge contracts to presidents who then continue to collect a salary even after they've left or been fired,” Lopez said. “And meanwhile, they struggle to find the funds that they need for things like campus pantry.”

Farnsworth, who is also running the anti-DEI bill, sponsored Lopez’s idea as legislation this year. It didn’t get out of committee after the Arizona Board of Regents lobbied against it, and other educational groups were upset they weren’t involved, Lopez said.

Next year, she said, “I think we'll definitely try again.”

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Most of the students’ lobbying efforts weren’t as successful, however.

Their meeting with new Republican Rep. Hildy Angius, for example, got contentious.

It was Karly Barnes’ first time lobbying with ASA. She’s a sophomore at Northern Arizona University studying communications and got involved with the group because “having a voice as a university student is really powerful.” She was looking forward to speaking with Angius because the lawmaker represents Barnes’ hometown of Lake Havasu City.

Barnes said when her group brought up their opposition to banning voting centers, Angius “laughed at us and said this isn't an issue.”

When it came time to discuss the DEI bill, Angius said, “I'm a 65-year-old woman. What does that have to do with me?”

“Before we even started talking about (the pronoun bill), she said, ‘I just want to let you know before you waste any more of your breath, you won't get any sympathy from me on this one,’” Barnes said. “There were a couple of times where my jaw was to the floor.”

At the end of the meeting, Angius argued if the students believe in science, then they should know there are only two genders, and “literally stood up off her desk and, like, motioned her hand to the door, saying, you guys can leave now,” Barnes said.

The college student said she left the room upset, and Barnes’ advisor plans to reach out to Angius about the encounter.

Despite Angius’ attitude in the meeting, Barnes hopes meeting the representative in person “puts into perspective for (legislators) that ‘I can't just serve my own interests, because the people that I'm serving don't have the same interests as me.’”

“A lot of the time, especially with Hildy Angius, she serves as the face of District 30, but she doesn't know the faces that she represents,” Barnes said.

The ASA students came prepared with a list of bills they advocated for and against in their meetings with lawmakers. Here’s what the scholars want:

For:

• Allocating $100 million to the Arizona Promise Program that guarantees scholarships to public universities for Arizona residents. Gov. Katie Hobbs proposed putting $40 million toward the program in her budget proposal this year.

• Republican Rep. Selina Bliss’ HB2581 would create a statewide tracking system for sexual assault kits. The Phoenix Police Department has a serious backlog and doesn’t have a system to tell victims where their kits are in the processing system.

Against:

• Republican Sen. John Kavanagh’s SB1002 prohibits teachers from using a student’s preferred pronouns without parental permission.

• Republican Rep. Rachel Keshel’s HCR2002 would ask voters to get rid of voting centers — where voters can cast a ballot at any location — in favor of a precinct-based voting system.

• Republican Sen. David Farnsworth’s SB1694 would withhold state money from universities that offer courses on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Get ready for campaign ads: Republicans on the national stage are eyeing Arizona’s governor’s race as a prime pickup opportunity, The Hill reports. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs already has two GOP opponents: Karrin Taylor Robson, who lost to Kari Lake in the 2022 primary, and former head of the Freedom Caucus, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs. GOP operatives say Hobbs’ record-setting vetoes make it look like she wants “one-party control,” but they’re a little worried the midterms won’t favor Republican candidates. There’s a long way to go until the election, and other candidates could jump in. A recent poll showed Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, stood as good a chance as Biggs, and both were ahead of Taylor Robson.

Other ways to serve: Democratic state Sen. Eva Burch, who represents a competitive Mesa district, announced she’s resigning from the Legislature, effective at the end of next week. Burch, who was first elected in 2022, blamed the low legislative pay and long hours that compete with her real job as a healthcare provider. Not to mention, as a Democrat in the Republican-controlled Legislature, she is “not in the best position to get things done.”

Not looking good: The Mexican government’s arguments didn’t fare well this week as they tried to persuade U.S. Supreme Court justices that gun manufacturers were responsible for violence in Mexico, KJZZ’s Nina Kravinsky reports. Mexican officials filed a landmark lawsuit saying more than 70% of guns used by criminal groups in Mexico come from the U.S., and manufacturers know the weapons they sell end up in the hands of cartel members. Judging by their comments as they heard arguments on Tuesday, the justices appeared to agree that a 2005 law shields gun manufacturers from being held responsible.

“Somebody” is attacking the judiciary: Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick called out the “assault on the independent judiciary” in an op-ed for Real Clear Politics. That independence is what separates democratic countries like the United States from authoritarian regimes like China. But it’s “under grave attack” from the left and right, he wrote, listing “highly dangerous tactics” like defying court orders, impeaching judges, and arguing that a president has the “power to define his own constitutional authority.” A rousing appeal, no doubt. But he didn’t mention President Donald Trump by name once.

Cage-free no more: Now that egg prices are rising amid an avian flu outbreak, Arizona lawmakers are trying to get rid of rules that require hens to live in cage-free conditions, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. A Senate panel approved Republican Sen. Shawnna Bolick’s bill that would block the rules, which were already delayed until next year, before they take effect. A looming question is whether animal rights advocates will try to get a measure on the ballot that would be stricter than the rules Bolick is trying to block.

More questions than answers: The Trump administration’s cuts to federal grants led to nine stop-work orders and seven termination orders at the University of Arizona, the Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. Other than that, UA officials didn’t have a lot of answers from faculty senators who were upset about the lack of information and plans about large-scale research projects.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Senior Vice President for Research Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, who appeared to be taken aback by the blunt questions.

Blunt questions are the best. We’ll make you a deal. You click that button and subscribe and we’ll keep asking the bluntest questions we can come up with.

Making it official: Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban was permanently blocked yesterday by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge, AZFamily’s Mitchell Koch reports. The ruling that the ban was unconstitutional comes after the Legislature repealed the law last May and voters approved Proposition 139 in November, making abortion a constitutional right until fetal viability, which is generally 22-24 weeks. The ruling this week was made even easier by the fact that nobody was defending the ban. Attorney General Kris Mayes, who is tasked with defending state laws, said the ballot measure made the law unenforceable.

Either Elon Musk’s AI tool doesn’t work very well, or there’s a high likelihood that President Donald Trump is a Russian asset.

Republic columnist EJ Montini asked the tool, Grok, to search publicly available information about Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and rate how likely it is that Trump is a Russian asset.

It was one of the finer journalistic uses of AI we’ve ever seen.

Grok, which was developed by Musk-owned Twitter, came back with:

“Trump’s ego and debts make him unwittingly pliable, fits the evidence. Adjusting for uncertainty and alternative explanations (e.g., ideological alignment or naivety), I estimate a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties.”