Like any market, prostitution exists in Arizona because people are willing to pay for it.
Arizona law, though, does not clearly separate the buyers from the sellers: Both are charged under the same prostitution statutes.
In practice, the law doesn’t affect both sides equally.
During a recent crackdown on a notorious stretch of Phoenix’s 27th Avenue known as “The Blade,” for example, most arrests were of people accused of selling sex, not those accused of paying for it.
A bipartisan bill advancing this year would create separate legal categories for buyers and sellers, while increasing penalties for the “johns” who solicit prostitution.
But even with bipartisan support, the bill has drawn conflicting criticism: Advocates worry it could punish exploited sex workers, while skeptics say it over-penalizes buyers. And some question whether it will do anything at all.
The legislation would draw a clearer legal line between buying sex and selling sex by defining the roles separately in state statutes and increasing the penalty for only the buyers.
Under current law, both offenses are punished as a class 1 misdemeanor with escalating jail sentences for repeat offenses. On the fourth offense, the penalty increases to a class 5 felony.
This year’s bill would increase the penalty for that fourth bust to a class 4 felony and add a mandatory $200 penalty, with the money going to a fund for services for trafficking victims.
A similar law took effect in Texas through a Democrat-authored bill in 2021, making it the first state to turn buying sex into a felony. (Again, only for serial offenders.)
Democratic Sen. Flavio Bravo, who represents the district that covers “The Blade,” is moving the bill through the Senate via SB1535, while Republican Rep. Selina Bliss’s HB2720 passed a final House vote earlier this month. The mirror bills contain the same language, allowing each chamber to move the proposal without waiting for the other’s version to cross over.
But 14 Democrats in the House voted against the measure, including Bravo’s seatmate, Democratic Rep. Cesar Aguilar.
“I don't think this is actually going to solve what the bill sponsor, and my own seatmate, think they're going to solve,” Aguilar said during his vote explanation.
The opposition is based on the idea that sex trafficking victims could be hit with more severe felonies and a $200 fee — if they ask another victim to take part in a sex act for money.
Prosecutors could treat that as facilitating prostitution, even if both people were being exploited, per Natalya Brown, a lobbyist for the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence.
Currently, those charged with prostitution can avoid conviction by showing they were acting as a result of being trafficked. Advocates wanted stronger protection: a rule requiring courts to presume they were trafficked unless the state proved they were not, or a rebuttable presumption.
“They're not understanding that a large percentage of sex workers are victims of sex trafficking, the people that they're saying they want to help,“ Brown said. “So without amending it to include a rebuttable presumption if they are caught, it just doesn't do anything to help them.”
Marilyn Rodriguez, a lobbyist for Attorneys for Criminal Justice, said she and other advocates proposed an amendment to make it easier for trafficking victims to avoid conviction under the bill through a rebuttable presumption, but lawmakers rejected it.
“It's not as cut and dried as (lawmakers) believe sex buying to be,” Rodriguez said.
And paying for sex, to some lawmakers, isn’t that big of a deal.
“I’ve had both Democrats and Republicans say things to me, like, ‘These are just construction workers who are tired at the end of the day,'” Bravo said.
When the bill came before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Republican Sen. John Kavanagh voiced that concern openly:
“Not everybody who patronizes a prostitute is a buddy of Jeffrey Epstein, involved in trafficking,” he said. “I mean, we've had a lot of just stupid adolescent kids who had a few too much to drink, and they go out and patronize a prostitute.”
But at the same committee hearing, the officers who see the effects of prostitution and trafficking up close said Arizona’s laws aren’t strong enough to protect victims or the people living in prostitution hot spots.
Phoenix Police Lt. Chris Parese said the current consequence for those caught soliciting prostitution — a class 1 misdemeanor, equivalent to some forms of trespassing or loitering — “doesn't go far enough.”
“These women that are out there are out there by force and coercion, and it is my belief that the buyers involved with this deserve greater responsibility for their part in the transactions,” he said.
Grand Canyon University, a Christian college planted a bit inconveniently near the 27th Avenue corridor, has made area cleanup a focus of its police department and helped organize a crime-prevention coalition with nearby businesses and schools called the “27Collab.”
Shortly before Christmas last year, GCU Police Chief Mark Heimall said he visited the home of a young mother and her four children who live in "The Blade."
“As we spoke, I looked around and saw about 15 or 20 used condoms on the street and sidewalk,” he told lawmakers. “She saw me looking and apologized for not picking them up before we got there, and told me that’s where they normally park.”
Heimall could have another chance to offer his uncomfortable anecdote on Wednesday, when the House version of the bill is scheduled for another Senate committee hearing, even though the whole point of introducing mirror bills was to avoid that extra step.
Bravo said he still hadn’t gotten a clear answer on Monday about the plan. But either way, the legislation appears to be on track for Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk, as long as Senate President Warren Petersen wants to send it there.
Petersen could either bring Bravo’s already committee-approved bill up for a final vote, or instead move the House version if it clears committee again. Or he could do neither, and let the bill die.
Either way, some advocates say that even if the bill is signed into law, it won't fix the problem it’s trying to address.
“I feel like it's probably going to be signed, which is unfortunate, but it's not causing more harm,” Brown said. “It's just not doing anything, and victims are already caught up in the system. It's going to continue to happen.”
Candidates running for state and federal offices had until yesterday at 5 p.m. to turn in the signatures they need to qualify for July’s primaries — so we staked out the Secretary of State’s Office to see who showed up on the last day.
It might be the only thing politicians and reporters have in common: We love an impending deadline.
We saw a number of current lawmakers — like Democrats Sen. Lauren Kuby, as well as Reps. Junelle Cavero, Sarah Liguori and Aaron Márquez — filing their final supplemental petitions around lunch time.
A few challenger candidates filtered in too — like Daniel Butierez, a Tucson Republican trying to take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva in her deep blue Southern Arizona congressional district, and Robert Wallace, a Republican and Turning Point USA employee who’s mounting a primary challenge against GOP Sen. John Kavanagh.
Arizona State Mine Inspector Les Presmyk — a Republican who was appointed to the office by Gov. Katie Hobbs after his predecessor resigned in August — filed signatures from 14 counties and said getting more than 7,000 for the office was a “daunting task” after only starting four months ago.
Gina Swoboda, the former state Republican Party chair now running for secretary of state, entered with her husband Robert and turned in about 14,600 signatures — nearly double the number she needs to qualify.
“They’ve already hired people to challenge me,” Swoboda said of her primary opponent, Rep. Alex Kolodin.
She also turned in around 20 affidavits from people who requested the signatures they gave to Kolodin be withdrawn — but Arizona law requires those to have been turned in on the day Kolodin submitted his signatures or before. Swoboda noted to a Secretary of State’s Office employee that the submission information isn’t public, making it impossible to know when the affidavits needed to be turned in. The employee said she would refer the matter to her boss.
Republican former lawmaker Anthony Kern also showed up with what looked like two sheets of paper and chatted with Frank Steele, a Republican running an unlikely first-time challenge to Democratic Sen. Analise Ortiz.
Kern told Steele that he has to win and used his mouth to make a loud farting noise to describe the progressive Democrat.
And then there were the last-minute submitters living life on the edge.
Among them were GOP Rep. Justin Olson, Democratic candidate for Arizona’s 1st Congressional District Mark Gordon, and Kai Newkirk — a progressive challenging fellow Democrat and U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton.
Newkirk turned his signatures in with 27 minutes to spare. After only launching his campaign twelve days before the deadline, he managed to gather 2,250 signatures, he said.
But the last submission was our favorite.
Bruce Gorshe, who owns Uncle Sam Petitions, said he had 90 clients for whom he was gathering signatures. When Republican Congressional District 4 hopeful and former NFL player Jerone Davison expressed awe and asked for some money for his campaign, Gorshe complained.
“I don’t have any money,” he said. “I’m serious. I’m waiting for my candidates to pay me.”
But remember: Just because these candidates filed their signatures doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll qualify for the ballot.
Next comes a 10-day window in which signatures can be challenged in court, and as Swoboda noted, that’s to be expected in many races.
Fallout from Minneapolis: Sky Harbor is one of 13 airports that will get ICE agents working security amid a partial government shutdown that is straining the Transportation Security Administration, the New Times’ Zach Buchanan reports. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego called the ICE deployment a “dim idea,” while a union representing government employees said ICE agents aren’t properly trained to work in airports. DHS officials didn’t answer the New Times’ questions about what ICE agents would actually be doing at Sky Harbor.
“The sole reason for this partial government shutdown is the Trump administration’s reckless and irresponsible deployment of ICE, and its refusal to accept measures of accountability,” Gallego wrote.
Trumpaganda: A group of Voice of America reporters is suing Kari Lake, saying she sacrificed editorial independence in favor of “propaganda” for the Trump administration, per NPR. In Iran, for example, the lawsuit claims VOA reporters were blocked from reporting that some Iranians supported the son of the late Shah. This lawsuit comes after a federal judge ruled last month that Lake did not have the authority to run VOA in the first place and ordered federal officials to rehire all the reporters Lake fired.
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A debate becomes a duel: Arizona’s school voucher system might be on the November ballot, twice. The state’s biggest teachers union backed an initiative that would set an income cap and add requirements like completing state testing. Now, school choice advocates like Brian Jodice of the American Federation for Children have an initiative of their own that doesn’t include an income cap and would combat what they call a “Trojan horse” from the teachers union, Shira Tanzer reports for KTAR.
“I mean, they’re talking about doing things that would make the program unrecognizable, unworkable and unusable for families,” Jodice said. “Arbitrary income caps, over-regulations of schools. I mean, really taking away the heart of how school choice benefits, not just kids in Arizona, but across the country.”
Not giving up yet: Arizona prison officials are appealing a federal court order that would put prison healthcare under the control of a court-appointed receiver, Katherine Davis-Young reports for KJZZ. A federal judge last month said “the court’s patience has run out” after 14 years of litigation and state officials have “deployed many delay tactics.” After the ruling, Gov. Katie Hobbs said she was deeply disappointed by the decision and claimed the court failed to recognize the “immense strides” the prison system has made under her administration.
Simmering spat: Southern Arizonans have been hearing about the Copper World mining project for quite some time. For the rest of Arizona, the Republic’s Sarah Lapidus breaks down the project and why it’s such a big deal, including the spat between Hobbs and local Democratic officials who wanted her to block the April 29 auction of 160 acres of state land the mining company needs.
Where did I hear that?: A week after we wrote about Democratic Sen. Brian Fernandez voting to fund his employer to the tune of $3 million, the Republic’s Ray Stern and Helen Rummel picked up the story.
Last week, the New Republic took a deep dive into Arizona’s water woes — and a potential market-based solution proposed by Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin.
The whole piece is worth a read if you’re a water nerd, but the passage that caught our lol sensibilities was the description of Kolodin’s law office from the New Republic’s Aaron Gell.
“In terms of water, ‘Arizona’s like living on Mars, OK?’ Alexander Kolodin told me, sitting in the modest, comedically cluttered office of his Phoenix law practice, an ADHD fever dream of half-empty soda cups and Jenga-like towers of legal briefs.”
We’ve never seen Kolodin’s law office, but comically cluttered ADHD fever dream checks out, considering the guy lost his car keys at the Capitol at least twice last year.
We also got a kick out of his description of the secretary of state candidate’s history of bringing shoddy cases attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and the ethics class he was forced to take afterwards. And this parenthetical is doing a lot of lifting.
“(Asked about the AK-47 resting a few quick steps from his office chair, he explained, ‘after Charlie Kirk got assassinated, I’m not taking any chances.’)”