The Art of Compromise
It's amazing what a deadline can do ... New lawmakers incoming! ... And a busy week at the Capitol for the Thong Man.
It took a fair amount of compromise to get the election-disaster-averting emergency legislation to the Governor’s Office last week — a rare moment of fear-inspired bipartisan agreement at the Capitol.
Neither side was totally thrilled with what they got out of the deal.
However, citizens got what they needed: Certainty that their ballots would go out on time and that their votes for president would be delivered to Washington D.C. in time to actually count.
So today, in the spirit of celebrating compromise, let’s look at what each side had to give up, and what each gained, in a few of the provisions that were added, stripped out or tweaked in last week’s last-minute negotiations over the election timeline.
Some Points of Compromise
The law moves up the 2024 primary election date as Republicans wanted, but leaves future primary election dates in August, rather than May as Republicans des. ired
Republicans’ plan to force schools to turn into polling places got the axe in last-minute negotiations, though starting in 2026, state offices will instead be available as polling places.
Republicans Gave Up
Republicans had hoped to use the legislation as a chance to axe May special elections altogether, but that got stripped from the final bill.
Democrats Gave Up
When a voter returns a ballot with a signature that elections officials don’t think matches the one on file, they’re given five days to verify that it is their signature. Democrats were reluctant to shrink the number of days to “cure” mismatched signatures from five business days to five days, but ultimately that provision remained in the bill.
The final version also pulled a $1.2 million appropriation to the Secretary of State’s Office that Republicans had offered up in the original bill.
Republicans Got
Republicans were able to keep a provision allowing voters to show identification when dropping off their early ballot on Election Day to bypass the time-consuming signature verification process. While it’s not mandatory, many Republican lawmakers would like it to be.
Democrats Got
Democrats mostly succeeded in pulling out GOP-backed provisions or watering them down, including by fighting off harsher requirements to verify voters' signatures. The standard in the compromise states that signatures don’t have to match exactly, which Democrats hope will tamp down on challenges to election results.
Scooching up the primary election date by a week to July 30 may have saved Arizona from an election doomsday scenario, but jostling the dates means Arizona has a whole new election calendar.
While most of those myriad deadline changes really only affect elections administrators, there are a few changed dates you should know about.
The last day to register to vote in the primary is now July 1. (But don’t wait. Just go register or update that address now.)
You now have until the Sunday after the election to cure your ballot if officials don’t recognize your signature, not a full week.
And for candidates, the deadline to submit nominating petitions moved up a week to April 1.
That won’t matter much for the candidates that have already been out there pounding the pavement to get their signatures, but it might create a time crunch for U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who has to collect more than 42,000 valid signatures from registered voters by the deadline if she wants to run for reelection, and hasn’t yet started.
House Democrats are slowly refilling their ranks after four of their members quit this year.
Two of those vacant seats have already been filled — Jevin Hodge and Sarah Liguori were appointed to replace the resigned Athena Salman and Jennifer Longdon, respectively.
And the remaining two vacant seats may be filling up soon.
Democrats in central Phoenix’s LD5 met (again) last Thursday to pick three potential replacements for a lawmaker who quit — this time Democratic Rep. Amish Shah, per the Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington.
The three are: Mark Robert Gordon, Charles Lucking and Briana Westbrook.
And in the West Valley’s LD22, Democrats are slated to meet tonight to pick three possible replacements for Democratic Rep. Leezah Sun. Nine people have applied for the gig so far, and they all filled out questionnaires that you can read here.
The nine are: Steven Chapman, Natacha Chavez, Roberta Garcia, Sharon Hendrickson, Bryan Kilgore, Dr. Elda Luna-Najera, Betsy Munoz, Martin Quezada and Paul Valach.
But there’s drama brewing. District chair Tina Gamez emailed precinct committeemen saying she was not happy that Quezada, a former lawmaker, had already sent them his questionnaire before she could send everyone’s responses at the same time.
“Many are unhappy that this happened, as am I. Unfortunately, there are people who believe that rules don't apply to them. Mr. Quezada's completed questionnaire is also attached even though you have received it,” she wrote.
You can watch the LD22 Democrats’ meeting online tonight at 6 p.m. but you have to register here.
It’s like Iraq: Arizona election officials are preparing for potential disaster scenarios that usually only happen in fledgling democracies and countries with severe political unrest, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. Like many other election officials across the country, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is not taking any chances with Donald Trump on the ballot.
“(Fontes’) office is coordinating active-shooter drills for election workers and has sent kits to county election offices that include tourniquets to stem bleeding, devices to barricade doors and hammers to break glass windows,” Wingett Sanchez writes.
Speaking of barricades: Former prisons chief Charles Ryan won’t be going to prison after having a several-hour armed standoff with cops two years ago where he got drunk, shot himself in the hand and pointed his gun at police. He pleaded to a disorderly conduct charge and was sentenced to two years probation on Friday, AZFamily’s David Baker reports.
On to the next gig: Corporation Commissioner Anna Tovar, a former lawmaker, Tolleson mayor and city council member, announced she won’t seek reelection to the Corporation Commission this year. Three seats on the five-member utility regulation board are up for election this year, and Tovar is the only Democrat on the commission. Republican incumbents Lea Marquez Peterson and Jim O’Connor are also up for reelection.
Dem squabbles continue: Democratic Rep. Lydia Hernandez filed an ethics complaint alleging several of her more progressive colleagues bullied her for being a moderate, per the Republic’s Ray Stern. Probably the best detail is that she accuses other Democrats of “false imprisonment” because they wouldn’t let her leave a meeting until she agreed with them, which only took 30 minutes. She had previously filed the same allegations in a workplace harassment complaint that was dismissed last year. Last month, she tried to file a police report with the same allegations, but police wouldn’t take it because they said there was no crime, Stern writes.
Highly confidential public records: The FBI is investigating Chandler City Councilwoman Jane Poston and Chandler Law Enforcement Association president Michael Collins, ABC15’s Dave Biscobing discovered via a public records request. Details are scarce, but before he retired, the city’s former police chief wrote an email confirming he had a “confidential briefing” with the city manager about the investigation.
“Powerful people back East”: Republican donors want Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb to drop out of the U.S. Senate race against Kari Lake and run a primary campaign against Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, per CNN. Establishment Republicans are trying to get revenge after Crane joined with seven other far-right Republicans and congressional Democrats to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, another member of the “Gaetz eight,” says he’s getting blowback from donors, CNN notes.
Run a striker, David!: Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman blew off questions from the Republic’s Stern about whether he’d allow the Don Bolles memorial bill to get a hearing in his Senate Government Committee this year after singlehandedly killing the bill last year. But Republican Sen. David Farnsworth said he’s a big fan of the idea, telling Stern the Bolles murder is one of the reasons he got into politics.
“Reporter Hank Stephenson of the Arizona Agenda came up with the idea for the bill last year,” Stern writes.
It’s the final week for (most)1 committee hearings!
What does that mean? Well, it’s a good news / bad news situation.
The good news is, after this week, most House bills that haven’t been heard in House committees are dead for the year. Same for Senate bills that haven’t been heard in Senate committees.
The bad news is it’s going to be a very long week at the Capitol.
Already Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers is planning for a double-header of her Senate Elections Committee to ensure all the bills get through. Same for Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman’s Government Committee and Republican Sen. David Farnsworth’s Transporation, Technology and Missing Children Committee.
Next week, the action at the Capitol will be all about votes from the full House and Senate, as each chamber attempts to offload its bills to the other during the annual “crossover week.”
We didn’t have a chance last week to give the Republic’s Taylor Seely a proper shout-out for her excellent exposé of the beloved “unofficial” mayor of Laveen, a tan fellow that locals just call “Phil the thong man.”
“He knows what's being built where and how to stand up to developers. He advocates for the area's interests and has become a staple in Laveen, the small, but growing, farmland community 25 minutes southwest of downtown Phoenix,” Seely writes.
Also, since the 1970’s he’s mostly been wearing a colorful Speedo thong, or at best, short shorts.
The Rules and Appropriations committees are exempt from this deadline.
Please tell CNN that Eli Crane is in CD2, not CD5. re: "Powerful People Back East hoping Mark Lamb will drop bid for US Senate to challenge Eli Crane"