The capitol recap

We’re going over everything you forgot, didn’t catch or tried to suppress over the past six months.

In a 24-hour news cycle, it’s hard to remember what happened two days ago, let alone over the past six months.

Arizona’s Legislature adjourned two weeks ago, but we’ve been covering the ins and outs of the state’s 57th legislative session since before it started on Jan. 13.

To get you prepped for the year, we crafted a complex metaphor of lawmakers as a high school cafeteria crowd (and got to photoshop Senate President Warren Petersen’s face onto Regina George.) We also made a legislative to-do list¹ and introduced the budget chaos months before it really started.

But the best way to predict what politicians will do is to look at what they’ve already done. So today, we’re taking a midyear walk down memory lane before the rest of this year’s chaos unfurls.

Sinema’s psychedelic encore

After abandoning her U.S. Senate seat, and spending leftover campaign money on a Saudi Arabian hotel and Taylor Swift merch, Kyrsten Sinema graced us with her presence at the state Capitol in February to advocate for psychedelics.

She asked a House committee in March to approve $5 million to fund ibogaine research. That’s a psychoactive compound found in an African plant, and it could treat PTSD and complex brain injuries for veterans.

Sinema insisted she was advocating for the bill as a “private citizen,” not a lobbyist. But KJZZ found out the new firm she works for represents a company called MindMed that carried out ibogaine studies. The former Senator started working for the law firm after she testified, however. She never registered as a lobbyist.

The bill never got a final Senate vote. But the budget includes $5 million for “ibogaine clinical research grants” anyway.

That grant has to be given to a company that “Has a neurosurgery program with the requisite clinical and research facilities,” per the main budget bill. We’ll see if that ends up being MindMed.

MAHA madness

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a one-day trip to Arizona in April, and he stopped at the state Senate to promote a bill to prevent people from using food stamps to buy soda. It’s part of his MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) agenda, and Republican lawmakers were eager to give him a platform.

A crowd booed a reporter who tried to ask Kennedy about the measles outbreak. Since the visit, there have been more measles cases this year than any year since the U.S. declared the disease eliminated in 2000.

“Let’s talk about food!” Kennedy yelled.

Republican Rep. Leo Biasiucci has championed the MAHA agenda in Arizona, but Hobbs vetoed the soda bill. She signed his bill to ban ultra-processed foods in school lunches, however, and it goes into effect this upcoming school year.

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan also visited the state Capitol. Democrats walked out on his speech about the federal mass deportation campaign.

Stolen valor

Republican Rep. Walt Blackman returned to the Capitol this year after taking a hiatus for a failed Congressional run, and he wasn’t scared to stir the pot.

He championed a bill to make stolen valor a state felony, and while lawmakers aren’t usually vocal about behind-the-scenes legislative maneuvering, Blackman called his colleagues out.

He held a press conference bashing Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers for refusing to put the stolen valor bill up for a committee hearing. Blackman alleged Rogers and Republican Sen. Mark Finchem were trying to protect Blackman’s primary opponent, Steve Slaton, who falsely claimed to be a Vietnam veteran.

Blackman got the bill through by running a strike-everything amendment. Hobbs signed it into law in April.

DINO wars

The year started with the expectation that the governor would start sending her director nominees to far-right Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman’s Director Nominations Committee, or DINO committee, to be officially confirmed. Republicans won a lawsuit over the summer, forcing her to return to the formal nomination process, which was full of contentious hearings and invasive questions hurled at Hobbs’ nominees in 2023. Hoffman called his reappointment as committee chair Hobbs’ “worst nightmare.”

The Senate ended up confirming 12 department directors this year, but not without another series of contentious hearings. Hoffman shut down state insurance department nominee Barbara Richardson because she served on insurance industry committees focused on climate resiliency and race issues, for example.

Hobbs again threatened to stop sending nominees to the Senate over the hearings, but kept sending them anyway.

She did get a couple of licks in, however. In every veto letter of a Hoffman bill, Hobbs included the same acrostic poem:

“This bill is Detrimental, Ineffective, Nonsensical, and Objectionable.”

License to speed

Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen didn’t have any luck stopping lawmakers from using legislative immunity to get out of speeding tickets this year.

Two Republican senators — Finchem and Hoffman — were pulled over in January while speeding, but legislative immunity shielded both of them from getting a ticket. Former Sen. Justine Wadsack 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.

Nguyen’s bill didn’t make it through the Senate, which happens to be where most of the traffic tickets come from.

Parents vs. politics

Although we didn’t know it at the time, the fight to fund a program that pays parents to take care of their children with disabilities was a telling precursor to the budget wars.

Republicans stalled on funding the Parents as Paid Caregivers program, or PPCG, as it was set to run out of funding without a $122 million infusion. Republican Reps. David Livingston and Matt Gress led attempts to basically cut the program in half instead of passing a clean renewal.

Hobbs refused to sign any bills until lawmakers passed a continuation of the program without decimating it. So House lawmakers had their first real late-night floor session to finally get a clean renewal passed.

It was an inspiring showing of effective advocacy — parents continuously showed up to the Capitol to pressure lawmakers to pass the spending.

But the political grandstanding on behalf of disabled children didn’t go unnoticed: Gress, Livingston, Speaker Steve Montenegro and Rep. Michael Carbone were hit with a recall campaign. That campaign has since paused, per KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez.

Tasers, tweets and townhomes

Lobbyists for Taser-maker Axon hit the state Capitol hard this year to get help building the company a new headquarters in Scottsdale.

Scottsdale voters launched a referendum² to challenge the project, which included apartments, condos and hotels, after Scottsdale City Council had already approved the zoning — so Axon asked lawmakers to give them the go-ahead instead.

Lawmakers passed and Hobbs signed SB1543 to let Axon build its HQ without voter approval. Some lawmakers, especially those from Scottsdale, were furious.

Axon President Josh Isner beefed with Scottsdale-based Republican Rep. Joseph Chaplik on Twitter. Isner said Chaplik is in competition with the Axon project because he “brokered over $1B in apartment deals in his career,” to which Chaplik responded, “You should put the cocaine away or turn your phone off.”

After the bill passed, Isner said Axon pulled out of talks with Scottsdale, which mainly centered on the density of the project, because of “political toxicity.” It still plans to build 2,000 apartments and condos.

Budget

Lawmakers got alarmingly close to shutting down the state’s government this year after politicking too close to the sun.

Some legislators said they started talking about what to put in the budget before January, and both the House and Senate got weeks of vacation to make time for negotiations.

Still, Montenegro introduced a budget in early June that was crafted only with Republican House members, which isn’t how the budget process works.

The Senate dropped its plan, which was negotiated with the governor’s staff, a week later. That version eventually became law, but not before the House delayed even more and tried to pass a “skinny budget” that only funds basic government operations, even with the predetermined promise of Hobbs’ veto.

The whole process made budget season more maddening than usual. But it did give us some top-tier political moments like:

• Gress fighting to get the budget done before his late June Italian wedding to Daniel Scarpinato (both used to be Gov. Doug Ducey staffers). He ended up missing the final budget vote anyway.

• The weird public spat between Montenegro and Livingston during the “skinny budget” conversation. Livingston suggested he won’t keep his spot as House Appropriations Committee chair next year.

• Petersen’s charged speech from the Senate president’s chair rebutting other lawmakers’ “RINO” accusations.

• Our AI-produced political play recapping the drama of the budget, aptly titled “Sine Die Hard.” It featured an omnipresent voice-over from Hobbs and a budget “written in Comic Sans.” We will be accepting donations for a live production.

An excerpt from ACT II — "The Leak"

1. By our count, lawmakers got 2 and a half out of five of those items done.

2. The group behind the referendum was called Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions, or TAAAZE.