The Daily Agenda: Abortion special session could backfire
But a campaign promise is a campaign promise ... Lawsuits, allegedly, incoming ... And justice for bald men.
We’ll have one last post for y’all tomorrow morning — an end-of-year business update — before we take a few weeks away from the daily grind to catch up on business needs and rest before the long legislative session starts. We may have a post or two appear during that time off, but we won’t keep our regular publishing schedule. We’ll return to the Daily Agenda on Jan. 2 at 6 a.m.
We hope you and yours get some time to rest and recharge during the holiday season as well!
As lawmakers push the outgoing governor to call a special session to raise the school spending limit, the incoming governor has already said she’ll call at least one special session upon taking office.
On the campaign trail, and again after the race was called, Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs said she would pull lawmakers into a special session on day one to repeal a pre-statehood law that bans abortions completely, with an exception only to save the life of the mother.
But that plan, while it aligns with how the state as a whole views abortion access, faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Legislature, where most, if not all, GOP members view abortion much differently. Reproductive rights advocates said they don’t see the votes for repealing the outright ban, either, but they understand the value of trying.
A couple months ago, when the Republican attorney general and Democrats both called for a special session to clarify whether the newer 15-week abortion ban or the outright ban should be enforced, we tried, and failed, to find GOP lawmakers who’d vote with Democrats to repeal the full ban.
Since the Dobbs ruling, it’s been unclear which laws will reign in Arizona, creating confusion for patients, providers and prosecutors. A lawsuit seeking clarity is working its way through the courts, and neither law is currently being enforced in the meantime, so the urgency for a special session isn’t the same as it was immediately post-Dobbs.
Circumstances may have changed — namely, Republicans lost big races last month at least in part because of abortion — but the incoming lawmakers are, on the whole, more conservative than their outgoing counterparts.
“Republican majority lawmakers and anti-abortion advocates will need to weigh their options: Create an acceptable fix now in a special session, or deal with a catastrophic (from their point of view) ballot initiative in 2024,” Jodi Liggett, founder of the Arizona Center for Women’s Advancement, told us via email.
Incoming Senate President Warren Petersen told us via text that he hasn’t spoken with Hobbs about the issue. Speaker-elect Ben Toma said he also hasn’t spoken with Hobbs yet about it, nor has he heard from his caucus on the issue. Senate Democratic leader Raquel Terán says the Dem caucus is united in wanting to repeal the ban. One GOP lawmaker told us they don’t see the point of calling a session that will likely fail and upset the Republicans she’ll need to work with to pass any of her priorities. She also can’t force the Legislature to do what she wants, so they could adjourn the session immediately, or send her abortion-related bills that could be uncomfortable for her to veto, the lawmaker said.
“(To her supporters), it looks like she’s taking the bull by the horns, until the bull doesn’t move,” the Republican lawmaker said.
Still, even if a repeal of the ban doesn’t pass the Legislature, it could have strategic benefits for Democrats. They’d get Republican lawmakers, especially those in swing districts, on the record about a major issue to Arizona voters. And they’d show potential backers and supporters of a 2024 ballot measure that Hobbs kept her campaign promise by trying, and that using direct democracy is the only option.
In her most recent round of interviews, several journalists asked Hobbs about whether she’d have the votes to repeal the 1864 ban. She responded by saying she hoped Republican lawmakers would listen to their constituents on the issue, but acknowledged she can’t say whether she could muster a majority, meaning two Republican votes in each chamber. She also nodded toward a ballot measure to further access, saying voters might need to solve the problem themselves.
Meanwhile, the reproductive rights community is discussing what a 2024 measure could look like and the steep climb it’d face. It would cost tens of millions of dollars to get a measure on the ballot and run a campaign, given the restrictive laws for signature-gathering and inevitable lawsuits. Two newly approved ballot measures restricting direct democracy could have an effect, too. It’s unlikely the Legislature would agree to send a measure to the ballot on the topic, either.
It will be challenging for the coalition of groups to align behind a ballot measure that satisfies activists and isn’t so permissive the public would reject it. There are some who don’t want to see any limits on abortion in a ballot measure, Liggett said, but that could put off moderate Arizona voters who were comfortable with the pre-Dobbs rules.
Chris Love, a reproductive rights advocate and past chair of Planned Parenthood Action, said decisions on how to craft the measure should be based on data and analysis of where voters sit on the issue. She wants to see voter education to detail how a 15-week ban, with an exception only for the life of the pregnant person, isn’t enough access, especially for those who face barriers to getting care. And while she personally doesn’t believe in any limits, she understands this is Arizona.
“We're going to have to make some really uncomfortable compromises,” Love said.
The watch continues: The clock is ticking for Kari Lake, Abe Hamadeh or anyone else to file a lawsuit challenging the results of the election. Monday is the deadline. Maricopa County began the recount yesterday of three races that fell within the newly expanded margin to trigger an automatic recount: the attorney general race, the superintendent of public instruction race and the race for the second House seat in the Chandler-based LD13.
New gig just dropped?: Lake spent nearly three hours yesterday guest-hosting “America First with Sebastian Gorka,” a Rumble show and podcast, ranting about the “stolen election” and RINOs and promising that a lawsuit is coming Friday. She interviewed pillow and election conspiracy salesman Mike Lindell, Gateway Pundit “reporter” Jordan Conradson and RNC chair candidate and Lake campaign lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, among others.
It’s not a rift!: The Republic’s Ray Stern gets the scoop on the Hobbs-backed pick for Arizona Democratic Party chair that we hinted at the other day: She’s supporting former lawmaker and current Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo to lead the state party, while Adrian Fontes and Mark Kelly are backing Yolanda Bejarano, the party’s vice-chair. And in other party chair news, the list of those who want to be AZGOP chair is growing: Sheila Muehling, the party treasurer, is in the race, and we’re increasingly hearing Jim Lamon, the wealthy businessman who bankrolled his own failed U.S. Senate primary campaign this year, may be interested in the gig.
16, 31 and none: Incoming Senate President Warren Petersen is proposing a package of policy changes that echo Lake’s plan to fight inflation by barring cities from taxing food and rent, as well as cutting the fees to get an occupation license and red tape on developers to help boost the housing supply, the Capitol Times’ Camryn Sanchez writes. Cities and incoming Gov. Katie Hobbs opposed the idea of eliminating food or rent taxes, which only some cities use, with some Republican mayors saying it’s a plan that would force cities to defund police, fire and other essential services.
Run, Doug, run!: Washington Post conservative columnist George F. Will, a longtime fan of Gov. Doug Ducey, urges the governor to run against Donald Trump for the presidency in 2024, putting him on a shortlist of governors who could beat the former president. Will called him a “full-spectrum conservative” who has scored big wins on economic policy, regulatory and judicial reform, school choice and barring transgender girls from playing school sports.
It’s like “constitutional sheriffs” but for legislatures: The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday on a case testing the “independent state legislatures doctrine,” which argues that state lawmakers, not the courts, state constitutions or voters, have sole authority to set election law in a state. The New York Times’ Michael Wines has a helpful breakdown of the doctrine and the case. And outgoing Republican state Sen. Paul Boyer tells Politico that the whole nullifying an election aspect of the doctrine isn’t as theoretical as it might seem, considering state lawmakers here tried to pass a bill to give themselves authority to overturn the 2020 election, along with many other “crazy” ideas he helped stop.
Also kinda like constitutional sheriffs: After a wave of resignations and the murder of Constable Deborah Martinez, the Pima County Board of Supervisors is struggling to finding qualified applicants to appoint as constables, the Tucson Sentinel’s Bennito L. Kelty writes. The board has been pushing the constables to implement reforms, threatening to cut budgets if they don’t, and voting against hiring deputy constables to help with the workload.
Dems cut ribbons, too: While Arizonans are probably used to seeing Ducey and a cast of Republican politicians at major economic announcements, Tuesday’s event with President Joe Biden featured mostly Democrats accepting credit. Ducey, though, really laid the groundwork for the groundbreaking of the new microchip plant, which represents massive investment of private and foreign money in Arizona, the Republic’s Alison Steinbach notes. Meanwhile, Yuma Mayor Doug Nichols is mad that Biden didn’t stop at the border while he was in Arizona, telling KTAR that it didn’t have to be a political thing, but the president should see the reality on the ground there.
Let’s hope this ages well: All the big-name election deniers who lost their elections conceded, except of course Lake, but the fact that she hasn’t pulled some kind of “Jan. 6 redux” shows that “few, if any, Republicans actually believed the Big Lie in the first place,” Salon’s Amanda Marcotte writes in a think piece about Lake’s loss.
Speaking of Arizona Democrats rising: Biden announced his appointment of Ginger Sykes Torres, a member of the Navajo Nation who ran for the Phoenix-based Congressional District 1 this year but withdrew from the ballot after facing a lawsuit over her signatures, as executive director of the Arizona USDA Farm Service Agency.
Lucy and the football: With the passage of Prop 308, Arizona’s undocumented students got in-state tuition, but they worry what that means if the DACA program, which “hangs by a thread in federal court,” goes away, KJZZ’s Alisa Resnik writes. And while U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has once again crafted the framework of an immigration reform deal with a Republican colleague that would, among other things, give Dreamers a path to citizenship, the Daily Star’s Tim Steller warns readers not to hold their breath.
Today in cities: New Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan has a four-point plan to fix the city’s police force. It’s pretty vague, and he wouldn’t talk to the Phoenix New Times about it, but sent a statement that the plan “revolves around the concept that preservation of life is at the core of policing." NIMBYism and concerns about location and water sources voted against a planned affordable housing project in Chandler, KJZZ’s Kirsten Dorman reports. And Substacker Dillon Rosenblatt picks a fight with Lake Havasu Unified School District over public records about that teacher with an OnlyFans account.
Hank is VERY excited to see that his bald head would not prevent him from winning a competitive U.S. Senate race in a swing state and that said baldness could, in fact, give him a leg up.
Only one more Agenda before New Year's? I'll miss it, but taking a break is important. Hank can rest up for the start of his Senate run ...
REALLY going to miss you two! But I'm sure you need the time off. Enjoy! (P.S. - you're right "It’s not a riff!". It's a rift. :0)
Happy Holidays!