The Daily Agenda: Another day, another embarrassment
Your colleagues are investigating your bad tweets for being bad ... The Governator funded election grants, too ... And we're sure these new classroom visits wouldn't be politicized.
The Arizona Senate once again rebuked its nuttiest member, Sen. Wendy Rogers, voting nearly unanimously to send her latest conspiratorial social media post to the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate.
This specific post, in which Rogers said “fed boy summer has started in Buffalo,” implied that the mass shooting targeting Black people in Buffalo, New York, was a false-flag operation by the feds. Yes, it’s ridiculous. No, it’s not surprising. Remember her last censure?
Senate Democrats wanted to expel her immediately and, in their infinite naïveté, warned Republicans that they would make a motion to do so yesterday. So Republicans instead blocked the move by offering a substitute motion to send the bad post to the Senate Ethics Committee — which has yet to take seriously a single investigation under Karen Fann’s tenure as Senate president.
It’s not clear what the committee is supposed to investigate: Whether she wrote the tweet? Whether it was racist, wrong and dangerously conspiratorial? Whether Rogers is an embarrassment to the Senate? Whether the tweet constitutes the kind of “disorderly behavior” that could lead to an expulsion? None of the above?
Democrats eventually convinced a handful of Republicans to help overturn the ruling that blocked them from immediately invoking an expulsion. It was a day of procedural madness, as both sides call points of order and argued whether they (the politicians) were playing politics. Ultimately, the expulsion didn’t get the two-thirds support necessary to pass.
So what’s it going to take to rid Arizona of Rogers?
We have no faith in the Senate Ethics Committee under Fann. As Republican Sen. Sonny Borrelli said, the committee will likely investigate Rogers “to make sure (she) is cleared.” The committee has quashed nearly every investigation sent its way in the last two years, including one into Rogers. A brief recap:
Fann quashed a complaint against Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita after a former Capitol staffer turned lobbyist alleged Ugenti-Rita and her husband, former House Chief of Staff Brian Townsend, sexually harassed her and that Ugenti-Rita tried to pressure her into a threesome1.
The Republican-controlled committee threw out a complaint against Rogers in March after a staffer and former Rogers campaign volunteer accused her of berating him, calling him fat and breaking his belongings. The state is now facing a wrongful termination lawsuit from the employee.
The committee is, however, investigating a complaint against Democratic Sen. Lisa Otondo after allegations surfaced that she helped cover up Democratic Rep. Robert Meza’s fraud and public corruption schemes. The House Ethics Committee dismissed the complaint against Meza.
Many Republicans made it clear that they don’t believe her tweet was racist or conspiratorial (or that they had no idea what “fed boy summer” meant). And even if it was, spewing hate online is not an expellable event, they argued.
Rogers said nothing during the hours of debate about her. But she fired off a statement claiming her post had been taken out of context while failing to explain a context in which it would be appropriate.
Ugenti-Rita argued she’s tired of the shenanigans of filing ethics complaints against each other2, and it’s up to the voters to decide if Rogers should stay.
Sadly, Ugenti-Rita is probably right. Even if the Senate expelled Rogers, she’s still running for re-election. Ultimately, it’ll be up to the voters get rid of Rogers, and they’ll have their chance in August. Republican Sen. Kelly Townsend is running against Rogers in the primary for the new Legislative District 7 Senate seat. Townsend is probably a long shot, considering Rogers is a darling of the new far-right and has more cash than many gubernatorial candidates.
But God help us, we’re rooting for Townsend.
The power of a seasoned auditor: The state erroneously kicked some Native American kids off KidsCare, a health insurance program that covers children, a state audit found. While the KidsCare program charges premiums for covered children, Native children are exempt from paying premiums by law, Arizona Public Media’s Andrew Oxford reports. Still, the audit noted, 50 Native children got booted from coverage for not paying premiums.
Everything is politics: As Title 42 becomes a highly political immigration football by both parties in an election year, “the prospect of repealing the public health rule by May 23 appears increasingly unlikely,” the Republic’s Rafael Carranza reports.
The B Team debate: Four of the five Republican candidates for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District showed up for a debate on “Arizona Horizon” last night hosted by Ted Simons and the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl. Candidate Lucretia Free stood out from the others, though she, like most of the candidates in the race, does not have the money to run a real campaign. Former Gov. Doug Ducey aide Juan Ciscomani is the only candidate to crack seven figures (most haven’t cracked five figures), and he didn’t show up to the debate.
From bad to worse: The nationwide shortage of baby formula is hitting the Phoenix area harder than other parts of the country, meaning caregivers are more likely to find formula out of stock here than than the national average, ABC15’s Garrett Archer reports.
It’s not illegal to be an idiot online: Arizona State University lost its case against an anonymous Instagram account advertising “covid parties” in 2020 in a legal appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer reports. The university sued a John Doe over the account, claiming trademark violations, but the federal judges said the account was clearly not seen as affiliated with ASU. Instead, the poster, who filed a response to the claim which wasn’t allowed into the case because it was profane, was expressing negative views about the university, as is their right, the judges said.
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We suggest Mountain Desert Canyon Shadow Cactus School: The Tempe Elementary School District said it intends to rename three schools with names of people who were members of the Ku Klux Klan, and the district asked the community to suggest new names for the three schools, 12News reports.
Keep it simple: Conservative columnist Robert Robb says schools should get a sizable increase in base-level funding instead of spreading more money across multiple programs or redoing the school funding formula because increasing base level funding is simple and could actually pass this session.
It lacks a catchy name: While you might have heard about the Zuckbucks that gave grants to help pay for elections, you might not have heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, also gave grants to Maricopa County to help pay for staffing, the Arizona Mirror’s Dillon Rosenblatt reports. Such private grants for elections administration are now banned under Arizona law.
State > federal: After the federal government made moves to take over the state’s workplace safety program, Arizona business groups say having the feds in charge would negatively affect businesses like contractors and create more burdens, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Nick Phillips writes.
The state actually still inspects things?: In about 1,400 inspections by the Arizona’s Weights and Measures Services Division each year of retail businesses, posted prices in stores don’t match the prices actually charged to customers about 17% of the time in routine inspections, AZFamily reports.
There’s a world outside Arizona, allegedly: To get a lay of the land in U.S. Senate races around the country, check out the Washington Post’s interactive of key Senate races, including Arizona’s, that may affect the party makeup of the chamber.
A House bill would require public schools, both districts and charters, to set policies that allow parents to visit and tour classrooms.
Republican Rep. Michelle Udall’s House Bill 2025 calls on schools to adopt policies in public meetings so that parents of current students or prospective students can visit, tour or observe their child’s classroom unless such a visit would “threaten the health and safety of pupils and staff.” Those policies, once adopted, must be posted online and “easily accessible from the home page on each school’s website.”
The bill from Udall, who is also running for superintendent of public instruction, comes amid a wave of parent activism across the country, which has erupted at some school board meetings in Arizona.
EDITED TO ADD: In this case, parents of students with disabilities found they weren’t able to tour prospective classrooms, with some schools saying student privacy laws prevented it, so these parents sought a state law to clarify the issue. Check out Karla Phillips-Krivickas’ account of the problems she faced here.
It passed the House and awaits a final vote in the Senate.
Arizona Senate leaders demanded that Senate Democratic staffer Talonya Adams take down a host of tweets badmouthing Katie Hobbs, including one praising us as “reputable journalists” while trashing our reporting about gubernatorial Marco Lopez’s involvement in the largest bribery scandal in history.
Adams is the Senate Democratic staffer who won two racial and sexual discrimination lawsuits against the Senate by alleging former Senate Minority Leader Hobbs, among others, discriminated against her when they fired her. As part of the settlement, the Senate offered Adams her job back — making for an awkward working environment.
Adams has been on an online rampage against Hobbs ever since, including in a series of tweets she posted during working hours.
The Senate’s hired attorney, Kory Langhofer, fired off a letter demanding Adams take down the tweets and refrain from tweeting political endorsements and attacks during working hours, the Yellow Sheet Report reported yesterday. Adams complied, but she’s clearly not happy about it.
Fann argued that Ugenti-Rita wasn’t technically a sitting senator when the allegations took place. (Ugenti-Rita had already been elected to the Senate from the House, but hadn’t taken her seat. Good timing!)
Meanwhile, Fann and Republican Sen. T.J. Shope pledged yesterday that the Senate Ethics Committee would receive and investigate a complaint against Democratic Sen. Juan Mendez for very rarely showing up to the Senate this year after Rep. Athena Salman gave birth to their first child. Both are avoiding the Capitol because of COVID-19 risk to their newborn. Fann has excused Mendez for his absences, as has House Speaker Rusty Bowers for Salman, but both are still their legislative salaries and per-diem payments.
But God help us, we’re rooting for Townsend.
{Hard Gulp}
This isn't so much lesser of two evils as it is the evil of two lessers.