The Daily Agenda: The formerly all-powerful Chamber

He has no juice with the governor ... She has no juice with Dems ... And is that a middle finger?

Heads up: We’re taking Monday off in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We’re still publishing tomorrow, but after that, we won’t be in your inbox until Tuesday. 

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The state of Danny Seiden’s business in Arizona is strong, according to Danny Seiden. 

The head of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry delivered his “State of Arizona’s Business” address to the Arizona Senate’s Commerce Committee yesterday, predictably declaring that the policies of his former boss, Doug Ducey, put Arizona on solid footing. 

But behind the scenes, Seiden’s own status as president and CEO of the Chamber has been in question ever since he attempted to join up with Kari Lake’s transition team when she wrongfully declared victory in the election. 

YvonneWingettSanchez 🏜 @yvonnewingett

ARIZONA-- @KariLake is holed up in transition meetings today and these notable GOP figures have been in and out of her office today: Eileen Klein, former Gov. Brewer chief of staff, Floyd Brown, of the Western Journal, Danny Seiden, with the Arizona chamber ...

The political rumor mill has been aflutter since Gov. Katie Hobbs ditched the Chamber’s annual legislative forecast luncheon last week — the first time in at least a decade that a governor has skipped the event. Word on the street is that Hobbs and her allies want Seiden gone from the Chamber and people in her corner have been feeling out members of the Chambers’ board, which hires and fires the CEO, arguing that Seiden is a liability and the organization needs a fresh start with the new governor. 

But Seiden says that, as far as he knows, the rumors are nothing more than rumors. 

“Under no circumstance have we heard from Hobbs’ team anything that supports that. Under no circumstance have I heard from a single board member who supports that,” he told us when we asked about the rumors of his pending demise. “And I have to say, if the Chamber's making her list of things to do in the first 100 days, I'm flattered. But I highly doubt that.”

Still, even Republicans who run in Chamber circles say that Hobbs has made it pretty clear that she wants to oust Seiden in favor of a business leader she can actually work with. 

“I think that Danny, like many of us, believed that Kari was going to win. Unlike many of us, Danny definitely took steps to position himself (in Lake’s administration),” one Republican consultant said. “I don’t think the Hobbs administration has any interest in mending those fences. I really don’t.”

The Chamber is an extremely influential group, and its members pay good money for that influence. If Seiden is on the outs with the new governor, it could spook his board members into looking for new leadership. And a fresh start may be in the Chamber’s best interest, the Republican said. 

But if Team Hobbs is taking a serious shot at Seiden, they may have missed their moment, according to a lobbyist who has had conversations with Chamber board members about the effort to dethrone the CEO. Seiden confirmed he has no plans to leave of his own accord, except perhaps for a “dream job” helping orphans in Kenya.

At the big chamber luncheon that Hobbs skipped, the Chamber folks lavished praise on their CEO, the lobbyist said. But behind the scenes, some on the board acknowledged that Seiden didn’t strengthen his position by buddying up to Lake, though they weren’t ready to fire him just yet. The fight has reached something of a standoff, the lobbyist said. 

“The vibe (from Chamber members) was Danny really fucked up, however, if Katie was smart, they’d have an airing of grievances and go forward working together,” the lobbyist said. 

Seiden wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Capitol Times in late December that many viewed as a mea culpa to Hobbs. In it, he declared the election over, saying, “and lest there be any doubt, Katie Hobbs is Arizona’s governor-elect.” But that came on the heels of a series of tweets in November, while he was auditioning for a role on Lake’s transition team, criticizing the election and the officials that ran it — an issue that’s personal to Hobbs. 

Danny Seiden @dbseiden

Well we know the focus on the day before the election certainly was not checking the printer ink.

Jim Small @JimSmall

The focus on the day after the election is (always) on verifying signatures on the early ballots dropped off at polling places. There's a 5-day time period for voters to verify their ballot if a signature doesn't match, and they want to give voters as much time as possible https://t.co/iTxao6K4bH

Nobody from Hobbs’ team would speak publicly about Seiden. But the question isn’t whether her administration would prefer new leadership at the Chamber, it’s whether she has the political capital to wage a long-term war against a CEO who’s digging in his heels, and whether she could ultimately prevail. 

Tom remembers the good old days: New Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne delivered his “State of Education” address to the Senate Education Committee yesterday, declaring that the state of education is “grim.” He told lawmakers he wanted to bring back a bunch of things Arizona used to do back in his day (the 77-year-old Horne was also superintendent from 2003 to 2011), like tough discipline, requiring students to pass standardized tests to graduate high school, banning bilingual education in favor of English-only immersion and implementing government takeovers of failing schools. But he clarified to the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers that tough discipline means suspensions and expulsions, not a paddle.

Melinda Merkel Iyer 🌵🇺🇸 @iyer_report

Tom Horne's cell phone ringing repeatedly during his testimony to the Senate Education Committee. "Is that me?" Talk about a metaphor for the next four years under his administration.

You’re up next, Pima: It’s not just development in Buckeye that is unsustainable — Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke tells the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis that Pima County could be the next area that is declared lacking in the required 100-year water supply for new housing developments. 

Gotta get through Gail: Gov. Katie Hobbs’ plan to help local communities better regulate groundwater by starting active management areas has one big problem, the Daily Star’s Tim Steller writes: It has to get through the Republican Legislature, and specifically Republican Rep. Gail Griffin, a longtime opponent of that and many other conservation ideas, who serves as chair of the House Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee. And in the Republic, columnist Joanna Allhands praised Hobbs’ take on groundwater management, but said lawmakers likely won’t go along with it.

“I don’t know how anyone in a leadership position, especially someone who has been there as long as Gail, could refuse to acknowledge that this is part of the solution to the problem,” Hobbs told Steller when he pressed her on the roadblock. 

AEL needs a better name: Lawmakers are still bickering about when and whether to increase the education spending cap that would require schools to make massive cuts to their budgets this year if it remains in place past March 1, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reports. Lawmakers have several proposals to lift the cap, which requires a two-thirds vote. But all the plans introduced so far would do so on a one-time basis. Because the cap is in the Arizona Constitution, repealing it outright would require a vote of the people, though that could be done in a special election in May. 

Nicole Grigg @NicoleSGrigg

HOSPITAL CAPACITY: A Phoenix hospital has added tents to its parking lot to triage ‘less severe’ patients as there is a ‘higher than normal’ volume of patients. St. Joseph’s didn’t elaborate on the higher than normal number of patients. @abc15

Still going: The Arizona Court of Appeals is fast-tracking Kari Lake’s lawsuit claiming she would have won the election if not for those darn printers, Capitol scribe Howard Fischer writes. Her case is still very much a longshot, but it will likely end up before the Arizona Supreme Court eventually. 

Real problems, potential solutions: Votebeat’s Jen Fifield looks at some of the real problems with elections in Arizona — like slow results and county supervisors threatening to not certify elections — and lays out some of the policy solutions that may actually stand a chance of becoming law under a Republican Legislature and Democratic governor. 

Rebranding effort unsuccessful: Independent U.S. Sen. Kysten Sinema is still among America’s least popular senators, although people love and hate her slightly more after her party switch, Morning Consult found in a new survey. Her approval ratings jumped slightly with Republicans and independents following the switch, but it further tanked her standing among Democrats. Overall, her approval rating stayed about the same. 

Gabriella Cázares-Kelly @GabriellaCKelly

I’m at the Indian Nations and Tribes Day at the Arizona State Legislature. The Republicans hold the majority, but they did not prioritize even attending. This is an important opportunity to meet and build relationships with the 22 Distinct Tribal Nations that are in AZ.

In-fighting to the extreme: Candidates for AZGOP chair are touring the state in an attempt to win the party faithful, including a stop this week in Kingman, the Daily Miner reports. Jeff DeWit — the former campaign karaoke state Treasurer, Trump administration appointee and foe of Gov. Doug Ducey — is racking up far-right endorsements in his bid to become the next Arizona Republican Party chair. Meanwhile, Pam Kirby, who had the backing of Current AZGOP Chair Kelli Ward, is now seeking the treasurer position. The AZGOP will vote on its new officers on Saturday, Jan. 28. The Maricopa County Republican Party is holding its reorganizational meeting this weekend, and Frosty Taylor, who writes the GOP news blog Republican Briefs says the race is getting nasty. 

“In over 55 years as a journalist, I have never before witnessed the mean, hateful, underhanded shenanigans that we’ve watched this past decade. Power hungry individuals and groupies have disrupted meetings in their efforts to gain party control,” Taylor writes.

No bids, no problem: The Republic’s Laurie Roberts reveals the no-bid contract to a Trump-supporting Florida company that put up former Gov. Doug Ducey’s short-lived container wall at the border. The state defended the contract to AshBritt by saying the “immediate and serious need for material, services or construction that is threatening the health and safety of the population.”

Same faces, new positions: County boards of supervisors rotate leaders regularly, putting a different supervisor in the chair seat to represent the county publicly for a year. Maricopa County’s supervisors just voted for Clint Hickman as this year’s chairman, replacing Bill Gates. And in Pima County, Adelita Grijalva will chair the supervisors, the first Latina to hold the position. 

sophia lo @sophiamaylo

don’t date journalists! my bf asked if i thought he could FOIA the city to get footage of me falling during my walk :((

Eggspensive: The price of eggs has taken off across the country, though one small part of increasing costs could be a new Arizona Department of Agriculture regulation that requires hens to have more space, a precursor to a forthcoming requirement for cage-free hens, Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer reports. (We wrote all about the cage rules and where they came from last year in an eggsclusive edition.) The major factor driving egg price increases is a bird flu among hens.