The Daily Agenda: No more abortion special session
The Daily Agenda: No more abortion special session
The courts prevent a plan that wouldn't have worked anyway ... Andy Biggs wants you to remember his name ... And you can finally peruse this session's new bills.
Gov. Katie Hobbs is abandoning her campaign promise to call a special session on abortion “on day one” as governor after the Arizona Court of Appeals late last month settled the question of abortion law in Arizona.
The Arizona Court of Appeals in late December decided that the pre-statehood outright ban on abortion couldn’t be enforced, instead saying that a newer 15-week ban would take hold.
That makes a special session on the topic — which Hobbs had pledged to repeal the outright ban — moot, 12News’ Brahm Resnik first reported yesterday.
Skipping the special session makes sense: As we reported last month, Hobbs did not have the votes to repeal the territorial law. Launching a special session would mean picking a fight that she could not win. While it would be good politics with Hobbs’ base, it would stoke resentment with the GOP Legislature, potentially derailing her ability to work with them on pressing issues such as the school spending limit.
Some Democrats saw a special session on abortion as a way to get GOP lawmakers on the record for their hardline abortion stances that far exceed what the general public supports, though it would have been more useful politically for that to happen before the election, not after.
Although the ruling was a win for Democrats who want some level of access to abortion, Hobbs is clearly not satisfied with the status quo. After the ruling, she said she would do “everything in (her) power to ensure women can exercise their constitutional rights” and that she’d “continue to fight to restore reproductive freedom” in Arizona.
But what that looks like, exactly, is unclear. Abortion advocates are prepping for a 2024 ballot measure to cement legal access to abortion in Arizona, which Hobbs will undoubtedly back. And Republican lawmakers are likely working on their own ballot referrals to send to the voters. (Lawmakers can send a question to the ballot via a bill that doesn’t need the governor’s signature.)
Hobbs’ involvement could be limited to supporting a ballot measure for increased access, or she can try to push for new pro-choice laws. But those new laws would face long odds in the Republican-dominated Legislature, making it almost certain that 2023 won’t bring much progress for abortion access.
Still, Arizonans are already feeling the effects of the new Democratic slate in charge of the state’s top offices. The new Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes isn’t appealing the ruling, a stark departure from former AG Mark Brnovich’s opposition to abortion access. That refusal to appeal gives people seeking abortions and their providers some certainty about what’s legal now as advocacy groups work to expand abortion access in the future.
If you don’t win, just keep running: U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs and his crew of hard-right freedom fighters blocked Kevin McCarthy from becoming the speaker of the U.S. House, leaving the new majority Republican caucus and the chamber without a leader. After three rounds of voting McCarthy wound up with 202 and 203 votes, short of the 218 he’d need to become speaker. Biggs, the former leader of the Freedom Caucus (both here in Arizona and in DC), nominated and voted for himself in the first round where he got 10 votes, then directed his supporters to back longshot Jim Jordan, the New York Times reports. This, of course, comes after House Republicans already met in private to vote for McCarthy, where Biggs also lost the vote, though he got 31 supporters at that time. Usually, after that vote, the caucus will close ranks and support the winner, ensuring they have enough votes to become speaker.
“Until Tuesday, the House had not failed to elect a speaker on the first roll call vote since 1923,” Catie Edmondson writes in the Times.
If you don’t win, go to court forever: Failed attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh is going back to court. He announced on Twitter yesterday that he would be filing a motion for a new trial, declaring the actual AG, Democrat Kris Mayes, “will either resign or be removed from office.” He’s pinning his hopes on the argument that if the judge that heard his initial suit knew about the recount problems in Pinal County at the time of his hearing, he would have won. Meanwhile, attorneys for Mayes are seeking sanctions against Hamadeh and his lawyers for bringing the first lawsuit without evidence to back up his claims, the AZ Law blog reports. Finally, failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has filed two different appeals of her lost election challenge. The AZ Law blog has the filings on that one, too.
!: The Washington Post editorial board penned a piece dancing on Hamadeh’s political grave, declaring his loss “the exclamation point to end an election year that saw a remarkable repudiation of high-profile GOP candidates who embraced the Trumpian cause of undermining democracy and sought to carry it forward.”
This all assumes the judge would have cared: The Arizona Daily Independent, a right-leaning blog in Southern Arizona, penned an article declaring that Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer deliberately “kept the substantive information” about the county’s recount fiasco from the judge in Hamadeh’s case. Volkmer denies he knew about the screw-up until after the county canvassed the election and says he didn’t know the full extent until the lawsuit was nearly complete. He told the Yellow Sheet Report that he didn’t communicate with the judge or Hamadeh’s team because nobody ever asked him. The Pinal County Board of Supervisors meets this morning to discuss elections problems yet again.
The antifa SOS: Secretary of State Adrian Fontes prefers the term “MAGA fascist,” over “election denier,” the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington writes in a profile of Arizona’s most pugnacious statewide elected Democrat.
“We must stop pretending these guys have legitimate complaints, catering to their eggshell sensitivities. We must confront them again and again, treating them like the enemies to democracy that they are. We’re not name-calling, we’re truth-telling – there’s a big difference,” he told the Guardian.
Coming soon to a city near you: While city-dwellers probably won’t feel the effects of the newly mandated steep cuts to Arizona’s share of the Colorado River water now, they’ll feel them eventually. As water levels drop dangerously close to threatening hydroelectric power from Hoover and Glen Canyon dams, residents, rather than farmers, may eventually be forced to cut back their water use, Cronkite News’ Ryan Knappenberger writes.
Pre-order now: High Country News did a Q&A with Natalie Koch, who we cited Monday for writing an op-ed in the New York Times about Arizona’s water giveaway to a Saudi Arabian company. Her new book, “Arid Empire,” grew out of her research into the sweetheart water deal, her upbringing in Arizona and her fascination with the two regions’ intertwined histories and futures.
“King Saud and his family made a royal visit to Arizona. They did this whole tour of Arizona agriculture and looked at the Arizona dairy industry. King Saud went back to Saudi Arabia and pushed to set up a dairy industry there. What we see now is the legacy of that. But it’s not the only connection between Arizona and the Arabian Peninsula,” she tells High Country News.
Adios: Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman looked back on her single term as Arizona’s schools chief in an interview with KTAR. The station noted that she was the youngest person ever elected to statewide office in the entire U.S. Hoffman said the hardest part of the job was offering condolences to school leaders after hearing about staff who died from COVID-19.
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