The Daily Agenda: A new second-in-command?
That's lieutenant governor to you ... Intimidating voters isn't cool ... And Jon Stewart returns to the meth lab of democracy.
Arizona’s top two races are toss-ups, and there’s a very real possibility that the state could end up, once again, with a Republican governor and a Democratic secretary of state, or vice versa.
It’s a lot of fun to think about the fallout of that election. If Republican Kari Lake wins the governorship but Democrat Adrian Fontes wins the Secretary of State’s Office, for example, will Lake claim the election was rigged? But if voters elect candidates from two parties to the top two offices, the ramifications could be much broader than awkward cries of fraud from half of the Republican ticket.
Any time potential future Gov. Katie Hobbs leaves the state, potential future Secretary of State Mark Finchem would take over her duties. Ditto for Lake and Fontes.
And in today’s toxic political environment, that could spell chaos and trouble. That chaos is at the heart of the pitch that Republican state Sen. J.D. Mesnard is making to voters as he stumps for Prop 131 on the November ballot. The measure would create a lieutenant governor who would run on a ticket with the governor candidate and be second-in-line for the office, like the vice president.
“We've had literally every reason the Constitution envisions for governors to leave office happen: dying, resigning, impeachments,” Mesnard said. “But what a lot of people don’t realize is that it also happens temporarily every time the governor leaves the state — which happens all the time. And with politics being what it is nowadays, you just know that people are gonna start playing games.”
However, even if voters approve the measure, it won’t solve the problem of a Lake/Fontes or Hobbs/Finchem election — the measure wouldn’t take effect until 2026, at the end of their first terms.
And whether voters will ultimately approve the idea is still a pretty big question. In 2010, voters overwhelmingly rejected a similar idea in Prop 111, though that proposition would have replaced the secretary of state with a lieutenant governor and would not have allowed the gubernatorial candidates to choose their running mates.
Prop 100 from 1994 was closer to the current proposal, though it didn’t give the lieutenant governor any specific duties1. This year’s proposal would allow the governor to designate their lieutenant as their chief of staff or as the director of the Arizona Department of Administration or to fill any position for which the governor is authorized to make an appointment.
Allowing the governor to choose their own lieutenant governor and run for office as a team is key to the plan, Mesnard noted, as in other states that elect the officials independently, there have been clashes, to say the least.
In Idaho, which elects a lieutenant governor separately from the governor, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin has shown a penchant for writing executive orders — like banning COVID-19 testing and vaccination requirements by schools or banning local mask mandates — while her fellow Republican, Gov. Brad Little, is out of town. This year, she had former President Donald Trump’s endorsement as she challenged Little’s re-election bid in the GOP primary and lost.
In the past, Arizona secretaries of state have usually played nice when a governor is out of town. But the boundaries of acceptable tactics to stymie the other side are quickly shifting. These days, either candidate for secretary of state would likely be rewarded by their base for taking advantage of a gubernatorial vacation to sew chaos via executive order or the power of an (acting) governor’s signature or veto stamp.
Of course, the responsibility of being second in line for the governorship isn’t limited to temporary fill-in duty. The Seventh Floor, where the SOS is housed, has served as a stepping stone to the governor’s Ninth Floor at least five times in state history because governors died, got impeached or quit. And prior to Ducey, no governor had completed a full eight years in office in more than three decades.
And the current line of succession hasn’t always left voters with the party they wanted2 in the Governor’s Office. When Janet Napolitano left to join President Barack Obama’s administration in 2009, Republican Jan Brewer ascended to the office, dramatically shifting the political trajectory of the state. When Rose Mofford replaced Evan Mecham following his impeachment and removal from office in 1988, voters wound up with a Democratic governor despite voting for a Republican one.
As Arizona becomes an increasingly purple state, two parties occupying the Executive Tower will become an even more common occurrence, and creating an Office of Lieutenant Governor is an idea worth considering.
The epicenter of voter intimidation: As people continue to stake out ballot drop boxes, taking photos and videos of voters and license plates, Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone said his officers will be monitoring to ensure voters’ rights are respected. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is also watching and that it “will not permit voters to be intimidated,” though it’s not clear if the DOJ will intervene. And multiple groups are now suing over the drop box watching as well.
“You can be intimidating without committing a crime. You can make people uncomfortable without committing a crime. It doesn't make it OK because it's not a crime," Penzone said.
Vote first, ask questions later: After Cochise County voted to approve a hand count, it’s not clear what exactly they authorized or how it would be implemented, Rachel writes for The Guardian. The Secretary of State’s Office sent a letter to the county detailing how the part of the law the county cited doesn’t authorize a 100% hand count, giving the supervisors until 5 p.m. Wednesday to provide details on what they intend to do. Another meeting about the issue is set for 1 p.m. today.
A temporary reprieve: To halt a lawsuit in Maricopa County brought by the Arizona Medical Association and a Phoenix abortion provider, the Attorney General’s Office agreed not to enforce the pre-statehood abortion ban until a different legal case is concluded, the Republic’s Ray Stern reports. The move provides some clarity as the courts work out the fate of abortion in Arizona. Meanwhile, Democrats have campaigned on abortion, telling voters they would repeal abortion bans if Democrats take majorities in the Legislature, but two Democrats who are likely to win their legislative races are pro-life, complicating Democrats’ messages, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Camryn Sanchez reports.
Embrace vs. avoid: The Legislative District 13 race, one of the most competitive in the state, serves as a “microcosm” of what’s going on in this year’s elections, with one GOP candidate avoiding hot-button issues like election fraud and another embracing the topic, the Republic’s Sam Kmack reports.
The company you keep: Fox News commentator Sean Hannity held a town hall on Arizona’s midterms featuring Kari Lake and Blake Masters. And the man featured in a TV ad supporting Lake and opposing Katie Hobbs as “too liberal” to be governor is a pastor who has made homophobic and Islamophobic comments whose church “champions a subservient role for women within their families,” Mother Jones reports. Lake said she doesn’t care if the Super Bowl threatens to pull out of Arizona next year because of her policies, showing that she has “a willingness to flirt with financial banishment and the fallout that could arise from it,” MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones reports.
Vote early and often: As expected, early ballots returned so far are mostly coming from Democrats, the Republic notes. Voting patterns shifted in recent elections after Republicans have hammered the message that early and mail-in ballots are conduits of fraud. But Democrats will need to be up by a lot in the first drop of election results on election night in order to stave off gains from Republicans, whose votes will mostly be counted in later batches.
I want to go to there: Longtime former state lawmaker Art Hamilton talks with KJZZ’s Lauren Gilger about how politics used to work and how people of different political beliefs worked together when he was in the Legislature, a type of collegiality and compromise that’s rarely seen in today’s vitriolic politics.
She did her job: After a reporter for the Daily Wildcat, the University of Arizona’s student newspaper, wrote a column about a cringy alpha male TikToker at the school, the Tiktoker doxed the reporter, leading to a wave of harassment and threats. The school, which was alerted to the threats, has so far not done anything in response, even in the wake of a professor’s murder by a student recently.
What is she waiting for?: Former President Donald Trump called AZGOP Chair Kelli Ward to tell her she needs to spend more on candidates he’s endorsed, Politico Playbook reports. In what was characterized as a “contentious” call, Trump questioned why Ward wasn’t spending all the AZGOP funds to help win the election, particularly mentioning spending on SOS candidate Mark Finchem’s race.
Clear your record: More than 1,400 Arizonans could benefit from a new Biden administration directive to pardon people convicted of federal marijuana possession charges, the Republic’s Chelsea Curtis reports. The state has the second-highest number of these federal marijuana convictions.
Get her home already: Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner’s appeal of her marijuana sentence in Russia was denied, as expected. Griner was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison, but the U.S. is still working to secure a prisoner swap to release her.
In a clip from an upcoming episode of “The Problem with Jon Stewart,” Jon Stewart tries to get Attorney General Mark Brnovich to admit that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Brnovich stumbled through it, refusing to simply say whether the election was stolen. He did say Trump lost Arizona and mentioned the few charges against voters for breaking election law, but said he still has ongoing cases related to that election.
“This is blowing my mind,” Stewart said.
As a state Senator at the time, Jan Brewer backed Prop 100. Ironically, if voters had approved it, she would have never ascended to governor from her position as secretary of state.
And that line of succession hasn’t always gone from the secretary of state to governor. When Gov. Wesley Bolin died in 1978, the line of succession skipped Secretary of State Rose Mofford and went to Attorney General Bruce Babbitt because Mofford had been appointed to her office. Prop 301 would remove the requirement that any successor must be elected in their own right.
Who are the prolife Democrats? Want to make sure I never send them money.