The Daily Agenda: To expel or defeat?
The Daily Agenda: To expel or defeat?
Liz Harris is the new Wendy Rogers ... Water your plants when Tucson says to ... And a sloppy boardslide is still cool.
The Arizona House will consider taking the extraordinary step of expelling one of the state’s top election deniers, Republican Rep. Liz Harris, from the chamber.
The House Ethics Committee yesterday unanimously decided that Harris committed “disorderly conduct” by inviting a conspiracy theorist to publicly accuse lawmakers, cops, the Mormons and assorted others of accepting bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. Democrats attempted to censure her but failed to come up with two Republican votes, so they filed an ethics complaint, assuming nothing would come of it.
But when Republicans on the Ethics Committee interrogated Harris at a hearing last week, it became clear expulsion could be on the table. Harris lied to the committee about her involvement in planning and coordinating the presentation, the committee wrote in its report, relying in part on text messages between Harris and presenter Jacqueline Breger that were printed out and anonymously delivered to the House.
Now, some Republicans seem ready to vote her out. But expulsions require a two-thirds vote, meaning it would have to be a bipartisan effort.1
Both sides have political considerations that may ultimately let Harris keep her job.
For Republicans, the calculation is relatively simple: Harris is one of their own. She has a fervent following in the election denial crowd, and any move against her is sure to spark some level of backlash from Republican activists. But she hasn’t made many friends in her caucus2, and by allowing Breger to allege that both House Speaker Ben Toma and Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers are on the take from the cartel, Harris managed to personally enrage both sides of her caucus. If all the Democrats voted to expel her, it would only take 11 Republicans to get to a two-thirds majority.
“This is a member who is a pain in the ass to everyone,” one Republican said. “But I don’t know who has the stomach to endure the wrath from the John Birch Society types.”
For Democrats, however, it’s a little more complicated: Harris represents a swing district. Some Democrats want her to stay in office and run for re-election, believing she’ll be easier to defeat than whoever gets appointed to replace her. (That’s also a motivation for Republicans who want to expel Harris.) Other Democrats want her gone now, political game theory be damned.
“This person is dangerous and the people she’s with are dangerous,” one Democrat said. “She needs to be stripped of her access to the building. She needs to be stripped of her power.”
As of yesterday afternoon, Republican and Democratic leaders in the House were negotiating for a possible compromise: Each side brings 20 of the necessary 40 votes to get to a two-thirds majority.
Democrats aren’t often in a position to decide the fate of a Republican lawmaker, but this may be that rare event.
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The impending water wars: The federal government laid out proposals that would cut Colorado River allotments to Arizona, Nevada and California if the states can’t figure out how to agree to cuts of their own, the latest step to keep water levels high enough to prevent problems with hydroelectric power generation. The proposals included two different ways the feds could make cuts: by seniority, which lets California largely off the hook for big cuts to the detriment of Arizona, or evenly among the three states, which ignores the priority of water rights. The Biden administration said it still wants the states to work together and agree on cuts rather than impose any, but they need to act fast. Meanwhile, in Tucson, elected officials are considering various ways to cut back on water in the event of Central Arizona Project cuts, like restrictions on when people can water plants, limits to pool sizes and regulations on golf course usage, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports.
The big 1-0-0: Gov. Katie Hobbs will hold a press conference today to commemorate her first 100 days in office. In case you missed our story last week, we recapped her time as governor so far. And this afternoon, we’ll publish a timeline of those first 100 days, available only to paid subscribers. Click below to go paid in time to see it.
This will be expensive: The first Republican contender has entered the U.S. Senate race, after Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb made it official yesterday. So far, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego is in, and independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is expected to run to keep her seat. On the right, failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is likely to jump in, at least according to her staff and fans.
“If I was a betting man, which I’m not, I’d bet the farm that Kari Lake ends up running for Senate,” Lake senior adviser Colton Duncan told the Washington Post. “I’m 99 percent sure she’ll run, and if she does, I’m 100 percent certain she will win. However, right now Kari is entirely dedicated to her legal battle.”
In other local sheriff news: People keep creating Facebook profiles impersonating Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot, the Yuma Sun’s James Gilbert reports. Not cool, though not as weird as the time someone used Mesa Mayor John Giles’ photos to catfish people on dating sites.
A tale of two cities’ beefs: The battle between Phoenix and Tempe over the proposed entertainment district around a new Arizona Coyotes arena was both confusing and potentially avoidable, the Republic’s Sam Kmack reports. Phoenix sued to stop the project because of a flight path agreement, and the Coyotes countersued. Tempe “may have been able to avoid the chaos,” Kmack reports, based on proposals that could have headed off the court cases.
Still legal: After a Texas court ruling threw future access to abortion drug mifepristone into uncertainty, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said the drug is still legal in Arizona and that her office would continue to work toward protecting access to mifepristone by getting involved in court cases related to it, the Republic’s Stephanie Innes reports.
What your lawmakers are up to: Republican Arizona Sen. Justine Wadsack has claimed she doesn’t meet often with lobbyists, defending her refusal to meet with Moms Demand Action, but Wadsack’s calendar shows plenty of lobbyist meetings, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. And Democratic Rep. Keith Seaman is working with the largely Republican elected officials from his area, despite any party-line differences, particularly on securing money for the I-10 expansion the feds decided not to fund, Pinal Central’s Jodie Newell reports.
A prehistoric mascot for dysfunction: The court ruling that required Phoenix to boot people out of the homeless encampment downtown included a provision to let a local business owner keep up some dinosaur sculptures that have become a bizarre symbol of the strife within the Zone. Court records from the case show that Phoenix Kitchens, which installed the dinos, said it was constructing gas lines and cleared out 36 people living in the area, only for the dinosaurs to show up, the Phoenix New Times’ Katya Schwenk reports. The city believes the business acted “in bad faith” to get the city to move people away to then put the installations in the right of way, preventing people from coming back.
Dispatches from Nogales: Nogales Mayor Jorge Maldonado met with a federal housing official in Phoenix and asked about the local housing authority getting bad grades, leading to a clash among the mayor, council and city manager over whose job it is to meet with officials to represent the city, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi reports. Separately, the former city attorney filed a notice of claim against the city over his termination, which he claims stemmed from his refusal to be part of a politically motivated claim from a former mayor and councilman, the paper reports.
When has the constitution stopped them?: A bill from Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers that would have required people to upload their driver’s license to verify their age before accessing porn online failed on the House floor after some Republicans said they believed the bill wasn’t constitutional, the Mirror’s MacDonald-Evoy reports. As always, the bill, Senate Bill 1503, could come back.
Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a spate of bills yesterday, but we’ll tell you about one that she approved.
On Monday, she signed Republican Rep. Quang Nyugen’s House Bill 2168, which extends a Good Samaritan law that prevents people who help someone overdosing on opioids from being prosecuted. The law, part of a set of laws designed to lessen the opioid epidemic, was set to expire in June 2023, but now will remain until June 2028.
“When it comes to fentanyl and opioid stuff, I think we can always find common ground there,” Nyugen said, according to KJZZ. “To me, it’s a non-partisan issue. It shouldn’t be a ‘right’ or ‘left’ [issue]. We’re talking about saving lives, for Arizonans.”
Hobbs has so far vetoed 43 bills and signed 36.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren can shred, kinda.
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