The Daily Agenda: Vouchers for all, probably forever
The Daily Agenda: Vouchers for all, probably forever
Like bed bugs, vouchers will be hard to get rid of ... Press is neither good nor bad, it just is ... And we’re the best newsletter in town!
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs on Friday made official what was becoming increasingly obvious last week: The drive to refer Arizona’s universal private school voucher law to the ballot failed.
Legislators approved the law this year after voters blocked a smaller expansion of the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program in 2018.
Lawmakers argued they weren’t overriding the will of the voters because public sentiment on the issue had swung strongly in their favor after the RedForEd movement and through the pandemic, and that voters would support vouchers in 2022 if given the chance, especially since this effort would have faced a real campaign supporting the law, unlike the 2018 referendum.
That may be true. Unfortunately, now we’ll probably never know.
An up or down vote on universal vouchers would have given us a real data point on how voters feel — at this moment — about Ducey’s plans to push Arizona to the outer limits of school choice at a cost to public schools.
Successfully pulling off a referendum is always a steep uphill battle. But it’s worth noting that it doesn’t appear education supporters had a harder time gathering signatures — it just became harder to get on the ballot. In 2018, when organizers referred the last voucher law to the ballot, the requirement was a mere 75,000 ballots. (Hobbs didn’t say exactly how many signatures referendum organizers actually delivered to her office, just that they fell below the roughly 118,000 necessary to qualify for the 2024 ballot.)
With the failure of the petition drive, there’s little chance Arizona rolls back the country’s largest school choice program, even if Democrats take power. More than 10,000 applications had already been submitted for universal vouchers even before it became clear the law would go into effect. That alone will nearly double the size of the existing ESA program and the number of families who would oppose politicians taking away their funding.
And those numbers will continue to grow. About 100,000 kids in private or home schools will now automatically qualify for vouchers, not to mention any family who wants to start sending their kid to a private school. The program’s ability to grow is limited only by the number of parents who can afford to make up the difference between the roughly $7,000 per year that ESAs offer and the actual cost of private school.
The vast majority of Arizona students will always attend public schools, but that army of voters who will now cast ballots to protect their own vouchers will likely make the program unstoppable.
As Substacker Robert Robb notes, it’s a lot easier politically to prevent a government program from starting than to kill one off. Now that universal vouchers are here, they’re probably here to stay.
“By the time the next legislature convenes, there will be thousands of students granted vouchers under the bill’s eligibility expansion. By the time an initiative made it to the 2024 ballot, there may be tens of thousands,” he writes.
The universal voucher program will likely be one of Gov. Doug Ducey’s most lasting policies, even if we’ll never know how most voters feel about it.
All press is good press?: In a not-super-flattering profile of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, the New York Times’ Jack Healy and Jasmine Ulloa cover her attempt to capture the moment on abortion issues and why she has “struggled to compete” against Republican Kari Lake.
No press is good press?: The Republic has a whole new batch of written Q&As with candidates for Maricopa County Community College District, Flagstaff mayor and the Democrats running for CD3, CD4 and CD7 (the Republicans didn’t respond).
He’s coming baaaaack: Donald Trump is coming to Mesa this Saturday, just a few days before early ballots start hitting mailboxes to stump for “the entire Arizona Trump Ticket.” Joe Biden hasn’t been here since the 2020 election.
TLDR? Insanity v. incompetence: The Republic’s editorial board ending the practice of endorsing candidates ahead of 2020 election, but it offered its collective thoughts on the gubernatorial race, running through how Lake’s style of election denialism gave us Jan. 6, and how Hobbs has hurt herself by refusing to debate and by not owning and apologizing for the Talonya Adams racial discrimination firing sooner. The editorial board also offered a helpful breakdown of the importance of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District race, which features 14 candidates for five seats at the bottom of your ballot, but is super important.
“If Lake wins, she’d put wind in the sails of what is expected to become a more conservative Legislature – one that is expected to focus heavily in the next session on new voting restrictions and state border security posturing.
If Hobbs wins, her bully pulpit might be limited, but she would have the power of the veto. Hobbs could be the backstop to some of the Legislature’s most egregious bills,” the Republic’s editorial board writes.
An evergreen headline: “Rep. Paul Gosar under bipartisan fire for again defending white nationalist,” the Republic’s Alison Steinbach reports. The white nationalist Gosar is defending is Nick Fuentes. Again.
Just stop: Cochise County Supervisor and former lawmaker Peggy Judd, who was at the Jan. 6 riot in the U.S. Capitol, called a meeting with former lawmaker turned Cochise County Recorder David Stevens and Elections Director Lisa Marra to discuss hand-counting ballots, the Sierra Vista Herald’s Shar Porier reports. Marra told the paper that it would be “dangerous” to implement a full hand-count of ballots without any legal standard this close to an election.
Sometimes it just doesn’t work out: Republican Juan Ciscomani and Democrat Kirsten Engel won’t debate in their race for southern Arizona’s competitive 6th Congressional District — though both sides are blaming the other. Arizona Public Media in Tucson, which was supposed to host the debate, hasn’t cleared up whose fault it is.
It’s your problem I’m helping fix: Arizona Department of Environmental Quality Director Misael Cabrera testified at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in favor of a “good samaritan” bill that would ensure environmental groups that want to clean up mines can do so without being attached to the mine owners’ legal liability, Cronkite News’ Emilee Miranda reports.
Let us know when Rusty makes it official: Republican Rep. Joel John endorsed Adrian Fontes over Mark Finchem, his colleague in the state House, and it made national news despite John’s very low profile.
Don’t Texas or Florida our Arizona buses: Migrants’ rights activists are asking the FBI to investigate Ducey over his stunt to bus migrants to other cities, saying he, like the governors of Texas and Florida, mislead the migrants, but Ducey’s Office maintains there’s no trickery or coercion in Arizona’s busing program. But Amanda Aguirre, a former Democratic lawmaker who now leads the Regional Center for Border Health, which coordinates with Ducey’s office, told the Republic's Rafael Carranza that her organization wouldn't be a part of it “if this were in any way similar to what Texas or Florida Governors are doing.”
When in doubt, blame COVID: Arizona’s publicly funded healthcare system, AHCCCS, takes way too long to investigate potential fraud from patients and providers, the Auditor General’s Office found in a new report. The agency blamed the pandemic, turnover and ongoing staffing issues, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer writes.
Saguaros aren’t targets: As part of a settlement agreement with environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is holding public meetings to consider banning recreational target shooting in parts of the Sonoran Desert National Monument, 12News reports. Recreational shooting is allowed on almost all BLM land, but people shoot up saguaros and petroglyphs and leave trash, and there’s so much lead in the ground in some areas it’s considered a health hazard.
Nogales politics is wild: The Nogales City Council hired Jose Luis “Joe” Machado as its new city attorney, even though the council fired him without explanation twice — in 20031 and 2017. The Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi has all the local drama.
Close enough: A Triassic reptile discovered in 2014 at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona finally has a name: Puercosuchus traverorum, the latter word being a nod to the former park superintendent and his wife, Brad and Denise Traver, KTAR reports. It’s not actually a dinosaur, but more like a modern Komodo dragon.
Fun local history: Muhammed Ali spent five weeks hanging out in the Springerville area while training for a big fight in 1976. The White Mountain Independent found some locals who recall their most famous short-term resident.
Such an honor: Phoenix New Times declared us the Best of Phoenix™ Best Newsletter. Other awards went to “best racist blowhard” Wendy Rogers, “best sad attempt to stay relevant” Joe Arpaio’s mayoral run, and “best Republican politician” House Speaker Rusty Bowers.
It’s been a while since we all had a laugh at state Sen. Wendy Rogers’ general online nuttiness. From posing in front of cardboard cutouts of Donald Trump, to mocking an Australian bicyclist for getting hit by a kangaroo (while passing on the appropriate side for Australians), it’s nice to know that on any slow day, Rogers is there for some LOLs.
When Democratic gubernatorial primary contender Marco Lopez was mayor of Nogales, he voted to fire Machado the first time, and Machado lashed out, saying he was fired because, "The boy Mayor doesn't like to be told what to do."
Here's my Cliffs Notes version of the NY Times article on Hobbs vs Lake referenced here. Hobbs: soft spoken, not a strong campaigner, blew it on the Talonya Adams thing, emphasis on being a strong supporter of reproductive rights. Lake: big-rally campaigner, experienced media person, for abortion bans, says the 2020 election was stolen. For the most part, on substance, Hobbs is more in line with voters; on presentation, Lake is better at getting attention. I know it's generally not smart to bet on content over form, but one can always hope.
“...program will likely be one of Gov. Doug Ducey’s most lasting policies, even if we’ll never know how most voters feel about it.” Sure we will. Voters can choose whether to retain or bounce legislators who support an ESA expansion.