The Daily Agenda: We've had our fill of tamales

Not a one-tamal news cycle ... Still the meth lab of democracy ... And you're hired!

The Arizona House failed to override a veto by Gov. Katie Hobbs on the now-infamous “tamale bill” after most Democrats who previously supported the bill voted against the override. 

A few Democrats again voted in favor of House Bill 2509, but it fell short of the two-thirds vote it needed to continue on, getting just 35 votes. 

The whole ordeal served as a test for Democrats and their relationship with Hobbs, and Hobbs’ status as the state’s top Dem remained intact, though it created an unnecessary, bruising news cycle for the governor. When Republican lawmakers disagreed with former Gov. Doug Ducey, even if it happened publicly, the caucus still largely stuck together and deferred to the executive. 

The forces behind the bill and others like it across the country — like Americans for Prosperity and the Institute for Justice — played into the political calculus, too. Democrats didn’t want to align with groups that oppose regulation beyond just what’s in the tamale bill.  

Still, the tamale bill shows how a small issue can become a big political talking point. It landed in the pages of the New York Times yesterday, where people who sell the currently illegal foods they make themselves that require refrigeration told reporter Jack Healy that the bill would’ve made their lives easier.

“I always worry about being cited,” Javier Lara, who sells tamales he makes following his grandmother’s recipe, said. “I make minimum wage — I’ve got to make extra money. Anything I can do to survive in this world.”

Clearly, real people’s livelihoods have been caught in the middle of an obviously political battle between the governor and the Legislature. Because there was consensus on this issue, it should be possible for both parties to work together on a more palatable bill that legalizes cottage foods while addressing any legitimate safety concerns.

And they should. Now that we all know much more about the lesser-known “cottage foods” industry, we should use that knowledge to help people who want to make a living this way. Rather than let the issue remain a partisan talking point, make it into good public policy. 

But lawmakers should also walk and chew gum at the same time. While the people who sell cottage foods are obviously deeply affected by this bill, it’s not by any means the most pressing issue facing Arizonans. 

After the failed veto override, lawmakers then adjourned for a long break, despite it being the middle of a legislative session that still lacks a budget. They won’t be back on the floor until May 3, likely to give the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors time to pick a replacement for expelled former Rep. Liz Harris.

Breaks are nice and all, but they have a ton of work to do. They need a bipartisan budget that can get signed into law before July 1. They should focus on housing, homelessness, water or any number of cross-partisan issues that require urgent action.

The tamale bill, while it exposed some chasms between Democrats and affected some people’s livelihoods directly, was a sideshow from the state’s biggest problems. It’s time to refocus.

Center of the universe: New political parties and proponents of ranked-choice voting both want to remake Arizona elections next year, finding the new swing state a fertile place to make the case for both ideas, Rachel reports in her latest for the Guardian. No Labels, a centrist party, already got ballot status, then was sued by Democrats, while the Forward Party is starting to gather signatures. Meanwhile, ranked-choice voting advocates are testing out different styles of the process in focus groups and polls to decide if 2024 will be the right time for a ballot measure. 

There’s a pretty easy way to fix this: Some state agencies need immediate funding to make up for budget gaps between last year’s spending plan and what’s coming later this year, a normal part of the budgeting process that’s been held up as the governor and Legislature argue over budget issues, Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer reports. The state’s Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, most urgently needs money, and so far has only gotten half of the $3.3 billion needed to plug a budget gap this fiscal year, which could lead to missed payments to people on public programs. Senate President Warren Petersen said legislative Democrats are more to blame than Gov. Katie Hobbs because Republicans are still waiting on what Dems want in the budget.

That’s no way to run a business: The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson’s daily paper, lost nearly 25% of its staff after 10 newsroom staffers were laid off this week, the Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith and Paul Ingram report. The paper, owned jointly by Gannett and Lee Enterprises, is mostly managed by Lee and was profitable, but profits don’t save newspaper jobs in an era of big corporate bloodletting. Jill Jorden Spitz, the paper’s top editor, was among those laid off, as were opinion page editor Curt Prendergast and photo editor Rick Wiley.

Nail-biter: Republican Rep. Steve Montenegro filed this year’s second 1487 complaint against Tempe over the special election for the Arizona Coyotes arena and entertainment district, then withdrew it. The lawmaker wanted Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes to review the legality of having the team pay for the May election (a state law prohibits private funding of elections) and whether Tempe illegally used a workaround to refer the measure to the city ballot, the Republic’s Sam Kmack reports. Montenegro said he dropped the complaint after getting more info from the city, which assured him it didn’t intend to enforce an agreement that the team pay for the election.

In other Mayes news: The AG won’t be defending a new state law that prohibits transgender girls from playing school sports after the parents of two girls filed a lawsuit against the law, the Republic’s Ray Stern reports. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne will instead hire private lawyers to take up the defense or defend it himself, as Horne is one of the parties named in the lawsuit. The Senate could also intervene. It’s not clear why Mayes isn’t defending the state in this instance; her office wouldn’t say. 

Another restraining order coming: Fox10’s Nicole Garcia rang the doorbell at Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers’ Valley homes and her alleged trailer in Flagstaff. Garcia has not yet received a restraining order from the terrified retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. Neighbors at Rogers’ Flagstaff trailer and her Tempe home claimed she lived in both places. 

“I love Flagstaff!” Rogers told a Flagstaff radio host. 

Sore loser: A failed Navajo Nation speaker candidate who was backed by the former speaker who was pressured into resigning after photos surfaced of him drunk in Las Vegas, is trying to remove the new speaker, the Republic’s Arlyssa D. Becenti writes. Navajo Nation Council Delegate Eugenia Charles-Newton is the only sponsor on her bill to remove the first woman ever elected to be Navajo Nation Council speaker, Crystalyne Curley.

Double-dipping is inappropriate: The Arizona Board of Education voted to prohibit “double-dipping” into two school choice tools, Empowerment Scholarship Accounts and Student Tuition Organizations, in the same year, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Keira Riley writes. Among the other revisions to the state’s ESA handbook the board made yesterday was a ban on using the program for “inappropriate explicit materials,” a term the board didn’t define, the Republic’s Yana Kunichoff writes.  

Reassuring: The director of Phoenix’s ​​Office of Homeless Solutions has a solution for homeless residents of “the Zone” in downtown Phoenix: move them. In two weeks, the city will start clearing one block at a time, KTAR’s Kevin Stone reports, and the city plans to have “as many indoor places as we possibly can” for the residents to move.

One way to win over the people you want to hire you: Accuse them of wild conspiracies. 

Steve Steele, one of the three nominees to replace ousted lawmaker Liz Harris, believes that a fire at Hickman Family Farms was connected to destroying ballots, a conspiracy that never had any evidence to begin with, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports.

That oughta endear him to Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman. It was one of many old and new conspiracies Steele floated to MacDonald-Evoy. 

In other news about people who are not a good fit for the job, the Cochise County Board of Supervisors hired a new elections director¹ to replace “election skeptic” and county Recorder David Stevens, who has been pulling double duty since Lisa Marra quit. 

Who did they pick? Well, none other than La Paz County elections director Bob Bartelsmeyer, who posted following the 2020 election that “Trump legally won in a landslide,” among other lies that he told supervisors he spread in his capacity as a private citizen, not an elections director.

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1. Yes, that is two clips in the Guardian in one day for Rachel, the hardest working woman in journalism.