The Capitol’s voucher fight is back from the dead.
After a behind-the-scenes deal to kill a citizen-led school voucher reform measure collapsed in the final hours of the legislative session, lawmakers started counting votes and checking calendars last week to see whether they could try the whole thing again in a special session.
Now that the Legislature has adjourned for the year, lawmakers can only return to the Capitol if Gov. Katie Hobbs calls them back for a special session, or if two-thirds of both chambers agree to reconvene.
Since Republicans don’t have those votes on their own, either path requires some level of Democratic buy-in. But Democratic lawmakers opposed the deal the first time around.
This time, labor groups backing the special session are turning up the pressure, leaving some Democrats worried that opposition could carry political consequences.
The Arizona Education Association posted this flier across its social media pages Friday, writing, “We strongly support proposals for a special session to rein in Arizona’s out-of-control voucher program and stop the dangerous anti-union referrals that advanced during the regular session.”
The deal is largely the same as last time: The Arizona Education Association, the teachers union behind a citizen initiative to force harsher school voucher reforms than Republicans are comfortable with, won’t submit its signatures by the July 2 deadline to make November’s ballot.
In exchange, Republicans would agree to pass tamer reforms to Arizona’s school voucher program, known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, into state law.
But this time, Republicans have more to offer than they did during the sine die chaos.
When the original deal fell through, Republicans went into war mode and added several new measures to the November ballot, including:
An anti-union measure that is aimed at the teachers union, but also would impact police and fire unions.
A measure that would require school districts to spend 60% of their budget on classroom, or risk losing money.
And a measure designed to avoid the citizen-led voucher reform measure. (Education groups are currently suing to keep that off the ballot.)
To sweeten the deal, Republicans are now offering to kill off all three.
It’s a proposal that both sides seemed to be closing in on.
But on Sunday, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club — which is closely aligned with Congressman and gubernatorial contender Andy Biggs — inserted itself into negotiations.
The Free Enterprise Club spun up a pressure campaign calling the plan on the table a “lopsided surrender that gives the unions almost everything they want while Arizona families get almost nothing in return.”
It urged lawmakers to support “The Biggs Deal” instead.
“Andy Biggs is pushing a better deal — one that is fair, equitable, and actually protects Arizona's school choice program,” the FEC declared.
The Biggs Deal — which allegedly has Biggs’ blessing as the presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee — includes far less compromise: Republicans will back off one ballot measure, rather than three.
And the Legislature would put zero new regulations on the ESA program.
“The teacher unions drop their ballot initiative to decimate ESAs, and in exchange the legislature pulls back only one ballot measure: the one that would stop taxpayer dollars from subsidizing union activity,” the FEC wrote “That's it. A clean one-for-one trade. No regulations on the program.”
It’s not clear how Biggs big-footing Republican leaders at the Capitol to negotiate on their behalf will play out.
But for the AEA, keeping the union measure off the ballot may be the biggest concession on the table.
GOP lawmakers sold the ballot referral, HCR2040, as a way to keep teachers unions from using public resources. The referral would bar school districts from providing facilities, paid time off or payroll deductions for union dues to support union work.
But in a letter to members after the first deal collapsed, AEA President Marisol Garcia framed the measure as an “existential threat to the union,” and warned it could unravel existing agreements between districts and local unions.
The AEA was so serious about the first round of negotiations — and stopping the union-limiting measure — that it agreed to put about 70 boxes of signatures for the ESA reform citizens' initiative, the Protect Education Act, locked in a room “in escrow,” where they would have remained past the filing deadline if the deal went through, as we reported at the time.
And this time, the AEA is not alone in publicly supporting a deal that would kill the citizens’ measure. Nearly 20 unions and progressive groups joined the teachers union in calling for lawmakers to return to the Capitol.
Concern over the union-limiting ballot referral has also spread to public safety unions, which warned that the measure could threaten all public-sector labor groups, not just teachers. The Arizona Police Association asked Gov. Katie Hobbs to call a special session to repeal it.
Democratic lawmakers were under a gag order and barred from speaking to the media on Friday (though a handful broke that order to fill us in on the ongoing negotiations anonymously).
Behind the scenes, there appeared to be a growing appetite to accept a deal that kills the citizens’ ESA reform measure, as long as the GOP’s two teacher-focused referrals die with it.
While most Democrats emphatically opposed the grand voucher bargain last time, people familiar with the conversations say AEA and allied labor groups are now leaning on the political leverage they’ve built through years of campaign support for Democratic lawmakers — and signaling that future support could depend on where Democrats land this time.
In Garcia’s message to members after the first deal collapsed, the union leader wrote that AEA’s campaign to pass the Protect Education Act “will cost tens of millions of dollars,” on top of what the union had already spent gathering signatures. Fighting the two GOP referrals, she warned, “would cost millions more.”
That's a not-so-subtle message that many Democrats received loud and clear: The union will either spend money and organizing power fighting these initiatives, or help Democrats in November.
Democratic Rep. Anna Abeytia put the pressure lawmakers felt from AEA during the first deal more explicitly in a TikTok video.
“We were pushed into a corner to be forced to have to make this deal and sacrifice not only campaigns, but our own morals at the end of the day,” she said. “AEA was sacrificing the sake of labor for teachers for ESAs and our children.”
That heavy push from labor has forced Democrats to warm to the idea of a grand bargain. But the same two camps that opposed the deal last time are still adamantly against it: Save Our Schools Arizona, the public-school advocacy group helping lead the voucher reform campaign, and hardline ESA supporters who see any new guardrails as a threat to school choice.
Save Our Schools, or SOS, teamed up with the AEA to pass the Protect Education Act, the citizen initiative that has become the central bargaining chip in special session talks. But the two groups do not have equal power over the ballot measure’s fate.
While SOS has helped with much of the groundwork, the AEA has more votes on the committee that would decide whether to submit signatures for the measure.
AEA also holds the financial power: The National Education Association, AEA’s national affiliate, has put nearly $5 million into the ballot measure campaign.
Still, SOS is trying to keep the measure alive. The group launched an email pressure campaign urging supporters to lobby lawmakers and Hobbs against a special session.
And on Friday morning, the group stacked boxes in a display outside the Capitol to provide a visual reminder of the citizens’ signatures lawmakers would be overriding if they struck a deal to kill the ballot measure.
Save Our Schools Arizona continued gathering signatures for the Protect Education Act throughout the weekend and made a stop at the Capitol on Friday morning to ask lawmakers not to thwart their efforts.
Two weeks ago, Republican lawmakers had enough GOP votes to fulfill their end of the deal: an estimated 24 in the House and 14 in the Senate, House Chief of Staff Grant Hanna told us after the deal failed. The AEA was supposed to bring roughly half of legislative Democrats on board to put it over the finish line, but SOS advocates successfully lobbied against the deal.
The new deal puts Democratic lawmakers in a difficult position. While SOS has grassroots credibility and years of ESA reform advocacy, unions give a lot of money to Democrats.
Meanwhile, the far-right school-choice faction has landed in the same place as SOS.
Freedom Caucus leader Sen. Jake Hoffman tore into the deal on social media, bashing what he called “the total desperation and unhinged strategy (House Speaker Steve Montenegro) is employing” and warning any bargain with AEA would hand Hobbs “her crowning achievement” heading into her reelection campaign.
But several other Republican groups have come out in support of the deal, including the Center for Arizona Policy, an evangelical lobbying group.
CAP published a public message on Friday outlining the current terms of the proposal and answering concerns circulating among school choice supporters.
The deal on the table is “substantially similar” to the bill Republicans attempted to pass during the failed end-of-session deal, the group said. It includes fingerprinting requirements for teachers and tutors who work directly with students, which some ESA supporters worry would create a new layer of regulation for families using vouchers outside traditional schools.
While CAP wrote that it “would prefer a better deal,” it pointed to the central advantage of cutting a deal instead of letting the union-backed measure go to the ballot: Republicans could come back later and change it.
“Here is the crucial difference: because this is a statute, these provisions can be refined in future sessions,” CAP said. “If the fingerprinting requirements prove unworkable for home-educating families, the Legislature can fix it … That flexibility exists because this is legislation, not a ballot initiative.”
Worse off than before: Even though Arizona kicked a ton of people out of the SNAP program, the state’s error rate is higher than it was before new federal restrictions came on line, the Republic’s Ray Stern reports. A new federal report showed Arizona’s error rate (basically, overpayments and underpayments) was 10.8% since October, up from 8.8% in 2024. That could cost the state big time. If Arizona doesn’t get its error rate under control by this coming October, then it’ll have to pay $208 million in federal penalties, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. But Gov. Katie Hobbs’ office says the new state budget adds nearly $11 million for more staff to check SNAP applications for eligibility, which could help fix the error rate.
Picking her lane: After Democratic Socialist candidates did surprisingly well in recent congressional primaries, Democratic CD1 candidate Marlene Galán-Woods (a former Republican) signed onto a letter calling for a more centrist approach, the Washington Post reports. She was one of 13 candidates who want the Democratic Party to focus on mainstream issues like capitalism, fiscal discipline, strong borders and national pride. Republicans couldn’t agree more.
“What started as the Socialist Squad in 2018 has turned into an army that has taken over the Democrat Party,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Every House Democrat will have to answer for the socialist agenda that’s now driving their party, and face the fact that their radical agenda will lose them elections.”
Picking his lane: Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly didn’t sign onto the “more centrism” letter, but it looks like he’s playing a similar game. He ripped the border policies of former President Joe Biden, saying Biden “did a bad job at the border” and “created a crisis,” per The Hill. But Kelly noted he wasn’t worried about retribution from Biden backers, unlike Trump-supporting officials who fear crossing the boss.
Who vetted this guy?: The Payson Roundup’s reporting led to the resignation of Payson’s economic development director, the Roundup’s David C. Bolla reports. Gregg Martinez was facing accusations of fraud, personal financial problems and a domestic violence allegation that led to a guilty plea to aggravated assault and cost him his job at the City of Page. Then, after he started working in Payson, a local cleaning contractor accused him of sexual assault. Martinez claims his problems “are not subject for public discussion” and the Payson city manager says the city “does not comment on personnel matters.”
$36k salary, $10m lawsuit: Chandler Councilman O.D. Harris is suing Chandler and the City of Scottsdale for $5 million each, claiming the investigation and failed prosecution of him and his wife for allegedly destroying campaign signs against him was a racially motivated hit job from members of the council and city administration trying to tank his reelection campaign, the Republic’s Lauren De Young reports. He won reelection anyway, with the highest number of votes of any city councilmember. He says the mayor and members of the council directed the Chandler Police Department to investigate and controlled the investigation, then urged Scottsdale to prosecute him after the Maricopa County Attorney's Office wouldn’t.1
"If they were willing to do this to me while I was serving as Vice Mayor, I can only imagine what they might be willing to do to our most vulnerable residents,” Harris wrote.
Reviewing the reviews of the review: After two New Times reporters dispatched to cover the grand opening of Arizona’s first Buc-ee’s gas station failed to understand the hype, Buc-ee’s purists on social media got mad at them, which gave the reporters another full day of Buc-ee’s-related copy to work with.
“Buc around and find out!” one beaver-loving reader wrote.
Do you all know what a “push poll” is?
It’s a type of poll that asks a whole bunch of loaded questions about a candidate to “push” you into supporting or opposing one side, then asks who you plan to vote for.
It’s a good way for campaigns to test whether their planned campaign ads will actually sway voters.
But more than that, it’s a way for campaigns to juke the poll and push their numbers up.
Anyway, keep that in mind when you see Republican attorney general contender Rodney Glassman put out polling numbers that show him way up over his opponent, Republican Senate President Warren Petersen.
A “push poll” — clearly from the Glassman campaign — that we received on Friday.
Push polling is just one of the many scams in the polling industry that led us to stop trusting them a long time ago.
These days, if we want a vague estimation of which way the wind is blowing, we turn to prediction markets like Kalshi. At least in those, people have real money riding on predicting the correct outcome, rather than getting paid to manufacture vibes about their desired outcome.2
And for what it’s worth, Kalshi doesn’t think the Arizona AG GOP primary is that close at all.
1 Longtime readers will remember that Harris also said he was racially profiled when he had to put down a card to start a tab at a local restaurant bar — and he berated the staff over it.
2 Yes, we know prediction markets are bullshit, too — but reporters love stats. It’s in our nature.