It seems like every year, the Arizona House of Representatives has at least one or two totally foreseeable perfect storms that lead to all-night, slaphappy voting marathons.
Lawmakers introduced a record number of bills, shoved them through legislative committees, and then, last Wednesday night, spent nearly 18 hours on the House floor, rapid-fire voting on hundreds of bills.
The all-nighter didn’t end until after 5 a.m.
By the time the dawn broke, dozens of bills had failed.
It’s rare for bills to be hung in public like that — they usually die quiet deaths suffocating in someone’s drawer.
Because time is limited and public losses are embarrassing, votes usually don’t happen unless leadership is confident the numbers are there. In a chamber where Republicans hold a narrow majority, leaders rarely like highlighting the bills that divide the caucus.
Part of the problem last week was that several Republican absences scrambled the math.
Some bills fell just one vote short. Measures that drew 30 votes instead of the 31 required were victims of empty desks more than ideological revolt. On a zero-absence day, those probably pass.2
Other bills weren’t even close.
A slate of water proposals — including measures on brackish groundwater recovery, assured water supply standards and snowpack augmentation — failed. Multiple bills aimed at smoothing the way for data centers and small modular nuclear reactors went down. So did proposals dealing with state land oversight, renewable energy tax treatment and even a handful of study committees and appropriations bills.
The late-night session exposed two different weaknesses at once: how little room there is for error in a thin majority and how uneven support is for parts of the governing agenda.
You might think that Democrats rejoiced, having seized the moment to kill a handful of partisan bills.
But if they did, they celebrated too early.
“Reconsideration” is one of many legislative maneuvers to bring a bill back from the dead.
When a lawmaker who votes on the “prevailing side” of a bill wants a do-over, they can make a motion to reconsider the vote in the coming days. (That’s why bill sponsors sometimes flip to “no” at the last minute on a doomed measure — it preserves their ability to try again.)
Sometimes, lawmakers reconsider a bill because someone made a legitimate mistake and pressed the wrong button during one of those late-night delirium-fueled floor sessions. Other times, a lawmaker misses a vote and wants to be on record as supporting or opposing it.
Far more often, they reconsider bills after twisting arms and cutting deals with those who voted against it.
Today, the House is set to reconsider at least eight of those bills that failed. Expect a lot of intense pressure campaigns and deal-cutting in the meantime.
The question isn’t whether some of these bills come back.
It’s what it will take to get them there — and what that says about how stable the majority’s agenda really is.
If it only takes perfect attendance, that’s one kind of problem. If it takes amendments and concessions, that’s another.
Never stop never stopping: Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and her legislative nemesis Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman don’t agree on much, except that they both really don’t like Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, the Republic’s Alexandra Hardle reports. But being disliked — and being 80 years old — and owning a string of scandals dating back decades — aren’t stopping Horne from running for reelection this year.
Uhhhhh….what?: Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego endorsed fellow Democrat and Marine veteran Graham Platner, per the Washington Post. Gallego said he admired how Platner weathered a scandal last fall when it came to light that Platner had a tattoo widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.
“For him it was a growing experience and actually it was beneficial that it happened as early as it did because I think it has made him a better candidate,” Gallego said.
Getting off the sidelines: It wasn’t long ago that professional athletes were told to stay out of politics. Not anymore. Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker who’s running in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, is one of several former athletes who are accepting the Republican Party’s embrace and running for Congress, the New York Times reports.
The lawmaker doth protest too much: You may have noticed Republican state lawmakers pushing quite a few bills aimed at protesters. The Republic’s Taylor Seely breaks them down for you, from whether you would be able to blow a whistle at ICE agents to being charged under racketeering laws if somebody in your protest causes property damage. (And don’t forget, Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez pushed through a bill last year cracking down on campus protests.)
Quick, subscribe to the Arizona Agenda before supporting local news gets classified as an illegal protest, too.
An honest pothead: Our colleague and friend Gary Grady, a longtime courts reporter, launched his own Substack called From the Dockets AZ, kicking off the venture with a story about a pot-smoking lawyer who refused to lie about lighting up in order to purchase a gun. He’s suing the U.S. Attorney General’s Office to try to change the federal law that prohibits “an unlawful user” of “any controlled substance” from owning a gun.
“Occasionally Plaintiff will smoke 4-5 puffs during the course of an afternoon or evening, sit back and listen to music on his stereo system (which always sounds even better), daydream, enjoy some wine and food, and after several hours relax and watch a movie or program on television, feeling very refreshed,” Tucson lawyer Bill Weinstein wrote in his lawsuit.
In other, other news
The record-breaking February heat in Phoenix shows “Punxatawny Phil is a goddamn liar” … (Morgan Fischer / New Times) … When a drought like the one Arizona has experienced for 32 years gets old enough, it’s no longer a drought (Hayleigh Evans / Republic) … After the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, local officials in several Arizona cities and counties are considering ordinances to block ICE activity (Alisa Reznick and Matthew Casey / KJZZ) … Apple executives say they’re going to buy 100 million semiconductor chips made in Arizona (Corina Vanek / Republic) … And ASU President Michael Crow loves AI so much he regularly uses it on nine different platforms (Jessica Boehm / Axios).
There may be a new cringiest car rolling the streets of the Phoenix metro area — and it seems to belong to the campaign of Republican Jay Feely. 1
The name of the former Arizona Cardinals kicker and candidate for Arizona’s 1st Congressional District is emblazoned on a Tesla Cybertruck, per a photo posted by the Republic’s Stephanie Murray.
There’s nothing that says trying way to hard to be a cool dude like a Cybertruck — especially with advertising on it for a political candidate.
The photo was posted just a day before we published an interview with Republican Gina Swoboda, in which she offhandedly lambasted Feely’s campaign.
“I have no idea why we would think a football kicker carpetbagger from Gilbert is magically going to make people who care about policy and want to talk about policy run right out and vote,” she said.
But if anything’s going to persuade voters to vote the MAGA-aligned first-time candidate who may or may not even live in the district, it’s definitely this gaudy flex.
1 We suppose it could also belong to a Feely superfan, but that seems pretty unlikely — especially considering he once posted a 10-tweet thread to Elon Musk about his Cybertruck buying experience, which he graded with an F-.
2 Republican Rep. Joseph Chaplik announced he would be resigning from the legislature to focus on his congressional campaign last month, but still hadn’t actually resigned as of last week. He just sort of stopped showing up. Republican Rep. Laurin Hendrix was also out on one of the busiest days of the legislative session. And Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin dipped out near the end of the night after being forced to vote on a bill that he said he wasn’t ready to vote on.