AZ Policy Wonk

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he is still planning a sweep July 29 despite Judge Susan Bolton’s decision to halt the most significant parts of S1070.

Arpaio said he’s still going to enforce Arizona’s human smuggling laws and employer sanctions laws as he’s done the last three years. The only difference is how suspected illegal immigrants who haven’t broken a state law will be treated.

Had the key portions of S1070 stood, those people would have been booked into jail, Arpaio said. Now, they will be turned over to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Arpaio said his deputies have always done.

“This is not going to interfere with how we operate,” Arpaio said. 

Arpaio said he wasn’t disappointed with Bolton’s decision because it will be appealed. He thinks the appeal will be successful. 

“I don’t think the activists should be celebrating in the streets yet,” Arpaio said.

Sen. Russell Pearce, the bill’s sponsor, held an impromptu press conference in the hallway of the Senate building after refusing to take questions about S1070 during an event to call attention to a new state law that will allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

Pearce said the immigration law still allows police to ask about residency status, but instead of charging under the state law, police will have to turn suspects over to ICE.

Pearce said it was encouraging that Bolton left in the provision that prohibits local governments from limiting or restricting the enforcement of federal immigration laws. He accused Mesa, Chandler and Phoenix of being among cities in Arizona with sanctuary policies.

“We will sue them,” he said.

Pearce also believes the state will win the legal battle if it reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We wrote this for this battle,” Pearce said.

Rep. Doug Quelland has ended his appeal of the Clean Elections Commission’s decision to remove him from office.

Quelland’s attorney, Tim Casey, informed the Arizona Court of Appeals that the Phoenix Republican would not follow through with his intent to appeal a Maricopa County Superior Court judge’s order that backed the commission’s earlier decision. 

“I’m glad that the matter is complete,” Clean Elections Director Todd Lang said after he received Casey’s motion.

Quelland’s troubles began a few weeks after he prevailed in the 2008 elections, when Carol Vandercook, a Democrat who lives in Quelland’s district, filed a complaint with the help of attorney Jim Barton.

Vandercook’s complaint included a copy of a $15,000 political consulting contract signed by Quelland and Larry Davis, owner of Intermedia Public Relations. The contract put Quelland well above expenditure limits for publicly funded candidates.

With his appeals process over, Quelland became the second lawmaker in Arizona to be removed from office for public campaign finance violations. The first was David Burnell Smith, who was ordered from office in January 2006 by the Arizona Supreme Court for violating his 2004 primary election spending limits.

The delay in appointing a replacement for Quelland’s vacant Legislative District 10 House seat may be over. Legislative sources say the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is planning to meet on the matter early next week.

Cari Gerchick, a county spokeswoman, said the Board is eyeing Aug. 2 for a special meeting to consider Quelland’s replacement for the rest of the year.

I’m going to make this quick and dirty because I’m certain most of the Arizona Capitol Times’ readers are registered voters, but if you’re not, you will have to do so before midnight on July 26 in order to vote in the Aug. 24 primary election.

And if you are tired of lines at your neighborhood Motor Vehicle Department office (or if it’s closed due to budget cuts), you’ll have one last chance to register from 4:30 p.m. until midnight in front of the Executive Tower (July 26 is Monday, by the way).

Although, if you want to avoid a nighttime trip to one of the seedier parts of Phoenix, you can always register at servicearizona.com, which has become the favorite place to register for many Arizona voters.

About three-fourths of the voter registrations in Arizona are going through the online portal, said Matt Benson, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office.

In the week prior to the registration deadline for the 2008 general election, servicearizona.com was responsible for nearly 100,000 voter registrations. The biggest single-day tally was 38,872 on Oct. 6, 2008.

Earlier this year, the site collected another 8,320 registrations just before the deadline to register for the sales tax special election.

The best part about it, nobody had to wait in line.

Thanks to Benson, here’s a list of the biggest voter registration days so far (notice that most of the dates fall just before a deadline):

The Arizona Capitol Times has won seven awards in the National Newspaper Association’s 2010 Better Newspaper Contest and Better Newspaper Advertising Contest, including three first-place awards.

The Arizona Capitol Times won:

First place for Best Feature Series, Luige del Puerto, Non-daily Division, circulation less than 4,500;
First place for Best Business Feature Story, Salvador Rodriguez, Non-daily Division, circulation less than 8,000;
First place for Best Environmental Story, Jim Small, Non-daily Division, circulation less than 6,000;
Third place for Excellence in Typography, Non-daily Division, circulation less than 6,000;
Third place for Best Investigative or In-Depth Story or Series, Jim Small, Jeremy Duda, Luige del Puerto, Jeremy Duda and Anjanette Riley, Non-daily Division, circulation less than 3,000;
Honorable Mention for Best Use of Photographs, Non-daily Division, circulation less than 6,000;
Honorable Mention for Best Local News Coverage, Non-daily Division, circulation less than 3,000.

Judging was performed primarily by active community newspaper editors and publishers and included retired university journalism professors and retired or former newspaper men and women.  

Established in 1885, the National Newspaper Association is the voice of America’s community newspapers and the largest newspaper association in the country. The nation’s community papers inform, educate and entertain nearly 150 million readers every week.

President Obama on Thursday recommitted his administration and, indirectly, congressional Democrats to comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants already living in the U.S.

The president said immigration reform cannot wait, and he urged congressional Republicans to join with Democrats and the American people, who he said have already made immigration a top priority.

“I’m ready to move forward,” he said during his speech at American University. ”But the fact is without bipartisan support we cannot solve this problem. We cannot pass comprehensive reform without Republican votes. That is a political and mathematical reality.”

He started the speech by explaining the country needs ”one, clear national standard,” and he outlined the problems that can arise from ”a patchwork” of immigration laws in different states across the country, a reference to Arizona’s law that requires local and state police to arrest illegal immigrants and to calls in at least a dozen other states for similar laws.

Obama said it’s time to be honest about the problems and get past the “false debates.” He said both sides of the immigration fight have resorted to distorting the facts and clamoring for the kinds of laws that would be untenable on practical and moral levels.

“This issue lends itself to demagoguing,” Obama said.

He said those seeking amnesty for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. would lead to a surge in illegal immigration and would be unfair to those waiting for legal documentation to come into the U.S. Plus, he said, those who willingly broke the law should be held accountable.

But Obama also said rounding up all of the illegal immigrants and their children would be devastating because so many of them are “woven into the American fabric” by holding jobs, owning homes and contributing to their communities in other ways.

He said young children who crossed the border illegally with their parents should be allowed to pursue the American Dream, and he reiterated his longheld support for the Dream Act. 

The president also said a seal-the-border-first approach would delay much-needed changes to the immigration system as a whole. Republican representatives and senators, however, have said they won’t vote for any immigration measures until the border has been secured.

“I do not agree with President Obama’s assertion that we must pass comprehensive immigration reform in order to secure the border.  I do, however, believe it is necessary that we secure the border before we try to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl said in response to the president’s speech. 

In addition, Obama said Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano has been directed to improve federal immigration enforcement policies without waiting for a new law. He said that means more troops on the border and more support staff to stop violent criminals and drug cartels from entering the U.S.

He said federal agents are seizing more contraband than ever before and that crime is down along the border, despite reports to the contrary.

“The border is more secure today than it has been at any time during the past 20 years,” he said.

Kyl disputed that assertion as well.

“The President and his administration claim that much has been done over the past two years to secure the border,” Kyl said. ”Yet, a half a million people still illegally enter our country today, most through Arizona, and his administration has yet to lay out a strategy on how it intends to bring it under control.”

The cloud of irony surrounding Dean Martin on June 8 was so thick that it must have been difficult for him to see how quickly his campaign was swirling down the drain.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision to block matching funds threatens the viability of dozens of political candidates in Arizona, but it put a special kind of hurt on Martin, whose gubernatorial ambitions seem futile without the millions of dollars he was expecting to receive from Arizona’s Clean Elections system.

RELATED: Major races impacted by matching funds ruling

Martin is running third in the polls behind Gov. Jan Brewer and Buz Mills, and his campaign has been devoid of excitement for the past couple of months. When matching funds were wiped out, Martin lost perhaps his only chance to turn things around in time for the Aug. 24 primary.

What seemed obvious to many political insiders, though, must have eluded Martin, who insisted that the court ruling would not derail his campaign. In fact, Martin told reporters that his “real” opponent in the race was Brewer, while discounting Mills as a floundering candidate who is trying vainly to buy the election.

There are several possible explanations for Martin’s preposterous assessment of the governor’s race, but there is evidence to suggest that he was suffering from some sort of irony-induced malady that blotted out his view of reality.

The whole Martin/Clean Elections saga is so full of paradoxes that it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly which one is the most dominant. Here are a couple options: Martin was one of the first politicians to take legal action against matching funds, and then he signed up to qualify for them. Later, his gubernatorial campaign was relying on more than $2 million in matching funds, and then his own lawsuit wiped them out.

It all started in 2004 when Martin, a state senator at the time, became the lead plaintiff in the original federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of public campaign financing. He teamed up with the Institute for Justice to wage a legal fight on grounds that Arizona’s Clean Elections system violates free speech rights by diluting the effect and value of money spent by candidates who raise money from private donors.

That lawsuit was dismissed, appealed and ignored. But Martin later joined the 2008 lawsuit against matching funds – the one now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court – as a plaintiff.

Until this year, Martin’s relationship with Clean Elections was uncomplicated: He despised the system and said it was fundamentally flawed. He said it was unfair. He characterized it as un-American. He was on the front lines in the battle to eliminate it. And whether you agreed with him or not, his position was clearly definable.

But everything got murky when Martin decided that his best chance – some say his only chance – of winning the governor’s race would be to run as a Clean Elections candidate and balance his campaign on the expectation of matching funds. So he joined the system he was trying to destroy, conveniently setting aside his convictions in favor of political gain.

At the time, Martin told reporters his decision was strategic: Clean Elections provides an advantage, therefore he would use it.

It’s difficult to imagine that Martin would have been able to raise enough money to counter the spending by Mills, or even Brewer, if she had decided to raise private donations. But at least he would have been able to retain some dignity by sticking to his beliefs, even if it meant losing the race.

Now that the Supreme Court has blocked matching funds, Martin appears to be headed toward defeat anyway. While Brewer is in a similar position – stuck with about $707,000 and no chance of getting more – she has the advantage of incumbency and what appears to be a strong lead in the polls. Plus, she got a lot of free publicity by appearing on a round of television commercials in support of the sales tax measure that passed last month.

While there are a lot of reasons to respect Martin, his hypocrisy regarding Clean Elections gives people a big reason to distrust him. Voters sometimes excuse politicians for making bad decisions, but they tend to hold grudges against those who shrug off deep-rooted convictions. If anyone is paying attention to Martin’s folly with Clean Elections, they’re likely to seek a different kind of leadership.

-Matt Bunk is managing editor of the Arizona Capitol Times.

Police are preparing for a crowd of between 25,000 and 50,000 people to protest at the Capitol this weekend that could draw the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash and, unfortunately, not Young.

Rumor has it the famous trio of crooners will make an appearance, though it’s not been confirmed. If Neil Young was expected to be here, I would be much more excited, frankly. But even without him, this protest rally is likely to be much larger than the ones that preceded it.

The protests started last month after the Legislature passed S1070, which led to Arizona’s new immigration law, and continued until after Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill. Those initial rallies topped out at a few thousand people, though they attracted a lot of national media attention.

Saturday’s protest, though, will be the first of what likely will be a series of weekend rallies. At least two more protests are scheduled for the following weeks, according to Arizona Capitol Police officials.

In 2006, an estimated 100,000 people marched at the Capitol to show support for the rights of immigrants, so Phoenix is no stranger to large protests. But S1070 changed the tone of the immigration debate, and many police agencies no doubt are preparing for the worst while hoping for a peaceful demonstration like the one four years ago.

While today’s special election on Proposition 100 seems to have garnered more attention than most, nobody is watching the results more closely than Gov. Jan Brewer, who has tied her political future to the temporary one-cent sales tax increase.

There’s no doubt Brewer has made the sales tax increase a cornerstone of her administration, and she will try to claim a political victory if it passes tonight. But in fact, she may be vulnerable to criticism whether the measure passes or fails. No matter what happens at the polls tonight, all three of Brewer’s main challengers in the GOP primary are expected to launch attacks on Brewer for supporting higher taxes while the state’s economy continues to struggle.

If the measure passes, look for Brewer to get a temporary boost in the polls, but expect her opponents to chip away at her support over the long run.

The passage of Prop. 100 would come over the objections of many Republican voters and to the glee of many Democrats, most of whom aren’t planning to vote for Brewer this fall anyway. Voters who oppose the measure generally are going to vote in the Republican primary, and those Republican voters may hold the tax increase against Brewer if Dean Martin, Buz Mills and John Munger launch effective campaigns slamming her for hindering economic recovery.

If voters shoot down the sales tax increase, Brewer may lose some of the momentum she gained by agreeing to sue the federal government over the health care law and by signing Senate Bill 1070. She appears to be the frontrunner right now, but she would likely take a hit in the polls if voters reject Prop. 100 because she may be seen as an ineffective leader who was unable to secure enough support for a proposal that was a top priority for her administration. On top of that, her GOP opponents still will attack her for advocating a tax increase, and they would have the added benefit of being able to remind voters that they rejected Brewer’s idea. 

Candidate elections aside, the fate of the sales tax measure will obviously impact the state’s budget because it was a major part of the spending plan approved in March by lawmakers. If it fails, there will be a large hole in the budget. However, in anticipation of that, they crafted a series of contingency cuts that would be automatically enacted if Prop. 100 fails.

Those cuts total $862 million, and include large budget reductions for K-12 education ($429 million), AHCCCS ($114 million), universities ($107 million), the Department of Health Services ($40 million) and the Department of Public Safety ($11 million).

Although those cuts are triggered if the ballot measure fails, a special legislative session may be in the works if voters reject Prop. 100. Gov. Brewer has said a special session would be necessary to make sure the technical mechanisms are in place for the cuts, but most Capitol observers believe it’s because lawmakers don’t really want to make those deep cuts – especially to education – in an election year that has already seen more than $1 billion in cuts.

After Rusty Bowers busted out a tune as the lone “singing senator” and a roast-and-toast by lobbyists Russ Smolden and Marty Shultz, I was under the impression that nothing about this year’s Legislative Wrap-Up would be serious.

But just when I began thinking Tuesday morning would be all comedy, Rep. Jack Brown gave a short farewell speech that sobered me right up – if not the entire crowd at the annual Greater Phoenix Chamber event.

Brown, a Democrat who will step down at the end of this year, told everyone that his main goal during 36 years in the Legislature was to show, by example, that Democrats and Republicans can work together for the good of the state. He said he always tried to steer down the “middle of the stream,” for which he was criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike.

To Democrats, Brown was far too conservative. To Republicans, he was still a Democrat.

To Brown, though, both sides are too entrenched. And the Legislature, he said, did a poor job of working together during the final stage of his long political career.

Then Brown made a truly insightful statement, though it might have sounded like blather to those who fail to recognize profundity when it’s disguised by simple terminology.

“We can all work together, if we work together,” Brown said.

Now, I grew up around plain-speaking ranchers and farmers who chose to shield their philosophical genius behind common language, but I’ll admit it took a few seconds for the meaning of Brown’s statement to sink in.

Brown, if he was long-winded instead of concise, may have explained it this way: The only thing keeping both parties from working together is the fact that they choose to work against each other. There is no impenetrable Great Divide that keeps them apart; it’s simply a choice.

The acrimony level is high in the political world these days, particularly in Arizona where Republicans and Democrats run screaming from each other every time someone mentions illegal immigration or health care. They say there’s no common ground on these issues, arguing that bipartisan consensus is impossible because the ideological gap has grown too wide.

The result of that kind of thinking, though, is a belief that one side – your side – is ultimately right about everything, while the other side is completely misinformed, fiendishly deceptive or plotting to destroy the very world we live in.

The political atmosphere has become so polluted that disagreement on any issue can be greeted with disgust, total animosity and wild accusations – there’s almost this “Why do you hate America?” mentality.
Fomenting that kind of divisiveness is good for political parties, bad for Arizona and the U.S.

The American Democracy was set up so that intelligent people with different ideas would be forced to work together. Instead, we’ve been electing dozens of lawmakers every year who wind up being useless, either through their own refusal to compromise or the majority’s refusal to validate any proposal outside of its agenda. 

The growth of independent voters should be a wake-up call to lawmakers who live and breathe the party line. If the partisan disillusionment of nearly one in four Arizona voters doesn’t spell things out clearly enough, then the splits and factions within the parties should serve as a warning to lawmakers that their narrow definitions of good public policy might not be shared by those who do the electing around here.

I suppose the message voters are sending is so simple that, like Brown’s eloquence, it will be lost on the politicians who act as though cooperation is an idea concocted by simpletons who don’t understand the complexities of the state’s problems.

Every time a major piece of legislation is signed or a controversial bill advances, I get bombarded with press releases from notable people and organizations that want to weigh in. Today, as expected, my inbox was flooded with reaction to the new immigration law, S1070.

Here are just a few snippits from the statements I’ve collected so far:

“We fear that SB1070 will create a chilling effect that will make some parents hesitant to send their children to school, even if those children are eligible to attend Arizona public schools, thus inhibiting such opportunities for success.” – Arizona School Boards Association.

“The Governor did the right thing by signing Senate Bill 1070 into law.  It mirrors the ‘Enforcement First Act’ I authored five years ago in the United States House of Representatives.  As John McCain and others serving in Washington have alternated between inaction and amnesty, Arizona acted decisively today to enforce the rule of law and truly secure our border.” – J.D. Hayworth, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who is running against Sen. John McCain. 

“Brewer’s signing of SB 1070 is just the most recent example of government-gone wild in Phoenix. She will likely also receive another bill, SB 1024, which gives the Secretary of State discretion in whether or not to put Barack Obama on the ballot in 2012 based on false claims that he is a Kenyan.” – Pima County Democratic Party.

“The bill the Governor just signed does nothing to secure our border or make us safer from the cartel violence behind most border crime. We need stronger penalties against illegal entry, and I have made specific recommendations to the President for real federal border reform.” – Attorney General Terry Goddard. 

“Although the tendency to seek scapegoats during a recession is all too common, Arizona will pay a heavy price for codifying nativism.  SB1070 will exacerbate Arizona’s economic train wreck, since Latino’s - citizens or not – will seek a more hospitable place to live, work, pay taxes, and spend their hard-earned money. Since Latinos will fear to report crime, neighborhoods will become less safe. Police resources will be stretched to the breaking point, interfering with their ability to pursue dangerous criminals.” – Arizona Interfaith Network.

“Gov. Brewer promised to do ‘what’s right for Arizona’ with SB1070. Instead, she did only what’s right for her upcoming Republican primary. What a wasted opportunity for the governor to show true leadership and courage. Now, our state will suffer as the clock rewinds to the bitter, divisive days of Ev Mecham, when Arizona was seen as a national embarrassment. By signing SB1070, Gov. Brewer has sealed her own legacy of failure.”  – Don Bivens, chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party.

“The proponents of this bill have falsified crime statistics and blamed undocumented migrant workers with all sorts of exaggerated claims in order to get their way. And, with the stroke of her pen, the governor will hand state power over to the mechanics of bigotry and oppression.” – Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform.

“By signing this bill into law, Brewer has just authorized violating the rights of millions of people living and working here. She has just given every police agency in Arizona a mandate to harass anyone who looks or sounds foreign, while doing nothing to address the real problems we’re facing.” – Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.

“This will give state and local law enforcement officials important new tools for the fight against illegal immigration. I strongly support its passage and look forward to defending the law in court next year should I be elected attorney general.” – Andrew Thomas, a Republican candidate for Arizona attorney general.

“(Brewer) joins a long line of other Arizona politicians who are trying to ensure their own political survival at the expense of the people they claim to represent and serve. This is a watershed moment for the President and Congress. Will they continue to abdicate their responsibility and allow other states to follow suit or will they show leadership and respond to the state of emergency that our communities face by enacting comprehensive immigration reform?” – Janet Murguía, president and CEO of National Council of La Raza.

“This is a discriminatory policy that cannot be enforced without committing grave breaches of due process and equal protection. The law will not withstand legal scrutiny, and I call on the president immediately to reject it in the strongest possible terms.” – U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva.

“I will not tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona.” Gov. Jan Brewer.

“Arizona should brace for the inevitable response to its leadership’s folly – decreased cooperation with police that yields higher rates of crime, decreased international commerce that has ripple effects throughout the state economy, and a significant waste of taxpayer resources on defending and vainly attempting to implement a deeply flawed law.” – Mexican American Legal Defense Fund.

“It is hypocritical of Brewer to have stood in front of two large Latino functions and say that she would do what she believes was right for Arizona. Eroding our economic recovery and marginalizing communities does the exact opposite of what is right.” – Sen. Jorge Luis Garcia, a Democrat from Tucson.

“The costs in human and economic terms will be felt for a generation, if not more. The idea that SB 1070 will secure borders and insure safe neighborhoods is ludicrous and unsupported.” – Rep. Ben Miranda, a Democrat from Phoenix.

“We need to secure the border, and we need to secure it now. That’s why I voted for SB1070, and that’s why I urge the governor to sign it. Gabrielle Giffords, meanwhile, won’t just be honest with southern Arizonans. Once again, she’s standing with Barack Obama – not with the interests of her constituents.” - Jonathan Paton, a Republican who is running against U.S. Rep. Giffords in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.