Breaking rank
Democrats Pete Rios (left), Olivia Cajero Bedford (center), Linda Lopez (right) voted in favor of all 13

Old wounds were reopened in the House Democratic caucus when a trio of lawmakers who successfully petitioned the speaker for committee changes earlier in the session supported the Republican budget.
House Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-27, said Speaker Jim Weiers “bought off our three people” in the Appropriations Committee in order to get a bipartisan budget. When the House’s budget proposal was heard in that committee April 30, Democrats Olivia Cajero Bedford, Linda Lopez and Pete Rios broke ranks and voted in favor of all 13 bills.
Lopez and Rios also offered amendments to shift funds within the budget that were supported by all of the Republicans in the committee.
The amendments, which resulted in a decrease in spending of $1.9 million, shifted money largely from public health care and education to pay for increased teacher salaries, children’s support programs and targeted cancer screenings.
One of the primary objections Democrats have had with the House budget is the $62 million in tax cuts it includes. Lopes criticized the votes by what he called three “renegades” in his caucus because of what he said the vote means.
“I don’t think tax cuts are important — they obviously do, they voted for them,” he said. “I think their priorities are the wrong ones. Our caucus priorities are the right ones. I disagree with their approach, I disagree with their decisions, I disagree with their modus operandi…”
But the three Democrats defended their decision to cut a deal with Republican leaders, saying the ends justify the means because the House budget now has more in common with the Senate budget, which was negotiated by that chamber’s Democrats and Republicans and the governor.
“To me, a budgetary process is exactly that — it’s a process,” Rios, D-23, said. “So, you always try to impact a budget at any level you can, and that’s what I did at the appropriations level. When you introduce amendments that are significant, and they get on, you are basically bound to vote for that particular budget to keep it moving.”
Rios, who has served in the Legislature for 23 years since first being elected in 1983, also disputed accusations that he “sold out” by voting with the Republicans.
“I’ve been involved in the process, I have been for decades, I will continue to do that,” he said. “If we can make a budget better than what it was, then that’s why I’m there, to represent the interests of my constituents.”
Lopez, D-29, said it was important for the budget to have some Democrat fingerprints on it and said Lopes and other caucus leaders failed to do that.
“Right now, there is a total lack of communication between Republican and Democratic leadership in the House,” she said. “This was our way to work with Republican leadership to have some influence on the budget. Otherwise there was going to be no Democratic input on the budget in the House.”
Meetings or ‘scuttlebutt’
Weiers reportedly met with four House Democrats — Lopez, Rios, Robert Meza and Mark Desimone — to discuss the budget and possible amendments to the Republican plan before the bills went before the Appropriations Committee. When asked about the meeting, though, Weiers called talks of such a powwow “scuttlebutt” and said, “I’ve met with a lot of Democrats about the budget.”
He also said he had not met with any House Democrat leaders.
“They haven’t come in to talk to me,” he said. “They’re dealing with [Majority Leader Tom] Boone.”
Like the others who supported the budget, Cajero Bedford, D-27, said the goal was to provide money in an otherwise Republican budget for programs and priorities important to Democrats, but she said the House budget is currently lacking in several areas, including providing funding for hospitals to research and treat cancer in women.
Fallout for the three Democrats was swift and came from both within the caucus and from outside groups. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, said their votes only undercut the negotiations the Senate had with the governor.
“The governor, clearly, is working on the Senate budget, and so is everybody else, so what’s happening here — all it’s doing is undermining the process of true collaboration that’s happening in the Senate,” she said.
Governor ‘not happy’ about support for GOP budget
News of the votes quickly reached Gov. Janet Napolitano, who called Lopez and Rios to her office within an hour of the committee ending. Rios said she was “not happy” about the support they gave the Republican budget.
The Senate Democrats were outraged at Cajero Bedford, Lopez and Rios for their votes. Senate Assistant Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia, D-27, said the representatives made “a stinking deal” to get their amendments on the bills and they got too little in return for siding with the Republicans.
What they got, Garcia said, is “low-hanging fruit.”
“As liberal Democrats, we always want to achieve as much as we can in terms of finding some equity within the budget. And this is far from equity,” he said.
Angry e-mail calls for Lopez resignation
Enrique “Hank” Feldman, an advocate for children’s programs and president of the Fostering Arts-Mind Education Foundation, sent an e-mail to lawmakers and supporters castigating Lopez for her vote. He said she did not represent the interests of children or teachers and called on her to resign.
“You are no longer welcomed at our town meetings or our homes and lives,” he wrote. “You are a non-entity… a thing…with no soul. You do not stand for children which means you do not stand for the future of our society.”
The Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, condemned the votes as well. In an e-mail, the organization accused the three Democrats of cutting a deal with Weiers earlier in the session to change the committee assignments of six members.
“Each of these three legislators are a part of a small group of Democratic House members who were unhappy with committee appointments recommended by their party caucus leaders as the legislative session began,” the AEA said. “After a meeting with Speaker Weiers in January, committee appointments were modified and many political observers have been predicting an ‘inside deal’ was sure to follow.”
Lopez said the votes “had nothing to do with that” and said she only hoped to make the House budget more like the Senate budget.
But AEA president John Wright says her defense, and those of Rios and Cajero Bedford, wasn’t up to snuff.
“That explanation is not satisfactory because it does not account for the limited negotiating room we now have,” he said.
2008 support eroding?
Wright said it is too early to speculate how the AEA would receive the trio during the 2008 elections — Rios and Cajero Bedford are both expected to seek re-election, while a term-limited Lopez may seek another office — but he did say that the group’s endorsement for incumbents is “based largely on voting record” and this would certainly factor into that.
Privately, lawmakers have speculated Lopez and Rios promised Republican leaders they would secure up to six votes in exchange for receiving numerous amendments on the budget both in committee and on the floor.
But Rios denied there was any deal to deliver other Democrat votes onto the budget.
“Urban legend — no truth,” he said. “We can’t commit other people to anything. I have not gone around with a list saying, I need you to commit to this. That’s urban legend.”
Lopez said there was a deal, but it didn’t extend to floor voting.
“The only deal was that we would vote yes on those bills in appropriations, but nothing beyond that,” she said, adding the budget would take significant changes to garner her support on the floor.
Minority Leader Lopes said most of the members of the caucus were “very unhappy” with the votes and said the attitude represents a cultural change among Democrats. While the old guard was content to manipulate individuals to get support, the newer — generally younger — lawmakers are willing to put the needs of the caucus above their own. He said the committee votes demonstrate the differences between the two philosophies.
“[Rios] represents that old school,” Lopes said. “For him, it was OK to go make a deal. For the rest of the caucus, it wasn’t OK, because we decided how we were going to proceed with [the budget], and that was through the Senate.”
The caucus, he said, will move forward and won’t be torn apart by the dispute over the votes. However, there will not be outright hostility toward the trio that sided with the Republicans.
“I think what has changed is the level of mistrust,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t talk to you.”
Lopez, though, says she wouldn’t do anything different, because the House budget is better now than it was prior to the committee hearing.
“I believe, at the end of the day, what we did was the right thing,” she said.