Call it the issue that just won’t go away.
Nearly 10 months after the Republican House speaker exercised his power and changed the committee assignments of several Democrat lawmakers at their request, a prominent Democrat representative says the House minority leader may have removed four veteran lawmakers from committees because they are Hispanic.
“What I am saying is if you’re a member of the Hispanic Caucus and four of your veteran members who are sitting on those committees [are removed]…you notice things like that,” Rep. Pete Rios, D-23, said. “You notice that four of your Latino members are being stripped of their committee assignments.”
In January, House Speaker Jim Weiers altered the membership of four committees at the behest of Democrat Reps. Manny Alvarez, Olivia Cajero Bedford, Martha Garcia and Ben Miranda. In previous terms, the lawmakers had served on the Water and Agriculture, Appropriations, Education and Judiciary committees, respectively, but House Democrat leaders opted not to reassign them to those committees this term.
Instead, Reps. Theresa Ulmer, Chad Campbell, Lena Saradnik and David Lujan were assigned to those committees. All except for Lujan are in their first term as legislators and are not Hispanic.
A public spat between caucus leaders and the four lawmakers erupted when Weiers changed the committee rosters.
Rios says the most likely reason for the snubbing of the four Hispanic members was because they did not support House Minority Leader Phil Lopes when the caucus elected its leaders, but he can’t ignore the apparent racial divide.
“It has to be one of the two [reasons],” Rios said. “Just look at the facts – who the four people were, who they were replaced with.”
But Lopes says discussing the committee assignments, and the resulting dispute, is counterproductive and does nothing to further the goals of Democrat lawmakers.
“That’s water under the bridge,” he said. “It’s over. We’ve moved on.
“We’ve got a session to manage and we’ve got an election in which we expect to win four more seats and take the majority. This just takes focus off of that.”
Lopes declined to comment further on the issue.
Rios, though, says he’s only speaking out on the issue to defend himself and the other Democrats from accusations they agreed to support a Republican budget in exchange for the committee changes. In particular, he took exception to comments made by former House Minority Leader John Loredo and lobbyist Tim Schmaltz at the Arizona Advocacy Network meeting Oct. 18.
Loredo, who is divorced from Rios’ daughter, Sen. Rebecca Rios, said a deal was “absolutely” struck between the Democrats and Weiers, and he and Schmaltz credited pressure from constituents and advocacy groups for forcing the lawmakers to abandon their defection and vote against the budget.
Rios says he wants to put to rest once and for all the notion that he and other Democrats planned to cross party lines on the budget. As long as other people keep raising the issue, he says he will give his side of the story.
“When you’re on the side of truth, you have nothing to fear, and that’s where I am,” he said.
But the issue is likely to continue to percolate throughout the next legislative session, as many Democrat advocates, lobbyists and lawmakers believe Rios and as many as five other Democrats were prepared to support the Republican budget in exchange for the inclusion of funding for pet projects and the committee changes.
Loredo says that, despite Rios’s protestations, he remains convinced the group of Democrats intended to vote with the Republicans.
“It was obvious,” he said. “It was pretty clear what they did.”
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, points to the votes of Rios, Cajero Bedford and Linda Lopez, D-29, in the House Appropriations Committee in May. Lopez and Rios each offered amendments that were adopted by the committee and all three Democrats ultimately voted to pass the budget along to the entire House.
“My mouth was hanging down to the floor!” she said. “That’s not what Democrats do.
“Yeah, there was a deal.”
Despite her belief that Rios and the others were in bed with the Republicans, Sinema says the end result was that all Democrats banded to oppose the Republican budget on the House floor. And that is what must carry forward to next year.
“The smartest thing we can do is work to get a good budget passed…and work to tell people why Democrats should be leading this state,” she said. “There’s not a lot of room for infighting.”
Rios agrees, though he says that any conflicts between individual members won’t affect policy decisions.
“Both factions of the Democratic caucus, at the end of the day, are still Democrats,” he said. “Even though there may be that division based on personality [conflicts], that unity based on issues is still there.”