Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

Facing a grassroots Republican backlash over her proposal to expand AHCCCS to fully comply with Obamacare and collect billions of dollars from the federal government, Gov. Jan Brewer is taking her case directly to party activists and issuing a stern warning: Back my plan or prepare for Democrats to win Arizona races in 2014.

Sen. Rich Crandall announced today that he will not serve his entire term, and will retire from legislative service at some point after the current legislative session ends to pursue new professional opportunities.

The former Arizona director of a leading tea party group says he has scrapped plans to deliver Valentine’s Day cards that featured murderous dictators including Adolf Hitler to Republican lawmakers believed to oppose anti-union legislation.

Former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Wil Cardon says he is returning to politics with a simple goal: destroying the establishment wing of the Republican Party.

Former state Rep. Bill Konopnicki died Wednesday at his home in Safford after being diagnosed earlier this year with an autoimmune disorder that led to non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. He was 67.

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled this month that the state’s most fundamental campaign finance laws dealing with the registration of political committees and reporting of contributions and expenditures are unconstitutional.

The ruling won’t affect campaigns this election cycle, but it threatens to upend the state’s campaign finance system for future elections.

The attorney for a Republican lawmaker is asking a judge to bar two counties from printing ballots until residency questions surrounding the man who beat him in last month’s election are settled.

But elections officials say the early deadline for printing fewer than 250 ballots for military and overseas voters makes that impossible, and could mean that Darin Mitchell’s name appears on the ballots for the district’s other 94,000 voters that will be printed later this month – even if a judge rules that he is ineligible to hold office.

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and two wealthy contributors to conservative causes are funding an independent expenditure campaign aimed at ousting House Speaker Andy Tobin and replacing him with a first-term Republican lawmaker who made waves in 2011 for pointing a loaded gun at a reporter during an interview.

According to a campaign finance report filed Monday, Arizonans for an Honest Government raised $40,000 through the middle of August. Cain gave the committee $5,000 on Aug. 2.

A poll commissioned by House Speaker Andy Tobin’s re-election campaign shows him leading comfortably, despite a challenge from a Republican state senator who is alleging that the speaker isn’t conservative enough.

The man responsible for the most infamous negative ad in modern political history is leading the charge to unseat the speaker of the Arizona House.