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Lawmakers assert power grab over state offices
The historic Arizona Capitol building. Arizona legislators have introduced several bills this year to allow the Legislature to have greater control over state agencies and other...
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Key criminal justice bills dormant in Senate
Although several measures aimed at cutting prison sentences and making other major changes to Arizona’s criminal justice system have passed the House this year, the big question is whether these bills will make it through the Senate or even get a hearing there.
Advocates for reducing Arizona’s incarceration rate – the fifth-highest in the nation in 2019 according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics – had some reason for hope when the 2021 legislative session started. Eddie Farnsworth, the former Senate Judiciary chairman who often opposed proposals to revamp sentencing, is out of the Legislature, having not run for re-election in 2020.
In the House this year, so-called reform bills ran not through the Judiciary Committee, but through a new Criminal Justice Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake, a longtime advocate for criminal justice change.
Blackman’s committee advanced numerous bills, including ones to let more prisoners earn credits toward early release, create an independent ombudsman to oversee Arizona’s prison system, let judges assess shorter sentences than a statutory mandatory minimum in some cases and put new limits on civil asset forfeiture.
Most of these measures passed the House easily. A few, including HB2162, which would let some people convicted of low-level felonies have their convictions classified as misdemeanors, and HB2318, which would make some changes to “repetitive offender” sentencing, have made it through Senate Judiciary and appear to be on track to become law. However, three or four weeks after most of these measures have been transmitted to the Senate, some major criminal justice bills that passed the House haven’t been scheduled for a Senate hearing, leading activists to worry these efforts could stall yet again.
“It’s really unfortunate,” said Darrell Hill, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. “I think the House did a great job of passing a wide array of criminal justice reform bills, and thus far no one in the Senate has indicated that they’re willing to join with this bipartisan consensus and pass criminal justice reform, so that’s really disappointing to us.”
Hill said his organization would like to see Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, or Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to make sure the bills get an up or down vote in committee.
The ACLU has been encouraging its supporters to reach out to Petersen and urge him to schedule a hearing on the bills. So has the American Friends Service Committee of Arizona, a Quaker organization that seeks to revamp the criminal justice system.
Petersen didn’t return calls and emails by press time. Blackman said he has been working with Petersen and is still hopeful the yet-to be scheduled bills will get heard.
“We’ve been talking and trying to work out some kinks in the bills and concerns he has and some of the members have,” Blackman said.
Blackman said he is “hoping we will come to an agreeable resolution to come across the finish line,” and added that he would particularly like to see HB2167 passed, which would create an independent ombudsman to monitor the state’s prison system. Blackman put out a statement in early March pointing to several recent scandalous issues involving the state’s prison system as evidence of the need for greater oversight. They included a sexual assault lawsuit, the state being fined $1.1 million in February for not complying with court orders to improve inmate health care and the state’s inmate management software not calculating some prisoners’ release dates correctly, potentially resulting in inmates being imprisoned longer than they should be.
“I believe that is the cornerstone of reform and if we can get that, we’ll be fine,” Blackman said March 17.
Opponents of HB2167 include the Arizona Police Association and the Fraternal Order of Police. Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who voted against the bill, said during a House Appropriations Committee meeting in February that he views it as creating a public office whose job is to advocate for political change on behalf of prison inmates, “which I do not believe is the role of government-funded employees.”
Kavanagh said the ombudsman would save lawyers who want to sue the state over prison conditions the trouble of researching things themselves, and predicted Gov. Doug Ducey will veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
“This is publicly paid advocacy against our corrections department,” Kavanagh said.
Caroline Isaacs, American Friends Service Committee of Arizona’s program director, said she has been working with numerous organizations, including some major conservative groups, to advance criminal justice change this year. She said she views HB2167 as particularly necessary given the recent scandals at the department.
“It’s hard to fathom why we would not be having a conversation over prison oversight right now,” Isaacs said.
Isaacs also said that HB2673, which would let judges sentence an offender to less than a required mandatory minimum if the judge determines adhering to the minimum would be unjust and the public won’t be endangered. She said the bill shouldn’t be controversial, noting that the idea has many conservative backers.
“That’s an ALEC bill,” she said, referring to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft and push legislation. “That’s a Rand Paul bill.”
Rep. Joel John, R-Buckeye, who sponsored HB2673, said he was inspired to do so after he got to know a man who worked on his farm and spent several years in prison for petty crimes he committed after he became addicted to painkillers, which were originally prescribed for a work-related injury.
“There were people who spent less time in prison than he did for more serious offenses, and that didn’t seem right to me,” John said.
Opponents include Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk and Steve Twist, a longtime victims’ rights advocate who was assistant state attorney general during much of the period decades ago when lawmakers were adopting today’s tough sentencing laws. Both wrote to committee members saying mandatory sentences prevent unjust disparities in sentencing, according to a Capitol Media Services story about the hearing.
“Arizona adopted sentencing ranges to promote uniformity,” Polk wrote. “This bill takes us back to the days when who you are, where you live, and who your sentencing judge is will determine your sentence.”
Ducey spokesman C.J. Karamargin declined to comment on any of the bills, saying the governor has a longstanding policy of not weighing in on pending legislation. In the past, Ducey has been supportive of initiatives aimed at reducing recidivism, but has been skeptical of other criminal justice change efforts. He vetoed a 2019 bill to limit the use of Arizona’s “repeat offender” law to sentence people who don’t have prior criminal convictions. In this year’s State of the State Address, Ducey said he hoped to work with lawmakers on criminal justice change but didn’t offer any specifics.
“If there are other things that we can do that provide opportunities for people that better deal with mental health issues or addiction issues, I’m open-minded to that,” Ducey told the Arizona Mirror in January. “But … among the top priorities for me is public safety. And I’m not going to do anything that would lessen the amount of public safety and attention to law and order in the state or Arizona.”
Some criminal justice reform measures do seem to be moving through both chambers. Senate Judiciary was scheduled to hold hearings on March 18 on two of the House Criminal Justice Reform Committee’s bills — HB2171, to make some tweaks to marijuana laws in response to Proposition 207, and HB2165, which would allow some lower-level felons to serve part of their sentences on home arrest instead of in prison.
SB1250, which would let government and public health agencies and some private groups run needle exchange programs, passed the Senate 27-2 and on March 15 made it out of House Health and Human Services unanimously. Former Rep. Tony Rivero, R-Peoria, pushed the needle exchange idea for several years, and one of his bills to allow them passed the House last year but didn’t make it through the Senate.
Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, who is sponsoring it this year, said she opposed needle exchange programs before but Rivero helped to change her mind.
“It took a learning process for me to kind of get there,” she said. “I finally began listening to Representative Rivero, who was intent on educating a lot of us who were really not open to this idea because we really thought we were encouraging drug use by having needle exchange programs available.”
Gambling bill stalls in senate as politics take shape
Former Nogales mayor announces bid for governor
Former Nogales Mayor Marco Lopez launched his bid for governor with a request to “join us” — and a highly partisan jab at Republicans. Lopez, 42, currently the president of...
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AZ leaders must be honest, transparent, listen to public health experts
In the last year, Arizonans have seen more than 16,000 of our family members, loved ones, and neighbors die as a result of Covid. This fact cannot be separated from the reality that throughout the pandemic, our state has consistently ranked as one of the worst areas in the nation, with no meaningful action by state leaders to stop the spread. The pandemic became so dire for Arizona’s tribal neighbors that Doctors Without Borders were deployed to assist last summer.
Despite the dire situation in Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey and Republican leaders have done little to mitigate the spread of Covid. They have ignored the advice of public health experts urging the mandate of statewide mask usage in public and other high-risk situations. They have ignored requests for financial support from cash-strapped local communities. They have put politics ahead of Arizona’s safety, failed to support those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and recklessly reopened the state, without regard to Arizonans’ safety, which led to a precipitous spike in cases and deaths last summer.
We are grateful to U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly for wasting no time and working in Washington D.C. to address the serious concerns of Arizonans who have struggled throughout this pandemic.
Kelly made the economic rescue of Arizona’s families and small businesses a top priority, fighting for $50 billion in grants and loans for small businesses to stay afloat and keep people employed. Additionally, we thank the Biden administration and the members of the Arizona congressional delegation who are working to ensure that Arizonans can recover from this crisis as quickly as possible. But this rescue plan can only be the beginning.
We are joining Honest Arizona to hold our elected leaders accountable. Arizonans have endured far too much this past year, and we continue to face serious problems. If we’re going to get past this pandemic and get Arizona working families the opportunities they need, our leaders must be honest and transparent, follow the advice of public health experts, and respond to the needs of their constituents.
This commentary is signed by Honest Arizona advisory board members U.S. Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick, Ruben Gallego, former Attorney General Grant Woods, State Sens. Tony Navarrette, Jamescita Peshlakai, State Reps. Reginald Bolding, Cesar Chavez, Director of Arizona Public Health Association Will Humble, Cadey Lawless Harrell, M.D., Hunter Henderson – veteran living with a pre-existing condition, Marcos Castillo – living with two pre-existing conditions, Marked by Covid co-founder Kristin Urquiza
Brnovich asks court to allow state to intervene in immigration matter
Attorney General Mark Brnovich wants to defend a Trump-era rule that was designed to deny “green cards” to those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
The move comes as the Biden administration has decided not to fight a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which found the policies of the former president illegal. That potentially returns the situation to the way it was during the Clinton administration, when the economic tests for admission — and getting what is formally known as a Permanent Resident Card — were much more lax.
“Invalidation of the Public Charge Rule will impose injury on the states,” Brnovich said in asking the appeals court to let him intervene in the case. He estimated the cost of abolishing the 2019 rule at $1 billion a year nationally.
Brnovich, in explaining his move, said there needs to be some review of expanded public assistance benefits at both the state and federal level.
“Our system has been very taxed because of Covid and everything else that’s been going on,” he told Capitol Media Services.
“I think that now is not the right time to increase the amount of people that are getting Medicaid, public assistance benefits,” he said.
“I think that we need to take care of people that are here legally before we start giving benefits to people who just recently arrived here and don’t have legal status,” Brnovich said. “I’m trying to protect Arizona taxpayers.”
The ability of immigrants to support themselves has always been a part of the consideration when determining if someone who enters this country legally should be granted permanent status.
The Trump rule was designed to deny that status to people already here legally if it was determined they are likely to use government programs like food stamps and subsidized housing.
That would be determined on a variety of factors ranging from income to the ability to speak English. And the rule would apply on the basis of the chance of needing benefits at some point in the future, to whether anyone actually is receiving them.
One way of accomplishing that was to use income as a much stronger indicator of whether the applicant is likely to become a burden and, therefore, ineligible.
One section says that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “will generally consider 250% of the federal poverty guidelines to be a heavily weighted positive factor in the totality of the circumstances.” In essence, that suggests anyone above that level — $66,250 for a family of four — would have little problem qualifying.
At the other end, it says the absolute minimum for even being considered will be in the neighborhood of half that much.
“More specifically, if the alien has an income below that level, it will generally be a heavily weighted negative factor in the totality of the circumstances,” the measure reads.
In a December ruling, the 9th Circuit called the Trump rule “inconsistent with any reasonable interpretation” of the law on immigration.
The judges said the law has always been interpreted to mean long-term dependence on government support and not to encompass the temporary need for non-cash benefits. They also said the change failed to consider the effect on public safety, health and nutrition as well as the burden placed on hospitals and the vaccination rates in the general public.
Then there’s the fact the Trump rule sought to introduce a lack of English proficiency into the decisions “despite the common American experience of children learning English in the public schools and teaching their elders in our urban immigrant communities.”
Finally, the court said the Trump administration “failed to explain its abrupt change in policy” from the 1999 guidelines.
That sent the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, as other appellate courts have issued contrary rulings.
But here’s the thing: The Biden administration has decided not to defend the rule and, as of last week, effectively rescinded it. So Brnovich wants to intervene “to offer a defense of the rule so that its validity can be resolved on the merits, rather than through strategic surrender.”
The attorney general said he sees it from a strictly financial perspective.
He noted the appellate court, in its ruling, acknowledged that the Trump rule predicted a 2.5% decrease in enrollment in federal programs and a corresponding reduction of Medicaid payment nationwide of more than $1 billion.
Then there are other programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and food stamps, both of which require the state to pay at least the administrative costs.
The maneuver puts him at odds with Gov. Doug Ducey.
He criticized the Trump administration in 2019 when it proposed the rule, saying the federal government should focus more on criminal activity, drug cartels and human traffickers.
More to the point, in discussing the issue of who would be able to get permanent resident status under the new rules, the governor said this country needs more than those who already are financially sound.
“It’s not only people at the graduate level and the Ph.D level who we need,” Ducey said. “We also need entry-level workers and people who can work in the service economy.”
The governor said it’s about opportunity.
“I want to see people who will climb the economic ladder,” he said. “I think many of us have a family story similar to that.”
And that, said Ducey at the time, goes back to his preference for a more balanced approach to immigration than what Trump proposed.
“We have the ‘haves’ and the ‘soon-to-haves,’ ” he said. “And both of them a part of proper immigration reform.
The court has not set a date to decide on whether to let Brnovich intercede.
He is not alone, with Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia also signing on to his legal brief.
Supreme Court justice to retire
A Gov. Doug Ducey-appointed Supreme Court justice announced his retirement today, effective April 1, after about three years on the bench, capping a total of 20 years as a judge....
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Redistricting panel narrows field for executive director
Safely opening schools can be done
Ducey endures year of slings, arrows for Covid handling
On March 11, 2020, Gov. Doug Ducey placed Arizona under a state of emergency to combat the spread of Covid. The country declared Covid as a pandemic that same day.
To his harshest critics, Ducey’s efforts largely failed, and many directly blame him for the deaths of more than 16,000 Arizonans.
To his loyal supporters, he’s getting results. Arizona’s economy is one of the strongest in the nation and the vaccine rollout — despite several hiccups — has already inoculated at least 20% of the state’s population.
Ducey resisted calls for “extreme” measures put forth by both sides of the ideological aisle. He refused to impose a statewide mask mandate, angering the liberal base. But he also restricted business activity, upsetting conservatives.
And as Arizona’s cases skyrocketed in the summer and the fall, Ducey abandoned his early efforts at transparency. Specifically, the regularly weekly briefings went away, and he got testy with reporters in the sporadic ones he held.
Ducey and his staff refused to comment for this story.
Shut down, reopen, shut down again
A businessman by profession, Ducey acted cautiously, particularly when it came to calls to shutter business operations.
Before anybody really knew how bad Covid would get, Ducey put Arizona in a quasi stay-at-home order for a month, shutting the doors of “non-essential” businesses. He extended the order two additional weeks, but began to walk it back in early May to align with one of many visits by President Trump. He shut down schools in a joint-announcement with Democratic state Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman.
Ducey allowed businesses to begin reopening, but his critics said he had no plan in place to help slow the spread, insisting his administration implemented neither a comprehensive contact tracing effort nor a mask mandate and that the state allowed certain businesses to exploit a loophole and continue operating.
He refused to add any new mitigation measures as Arizona became a global hot spot around November through January.
The elderly
Many leaders said they were left out of the administration’s decisions – and the complaint emanated not just from mayors and other political rivals.
Things turned for the worse around Memorial Day, when bars took advantage of a loophole in the governor’s executive order to remain open amid a sharp rise in cases and deaths that disproportionately wreaked havoc on Arizona’s elderly population.
Some said his office only sought to mend relationships after mounting pressure and public shaming.
Dana Kennedy, the Arizona state director of the AARP, said her relationship with Ducey’s office became practically nonexistent after two meetings in early March 2020.
Kennedy said she had not heard from Ducey or his staff again until around June or July, when Ducey’s chief of staff reached out.
“My advocacy started working, and I got a call from Daniel Scarpinato where he said, ‘What do we need to do to repair this relationship?’ Kennedy said.
That led to the state setting up a task force for long-term care facilities.
And later, when vaccines became available, Ducey immediately prioritized vaccinating Arizona’s oldest residents, putting them in the same priority category as health workers, something Kennedy applauded.
But Kennedy lamented that Ducey and Cara Christ, the state health director, still wouldn’t allow numbers from long-term care facilities to be released and fought to keep any information sealed in court.
Kennedy said she felt hopeless at times.
“They felt like I was the only person who could help them. And I couldn’t,” she said about the aging community. She added that there hasn’t been any transparency from Ducey or Christ when it comes to the assisted living facilities or other long-term care facilities.
“I still to this day disagree with not releasing the information regarding assisted living facilities,” Kennedy said. “And to this day I could not tell you how many people have died in long-term care facilities.”
Arizona is among just a few states that hide that information from the public. What AARP Arizona knows is that least 2,500 residents of skilled nursing facilities have died. The true number, she speculated, is much higher than that.
“We know for a fact that there were a lot of deaths in our long-term care facilities, and they won’t release that information. They have it, but they won’t release it,” Kennedy said.
Deaths and transparency
Ducey started holding press conferences again toward the end of November.
More than half of all of Arizona’s Covid deaths would occur after his last public appearance on December 16.
And the last time Ducey publicly expressed condolences regarding a Covid-related death happened nearly a year ago.
“Our heartfelt condolences go out at this tragic loss of life,” Ducey tweeted about the second death from the virus.
Some lament that it’s not enough.
Among the 16,464 Arizonans who have died from the virus is Kristin Urquiza’s father, Mark. His death prompted Urquiza to launch Marked By Covid, which collects stories from people whose lives were upended by Covid.
Urquiza, who gained national attention, wrote a letter to Ducey inviting him to her father’s funeral, blaming him in part for her father’s death on June 30. She told the Arizona Capitol Times that her father believed the governor when he said Arizona was on the other side of the pandemic and decided to end the de-facto stay-at-home order in May.
At the time, bars briefly reopened and Ducey refused to allow cities to issue their own mask mandates. Ducey later relented, allowing local governments to issue mask-up ordinances in June.
“I haven’t received any condolence or outreach from the governor, Cara Christ or the Department of Health,” Urquiza said. “[They have all been] completely silent, and from everybody that I interact with who’s lost a loved one in Arizona, I don’t know a single person who has received a generic or a personal condolence from Doug Ducey.”
Loyal opposition, loyal critics
One of Ducey and Christ’s harshest critics is Will Humble, the former state health director who accused the state leaders of only acting after mounting pressure from experts, the public and media.
“How this Governor’s Office operated is that if you could embarrass them publicly they might consider changing direction,” Humble said.
Humble, who briefly remained in his health director role early in Ducey’s tenure, said the governor’s lack of transparency trickled down to nearly all state agencies, speculating that’s also the reason why directors from the Department of Economic Security and Department of Corrections also don’t hold news briefings.
Ducey’s supporters maintain that, despite the incessant criticism, Arizona sits with a robust economy despite early predictions to the contrary. They point to the governor’s innovative strategies to ramp up vaccination, notably by opening three statewide vaccination sites.
They note that the administration has acknowledged problems in the vaccine rollout, but that it’s working on fixing them and they see a light at the end of the tunnel shining just a tad brighter.
Meanwhile, it has been 85 days since Ducey’s last public appearance.
Borrelli badgers woman over ballots, ridicules Republicans
The Arizona Senate’s Republican whip attempted to pressure a woman who went dumpster-diving for ballots into handing documents she found over to him instead of law enforcement and implied both of them could be killed for trying to expose fraud.
During the 30-minute conversation, a recording of which was shared with the Arizona Capitol Times, Borrelli called multiple other Republican politicians “corrupt cowards,” said he was the sole senator pushing to investigate the 2020 election and repeatedly told Staci Burk, a plaintiff in an losing lawsuit to overturn election results, that she could be arrested or killed.
“I might get arrested or whatever,” Borrelli said. “I’m going to get ridiculed in the press. I don’t give a damn. I wanna save this fricking country.”
Over the weekend, Burk posted photos of two men, one of whom has since been identified as Vietnam veteran Earl Shafer, climbing into a set of dumpsters outside the Maricopa County elections department, removing a yellow trash bag of shredded paper and piecing together documents that appeared to be completed 2020 ballots.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said the county’s 2.1 million completed 2020 ballots were still locked in a vault, as required by state law, adding that the shredded papers could have been ballots cast by deceased voters.
“I have no explanation for how a voted ballot could be there and we do not believe there were voted ballots in there,” he said. “We’re 100 percent confident that they’re not part of the 2.1 million voted ballots.”
Upon learning about the incident — which was first published in right-wing websites that did not give the county a chance to respond — the Attorney General’s Office tried contacting Burk and Shafer to obtain the shredded papers. So far, they have not handed over the documents, a spokesman said.
Borrelli did not return multiple phone calls about the recording.
Burk, after speaking to Borrelli, created a GoFundMe account asking for $20,000 to cover her legal costs and saying senators warned her that she would be killed or arrested on false charges. So far, she has raised just $200.
Burk is also self-funding a lawsuit against Gov. Doug Ducey, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, all five Maricopa County supervisors and former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes. Her lawsuit, dubbed the “Arizona Kraken 2.0” made claims that ballots were delivered from South Korea.
A Pinal County judge threw out her lawsuit because Burk was not a registered voter. It’s pending appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.
During their call, Borrelli repeatedly warned Burk that she was in danger. Arizona is the “domino” that will expose corruption across the country and overturn the election, he insisted.
“This is so high level that they want this to go away,” he said. “They can try to silence you – you’re a private citizen. They can’t do anything to me. They can bully me all they want but they know they can’t take me out except if they whack me or I have a suicide.”
“If anything fricking happened to me, if I got hurt, if I got killed, this whole thing would go away because there’s nobody in the Senate that would push,” he added.
During the call, Borrelli called multiple fellow Republicans, including the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and new county recorder Stephen Richer “corrupt cowards,” said he was “really disappointed” in former lawmaker and new Maricopa County treasurer John Allen.
He also mentioned Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, and criticized Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale.
“Warren? Heh. I don’t want to go on and on about Warren. He’s the chairman of the judiciary committee, he inherited this and he reluctantly got involved.” Borrelli said.
It was Boyer’s “no” vote on a contempt resolution that stopped the Senate from sending its sergeant at arms to arrest the county supervisors for not turning over ballots and election equipment they contended they could not legally provide.
“He stabbed us all in the back,” he said.
And he let his feelings known about the Maricopa County supervisors, who fought the senate subpoenas.
“They’re the corrupt bastards that I want to go — I want them in freaking jail,” Borrelli said. “I want them in jail, you have no idea how much.”
He also repeatedly claimed that Attorney General Mark Brnovich, also a Republican, would let the election materials “evaporate” if Burk shared them.
“Do you turn it over to the attorney general that’s been turning his back and not lifting a finger?” Borrelli asked. “By the way, they probably have an incentive to make it all go away. I don’t.”
Later in the conversation, he said he couldn’t get other senators, including Senate President Karen Fann, to commit to investigating and protecting Burk as a whistleblower.
“I don’t trust any of those people,” he said. “The reason why we are where we are is because I’ve been a pain in the ass in the Senate and wasn’t going to let this go. Trust me, there are people who would fold like a lawn chair if I let this go.”
Borrelli said he has been in touch with Sidney Powell and Kurt Olsen, two attorneys who worked on multiple lawsuits filed by Trump allies trying to overturn election results. Olsen told him about new technology that would piece together shredded documents, which Borrelli compared to Iranian rugmakers reassembling shredded CIA documents after seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979.
At other points in the conversation, Borrelli lost his temper with Burk, who insisted that the Senate wouldn’t do anything to help her and claimed to have heard two weeks before the Senate’s failed contempt vote — and therefore more than a week before the Senate drafted its contempt resolution — that lawmakers had a secret meeting in which they decided to stage a 15-15 vote.
“You don’t think this is part of a cover-up?” Borrelli asked her at one point.
“Oh, I think it’s a cover-up,” she responded. “But I think the whole legislature is involved.”
Borrelli has insisted that the election was fraudulent since early November. On Nov. 10, he caused callers from across the country to flood a fellow senator’s legislative office, campaign phone number and personal cell phone with irate messages interrogating whether his race was proof of fraud — all because incumbent Republican Sen. J.D. Mesnard won his East Valley swing district when Trump lost it.
More recently, he has made multiple appearances on conservative podcasts and radio shows complaining that Boyer “betrayed the caucus,” contributing to a rash of threats against Boyer that got so bad he briefly moved his family out of their home.
Borrelli’s comments also run in opposition to what other Senate Republicans have tried hard to argue: that their attempts to audit the 2020 election have nothing to do with changing the results.
Senate Majority Leader Rick Gray said in a floor speech he and others were never trying to overturn the election. The Peoria Republican said he was “inundated with people’s input” and it was mostly about an audit.
“You didn’t see any of us trying to change electors,” Gray said on Feb. 4.
Fontes, the former Democratic Maricopa County recorder who lost his re-election bid, said Borrelli should apologize.
“Mr. Borrelli’s suicide jokes during this incredibly stressful pandemic are irresponsible and lack the maturity, empathy and leadership we should expect from our public officials,” he said.
