Bright yellow signs blasting Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita as “ethically compromised” litter roads in Scottsdale, where the 10-year incumbent seeks to fend off a primary challenge from a well-funded opponent.
It’s the most intense primary yet for Ugenti-Rita, one of the Senate’s most conservative Republicans, who swept into office in 2010 as a first-time candidate riding a Tea Party wave of activism. From that first race on, Ugenti-Rita has been a maverick unafraid of upsetting her own party — a stance that wins plaudits from constituents when it results in wins like an early repeal of a controversial vehicle license tax, but that also generates conflict at the Capitol, where legislative leaders prize “team players” above all else.
As she seeks to defend her Senate seat, Ugenti-Rita must deal with a social conservative lobby that doesn’t think she takes a sufficiently strong stance against abortion, skeptics of the #MeToo movement angry about Ugenti-Rita’s role in expelling a colleague she said sexually harassed her and voters troubled by sexual harassment allegations against Ugenti-Rita herself.
While rumors that Ugenti-Rita and her husband, former Governor’s Office staffer Brian Townsend, sexually harassed a lobbyist have circulated the Capitol for years and appeared in campaign materials from her 2018 primary opponent, the lobbyist’s sworn court deposition made public earlier this year put those claims in stark, occasionally graphic terms.
Ugenti-Rita’s primary opponent, Scottsdale attorney Alex Kolodin, is all too happy for voters to continue thinking of Ugenti-Rita laying on a bar for body shots and having her now-husband solicit a threesome, as the lobbyist alleged in her deposition. In campaign mailers, social media ads and sly asides during interviews, Kolodin calls out Ugenti-Rita’s “issues with lobbyists” and describes the incumbent as “scandal-plagued.”
“Everybody who is familiar with politics in Scottsdale, the people who are really actively involved, know the backstory and know the scandal,” Kolodin said. “It’s become a known thing among the electorate. I want to be represented by somebody who makes me proud as a constituent, and that’s certainly one of the reasons that I wanted to run.”
Ugenti-Rita has assiduously refused to acknowledge the allegations against her, ignoring questions from reporters and avoiding forums and debates where they could arise. Her Senate colleagues closed ranks around her in February, after the Arizona Capitol Times and other media organizations obtained copies of the court filings.
She is currently embroiled in a defamation lawsuit against former lawmaker Don Shooter, who was expelled from the state House after Ugenti-Rita and several other women complained that he harassed them. And if Kolodin continues discussing sexual harassment allegations leveled at Ugenti-Rita, she may sue him as well, her lawyer said in a letter sent to Kolodin last week.
“I am well aware that the days of civility for most people in political campaigns are well behind us in America, but that does not give you a license to harm Ms. Ugenti-Rita’s reputation with false and defamatory statements about her,” attorney Mark Goldman wrote. “I hope that you will rise above your current obvious inclination to defame Ms. Ugenti-Rita. Do you really want this type or conduct to be part of your political legacy in Arizona?”
Shooter, meanwhile, is invested in making sure Ugenti-Rita loses, and has offered Kolodin campaign advice — though he said Kolodin doesn’t need and hasn’t asked for his help.
“He’s not a stupid man,” Shooter said. “He’s not listening to me.”
Ugenti-Rita still maintains broad support among members of Arizona’s conservative political establishment. One of her seatmates, Republican Rep. Jay Lawrence of Scottsdale, repeatedly refers to himself, Ugenti-Rita, Rep. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills and Congressman Dave Schweikert as the “LD23 Dream Team.”
Her hard-line stances against tax increases and laser focus on election legislation earn praise from conservatives. More recently, her stalwart opposition to Gov. Doug Ducey’s assumption of power during the COVID-19 pandemic — including drafting legislation to immediately overthrow his state of emergency and protesting attempts to end the legislative session — won admiration from the conservative wing of the party.
And while Kolodin appears on first glance to have outraised Ugenti-Rita in the last two quarters, nearly all of the $135,000 he collected by July 1 comes from loans he gave his campaign. Ugenti-Rita brought in just over $88,000, all of which came from contributions from individuals and political action committees.
Influential Republican groups have split on endorsements in the race, with the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and the Free Enterprise Club picking Ugenti-Rita and the Center for Arizona Policy siding with Kolodin. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry endorsed neither.
Following the Center for Arizona Policy’s snub of Ugenti-Rita, freshman Republican Reps. Shawnna Bolick and Walt Blackman announced their own endorsements of Kolodin. Bolick’s teenage son, Ryne, is also managing Kolodin’s campaign.
Their endorsements mark a new area in which Ugenti-Rita has had to go on the defensive: while supporters of abortion rights have long criticized her record, she’s now targeted by abortion rights opponents as being too “pro-choice.”
The main issue the Center for Arizona Policy and Kolodin cited was Ugenti-Rita’s support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Over the past several years, she and two other Republican women, Sens. Heather Carter of Cave Creek and Kate Brophy McGee of Phoenix, have voted for and sponsored resolutions to ratify the constitutional amendment, which guarantees equal rights regardless of sex.
Critics of the amendment portray it as enshrining the right to obtain an abortion in the Constitution, and supporting it earned Ugenti-Rita, Carter and Brophy McGee the ire of the Center for Arizona Policy and its influential leader, Cathi Herrod. Ugenti-Rita and the center also tangled over a CAP-backed bill to provide state funding for centers meant to dissuade women from obtaining abortions, as Ugenti-Rita questioned the need for aspects of the bill.
Blackman said his support for Kolodin stems from his belief that Kolodin will try to outright ban abortion instead of continuing to regulate it, as Republican majorities have done for the past several decades. Arizona still has an abortion ban on the books – it just can’t be enforced because of Roe v Wade.
“We need legislators that are going to fight [for] this cause, and I endorsed him because that’s what he wants to do. He wants to end this epidemic,” Blackman said.
The winner of the August 4 Republican primary will face Democrat Seth Blattman, an ASU graduate and political newcomer who runs his family’s furniture manufacturing company.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich is once again pressuring Gov. Doug Ducey to pave the way for executions in Arizona.
In a letter this week, Brnovich told the governor that it is clear that the federal government is able to get its hands on pentobarbital. What that means is that the problem the state has had in the past in getting the drugs — and doing so legally — from a willing supplier no longer exists.
And Brnovich pointed out there are now 20 individuals on “death row” who have exhausted their appeals.
But it is up to the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry to actually order the drugs. And that agency is under the control of Ducey.
“It has been six years since Arizona carried out an execution,” Brnovich told the governor. In fact, he said, some of the crimes for which people have been convicted and are awaiting execution date back to the 1970s and 1980, specifically citing the 1984 slaying of 7-year-old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson who disappeared while riding her pink bicycle at Tucson’s De Anza Park. Frank Jarvis Atwood, who had previously been released on parole from California, eventually was arrested and convicted.
“The time has come for Atwood and others to be held accountable,” Brnovich wrote.
Brnovich made a similar plea to Ducey a year ago when U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government intended to resume executions after nearly two decades.
There was no response from Ducey at that point.
The federal government did finally carry out its first execution on Tuesday, using lethal injection on a man convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in the 1990s.
On Wednesday, there was no specific response form Ducey about obtaining new execution drugs or asking for Brnovich’s help in getting them. Instead, gubernatorial press aide Patrick Ptak would say only that the governor has received Brnovich’s letter and “will continue working with the Department of Corrections to ensure justice is served and that we follow the law.”
Part of the new push from Brnovich on Ducey is because the state has either won or settled lawsuits over the death penalty and the drugs that can be used.
Last year a federal appeals court concluded that Arizonans have no legal right to know where the state obtains drugs to execute inmates. That ruling, Brnovich said, makes it more likely that the state will find a supplier, many of which have been unwilling to sell their drugs for executions because they fear “harassment or retaliation by death penalty opponents.”
And just three weeks ago the state settled other claims, agreeing not to limit the ability of witnesses to hear the sounds of the execution.
Arizona has tried to get drugs used in executions in the past.
The state in 2015 ordered 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental, a muscle relaxant used in the execution process, from a supplier in India. That came after a domestic manufacturer refused to sell it for executions.
The decision to order the drugs came despite warnings by the FDA that buying the drug from India-based Harris Pharma would be illegal. That followed a 2012 decision by a federal judge, ruling in a lawsuit brought by inmates, requiring the federal agency to block importation of the drug as unapproved.
Customs and Border Protection seized the drugs at Sky Harbor Airport. And in 2017 the Food and Drug Administration refused to release them.
Arizona has not carried out an execution since it put Joseph Wood Jr. to death in 2014 in a procedure that took nearly two hours. He had been convicted of the 1989 death in Tucson of his girlfriend and her father.
Brnovich said it’s time to restart the process. But he needs Ducey’s cooperation.
“I again ask for your assistance in procuring the drugs necessary to resume executions in Arizona,” he wrote to the governor. “It is imperative to fulfill our obligation to uphold the rule of law.”
A federal judge late Tuesday rebuffed a bid by Xponential Fitness to allow it to reopen its 50 facilities around the state despite the order by Gov. Doug Ducey to keep them shut for at least another two weeks.
`The court does not doubt the earnestness of plaintiffs’ desire to open their businesses, generate revenue, earn a living, and employ — and as importantly — pay — others,” wrote Judge Diane Humetewa. And the judge said she recognizes “the economic and emotional hardships” that the orders by the governor dealing with COVID-19 can impose on people and individuals.
But Humetewa said she was powerless to simply void Ducey’s orders.
“In our constitutional republic, the decisions of whether, when, and how to exercise emergency powers amidst a global pandemic belong not to the unelected members of the federal judicial branch, but to the elected officials of the executive branch,” she wrote.
Humetewa said a crisis like that created by the coronavirus calls for “quick, decisive measures to save lives.”
“Those measures can have extreme costs — costs that often are not borne evenly,” she said. “The decision to impose those costs rests with the political branches of government, in this case, Gov. Ducey.”
Humetewa, a President Obama appointee, acknowledged that Ducey’s order closed down gyms and fitness centers while other kinds of businesses were allowed to remain open. Alex Weingarten, the attorney for Xponential, argued those other businesses actually would be more likely places where the virus could spread.
But the judge called that irrelevant.
“Gov. Ducey’s June 29 executive order does not violate the Equal Protection Clause (of the Constitution) simply because it does not close every business where transmission is possible,” she wrote. Anyway, Humetewa wrote, the decision to close gyms temporarily is “reasonable and rational” because medical advisors have told him that these facilities pose undue risks — even those that operate within certain guidelines.
Finally, the judge rejected Weingarten’s claim that allowing his clients to reopen is in the public interests, at least in part because of the mental and physical benefits from the services they offered.
“COVID-19 is highly contagious and continues to spread at alarming rates, requiring public officials to constantly evaluate the best methods by which to protect residents’ safety against the economy and a myriad of other concerns,” Humetewa said.
“Gov. Ducey has provided evidence that gyms create a uniquely dangerous environment for the spread of COVID-19 because exercise makes mask-wearing more difficult and less effective, and individuals emit more virus-spreading respiratory droplets during exercise,” she continued. “Allowing gyms and fitness facilities to operate in Arizona, at this time, could increase the risk of transmission of COVID-19 — not just for those who visit plaintiffs’ particular facilities, but for everyone in the community.”
Xponential has franchise operations around the state operating as Club Pilates, Stretch Lab, CycleBar, Pure Barre, Yoga Six, AKT, and Row House.
This is the second defeat for gyms in as many weeks.
Last week a Maricopa County Superior Court judge rejected similar arguments made by the owners of Mountainside Fitness and Exponential Fitness who also argued that their facilities can be operated in a safe fashion.
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