Kelli Ward (David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic via AP)
Two-time U.S. Senate candidate Kelli Ward said Monday she’ll seek the top post in the Arizona Republican Party and likely forego any effort to seek the late Sen. John McCain’s seat in 2020.
Ward said she believes her two Senate runs and background in the state Senate make her a solid candidate to shore up the party as Arizona becomes a battleground state.
“I think that it’s time for a new strategy, it’s time for a new leader, it’s time for the old guard to be moved out and people who embrace the entire party to move in,” Ward said.
Ward would likely face current chairman Jonathan Lines in a scheduled Jan. 26 election by party committee members. Party spokesman Robert Maxwell said Lines is expected to seek a second term, but had no further comment Monday on Ward’s announcement.
The state party has been fractured for years between moderates who embrace business-friendly strategies and avoid hot-button social issues and a more conservative wing that has embraced the tea party and President Donald Trump’s initiatives. McCain, who died last summer, was a frequent target of those conservative party activists, and Ward challenged him in the 2016 primary but lost by 11 percentage points. She ran again for Sen. Jeff Flake’s seat this year, but lost in a three-way primary won by Rep. Martha McSally.
Democrat Kyrsten Sinema beat McSally in the general election.
Despite her campaign losses, Ward said those two statewide efforts have given her insight into what Republican voters want and an understanding of the issues that others don’t have.
The physician from Lake Havasu City said she’ll focus on changing GOP messaging on education and health care that she says has been poorly managed. She said she supports school choice, and public school teachers, but that GOP message hasn’t resonated. The same is true with health care.
“I think that as the GOP chairperson I can help us at the state level, at the local level and at the national level to make sure that our messaging and our strategy are appropriate so that we take the state from the purple that’s it’s become under the last two GOP leaders and become strongly right once again,” she said.
Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., smiles with her staff after delivering her first major speech on the Senate floor, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 30, 2019. McSally is a former Air Force colonel who flew combat missions in Iraq and Kuwait. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Federal appellate judges have agreed to decide whether Martha McSally can continue to serve as a U.S. senator at least through the 2020 election.
And they have agreed to rush the case – at least by judicial standards.
In a brief order, the judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by McSally and Gov. Doug Ducey, who appointed her, that there is no need to expedite the issue.
“Regardless of how this court ultimately decides this appeal, Arizona voters will have the opportunity to select the person to complete Sen. John McCain’s term in 2020,” wrote Brett Johnson, one of the attorneys representing the governor. And he argued that there would not be a need for an expedited hearing had the challengers to the appointment moved a bit faster when the case was heard in federal district court in Phoenix.
James Tyrell III, McSally’s attorney, echoed those arguments in what amounts to a “me, too” filing with the court.
But that didn’t convince the appellate judges who agreed to move more quickly than normal and set a hearing for November.
That still leaves the question of whether there can be a final resolution and an order for a special election if it comes to that before the already scheduled August 2020 primary where McSally could face Republican foes in her bid to fill out the last two years of McCain’s six-year term and, if she survives that, the November general election where Democrat Mark Kelly hopes to unseat her. That’s because whoever loses this round is likely to seek U.S. Supreme Court review which could delay a final ruling.
“All we can do is try,” said attorney Michael Kielsky who is representing the challengers. And he conceded that a final determination could come too late to force the special election being sought.
But Kielsky said that, if nothing else, it would set the precedent for what happens in future Senate vacancies and how long an unelected choice by the governor can serve.
Central to that is the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It took the power to name U.S. senators away from state lawmakers and gave it directly to voters.
It also says that when there are vacancies, the governor “shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.” Ducey has done that, setting the primary for Aug. 25, 2020 and the general election for the following Nov. 3 to determine who gets to serve through 2022.
The lawsuit, however, contends the Constitution requires the appointment to be temporary “until the people fill the vacancies by election as the Legislature may direct.”
In this case, McCain died last August.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, left, appointed former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl on Sept. 4, 2018, to fill the seat vacated by the late Sen. John McCain. Kyl resigned in January. PHOTO BY KATIE CAMPBELL/ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES
Ducey initially named former Sen. Jon Kyl to the seat until he quit in, at which point the governor selected McSally who had just been defeated in her own Senate race by Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
But challengers are arguing that 27 months between McCain’s death and the November 2020 election hardly counts as a “temporary” appointment. He wants a special election ahead of that to give voters the chance to put someone other than the unelected McSally in office to represents them as soon as possible.
Challengers have to seek 9th Circuit intervention because U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa rejected his arguments that the Constitution requires there be a special election within a year, if not less, when there is a vacancy in a senate seat.
In her June ruling, Humetewa acknowledged that Ducey is allowed to fill a Senate seat on a “temporary” basis.
But the judge said she finds nothing in the law that says 27 months is too long for a temporary appointment. And Humetewa rejected the argument that allowing McSally to serve until the 2020 election infringes on that 17th Amendment right of voters to choose their own senators.
Humetewa also accepted arguments by Ducey’s attorneys that there are good reasons not to call a special election and instead let McSally serve through 2020. That includes arguments that turnout at a special election would be less than during a regular one, plus the cost of a special election.
This June 3, 2016, file photo shows Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., delivering a speech in Singapore. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)
After casting the deciding vote that derailed Republicans’ seven-year quest to repeal the Affordable Care Act, U.S. Sen. John McCain is headed to Arizona to resume treatment following his diagnosis of an aggressive form of brain cancer.
McCain will be treated at Mayo Clinic, and on Monday will begin a post-surgical regimen of radiation and chemotherapy, his office said.
During that time, his office said, McCain will maintain a work schedule, and he plans to return to Washington after the August recess.
Following a surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye and the diagnosis of brain cancer, McCain left for Washington, D.C. to initially vote for advancing debate on a proposal to repeal Obamacare.
But he also admonished his colleagues and delivered a stinging rebuke of the hyper-partisanship that has engulfed Congress. He also made clear that he would not support any of the proposals to repeal Obamacare without substantial changes.
Last night (early morning in D.C.), McCain joined U.S. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in voting against “Skinny Repeal,” which sought to undo the mandate to Americans to buy insurance and to business to provide medical coverage to their workers. With Democrats unified in their opposition, the three Republicans’ vote sank the legislation.
McCain said Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with a plan that increases competition, lowers costs and improves care, but the repeal legislation would not accomplish those goals.
Its failure, he said in a news release, provides Congress a “fresh start” and the opportunity to craft bipartisan health care legislation.
“It is now time to return to regular order with input from all of our members – Republicans and Democrats – and bring a bill to the floor of the Senate for amendment and debate,” he said.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich (Capitol Media Services photo by Howard Fischer)
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced Thursday he’s running for U.S. Senate, becoming the third major candidate seeking the Republican nomination to take on Democrat Mark Kelly.
Brnovich, who is in his second term as the state’s top law-enforcement officer, is the best-known GOP candidate and the only one with political experience.
In a video announcement, Brnovich described himself as the son of immigrants who fled communism in Yugoslavia. He says he used his post as attorney general to take on “crony capitalists” and government overreach, while promoting religious liberty, border security and election integrity.
“We need an Arizona conservative in Washington who stands up for us and our values,” Brnovich said in the video. “Someone who’s been tested. Someone who won’t go run and hide at the first sign of trouble.”
Brnovich has drawn the ire of former President Donald Trump, which could become a major liability in a crowded GOP primary. Trump has repeatedly called Brnovich “lackluster” and said he’s “nowhere to be found” in support of the audit of Maricopa County election results by state Senate Republicans.
Trump and many of his most loyal supporters have latched onto discredited allegations of widespread election fraud in Arizona and elsewhere, which they claim cost him his re-election. Brnovich, Gov. Doug Ducey and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs certified Arizona’s election results showing a narrow victory for Democrat Joe Biden.
“Our Country needs Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who has done little so far on Voter Integrity and the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, to step it up,” Trump wrote in a statement earlier this month.
Brnovich downplayed the presidential feud, saying he can’t worry about what anyone else does.
“I want this race to be about me, what I believe in and what I stand for,” Brnovich said in a brief interview. “The media focuses so much on the things that no one can control. They don’t want to focus on what I stand for, what I believe and the record I have.”
Solar energy entrepreneur Jim Lamon and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael “Mick” McGuire, both political newcomers, have also announced plans to seek the GOP nomination. U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs has said he’s considering a run but has not announced a decision. Blake Masters, who has worked closely with billionaire Peter Thiel, also may run.
Kelly, a retired astronaut, won a special election last year to finish the late John McCain’s Senate term. He is now running for a full six-year term. The race is one of the most high-profile contests in 2022 and will help determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
As attorney general, Brnovich has picked a number of high-profile fights, including suing the Arizona Board of Regents — which is typically his client — over plans to build a hotel at Arizona State University. He’s also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate part of the Voting Rights Act in a high-stakes case filed by the Democratic National Committee; a decision is expected in the coming weeks.
Democrats immediately signaled that they would highlight his support for a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the health care law known as “Obamacare.” Democrats effectively used opposition to the law against Republicans in 2018 and 2020.
Before he was elected attorney general in 2014, Brnovich was a federal prosecutor and head of the state Gaming Department, which regulates gambling.
Kelli Ward at a campaign rally in August 2018. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
The Arizona Democratic Party is out raising the state GOP by a lot.
New campaign finance reports show the Arizona Republican Party collected just $81,320 in the three months ending Sept. 30. By contrast Democrats raked in $347,841.
And this isn’t just a one-time problem.
An analysis by Capitol Media Services finds that Republicans managed just $382,582 for the first nine months of the year, including nearly $180,000 from political action committees. Democrats took in $641,345, with $339,312 from PACs.
“I think it’s too early to declare this some sort of crisis for the Republican Party,” said GOP political strategist Stan Barnes.
And the phenomenon is not new, with an energized Arizona Democratic Party bringing in more cash during the two-year 2018 election cycle than the Republicans, though by nowhere near the current disparity.
“But it’s fair to say the world’s going to be watching whether or not this leadership of the party can raise the kind of money necessary to be relevant,” Barnes said. “And that question still remains.”
That “leadership” issue refers to the decision by precinct committeemen in January to oust party Chairman Jonathan Lines, who had been the establishment favorite, in favor of the far more conservative and overt Trump supporter Kelli Ward.
Ward, a former state senator from Lake Havasu City, had failed in two prior attempts to gain statewide office: a primary challenge to U.S. Sen John McCain in 2016 and, just last year, her bid to become the Republican nominee for Senate in a primary eventually won by Martha McSally.
Political consultant Chuck Coughlin said that Ward’s history as a candidate – and an unsuccessful one at the statewide level – is part of what’s going on now with fundraising.
“It’s a different role,” he said of being the party chief.
“It’s really behind the scenes,” Coughlin said, with the party chair working closely with other elected officials “and being very servant-oriented to their needs and solicitous of their needs and desiring of their support.”
And Ward?
“She seems much more comfortable in front of the scenes,” Coughlin said.
That includes most recently her role in leading some anti-impeachment demonstrations. And Ward has taken a much higher public profile than her predecessors.
“Of course, that doesn’t sit well with major donors,” he said.
Zach Henry, spokesman for Ward and the state party, did not return repeated calls seeking comment.
But the issues for the GOP go beyond who is leading the party. There’s the Trump factor.
“The Donald Trump cloud over the state of Arizona is a consequence,” said Barnes. “And I think one of those consequences is traditional large-gift donors are unsure.”
None of that, he said, means that Trump himself is in danger of losing Arizona.
“But donors and their money are emotional people,” Barnes said. “And the president’s impact on some of those egos is probably meaningful and having an impact on contributions.”
Put another way, Barnes said the history of the GOP is that its fundraising has done better when the party apparatus was controlled by the more “country club establishment wing.”
Former state House Speaker Kirk Adams said that, in some ways, the lag in donations to the state party following Ward’s selection is not a surprise. He said that the ability of the party chair to connect with donors and rake in cash is built on relationships.
`Do you have existing relationships and do you have the ability to make new relationships?” he asked. “It’s a lot of work.
That, however, leaves the question of whether Ward will get to that point.
“I believe she has the ability to build relationships,” said Adams who until last year was chief of staff for Gov. Doug Ducey. “I don’t know that’s she’s doing it yet.”
Barnes thinks she’ll come around.
“It seems to take time for that new chairman to figure out where the love is among the contributors that support that chairman’s point of view or that chairman’s agenda,” he said. “I have long-term confidence that Kelli Ward is going to figure that out.”
So what’s the impact of the party having less money?
“You can’t win elections without money,” said former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer. She said it’s critically important now, on the heels of some key Democrat victories in 2018, “to help these candidates take back the seats that we lost last time.”
That includes trying to wrest control of the state’s congressional delegation, with Democrats holding five of the nine House seats, and the fact that the GOP edge in the state House slid by four, to the bare minimum 31-29.
And McSally hopes to hang on to the U.S. Senate seat that used to belong to McCain.
Still, Brewer said any reticence by GOP faithful to give to the party need not be fatal. She said there are other options.
One, said the former governor, is to give directly to the candidates. Brewer said donors also can write checks to the Republican National Committee.
Still, she said, that could be a hardship on some candidates.
“They’ve always counted on the party,” Brewer said.
Coughlin said there already are mechanisms in place to find other ways to help.
He noted that Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers have formed what amounts to a political action committee to solicit donations for GOP legislative candidates. And consultant Nathan Sproul said the Trump re-election campaign is expected to pump major dollars into the state, with dollars also expected to flow in to keep that U.S. Senate seat from falling into Democrat hands as what happened last year with the election of Kyrsten Sinema.
Still, Coughlin said, it would be more efficient to have these kinds of campaigns coordinated by the party, even to the point that it gets a better rate on its postage.
“But if they’re not bringing anything to the table themselves, and particularly because it’s a caustic relationship with the other electeds, then maybe you rethink that.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is shown Monday, Jan. 6, 2003, before administering the oath of office to members of the Texas Supreme Court, in Austin, Texas. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has recommended a slew of Arizona luminaries for inclusion in the proposed National Garden of American Heroes. The list by the governor’s office includes three senators, two governors, and O’Connor, the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and military and civil rights heroes. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck, File)
A Native American U.S. Marine immortalized for helping raise the American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II. Two Arizona senators who were Republican nominees for president. The first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Those and other Arizona luminaries are among Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s picks for a new National Garden of American Heroes. President Donald Trump announced the effort this summer, and his administration reached out to governors and the public for suggestions to add to his own list.
The list by the governor’s office recommends three senators, two governors, military and civil rights heroes as well as two military units, including the Navajo Code Talkers. They used an unbreakable code in their Navajo language to communicate during battles in the Pacific during WWII.
The others are:
— Sen. Carl Hayden: He was known as a workhorse of the Senate, where he represented Arizona from 1927 to 1959 after serving in the House since Arizona statehood in 1912. His efforts on the Central Arizona Project, a canal system that brings water from the Colorado River to Phoenix and Tucson, helped ensure the state’s growth. He announced his retirement in 1968 and died in 1972 at age 94.
— Sen. Barry Goldwater: He was born in Arizona three years before statehood and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952. He was the Republican nominee for president in 1964, defeated by Lyndon Johnson. He then ran for Arizona’s other Senate seat in 1968 and won, serving until he retired in 1987. Goldwater died in 1998.
John McCain (Photo by Cliff Owen/Associated Press)
— Sen. John McCain: The son and grandson of Navy admirals was imprisoned after his Navy jet was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. He moved to Arizona after marrying Cindy McCain and retiring from the military. He won a seat in Congress in 1982, then won Goldwater’s old Senate seat in 1986. He was the Republican nominee for president in 2008 but lost and remained in the Senate until his death in 2018.
— Sandra Day O’Connor: She was the first female U.S. Supreme Court justice, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. She had previously been a judge and a state senator. She retired from the court in 2006. The 90-year-old announced in 2018 that she had dementia and was stepping back from public life.
— Raul Castro: Arizona’s only Hispanic governor served for 2 1/2 years after winning election in 1974. He was born in Mexico and came to Arizona as a young man, earning a law degree and serving as Pima County attorney and a judge. He was ambassador to El Salvador and then Bolivia in the 1960s, resigning as governor to become ambassador to Argentina. He died in 2015 at age 98.
Former Arizona Governor Rose Mofford, left, gets a hug from a supporter as she sits next to another former Arizona governor Raul Castro, prior to an inaugural ceremony for at the Arizona Capitol, in Phoenix, Monday, Jan. 3, 2011. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has recommended a slew of Arizona luminaries including Mofford and Castro, for inclusion in the proposed National Garden of American Heroes. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin,File)
— Rose Mofford: She became Arizona’s first female governor when Republican Gov. Evan Mecham was impeached and removed from office. The Democrat had been serving as secretary of state at the time and inherited a big budget deficit and criticism over the state refusing to adopt a Martin Luther King. Jr. holiday. Mofford was governor from 1988 to 1991, declining to run for a full term. She died in 2016 at age 94.
— Pat Tillman: The Arizona State University and Arizona Cardinals linebacker gave up a lucrative pro contract after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and joined the Army. He was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 in a friendly fire incident at age 27.
— Lincoln Ragsdale: He was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II and a prominent Black businessman and civil rights leader in Phoenix after the war. He died in 1995 at age 68.
— Frank Luke: Luke was an ace World War I fighter pilot who died in 1918 at age 21 after being wounded in flight. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. Luke Air Force Base in Glendale is named after him.
Ira Hayes (AP Photo, File)
— Ira Hayes: A Pima Indian from Sacaton, he was one of six Marines shown in Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s famous “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” photo in February 1945. He later suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism and died in 1955 at age 32.
— Stewart Udall: He was elected to Congress in 1954, and President John F. Kennedy named him secretary of Interior in 1961. He served in the post until the end of President Lyndon Johnson’s term in 1969, overseeing major efforts including the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and the expansion of the National Park system. He died in 2010 at age 90.
— Annie Dodge Wauneka: She was the second woman elected to the Navajo Nation Council and worked to improve health and education within the tribe. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. She died in 1997 at age 93.
— The Buffalo Soldiers: This group of Black U.S. Army cavalry unit soldiers was based across the Midwest and West after the Civil War and often assigned to Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona.
In this June 14, 2017 file photo Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz. speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta,File)
U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, Congressional District 2, has told Republican colleagues that she will enter the race for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by fellow Republican Jeff Flake, a move that puts a mainstream candidate who could win backing from President Donald Trump into the primary race.
McSally hasn’t made a formal announcement of her intention to run in next year’s Republican primary. But U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, Congressional District 6, said Tuesday that she told fellow Arizona GOP members of Congress that she was running.
“She said she’s in for Senate,” Schweikert said of the talk he had with the southern Arizona congresswoman on Monday. “It was one of those just sort of as you’re running around from votes, so there wasn’t much of a conversation on my part.”
McSally’s staff didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
A former Air Force fighter pilot who represents a moderate district, McSally would face off against former state Sen. Kelli Ward and could face other Republicans who have been considering getting into the race.
Ward lost badly in a challenge to Sen. John McCain last year.
Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is seeking her party’s nomination along with several lesser-known Democrats.
Flake announced last month that he would not seek re-election. He has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and acknowledged that he could not win a GOP primary in the current political climate.
Mainstream Republicans in Arizona have been searching for another primary candidate because they believe Ward cannot beat Sinema.
Ward discounts talk that she’s unelectable, saying in a recent interview that people are rallying behind her.
“The people who are dismissive, some of them have sour grapes because they didn’t get in at the right time to be able to build the organization that I’ve built,” she said.
Even ahead of an expected McSally announcement, she was targeted by conservative groups. A group affiliated with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon launched a website last week attacking what it called “McSally’s troubling history of supporting amnesty and being weak on illegal immigration.”
If McSally formally enters the race, it could make it easier for Democrats to retake her seat representing Arizona’s 2nd District.
The seat had been held by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, then won by Democrat Ron Barber when she stepped down in 2012 following an assassination attempt that left her badly injured. McSally defeated Barber by 167 votes when he sought re-election in 2014.
She handily won re-election last year by a 14 percentage point margin.
A House re-election may be tougher next year, with former U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick seeking her party’s nomination.
McSally has threaded a needle in her Tucson-area district, pushing border security and veterans issues while fighting to save the jet she flew in combat, the A-10, from retirement by the Air Force.
In May, she was quoted using an expletive urging fellow Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act in advance of a vote. She took heat back in her district for the vote and has worked since then to moderate her stance.
From left are former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, Cindi McCain, Gov. Doug Ducey at the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Biden. The Arizona Republican Party censured them Jan. 23. (Photo Twitter)
Arizona Republicans voted Saturday to censure Cindy McCain and two prominent GOP members who have found themselves crosswise with former President Donald Trump.
The censures of Sen. John McCain’s widow, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Gov. Doug Ducey are merely symbolic. But they show the party’s foot soldiers are focused on enforcing loyalty to Trump, even in the wake of an election that saw Arizona inch away from its staunchly Republican roots.
Party activists also reelected Chairwoman Kelli Ward, who has been one of Trump’s most unflinching supporters and among the most prolific promoters of his unproven allegations of election fraud.
The Arizona GOP’s combative focus has delighted Trump’s staunchest supporters and worried Republican insiders who have watched the party lose ground in the suburbs as the influence of its traditional conservative establishment has faded in favor of Trump. A growing electorate of young Latinos and newcomers bringing their more liberal politics from back home have further hurt the GOP.
“This is a time for choosing for Republicans. Are we going to be the conservative party?” said Kirk Adams, a former state House speaker and chief of staff to Ducey. “Or is this a party … that’s loyal to a single person?”
It’s a question of Republican identity that party officials and activists are facing across the country following Trump’s 2020 loss, and particularly after a mob of his supporters laid siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Nowhere is the question more acute than Arizona, where the state GOP’s unflinching loyalty to Trump stands out even in a party that’s been remade everywhere in the image of the former president.
Ward has relentlessly — but unsuccessfully — sued to overturn the election results. The party has used its social media accounts to urge followers to fight and perhaps even to die in support of Trump’s false claims of victory. Two of the state’s four Republican congressmen are accused of playing a role in organizing the Jan. 6 rally that turned violent.
After dominating Arizona politics for decades, Republicans now find themselves on their heels in the state’s highest offices. President Joe Biden narrowly eked out a victory here, becoming just the second Democrat in more than five decades to win the state. Consecutive victories in 2018 and 2020 gave Democrats control of both U.S. Senate seats for the first time in nearly 70 years.
Ward, a physician and former state legislator who lost two Republican primaries for the U.S. Senate, defeated three challengers to win a second term.
In a brief interview, Ward acknowledged “disappointment at the top of the ticket” but said she and many other Republicans still question the results showing victories for Biden and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. Judges have rejected eight lawsuits challenging Arizona’s election results.
Ward pointed to GOP successes down the ballot, noting Republicans defied expectations in local races.
Ward said she’s a “Trump Republican” who will “always put America first, who believes in faith, family and freedom.” The way forward for the GOP, she said, is keeping Trump’s 74 million voters engaged.
“Yes, I will be radical about those things because those are the things that keep this country great,” Ward said. “The people who are complaining are the people who actually put us in this spot where we are in Arizona, people who have been mamby pamby, lie down and allow the Democrats to walk all over them.”
The censures target some of Arizona’s most prominent Republicans,
Cindy McCain endorsed Biden and became a powerful surrogate for the Democrat following years of attacks by Trump on her husband. After the vote, she wrote on Twitter that “it is a high honor to be included in a group of Arizonans who have served our state and our nation so well.”
“I’ll wear this as a badge of honor,” she wrote.
Also after the vote, Flake tweeted a photo of him with McCain and Ducey at Biden’s inauguration and wrote: “Good company.”
Flake was one of the few congressional Republicans who was openly critical of Trump for failing to adhere to conservative values. He declined to run for reelection in 2018 and endorsed Biden in last year’s election.
“If condoning the President’s behavior is required to stay in the Party’s good graces, I’m just fine being on the outs,” Flake wrote on Twitter before and after the vote.
Ducey is being targeted for his restrictions on individuals and businesses to contain the spread of Covid. While it’s not mentioned in the proposed censure, he had a high-profile break with the president when he signed the certification of Biden’s victory.
“These resolutions are of no consequence whatsoever and the people behind them have lost whatever little moral authority they may have once had,” said Sara Mueller, Ducey’s political director.
Many traditional conservatives fret that the censures and Ward’s combative style turn off the swing voters and ticket-splitters who handed Democrats their recent victories. But they say the party’s decisions will reflect only the views of about 1,500 committed activists.
John McCain was censured by the state GOP in 2014 and went on to comfortably win a Republican primary over Ward and a general election. The self-described maverick, known best for his willingness to buck his party, had strained relations with the state party for much of his career but was consistently reelected by wide margins.
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Associated Press writer Paul Davenport in Phoenix contributed.
Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., smiles as she removes her face covering to speak prior to Vice President Mike Pence arriving to speak at the “Latter-Day Saints for Trump” coalition launch event Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Mesa, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
If Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly wins a seat in the U.S. Senate, he could take office as early as Nov. 30, shrinking the GOP’s Senate majority at a crucial moment and complicating the path to confirmation for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
Kelly has maintained a consistent polling lead over Republican Sen. Martha McSally, who was appointed to the seat held by John McCain, who died in 2018.
Because the contest is a special election to finish McCain’s term, the winner could be sworn in as soon as the results are officially certified. Other winners in the November election won’t take office until January.
Trump has pledged to nominate a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died Friday, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that Trump’s nominee “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Mark Kelly rallies supporters at the launch of his campaign for U.S. Senate on Feb. 24, 2019, at the Van Buren in Phoenix. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
If Kelly wins, the timing when he formally takes office could be crucial in determining who replaces Ginsburg. It could eliminate a Republican vote in favor of Trump’s nominee — the GOP currently has 53 seats in the 100-member chamber — or require McConnell to speed up the nomination process.
With McSally in the Senate, four GOP defections could defeat a nomination, while a tie vote could be broken by Vice President Mike Pence.
McSally quickly laid down a marker, declaring on Twitter within hours of the announcement of Ginsberg’s death that “this U.S. Senate should vote on President Trump’s next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.”
She has not elaborated on whether the confirmation vote should come before or after the election. But she highlighted the renewed stakes of her race in a fundraising pitch on Saturday.
“If Mark Kelly comes out on top, HE could block President Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee from being confirmed,” she wrote.
Democrats in 2018 found success in Arizona, a state long dominated by the GOP, by appealing to Republicans and independent voters disaffected with Trump. The Supreme Court vacancy could shake up the race and boost McSally’s lagging campaign by keeping those voters in her camp.
Kelly said late Saturday that “the people elected to the presidency and Senate in November should fill this vacancy.”
“When it comes to making a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, Washington shouldn’t rush that process for political purposes,” Kelly said in a statement.
FIn this Feb. 10, 2020, file photo U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks during a discussion on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Republican and Democratic election lawyers agreed that Arizona law is clear: If Kelly wins, he will take office once the results are official.
Arizona Supreme Court precedent favors putting elected officials in elected positions as soon as possible, said Tim LaSota, the former lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party and a McSally supporter.
“Somebody who has only been appointed does not have the imprimatur of the electorate,” LaSota said. “It’s sort of intuitive that the law should favor somebody who has won an election as opposed to someone who’s just been appointed.”
Arizona law requires election results to be officially certified on the fourth Monday after the election, which falls this year on Nov. 30. The certification could be delayed up to three days if the state has not received election results from any of the 15 counties.
Mary O’Grady, a Democratic lawyer with expertise in election law, said the deadlines are firm and there’s little room for delay.
“I don’t see ambiguity here,” said O’Grady, who was Arizona’s solicitor general under two Democratic attorneys general.
Arizona law allows recounts and election challenges only under very limited circumstances, she said.
“Usually, the Secretary of the Senate’s office goes out of its way to accommodate the new senators coming in,” former Senate Historian Don Ritchie told The Arizona Republic, which first reported on the prospect for Kelly taking office early a day before Ginsburg’s death. “The old senator is out of their office there. I mean, they actually literally put a lock on the door so their staff can’t go in.”
In this February 4, 2009, file photo, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio orders approximately 200 convicted illegal immigrants handcuffed together and moved into a separate area of Tent City for incarceration until their sentences are served and they are deported to their home countries. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Joe Arpaio is flirting with another campaign that will never happen, according to some political insiders, but he could still serve as an effective surrogate for rising conservative figures.
On August 28, the Washington Examiner launched a torrent of speculation on the former Maricopa County sheriff’s political future after proclaiming he might challenge Sen. Jeff Flake in the Republican primary for his seat.
Arpaio said he hasn’t ruled out anything, which he reiterated during an interview with the Arizona Capitol Times.
“What’s definite is I’m sure going to help people, help them raise money, help the president, make sure he gets some support. That’s a given,” he said. “I’m going to get back on the campaign trail as far as helping other people.”
Jason Rose
As for another run of his own, Arpaio’s longtime friend and former publicist Jason Rose said that’s “a flirtation that will not result in a date.”
“He might surprise us all, but he loves being the sheriff,” Rose said.
He loves it so much, he added, that “there has been serious discussion about running for sheriff again.”
Arpaio, in response to Rose’s comments, said: “Who? What’s he know? I don’t talk to him. Jason Rose? I haven’t talked to him in months. Disregard what he’s saying.”
He said he has not told anyone he would challenge current Sheriff Paul Penzone to regain his seat. Then again, he would not say whether he’d ruled that race out either.
For what it’s worth, Rose would advise against it after he “lost in his home base by a considerable margin” to Penzone.
“There was always a presumption that the sheriff was a formidable political force and could potentially wage an interesting race for governor or whatever he wanted to do,” he said. “In this case, the question is does the emperor have any clothes.”
Constantin Querard
Arpaio may be “done as far as running for office,” but political consultant Constantin Querard said his political identity will live on as a “celebrity endorser.”
Like former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer and others who left office with “a legion of fans” still behind them, Arpaio remains a “valuable commodity,” Querard said.
But President Donald Trump, who won Arpaio’s enthusiastic support early on and pardoned him from a criminal contempt of court conviction last month, may not be the best target for the sheriff’s dollars or his time.
“Now that Trump is president, I don’t know that Arpaio necessarily brings anything to Trump that Trump doesn’t already have,” Querard said. “Whatever Trump does, Joe Arpaio is not going to be able to change that. If Trump delivers, great. If Trump fails to deliver, having Arpaio say Trump’s great on border issues isn’t going to help Trump.”
Arpaio lent the president credibility on issues important to his base, which both men realistically share. Now, Trump has the “biggest microphone in the world” to talk about immigration, Querard said..
Candidates who do not command the same level of name recognition – and millions of Twitter followers – need Arpaio far more.
Querard said much of Arpaio’s negative publicity was focused in Maricopa County, so support for him improves the farther away he goes.
Arpaio should look to the national stage, he said, and find Republican primaries where he can tilt the odds in favor of the candidate more in line with his supporters. If the fervor that followed the Examiner article is any indication, an endorsement from “America’s Toughest Sheriff” will help a candidate dominate the news cycle for several days.
Chad Willems, Arpaio’s political adviser and campaign manager when there’s one to manage, would not name names, but said politicians across the country continue to seek the 85-year-old ex-sheriff’s endorsement.
Arpaio has more than $460,000 left in his “Elect Sheriff Joe Arpaio” campaign account, according to filings with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, but Willems said they have no immediate plans on how that money may be used.
He said the options are to return the money to donors, transfer them to a new political committee, transfer them to a political party or donate them to a nonprofit organization, not including Arpaio’s own Sheriff Joe Arpaio Action Fund.
Arpaio said he donates out of his own pockets to candidates he favors, but he’s “not out there raising money myself.”
He said he’s not “looking for a job,” and for a short time after he lost his latest re-election bid by about 10 points, he thought he was out of politics for good. But after seeing Trump attacked by both the Democrats and Republicans like Flake and Sen. John McCain, he decided the country needed him to keep speaking.
“I would hope senators support their president,” he said. “And I would hope even some Democrats would get out there and support our president, try to get things together, get this country back on track.”
While he’s busy weighing his political options, Arpaio is also working on a book – “Maybe Jason will buy ten copies,” he said. “Why would he know what I’m doing? He must be making it up.”
“The Sheriff Joe Arpaio Tour” was originally scheduled for October, the same month Arpaio was slated to be sentenced for his contempt of court conviction. But he said too few people signed up for the excursion by Conservative Tours, a venture operated by former U.S. Senate Republican candidate from Massachusetts Kenneth Chase.
Still, Arpaio said it would be a great occasion to be a “celebrity” tour guide.
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett certifies the 2014 primary election canvass on Sept. 8, 2014. (Photo by Evan Wyloge/Arizona Capitol Times)
Gubernatorial hopeful Ken Bennett is using the question of who would replace John McCain if and when the senator quits or dies to round up votes and raise money for his gubernatorial campaign.
In an email Friday, the former secretary of state doubled-down on his earlier vow not to appoint Cindy McCain to fill any vacancy. And he said those who share his viewpoint should donate $5, a bid to get at least 4,000 of those small donations to qualify for $839,704 in public funding for the GOP primary.
“U.S. Senate seats are not family heirlooms,” Bennett said in an interview with Capitol Media Services. “When people vote for an elected official, that does not mean that they are voting for their spouse to take over their position if something happens to them.”
But Bennett also conceded that part of his decision to air his views on the potential of a Sen. Cindy McCain — assuming he ever gets to be in a position to name a replacement for her husband — is strictly political. And that includes tapping into Republican voters who are not fans of McCain in his effort to deny incumbent Doug Ducey the GOP nomination..
“You look for where your potential votes are and you differentiate yourself to those groups so that you try to get their vote,” Bennett said.
And the way he sees it, he said, his views on McCain are linked to his bid to defeat Ducey.
Bennett said he supported McCain in the past because the senator, in campaigning for reelection in 2016, promised to vote to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. But when the issue came up for a vote last year, McCain was the deciding — and highly visible — “no” vote with a televised “thumbs down.”
“We’re always looking for what’s our potential audience within the primary voter domain, where can we get our votes,” he said. More to the point, he said any bid to oust an incumbent must be based on showing would-be voters the differences.
How that all relates to his bid to defeat Ducey, Bennett said, is that the senator, ahead of voting against repeal, said his position would be “largely guided by Gov. Ducey’s analysis of how it would impact the people of our state.”
“Ducey and McCain are pretty tight,” Bennett said.
More to the immediate point, he said that defeating an incumbent means pointing up the differences.
“Now if that happens to also coalesce and or correspond with people who didn’t like McCain not following through with his promise not to repeal Obamacare, at Ducey’s request, then yes.” Bennett explained. “So if I end up tapping into both of those at the same time, that’s what you do in an election.”
The reason who might succeed McCain stems from the speculation that has arisen since the senator announced he has an incurable form of brain cancer.
By Arizona law, the governor gets to name replacements for the U.S. Senate, though not the House.
Had McCain quit before the end of last month, that replacement would serve only until this year’s election, at which point whoever won would fill out the balance of the term that runs through 2022.
With that deadline passed, the soonest there would be an election for McCain’s replacement — assuming he’s still not serving at that time — would be 2020. And all that could come next year when Ducey or someone else is sworn in as governor.
When Bennett was running for secretary of state in 2010 he supported McCain who was in his own reelection campaign.
“And I probably supported him again in 2016,” Bennett said. All that changed, he said, with that thumbs-down vote on Obamacare repeal.
What gave Bennett the opportunity to bring up the whole subject has been speculation in some conservative media outlets that the fix was in to have Ducey appoint Cindy McCain to the seat.
The governor, for his part, has repeatedly brushed aside such rumors.
“There is no vacancy,” he said as recently as Thursday in an interview with KTAR, several days after the governor and his wife, Angela, visited the McCains at their cabin near Cornville. He called Bennett’s comments “indecent.”
“They say more about the person that said them than I ever could,” the governor said. And Ducey said the trip to the McCains was something that had been planned for a while.
But the speculation has not cooled, with neither Ducey nor press aide Daniel Scarpinato issuing an outright denial that the subject has come up.
While Bennett may be searching for GOP votes, he did himself no favors with party officials.
“I am disappointed in you,” party Chairman Jonathan Lines wrote in a tweet.
“Regardless of your personal feelings towards the McCains this type of attack has zero place in our party or our state,” the message continued. “You’ve disqualified yourself from leading our state.”
Bennett has dabbled with the conservative wing of the GOP before.
In 2012, as Barack Obama was seeking reelection, Bennett, as the state’s chief elections officer, announced he was requesting that officials in Hawaii provide verification that the president was, in fact, born there before deciding whether to place his name on the Arizona ballot. Bennett, then weighing a 2014 bid for governor, said he received more than 1,000 requests from constituents to verify the president is a “natural-born citizen” and therefore eligible to hold the highest office in the land.
Bennett later backed off after saying he had received certification from Hawaii officials that it did have such a birth certificate.
In his latest campaign, Bennett also has taken on some help in his gubernatorial campaign from those who have long been McCain foes. That starts with Christine Bauserman, an organizer of United Republican Alliance of Principled Conservatives who worked on Trump’s election campaign and ended up with a job at the Department of Interior.
She didn’t keep that post, however, after CNN earlier this year exposed how she used her social media accounts to share conspiracy theories and make anti-Muslim statements.
“The positions expressed by Ms. Bauserman are inappropriate and unacceptable, and they are not consistent with those of the Secretary or the Trump administration,” Heather Swift, a spokeswoman for the Department of Interior said on accepting Bauserman’s letter of resignation.
Clint Bolick (Capitol Media Services file photo by Howard Fischer)
Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick urged Gov. Doug Ducey to name Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery to the U.S. Senate just days after John McCain died.
In a text message sent to Ducey obtained by Phoenix New Times, the judge called Montgomery “one of the few who could fill Sen. McCain’s shoes,” and someone “who is supported by all parts of the GOP, yet unfailingly conservative.”
Bolick told Capitol Media Services Tuesday there was nothing improper about his endorsement of Montgomery.
He acknowledged that the rules that govern the conduct of judges prohibit them from publicly endorsing candidates for public office. But the text, he said, was meant to be a private message to Ducey.
Bill Montgomery
But attorney Tom Ryan, a Chandler attorney who has been involved in political issues and legal disputes over conflicts of interest by public officials, said that ignores the fact that Bolick sent the text from his court-issued cell phone. And that made anything he sent from there a public record, whether he intended that or not.
Even if there was no technical violation of the rules that govern judicial conduct, Ryan said Bolick should not have weighed in. He said the glowing words about Montgomery create an appearance of favoritism for the county prosecutor that would cause concern by any defense attorney who is arguing a case before Bolick.
Bolick, however, brushed aside any such concern, citing his record on the bench since being appointed by Ducey in 2016.
“I think Bill would be the first to note that his record before me is far from perfect in terms of my voting for him,” Bolick said.
Anyway, the judge said, this wasn’t a political “campaign.” Instead it involved the governor fulfilling his legal duty to fill vacancies created in the Senate.
Ryan dismissed that argument, calling the appointment of a senator — who in this case had to be a Republican like McCain — an “overtly political act.”
The text, sent the afternoon of Aug. 27, starts with an apology “for joining what I am sure is a tsunami of unsolicited advice.”
“Wicked smart principled, West Point, very modest beginnings, young enough to be there for a long time,” Bolick wrote. “Can work across the aisle.”
Bolick said he was acting on his own and not on any request by Montgomery, who he said is “very much in the mold of Jon Kyl.”
Doug Ducey
“Clint — thank you,” Ducey texted back.
“Always value your advice and recommendations,” the governor continued. “I share your admiration of Bill. He is one of our finest.”
As it turned out, Ducey named Kyl to serve until the 2020 election.
Kyl, however, may not remain that long.
In being appointed, however, Kyl, who had served in the Senate for 18 years before retiring at the end of 2012, vowed only to serve through January. That enabled him to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court after having been tapped in his private practice to help guide him through the confirmation process.
Kyl’s press office in Washington did not respond to a query about the senator’s intentions. But if Kyl does quit, Ducey will have to find someone to take his place.
Montgomery on Tuesday sought to distance himself from the whole issue.
“I was one of many who supported Sen. Kyl’s appointment and did not ask, seek, or have any conversations about being appointed,” he told Capitol Media Services. And he said too much was being made of what Bolick had done, calling it “an unsolicited private email making a recommendation that didn’t happen.”
And what if the seat were to again become vacant?
“My best answer is that I’m the county attorney until I’m not,” Montgomery responded.
Bolick said he did not understand the fuss over the text.
“I don’t think this is really any different than me expressing a view about an appointment to the governor personally,” he said. “Judges remain citizens.”
Anyway, Bolick pointed out, the rules do not create an impenetrable wall between judges and politics.
“Judges are allowed to make political contributions and often do,” he noted, contributions that candidates have to report in publicly available campaign filings.
“Judges are allowed to privately express their views on candidates for office,” Bolick continued. “I don’t think the fact that a private communication is made public changes that analysis.”
And Bolick said what he did is “one big step removed from that” because Montgomery was not a “candidate” running for office.
There was no immediate response from Ducey about whether he thinks it’s proper for a sitting state Supreme Court justice to be making recommendations for appointments to political office.
Bolick said no one has ever suggested that sitting justices cannot express their opinions.
He pointed to an interview U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did in 2016 with the New York Times — before the presidential elections — where she joked that if Donald Trump became president it could be time to move to New Zealand.
“I can’t imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as president,” she said.
And Sandra Day O’Connor, watching election returns in 2000 at a party with friends, said, ”It’s over” when the networks were saying Democrat Al Gore had won the election.
Her husband, John, offered the explanation that his wife wanted to retire and was not interested in having her seat filled by a Democratic president. But that did not stop O’Connor from becoming the fifth vote on the nine-member court to halt the recount of Florida ballots, meaning Republican George W. Bush would be elected.
Years later, O’Connor appeared to have some second thoughts, suggesting that perhaps the court should not have taken the case in the middle of the election counting.
Ian Danely, who runs One Arizona, an advocacy group aimed at getting more people to vote and increasing civic engagement, walks the halls of the Mayo Clinic in 2015 during treatment for anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare blood cancer.
Ian Danley is fighting for his life for the third time in four years, and yet he has decided to take on another fight – health care for the hundreds of thousands of Arizonans covered through the Affordable Care Act.
The 36-year-old father of two, who found out two weeks ago that he’s facing cancer again, said he’s not one to back down from a fight.
“I can sit and get scared and hunker down and feel sorry for myself, or I can fight. And I’m kind of a fighter,” said Danley, who has worked on Democratic campaigns and now runs One Arizona, an advocacy group aimed at getting more people to vote and increasing civic engagement.
He took both battles to social media in a series of frank and personal tweets as the debate in the U.S. Senate heated up over the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
“I’m calling you from my chemo chair to protect AZ health care. Vote No!” Danley tweeted to U.S. Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain on July 14, complete with a photo of him with an IV in his arm.
While Congress continues to debate health care, expect to see more social media posts from Danley calling on elected officials to vote against repealing the ACA.
As someone who has worked in politics, he gets that it’s politically difficult for Flake and McCain right now. But he hopes his personal story will resonate with the men and get them to vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act.
McCain and Danley both were actually at Mayo Clinic on July 14 at the same time. McCain was recovering from brain surgery he underwent at the hospital to remove a blood clot. McCain announced July 19 doctors diagnosed him with brain cancer.
Danley was also at Mayo’s campus, starting up treatment for the third time to fight anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare blood cancer.
He was first misdiagnosed in 2013 with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and got treated, then the cancer came back after about a year. The second time, he was managing the campaign for Democratic superintendent of public instruction candidate David Garcia when he felt a lump. He knew it was cancer again. He went through a stem cell transplant and spent a month at Mayo Clinic recovering.
He thought he was fine. He started posting old pictures of his previous treatments to social media as a warning call to the state’s elected officials. Then, during a routine scan two weeks ago, doctors found a small lump.
His current course of treatment will last 54 weeks, with infusions of a more targeted chemo drug every three weeks during that time.
He has insurance coverage through his employer, but he’s still worried about what could happen. Repealing the Affordable Care Act entirely could make coverage requirements for pre-existing conditions, like his cancer, disappear. Essential health benefits, like cancer treatment, could be weakened.
If lifetime limits are allowed to come back, something prohibited under Obamacare, he’s already gotten $1.2 million worth of treatment over the past few years. He’s only had to pay less than $5,000 out of pocket.
.@JeffFlake if u vote for AHCA & lymphoma comes back, we can’t afford another transplant & I’ll die. Vote no brother. Choose me, not Trump. pic.twitter.com/xIV0NIjPK1
It’s unclear what the path is for Republicans. A 2015 plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, vetoed by President Obama, would have kept protections for things like pre-existing conditions in place while ending Medicaid expansion and subsidies.
McCain said in a statement July 17 that one of Obamacare’s central problems was partisanship, as the ACA passed without any Republican votes.
“As this law continues to crumble in Arizona and states across the country, we must not repeat the original mistakes that led to Obamacare’s failure,” McCain said.
“The Congress must now return to regular order, hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors so that we can produce a bill that finally provides Americans with access to quality and affordable health care,” he said.
Flake’s office said July 18 that he supports repealing Obamacare without a replacement, just as he did in 2015.
But in a statement last week, while the Republican plan was still alive, Flake said his vote on any health care plan would balance fiscal sustainability with ensuring people with coverage don’t have the rug pulled out from under them.
.@JeffFlake – I want to live so I can have a relationship with my son Tyler like you had with your dad. Give me that chance. Vote no man. (6 pic.twitter.com/PklBeQ9HT3
Danley tried to appeal to Flake’s sense of family in his tweets after he saw how Flake spoke of his father, Dean Flake, when he died at age 85 on June 27.
“I want to live so I can have a relationship with my son Tyler like you had with your dad. Give me that chance,” Danley tweeted on July 10.
Danley’s son is 4 years old. He said he believes his treatment will work, if it continues to be covered.
“And if I don’t make it, (my kids are) not going to remember me. I’m just going to be this guy in a photo they’re going to tell stories about,” he said.
He said he knows Flake is a good man. And he understands that Flake is in a tough spot politically – if he doesn’t vote to repeal Obamacare, his Republican primary challenger will go after him. If he does, his Democratic challenger will.
“It’s a risky move either way. So do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. And you can look your kids in the face, look yourself in the face, and say, I walked with integrity,” Danley said.
Arizona is one of five states likely to gain at least one seat in Congress in 2020. SOURCE: ELECTION DATA SERVICES ANALYSIS OF US CENSUS BUREAU DATA
All those folks fleeing elsewhere puts Arizona on track for picking up a 10th seat in the U.S. House of Representatives beginning in 2022.
And that’s going to result in some political jockeying among current and would-be federal lawmakers as current members of Congress weigh whether to seek re-election in their own redrawn district or run in another. Then there’s the potential political musical chairs, with not just an open race for governor but Republican lawmakers eyeing a chance to oust newly elected U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly in 2022.
All that is the result of new preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau that show the state’s population has increased by slightly more than a million since the official decennial count in 2010. That’s a growth rate of 16.1%, which is the fifth highest in the nation.
By contrast, the entire country grew at just 6.7%. Only Utah, Texas, Idaho and Nevada had greater decade-over-decade growth.
What makes that important is that the House has a fixed number of representatives at 435. So if Arizona is growing so much faster than much of the rest of the country, it should get a bigger voice in that chamber. And states that haven’t grown as fast or whose populations have shrunk would lose.
Only thing is, it’s not a matter of simple math.
On paper, the current national population of nearly 329,500,000 would translate out neatly to individual congressional districts of about 757,434 people.
But Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services which analyzes the data, points out that the U.S. Constitution requires that each state have at least one representative.
So Vermont gets one, as does Wyoming, North Dakota and Alaska.
There’s also the fact that the population of the District of Columbia, estimated at about 713,000, effectively doesn’t count as it is not entitled to any representation at all.
Factoring all that out, Brace figures Arizona with its more-than-a-million growth since 2010 will get one more seat.
There are even bigger gainers.
The biggest is expected to be Texas, which Kimball figures will add three more seats, bringing its representation in the House up to 39. That’s based on adding more than 4.2 million new residents in the past decade.
Florida also is likely to pick up two more seats, moving to 29 representatives.
And along with Arizona, other states gaining a seat are Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon.
But where there are winners – and a 435-seat maximum – there have to be losers.
Brace said New York, which actually lost more than 41,000 residents according to the latest estimate, will drop at least one of its 27 seats in the House.
And he figures it actually could be a net loss of two.
That’s due to the bid of the Trump administration to exclude from the count those people who are not lawfully present in the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court late last week sidestepped the legality of that move, with the majority of the justices concluding the case was not ripe for review because the administration had not said which individuals it wanted to exclude from the count. That potentially paves the way for a future ruling.
Brace figures that if undocumented individuals are excluded, that likely would cost New York a second seat. And the winner in that scenario appears to be Alabama, which might be able to hang on to all of its seven representatives.
California also is likely to lose a representative, leaving it with just 52 members in the House, but still far ahead of anywhere else.
Also declining would be Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
The analysis by Election Data Services of the newly released data shows that if Arizona gets 10 seats in the House, that means 10 districts each with about 742,000 residents to meet the legal mandate for equal population.
But the fact is that all parts of the state haven’t grown equally fast in the past decade.
The biggest growth rates have been in the Phoenix metro area, extending into parts of Pinal County. So it’s likely that a new congressional seat would have to be carved into that area.
That means even more clout for central Arizona. Six of the state’s nine congressional districts include parts of Maricopa County – add Pinal into the mix and now it’s seven.
It ultimately will be up to the Independent Redistricting Commission to decide where to draw the boundaries.
The bipartisan voter-created panel is required to consider a variety of factors, like respecting communities of interest and using county boundaries when possible.
Commissioners also are required to create as many politically competitive districts as possible. That means there is a mandate of sorts to take what have proven to be “safe” districts, like those occupied by Republican Andy Biggs and Democrat Raul Grijalva, and find ways to try to even them up by party registration.
The new lines, by definition, won’t match the existing districts. So incumbents will have to decide whether to continue to run in the district where they live or another district. Nothing in federal law requires a member of Congress to live in her or his district, though is usually is politically advisable.
Complicating matters is what else is up for grabs in 2022.
Kelly, elected this year to serve the last two years of the term of the late Sen. John McCain, would have to seek his own six-year term, assuming he runs. And that could prove tempting to Republican congressmen like Biggs and David Schweikert.
On the Democrat side, there is the chance that Congressman Greg Stanton might choose to run for governor – it will be an open seat with Doug Ducey unable to serve a third term – rather than seek another two years in Congress. And with Ducey out of the way, GOP members of Congress might eye that office.
Gov. Doug Ducey (Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)
The former leader of Arizona’s Libertarian Party filed a lawsuit against Gov. Doug Ducey Wednesday, arguing he must immediately hold a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by John McCain.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Arizona, alleges that Arizona laws dictating how to handle a vacancy in the U.S. Senate violate the 17th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and deprive Arizona citizens of their 14th Amendment and First Amendment rights.
Michael Kielsky, an attorney at Udall Shumway, former chairman of the Arizona Libertarian Party and frequent candidate for public office, brought the suit on behalf of a coalition of five Libertarian, independent, Republican and Democratic voters.
Daniel Scarpinato, Ducey’s chief of staff, dismissed the suit as “another frivolous lawsuit.”
But Kielsky said that leaving the seat with an appointee until 2020 is unreasonable, and a judge will decide if the suit is frivolous.
“As with a lot of constitutional provisions, we have to apply a reasonable standard… (An election in) March would be reasonable, May would be OK, but two years is unreasonable,” he said.
He noted that a lawsuit challenging the appointment to the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois that former President Obama vacated in 2009 was successful on similar grounds.
Arizona law states that if a vacancy occurs in the U.S. Senate, the governor shall appoint a person to fill the vacancy, and that person shall serve until the next general election. But if the vacancy occurs less than 150 days before the next primary election – as happened with McCain – the appointee “shall serve until the vacancy is filled at the second regular general election held after the vacancy occurs,” meaning the 2020 election.
The suit argues that law violates the 17th Amendment, which granted voters direct elections of U.S. Senators. That amendment states that in the event of a Senate vacancy, the state governor shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies, “Provided, that the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.”
But the suit argues that the state Legislature has no authority to mandate that a temporary appointee serve in lieu of a Senator directly elected by the people, “beyond any period necessary to hold an orderly election.”
The suit argues that by keeping in office a “temporary” appointee far beyond the period within which an orderly election could be held, Ducey has deprived plaintiffs and other citizens of their right to vote under the 17th Amendment and to determine who shall represent the people in the Senate.
As a result of the state law, “citizens of Arizona will be deprived of elected representation in the Senate for over twenty eight months, and will suffer irreparable injury from such a lengthy loss of elected representation in the United States Senate,” the suit argues.
While some states dictate that U.S. Senate vacancies must be filled by special election, most states employ similar delays in filling a vacancy that occurs shortly before a scheduled election, though most use shorter timelines than Arizona, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures.
In Virginia, if the vacancy occurs fewer than 120 days before the primary election, the appointee serves until the following election cycle, according to the NCSL. In New Jersey, if a vacancy occurs more than 30 days before the next primary election, it’s filled that year, otherwise the appointee serves until the next election cycle.
Strip away everything else, and lobbyists only have words.
With words, they must persuade policymakers to adopt a change, rebuff a proposal or modify a policy.
And that’s why while subject matter expertise is important, credibility is everything and relationships matter.
And when it comes to credibility and building relationships, among the best is Deb Gullett, whose experience in the public policy arena is as expansive as the Arizona sky.
“She’s a good policy advocate,” said Michael Hunter, the Arizona House of Representatives’ chief of staff. “But she has access to people because she’s so highly trusted.”
Gullett grew up in Iowa, and ended up in Arizona because of true love – she met her husband, Wes, while working for U.S. John McCain nearly 25 years ago. At the time, she was stationed in D.C., while Wes was in Arizona. They concluded Arizona was ultimately a better place to raise a family than the nation’s capital.
Fresh out of college, Gullett had cut her teeth in politics when she got swept up in one of Iowa’s presidential campaign cycles. She crisscrossed the country for soon-to-be President George H.W. Bush, eventually ending up in Washington, where she served as special assistant to Bush and as director of the White House Office of Media Relations.
Today, Gullett is executive director of the Arizona Association of Health Plans. Previously, she worked at Gallagher & Kennedy’s government affairs arm, and served as associate vice president at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus and also as associate dean of the College of Public Programs.
Gullett was a chief of staff to Phil Gordon while he was Phoenix mayor. She has a long history of working for McCain, having served as his chief of staff and state director. In addition, she managed the Arizona headquarters of McCain’s presidential run in 2000, and served on his National Finance Committee for his 2008 presidential campaign.
Consultant Jaime Molera, who has known Gullett since her days serving as McCain’s chief of staff, said Gullett is very intelligent.
“She has a tremendous depth and breadth on policy matters,” Molera said, adding despite having held important positions at the highest echelons of government, Gullett remains completely grounded.
Mark Kelly rallies supporters at the launch of his campaign for U.S. Senate on Feb. 24, 2019, at the Van Buren in Phoenix. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Democrat Mark Kelly says he raised nearly $12.8 million during the second quarter for his bid to unseat Arizona Republican Sen. Martha McSally.
Kelly’s campaign said Tuesday he’ll report having nearly $24 million in the bank at the end of June.
The retired astronaut has consistently outraised McSally in one of the most closely watched 2020 Senate contests. He’s reported the strongest fundraising of all Senate candidates this year, including incumbents.
McSally has not yet disclosed her fundraising haul for the second quarter.
McSally took office last year after she was appointed to the seat left empty when Sen. John McCain died. Democrats see the seat as a prime pickup opportunity after McSally lost a 2018 race for the state’s other Senate seat to Kyrsten Sinema, the first Democrat to win a Senate contest in Arizona in three decades.
Arizona has shown promise for Democrats, who now control five of nine U.S. House districts and several statewide offices.
Democratic Rep. Athena Salman on Monday introduces a resolution to expel Republican Mark Finchem from the House based on his activities before and including the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (Capitol Media Services photo by Howard Fischer)
Rep. Athena Salman and 22 other House Democrats introduced a resolution Monday to expel Rep. Mark Finchem from the body.
“Every day the member remains in office is a threat to the Arizona House of Representatives, a threat to national security and a threat to our democracy,” Salman, a Tempe Democrat, said at a news conference.
Finchem, R-Oro Valley, was a vocal supporter after the election of efforts to overturn President Biden’s narrow win in Arizona. He was in Washington, D.C. to speak on Jan. 6 and he had planned to deliver evidence of fraud in Arizona to Vice President Mike Pence. Although Finchem said he wasn’t near the Capitol when a pro-Trump mob stormed it trying to stop the certification of the electoral vote, he said he learned of it hours later and put out a statement blaming the violence on Antifa.
Since then, Democrats have been trying to keep the spotlight on Finchem’s role in challenging the election results and in the Jan. 6 riot that led to five deaths. House and Senate Democrats sent a letter to the FBI on Jan. 13 asking the bureau to investigate Finchem’s conduct, and Rep. Cesár Chávez, D-Phoenix, on Jan. 14 formally called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate Finchem’s actions and possibly recommend his expulsion.
Salman, who is leading the effort, conceded under questioning that many of the individual allegations detailed in what was introduced as HR 2006, by themselves, might not rise to the level of her contention that the conduct of the Oro Valley Republican “was dishonorable and unbecoming of a member of the House.” She also contends that his activities “undermine the public confidence in this institution and violated the order and decorum necessary to complete the people’s work.”
“When you look at these things in a vacuum, sure, they can appear random,” she said, But Salman said that, taken together, they amount to evidence that Finchem “participated in, encouraged and incited the events of Jan.6,” making him complicit of “insurrection and rebellion” and therefore unqualified to serve.
Finchem declined to comment “on advice of counsel.”
He already has obtained legal representation in connection with at least one issue not now in Salman’s bill of particulars: his refusal to turn over text messages sought as part of a public records request. His attorney, Alexanader Kolodin — the same lawyer who filed lawsuits to challenge the results of the Arizona election — argued that the messages are on their own personal devices and therefore not public.
Although several dozen people, many of them residents of Finchem’s Legislative District 11, have filed complaints with the committee also calling for an investigation, it has not scheduled any hearings or taken any other action on the matter yet. Salman said the FBI has acknowledged receiving the Democrats’ letter but she hasn’t heard anything else. She acknowledged that the apparent disinclination from House Republicans, who hold a 31-29 majority, to act on the Democrats’ complaints could be an obstacle.
“The conservative majority has made it very clear that they’re not responding or even doing anything,” she said.
The resolution recounts the actions of the mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and highlights Finchem’s membership in the Oath Keepers, which the resolution describes as “a far-right group with a well-documented history of domestic terrorism and violence against the government, and whose founder threatened to hang Arizona’s former United States Senator John McCain in 2015.” Several people affiliated with the Oath Keepers are facing federal conspiracy charges, over their alleged actions on Jan. 6.
It also highlights Finchem’s ties with Ali Alexander, one of the “Stop the Steal” organizers. And, the resolution says Finchem has “failed to denounce these domestic enemies, and further, has sought to conceal the consequences of his actions by promoting a baseless conspiracy blaming leftists that has been disproven by federal law enforcement agencies” and has “a documented history of pushing conspiracies that blame the left for violence by white nationalists, including deflecting blame for neo-Nazi violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.” It concludes by calling for his expulsion for taking part in an attempt to overthrow the government.
“Finchem has no honor, is unfit to serve in the Arizona state Legislature and poses a clear and present danger to American citizens,” said Dana Allmond, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who lives in LD11. “We cannot settle for anything less than his expulsion now.”
Allmond accused Finchem of violating his oath of office.
“It’s apparent Finchem doesn’t understand what that oath embodies,” she said. “He claims a stolen presidential election and celebrates murder.”
Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services contributed to this report.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Battling brain cancer, John McCain on Thursday vowed to return to the Senate, leveling fresh criticism at the Trump administration and aiming a good-natured dig at Republican and Democratic colleagues shaken by news of his diagnosis.
“I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support ai??i?? unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I’ll be back soon, so stand-by!” McCain said in a tweet. Showing no signs of stepping back from political and national security battles, he issued a statement slamming the Trump administration over its Syria policy.
The 80-year-old McCain, the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2008 and six-term Arizona lawmaker, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, according to doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, who had removed a blood clot above his left eye July 14. They also managed to remove all of the tumor that was visible on brain scans.
The senator and his family are considering further treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation, as he recuperates at his home in Arizona.
In a blistering statement through his office, McCain criticized the administration over reports that it was ending a program to assist Syrian opposition forces fighting the government of Bashar Assad.
“If these reports are true, the administration is playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin,” said McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Making any concession to Russia, absent a broader strategy for Syria, is irresponsible and short-sighted.”
More significantly, McCain’s absence is forcing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to delay action on health care legislation. Republicans need his vote in order to move forward on repealing and replacing President Barack Obama’s law.
McCain’s closest friend in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said that they had spoken by telephone Wednesday night and that the diagnosis had been a shock to McCain. Graham said “woe is me” is not in McCain’s DNA. “One thing John has never been afraid of is death,” said Graham, who said he expects McCain to be back at the Capitol.
Prior to a Thursday news conference on immigration legislation, Graham said McCain called him three times. “He is yelling at me to buck up, I’m so going to buck up,” Graham said.
Meantime, prayers and words of encouragement multiplied on Thursday from presidents and Senate colleagues past and present.
“I called Senator John McCain this morning to wish him well and encourage him in his fight. Instead, he encouraged me,” said former President George W. Bush, who prevailed over McCain for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000. “I was impressed by his spirit and determination.”
Former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas said: “Having known John for many decades, I am certain that he is as tough as they come ai??i?? if anyone can defeat this, it’s him. John is a true American hero.”
According to the American Brain Tumor Association, more than 12,000 people a year are diagnosed with glioblastoma, the same type of tumor that struck McCain’s Democratic colleague in legislative battles, the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. The American Cancer Society puts the five-year survival rate for patients over 55 at about 4 percent.
McCain, a former combat pilot, has a lifetime of near-death experiences ai??i?? surviving a July 1967 fire and explosion on the USS Forrestal that killed 134 sailors, flying into power lines in Spain, being shot down in October 1967 and falling into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi, and going through 5 1/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison.
“The Hanoi Hilton couldn’t break John McCain’s spirit many years ago, so Barbara and I know ai??i?? with confidence ai??i?? he and his family will meet this latest battle in his singular life of service with courage and determination,” said former President George H.W. Bush.
Commenting on both McCain and the response, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, “The outpouring of bipartisan respect and love for John McCain as he faces this cancer battle reminds us that after all the meanness there is a human side to politicians. Count this Democrat in John McCain’s corner.”
In the past, McCain had been treated for melanoma, but this primary tumor is unrelated. Doctors said McCain is recovering from his surgery “amazingly well” and his underlying health is excellent.
With his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, McCain was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times, most recently last year, but was twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.
An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and helped turn Sarah Palin into a national political figure.
McCain returned to the Senate, determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign.
___
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José Patiño has done everything right, keeping within the many lines of federal bureaucracy involved with being a part of the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals program. But now, he is scrambling to come up with plans A, B, and C in case Congress does not come through with a plan to replace the program.
“There is hope for legislation to pass, but at the same time, nothing is certain,” Patiño, 28, said. “So, I have to prepare for the worst and keep fighting. Something could happen, but with the way Congress works, it most likely won’t.”
He was brought to Arizona from Mexico when he was 6. He has since earned his master’s degree in secondary education and bought a house. He now works as a mortgage banker and volunteers as the campaign director for local immigrant rights group Aliento.
Some of his mortgage clients are DACA recipients. He said some backed out after President Trump’s announcement September 5 that Congress has six months to fix the program or it will phase out.
Patiño said those people want to save money in case their lives are uprooted six months from now.
Patiño has been busy this week coming up with a contingency plan of his own. He said he’ll add his brother, also protected by DACA, to the title on his house, and he has been speaking with an attorney about migrating to Canada.
Returning to Mexico is an option, but not one that feels particularly comfortable.
He visited once while on advance parole, an element of DACA that allowed recipients to travel abroad and return to the U.S. without terminating their status, but it was “awkward.”
“They say that’s your home or that’s where you belong, but it felt like a foreign land,” he said.
He commended the outpouring of public support for legislators to act on the DREAM Act, a bill granting permanent legal status to people like DACA recipients, but said it is not enough.
Patiño said he has lobbied for the legislation originally co-authored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and heralded by Republicans, including Sen. John McCain. But he also predicted yet another false start on the attempt at immigration reform.
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, has fought for life for 16 years.
In 2007, it fell to a bipartisan filibuster even after winning the favor of a majority of senators. In 2010, it won over the House but fell in the Senate. And in 2013, it was approved by the Senate but failed in the House.
Now, as officials take another stab, this time faced with a hard deadline for action, the fates of nearly 1 million people are at stake and a president who once promised to scrap DACA on day one of his administration.
In a statement released September 5, McCain said Trump’s decision was the “wrong approach to immigration policy at a time when both sides of the aisle need to come together to reform our broken immigration system and secure the border.” He also called on his colleagues to “devise and pass” such reforms, including the DREAM Act.
His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the senator’s confidence in his colleagues to do just that.
And Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s spokesman, Jason Samuels, simply referred to a teleconference with members of the Arizona press held on September 6.
Flake, who also voiced his support for the DREAM Act, was asked what made him think such an effort would be successful considering the recent failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
“We’ve got momentum,” he said. “There are 800,000 kids that are currently protected by DACA… That’s a great motivator.
“They are contributing to society. They are going to school. Most of them are working…and so, it would be a blow to our economy if we were to lose them. They are valued members of society, and I hope they can stay.”
Flake said he thinks Congress can act within six months despite the long, failed history of the DREAM Act.
“I’ll take it comprehensive. I’ll take it piecemeal,” Flake said.
Whatever form a policy takes, if it materializes at all, lives hang in the balance.
Patiño said he is privileged, confident he has a network that will be there to protect him if Congress will not.
But other DACA recipients have only just begun to build their lives.
South Mountain High School students walk out of class September 5 to protest President Donald Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times
Jonas Lopez Pena, a sophomore at South Mountain High School, said he has no idea how to plan for his uncertain future.
“I rely on DACA, and without it, I’m pretty much nothing here in the United States,” he said. “I need it to be able to have a good life.”
On the same day DACA was slated for termination, Lopez Pena walked out of school with about 300 of his peers to protest Trump’s decision. He marched more than a mile to the Phoenix Police Department’s South Mountain Precinct surrounded by chants — “Whose streets? Our streets.” – and honking cars.
He had plans to go to college and took dual enrollment classes to earn credits in high school, but that has been turned upside down.
He said his three siblings are also protected by DACA. His parents are undocumented, though, and if their children are deported, Lopez Pena has no doubt they would leave everything behind and return to Mexico.
Jose Aguilar and Jonas Lopez Pena, sophomores at South Mountain High School, flash peace signs after walking more than a mile to the Phoenix Police Department’s South Mountain Precinct on Sept. 5. (Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)
“We wouldn’t have the lifestyle we have here. I wouldn’t have the opportunities I have here,” he said. “Everything would change.”
DACA was created via an executive order from former President Barack Obama in 2012 to protect young undocumented immigrants raised in the U.S. from deportation. The so-called Dreamers were granted two-year protective terms that could be renewed.
Recipients will become eligible for deportation in March if Congress takes no action.
Gov. Doug Ducey is asking a federal appeals court to overturn a ruling that could affect his ability and that of future governors to tap a special education trust account to funnel more cash into schools.
But the new filings with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals contain none of the vitriol that the governor unleashed last year at the trial judge who ruled against him.
In new filings, attorney Theodore Olson contends that U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake was incorrect in deciding that changes to the formula of how much can be withdrawn from the fund cannot occur without congressional approval. Olson argued to the federal appellate judges that is not the way the federal law reads.
And if that argument doesn’t work, Olson has some alternate legal theories.
The fight is over Proposition 123. That was Ducey’s 2016 plan to put more dollars into K-12 education without hiking taxes.
Doug Ducey
In essence, the governor asked voters to tap a special fund which consists of money earned from the sale or lease of the 10 million acres of land that the federal government gave Arizona as part of the 1912 Enabling Act that created the state. Under normal circumstances, the beneficiaries of the trust – in this case, public schools – would get a certain percentage of what is there.
Ducey’s proposal sought to more than triple the amount to funnel an extra $3.5 billion into schools for a 10-year period.
Phoenix resident Michael Pierce sued, contending that any change in the distribution required Congress to amend the Enabling Act.
Ducey disagreed. But he eventually did get congressional approval.
But Wake sided with Pierce, saying the governor was wrong to make the withdrawals first and then get the legal blessing of Congress.
In that ruling, Wake acknowledged that, at least as far as Proposition 123 is concerned, the matter now is moot, what with Congress finally ratifying the change. But the judge issued an order barring Ducey – or any other future governor – from making additional changes in the formula without going to Congress first.
What makes that particularly crucial is that the distribution formula automatically returns to pre-2016 levels after 2024. And that means a net reduction in state dollars for education unless the formula is again altered or some other source of cash is found.
And that’s why Ducey wants the 9th Circuit to void Wake’s ruling.
In his new filings, Olson told the appellate judges there’s a simple way to make Wake’s decision go away: conclude that Pierce never should have been allowed in court in the first place.
He said the only people who can claim they were damaged are the beneficiaries of the trust, including schools. In this case, Olson said Pierce has acknowledged that he has no possible eventual interest in the trust fund – other than being a citizen of Arizona who have a property interest in the trust and a concern that the money will not be there for future children.
The 62-page appeal had a far different tone than the personal attacks that Ducey launched last year in the wake of the ruling.
“Judge (Neil) Wake puts on a robe in the morning and thinks he’s God,” the governor said at the time. “But he’s not.”
And it got even more personal.
“I want to tell you what everyone down at the courthouse needs to know,” Ducey said.
“It’s time for Judge Wake to retire,” the governor continued. “He’s an embarrassment to the legal community.”
As a sitting judge, Wake could not comment. But gubernatorial press aide Patrick Ptak said it was not unfair for Ducey to attack a judge who is legally precluded from responding to personal attacks.
Wake got to the federal bench in 2004 after being nominated by Republican President George W. Bush and with the recommendation of the state’s two GOP senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl.
In this file photo, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey talks to reporters outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 3, 2019, following his meeting with President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Upset with his ruling on education funding, Gov. Doug Ducey is taking the unusual step of lashing out at a federal judge appointed by a Republican president and calling on him to resign.
“Judge (Neil) Wake puts on a robe in the morning and thinks he’s God, but he’s not,” Ducey said late Tuesday in the immediate wake of the decision that said the governor and state acted illegally in taking money from an education trust account without getting required congressional approval.
And the governor said he intends to spread the word about what he claims is not just an incorrect decision but an active bias by the judge against the school funding plan that Ducey crafted and Wake concluded was illegally enacted.
“I want to tell you what everyone down at the courthouse needs to know,” Ducey said.
“It’s time for Judge Wake to retire,” the governor said. “He’s an embarrassment to the legal community.”
Ducey doubled down on his insults of Wake on Wednesday.
“There are third-year law students at ASU that can write a more coherent opinion than the one that he put forward,” the governor said.
Neil V. Wake
Wake said that, as a judge, he cannot comment on the personal attacks.
But Ducey press aide Ptak, asked if it was unfair of Ducey to attack a judge who is unable to respond, responded, “hell, no.”
“He stopped being a judge and started being a politician,” said Ptak, saying Wake “had an agenda.”
“He can’t hide behind his robe,” he continued. “If he’s going to throw punches, he can take them.”
Wake got to the bench in 2004 after being nominated by Republican President George W. Bush, with the recommendation of the state’s two GOP senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl.
The governor, however, brushed aside a question about the judge’s Republican credentials.
“This is an activist judge who solicited this lawsuit because he didn’t like Proposition 123,” Ducey responded.
The record, however, shows that it was an individual, Michael Pierce, who filed the suit on his own in May 2016, without legal help, after the approval of Prop 123.
What Wake did, however, may have kept the case alive by getting legal help for Pierce.
Andrew Jacob told Capitol Media Services he had run into Wake about five years ago at an event at a law firm, telling the judge that he was partially retiring and only going to work part time.
“I offered that if he ever had a civil litigant who had a case that had merit and needed help with it, I would consider volunteering my time,” Jacob said.
It wasn’t until some time later, the attorney said, that Wake called, informed him of the basics of this case and asked if he would pick it up.
“He thinks this case has some merit to it and the litigant really didn’t know what to do with it for the next step,” Jacob recalled of the conversation. Jacob said he agreed, at which point he said that the only thing Wake did is give him the case number to review the pleadings filed so far and get in touch with Pierce.
A review of Wake’s 15 years on the federal bench by Capitol Media Services shows the judge decided a number of controversial issues.
In some he ruled in favor of the state, like a 2008 decision rejecting challenges to a new state law approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature that provided for the suspension and revocation of the business licenses of employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers.
But Wake has also blocked state and local officials from prosecuting a Flagstaff man who produced and sold antiwar T-shirts with the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, calling it “core political speech fully protected by the First Amendment.”
He also barred enforcement of a law that made it a crime to panhandle, saying the simple act of asking for money or food is protected by the First Amendment. And he said Arizona cannot refuse to provide family planning funds to Planned Parenthood solely because the organization also performs abortions, saying that conflicts with federal protections for Medicaid patients to choose their own care providers.
More recently, Wake struck down Arizona’s child molestation law because it read that once the state proves a defendant knowingly touched the private parts of a child – even by a parent changing a diaper or a doctor examining a child – the burden falls on the accused to prove there was no sexual intent.
And he ruled that inmates suing the state over allegations of poor health care can proceed on a class-action basis.
Before being appointed to the court, Wake argued for Republican interests.
He represented members of the state’s GOP congressional delegation which challenged the lines drawn by the Legislature – then with a Democrat Senate and Republican House – for congressional districts.
A decade later Wake was representing the Arizona Republican Party in its fight over lines drawn by the newly created Independent Redistricting Commission.
Even after taking the bench Wake found himself siding with Republicans on a redistricting dispute.
That fight erupted after the five-member commission crafted legislative districts but in a way so that the population of each was not equal. Instead, Republicans were added to a district that already had a majority of GOP voters, leaving other adjoining districts with fewer overall voters but a better chance for a Democrat to win.
That case went to a three-judge panel with the majority concluding there was evidence that “partisanship played some role in the design of the map.” But two of the judges said that the lines were manipulated in “good-faith efforts to comply with the Voting Rights Act.”
Wake was the dissenting judge, writing that “it does not take a Ph.D. to see this stark fact of intended party benefit.”
In private practice, Wake represented track owners who tried, unsuccessfully, to block Gov. Jane Hull from signing compacts with Native American tribes giving them the exclusive right to operate casino gaming.
And he also played a role in getting the Arizona Supreme Court to allow a juvenile justice initiative to be placed on the 1996 ballot.
Gov. Doug Ducey appoints Rep. Martha McSally to the fill John McCain’s senate seat currently held by Jon Kyl who stepped down Dec. 31 PHOTO BY DILLON ROSENBLATT/ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES
Attorneys for Gov. Doug Ducey are asking a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit demanding that he call an election — and soon — to determine who will occupy the U.S. Senate seat following the death of John McCain rather than let Martha McSally keep the post until 2020.
In legal papers filed Friday, Brett Johnson, who is leading the legal team, acknowledged that vacancies in the U.S. Senate must be filled by a special election. But Johnson told U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa that the U.S. Constitution allows the Legislature to let Ducey name a senator to serve until the next regular election.
The governor initially named Jon Kyl. And when Kyl quit at the end of last year, Ducey tapped McSally who had just lost her own Senate race to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
And the fact that election won’t be until 27 months after McCain’s death last August, he said, does not alter Ducey’s ability to have McSally serve until 2020.
Anyway, Johnson said, a special election solely to name a replacement would not just be expensive but also would give the edge to wealthier candidates.
In a lawsuit filed last year, attorney Michael Kielsky, chairman of the Arizona Libertarian Party contends that the governor must call a special election as soon as practicable to fill the post, a period he said is no longer than six months. Kielsky, representing two registered Democrats, one Republican, one Libertarian and an independent, said there is no reason for an unelected person of the governor’s choosing to be able to serve through the end of 2020.
But Johnson said Kielsky is misreading the law.
There is no question but that Arizona law allows a governor to appoint a temporary replacement when a Senate vacancy occurs. That person has to be of the same political party as the senator who quit or died.
And the law does require that there be an election to determine who gets to finish out the balance of the term. In McCain’s case, his term ran through 2022.
Johnson, however, said if the next regular election is not within six months, then the appointee can serve until the regular election after that.
In this case, McCain died on Aug. 25. That was just three days before last year’s primary and 73 days before the general election. Based on that, Johnson said, Ducey had the power to name someone to serve until the 2020 election when the final two years of McCain’s term will again be up for grabs.
Kielsky, however, wants Humetewa to rule that voters should get a chance to name someone of their choice long before the 2020 election — a person who could be of any political party.
Johnson, in his new legal filing, said the “inconvenience and expense of a special election outweighs any advantage to be derived from having a more prompt vacancy election.”
He told the judge a special statewide election in 2016 dealing with school finance cost the state more than $6.4 million. And in this case, Johnson said, a special election would require both a primary and general election.
Johnson also claimed that a special election would give an edge to “special interest groups and candidates with considerable self-wealth or funding” because of what he said the cost of having to finance an off-year campaign. By contrast, he argued, having the vote to fill the balance of the Senate term at a regularly scheduled election “creates a greater opportunity for a stronger pool of candidates to run.”
And Johnson said special elections have a lower turnout.
Johnson also brushed aside the complaint that the current practice is unfair because it means the person that the governor appoints has to be of the same political party as the person being replaced.
Gov. Doug Ducey is defending his support for the latest bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act even though he has no idea how much federal aid that would cost the state and how many Arizonans would lose health care.
“The numbers are important,” the governor said Wednesday. Ducey said his staff is analyzing the elements of the Graham-Cassidy bill on the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid program, which U.S. Senate Republican leaders are trying to get voted on before the end of the month.
But the governor said he remains convinced that what comes next will be better than what exists now, even without yet knowing the effect on the state and its residents.
“Obamacare is a failure,” he said. “It’s time for it to go.”
Yet Ducey sidestepped a question of whether he could guarantee that none of the 400,000 people who have been added to the rolls of the state’s Medicaid program because of the Affordable Care Act would again find themselves without health insurance.
“Well, I haven’t seen the final bill,” the governor said of the legislation he has endorsed. Anyway, Ducey said he believes the measure will provide Arizona with “the longest possible transition so that we can move people from Medicaid into a superior insurance product.”
He did not say what that would be.
Ducey also acknowledged that the proposal by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana would financially penalize states like Arizona, which expanded Medicaid eligibility long before there was an Affordable Care Act. That’s the result of voter approval in 2000 of Proposition 204 which guaranteed care for everyone up to the federal poverty level at a time when Medicaid eligibility was far less.
In fact, the governor cited a similar provision in earlier bills in a letter to Arizona Sen. John McCain as one of the “critical changes” that needed to be made to those now-failed attempts to make them acceptable.
“I don’t want a bill that is going to penalize Arizona,” Ducey said Wednesday despite what is in the current version of the measure. But the governor said he believes that even if Graham-Cassidy does become law and the penalty is in it, it won’t be the end of the discussion.
“It will take this bill and more to do and get our health care system in the right shape,” the governor said.
That’s assuming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can line up the votes, particularly that of McCain whose opposition to the earlier “skinny repeal” helped to doom that measure.
As of Wednesday the state’s senior senator was still undecided. But he repeated his statement that he wants the issue considered in “regular order,” meaning full-blown hearings and the opportunity for amendment.
That’s not what McConnell is considering, with the latest proposal being a single hearing in the Homeland Security Committee and a Sept. 30 deadline for action.
Ducey’s strong and early support of the new federal legislation puts him at odds with some of his Republican colleagues.
In a letter Tuesday, Kasich of Ohio, Charles Baker of Massachusetts, Phil Scott of Vermont and Brian Sandoval of Nevada all urged McConnell to scrap the plan and instead support “bipartisan efforts to make health care more available and affordable for all Americans.”
All are from states that several studies have shown will be, like Arizona, financial losers under the Graham-Cassidy plan.
One study from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities puts the annual loss to Arizona at $1.6 billion by 2026.
“The estimates you are referring to right now come from a left-wing or left-leaning organization that has a real stake in maintaining the status quo,” Ducey responded.
A separate report from Avalere Health which does consulting for the health care industry has cumulative losses between 2020 and 2026 at $11 billion. At least part of that is because the federal block grants to states would grow at a set rate rather than based on the number of people who enroll.
And after 2026, all the block grant dollars would go away.
For Ducey, however, the touchstone is getting rid of the Affordable Care Act.
“If anything, I think the deciding issue of the last eight years in terms of elections has been Obamacare,” the governor said. “It’s time for it to go.”
Ducey said he wants a bill to give states “maximum flexibility,” not only for Medicaid but also in the private insurance market. And he sniffed at the idea that what’s being proposed will result in fewer dollars from Washington, even as reducing federal expenditures has been one of the key goals of all of the proposals to undo the Affordable Care Act.
“There is no federal money,” Ducey said.
“All of the money is our money that is sent to Washington, D.C. and then comes back to us in a lower figure,” he said. “Somewhere there must be some overhead.”
But Ducey provided no specifics on how Arizona will be able provide care to as many people who are in the Medicaid program now with fewer federal dollars. In essence, the governor said he’s just convinced it would be better and more efficient.
“We know how to do things in the state of Arizona,” he said, noting that AHCCCS and its system of prepaid care on a per-capita basis has been cited by many as superior to fee-for-service Medicaid programs in other states.
Ducey also took a slap of sorts at the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association and its national affiliate, both of who have come out against the Graham-Cassidy plan. He said what’s in place now “you can’t even call it a health care system.”
“A system actually delivers a product or service,” the governor said. “This is a system that begins in Washington. D.C. and then it takes care of the insurance providers, the pharmaceutical companies and the hospital organizations before it runs over the doctors and leaves the patients with an insurance card the health care system won’t accept.”
In a statement Tuesday, Greg Vidor, president of the Arizona group said the plan “falls short” on the goal of quality and affordable care.
“This proposal erodes critical protections for patients and consumers, and would lead to costlier premiums for many individuals, especially those with preexisting conditions,” he said in a prepared statement. “Millions would lose coverage altogether.”
Gov. Doug Ducey makes his way through the Arizona House of Representatives on January 13 to the podium to deliver a speech on his priorities to a joint session of the Legislature. PHOTO BY ANDREW NICLA/ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES
As Gov. Doug Ducey welcomed in a new decade with his address to the joint session of the Legislature on January 13, it became clear that he left the Era of Good Feelings behind in 2019.
Just over a year ago, Ducey’s State of the State Address delivered a simple message: “Bipartisanship is a word that gets tossed around a lot,” he said.
“So let me be clear on the approach I intend to take,” he continued. “I’m not here just to work with Republicans on Republican ideas. And bipartisanship doesn’t simply mean working with Democrats on Democratic ideas. I’m here as governor of all the people to work with all of you on good ideas.”
He welcomed a host of new faces from both parties to the chamber, expressed gratitude for the lifetime of service by former Gov. Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat; and talked about bringing politicians and regular people from all walks of life together to address the viral spread of mass shootings on school campuses. He put front-and-center the need to come together on the opioid crisis, teacher pay and reduction of the prison population. He waxed effusive about key Democrats like Senate Minority Leader David Bradley.
There was a clear reason for such feelings of goodwill: With a water crisis looming, it was existentially important that lawmakers came together to pass the Drought Contingency Plan.
And while the ink has dried on the water plan, many of the issues that Ducey centered in last year’s State of the State speech have resurfaced in this year’s nascent legislative session: sex education, K-12 funding, criminal justice changes, infrastructure spending. However, he made it clear it’s a new day.
Things began on January 13 earnestly enough, with namedrops of Arizona icons like John McCain, Raul Castro and Sandra Day O’Connor. But by the speech’s 14th paragraph, the usually demure, business-forward Republican came out swinging.
“Let’s continue hacking away at the permanent bureaucracy and the ‘mother may I’ state,” he directed.
He took shots at liberal states like California and New York for their tax rates and their regulatory environments, took aim at the so-called “spending lobby” and, to rousing applause from his caucus, paid homage to the late President George H. W. Bush: “No new taxes; not this session, not next session; not here in this chamber, not at the ballot box, not on my watch,” Ducey said.
In short, if last year’s speech created an opening for togetherness, this year’s made it clear that the GOP is in charge, and that in the upcoming election cycle, it plans to keep it that way.
Lawmakers took note.
“It was a true, Republican, conservative speech,” said Sen. David Livingston, R-Peoria, on the House floor. Compared to last year’s, which he didn’t like, this was a speech that made him happy, he said.
Ducey didn’t hesitate to twist the knife where he saw Democratic governance going awry. He called out the city of Phoenix for its game of chicken with rideshare companies over increased airport fees and called upon a Republican Rep. T.J. Shope of Coolidge to carry a bill that would ask voters to make so-called sanctuary cities unconstitutional following the 2019 defeat of a sanctuary city initiative in Tucson, one of the state’s most progressive cities.
“If anyone needed a reminder … here in Arizona, we respect the rule of law,” he said.
Democrats, who for a brief moment last year convinced themselves that they liked the governor’s speech, were aghast, if not surprised.
“It’s the most partisan speech that I’ve seen the governor make,” said Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe. “They’re doubling down on the extremist agenda.”
Campaign Season
It’s impossible to divorce this from the looming campaign season. Not only is Republican leadership under attack at the White House, Democrats in the state are bullish on their chances to swing the state House, where the Republican majority tiptoes on a razor’s edge.
The irony, said Democratic consultant Ben Scheel, is that on economic policy, Ducey was not actually at his most conservative. While he talked a lot about cutting taxes, the only concrete cut he announced was the elimination of state income taxes on veterans’ military pensions. He also implored insurance companies to cover mental health treatments, announced Project Rocket, a $43 million funding plan for underprivileged schools, and touted big infrastructure projects and the replenishment of HURF funds.
“Some of those budget items, I don’t think legislative Republicans are gonna go for,” Scheel said. “I think that he included more funding measures than usual.”
To compensate, Scheel claims, Ducey needed to allude to other conservative causes.
“We believe in the free market, the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to make your own way,” Ducey said in his speech. “We believe in life and the potential of every child, along with the dignity of every individual.”
This could also explain the governor’s proposal that for every one regulation that’s passed, three need to be rolled back — a literal one-up of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump stipulating that for every regulation enacted, two need to go.
What went unsaid in the speech, aside from infrastructure spending, were issues that could likely garner support from both parties, such as sentencing law changes favored by Reps. Walter Blackman, R-Snowflake, and Ben Toma, R-Peoria.
While Ducey did mention criminal justice, his two biggest announcements were the closure of a prison and the rebranding of the Arizona Department of Corrections as the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry.
Toma acknowledged that these weren’t quite the overtures to revamping sentencing laws that some might have hoped for, but placed blame on Democrats.
“Part of the frustration at least from me has been that the other side seems to talk about bipartisanship, but when push comes to shove and it’s time to vote, they seem to take this stance of resisting anything that’s pushed by Republicans,” he said.
And because Democrats weren’t willing to embrace the spirit of bipartisanship last year, Ducey had no reason to offer that same olive branch, he said. And if Ducey’s amped-up rhetoric can stave off a Democratic majority in the House, or even pick up some extra seats, then all the better.
“In terms of tone, I don’t know if trying to hold out an olive branch when it was snubbed last session is a winning policy,” Toma said.
Gov. Doug Ducey (Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)
Don’t look for “Senator Ducey,” at least for the foreseeable future.
The governor is not considering appointing himself to the U.S. Senate should that become necessary if John McCain were to quit before the end of his term, according to press aide Daniel Scarpinato.
“Gov. Ducey has never and would never consider such a ridiculous notion, no matter the circumstances,” Scarpinato said in a Twitter posting this weekend. And if that were not definitive enough, he expanded on that in a message to Capitol Media Services.
“How much more clear can I be?” he asked.
The comments are designed to end days of what has become a guessing game since McCain revealed he has a particularly hard-to-treat form of brain cancer.
McCain himself has sent out repeated messages that while he is exploring various treatment options he intends to return to the Senate. That, however, has not stopped various suggestions and theories — and an outright claim by Kelli Ward, who lost to McCain in the 2016 Republican primary that he should step down and Ducey should name her as his replacement.
Ducey, who has been on vacation this past week, has maintained silence. Scarpinato said that’s by design.
“Our office has intentionally refused to engage in this gossip because it’s incredibly disrespectful,” he said in one Twitter message.
But that proved too much after some in the media pointed out that, at least legally speaking, Ducey apparently could select himself to fill any Senate vacancy that develops. Scarpinato again took to his keyboard to term that `irresponsible speculation run amok and misleading to Arizonans.”
He said it would have been one thing to throw out that idea if the governor had said or done something leading anyone to believe he would give up his current job as the state’s chief executive to become one of 100 senators. But that hasn’t happened.
What has happened has come from Ward who is trying to not only set herself up as heir apparent but also to send a message to McCain that his diagnosis is “grim,” that she believes he is dying, and that he should step aside for his own good.
“As a doctor, I’ve counseled people in similar situations and these end-of-life choices are never easy,” she said in a message on her campaign web site. “I usually advise terminal patients to reduce stress, relax, and spend times laughing with loved ones.”
And if his own self-interest is not enough to convince McCain to step aside, Ward said that the Senate has “complicated and difficult problems” to deal with.
“Arizona deserves to be represented by someone who can focus on those challenges,” Ward wrote.
That “someone” who Ducey should consider naming, Ward told an Indiana radio station last week, should be her.
“I have a proven track record of years in the state Senate of being extremely effective and listening to the voice of the people that I represent,” she told WOWO. And Ward said she made “an extremely good showing” against McCain in the 2016 Republican primary, picking up 39.9 percent of the vote against 51.2 percent among the four names on the GOP ballot.
Scarpinato said there has been “no discussion” with Ward — or anyone else — about a potential appointment.
“We have zero attention focused on a ‘replacement’ and talk of this sort is completely inappropriate,” he said.
Ward has since announced her bid to unseat Jeff Flake, the state’s other incumbent senator, who is up for reelection in 2018.
This isn’t the first time that Ward has, in essence, said that McCain is dying, though the timing was a bit difference.
In an interview before last year’s GOP primary, she told Politico that if McCain, who was turning 80 at the time, were reelected he might not be able to finish the six-year term.
“I’m a doctor,” she said. “The life expectancy of the American male is not 86. It’s less.”
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, left, appointed former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl on Sept. 4 to fill the seat vacated by the late Sen. John McCain. Though Kyl accepted the appointment, he will not seek election in 2020 nor did he agree to serve out the full remainder of the term. PHOTO BY KATIE CAMPBELL/ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES
Gov. Doug Ducey tapped former U.S. Sen Jon Kyl today to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Sen. John McCain.
Ducey’s appointment comes the same day as confirmation hearings begin for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, whom Kyl is shepherding through the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation process.
An ardent supporter of Kavanaugh, it comes as no surprise that Ducey tapped someone who will vote to confirm him to the Supreme Court.
But Kyl, 76, who did not promise to stay in the Senate seat until 2020, may not serve for long after seeing through Kavanaugh’s nomination.
“Over the last few months, Sen. Kyl has been working closely with the White House on the Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh,” Ducey said. “Now, Sen. Kyl can cast a vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.”
But citing Kyl’s experience, bipartisanship and 26 years in Congress, Ducey dismissed the suggestion that he only picked Kyl because he is pro-Kavanaugh.
Kyl, a lobbyist, dismissed the idea that his work will impede his ability to serve in the Senate. He will not be able to work as a lobbyist while serving as an elected official.
Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate, which means selecting a Kavanaugh supporter to replace McCain could be vital in getting the judge confirmed to the Supreme Court.
McCain did not offer Ducey any suggestions on his successor. A former McCain staffer said McCain always supported increasing diversity within Republican politics and said McCain likely would have chosen a Hispanic woman to replace him.
Ducey said he received an abundance of advice on the appointment — much of it unsolicited, the governor joked. But the best advice he received came from another governor, although he did not say whom.
“The best piece of advice I received was from another governor who said, ‘just do the right thing. Pick the best possible person, regardless of politics,’” Ducey said.
Kyl is headed to Washington, D.C. today. Ducey said he had already talked to Senate leadership about getting Kyl sworn in as soon as possible.
At a press conference announcing the appointment, Ducey praised Kyl’s experience
Kyl served as a U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1995 to 2013 and served in the U.S. House of Representatives before that. Sen. Jeff Flake, who is stepping down at the end of the year, succeeded Kyl in the Senate.
“It’s not the time for newcomers, and now is not the time for on-the-job training,” Ducey said.
McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain tweeted that Kyl is a dear friend of hers and her late husband.
“It’s a great tribute to John that (Kyl) is prepared to go back into public service to help the state of Arizona,” she McCain tweeted.
Since McCain’s death, there has been rampant speculation about whom Ducey would appoint to the vacant seat. The governor held off naming a successor for more than a week as he mourned the senator’s death both here and at memorial services in Washington, D.C.
But Ducey’s appointment of Kyl may not curtail speculation because Kyl has not promised to serve until 2020 — when the seat is scheduled to come up for election. Kyle promised Ducey he will at least serve through the end of the year.
Kyl said he accepted the appointment because he is putting country first, like McCain did so many times during his political career. But he reminded reporters that he stepped down from the Senate because he wanted to spend more time with his family and more time in Arizona, all things that could keep him from serving until 2020.
Ducey declined to speculate who he would appoint if Kyl stepped down before 2020, saying he’s still trying to convince Kyl to stay on for longer. He did, however, adamantly insist he would not appoint himself to the seat.
By law, Ducey was required to appoint a Republican successor to fill McCain’s seat, although he almost certainly would have tapped a Republican regardless.
Arizona Republicans like Flake, AZGOP Chairman Jonathan Lines and others praised Ducey’s decision to appoint Kyl. Trump chimed in, too, tweeting his support of Kyl Tuesday.
But Ducey’s gubernatorial opponent, David Garcia, criticized the governor’s pick. Garcia said he would have selected someone like Cindy McCain or former Attorney General Grant Woods, someone who was more in the mold of the late senator and who might be more willing to stand up to Trump.
“Jon Kyl has served as Brett Kavanaugh’s ‘sherpa’ through the nomination process and will undoubtedly vote for his confirmation which puts many rights we take for granted at risk, chief among them are women’s reproductive rights, civil rights, voting rights, environmental rights and workers rights,” Garcia said in a statement.
U.S. senatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., celebrates her primary election victory, Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, in Tempe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Gov. Doug Ducey has appointed Martha McSally to fill the U.S. Senate seat that Sen. Jon Kyl will vacate at the end of the year.
The announcement from the Governor’s Office Tuesday sets up a unique dynamic in which Arizona will be represented in the Senate by former foes.
McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema will serve alongside each other after facing off in one of the most contentious and expensive Senate races in Arizona’s history.
In a statement, Ducey praised McSally’s dedication to serving her country, referencing her 26 years of service in the U.S. Air Force and her multiple deployments to the Middle East and Afghanistan. He also praised McSally for representing Arizona in Congress for the past four years.
“Martha [McSally] is uniquely qualified to step up and fight for Arizona’s interests in the U.S. Senate,” Ducey said. “I thank her for taking on this significant responsibility and look forward to working with her and Senator-Elect Sinema to get positive things done.”
Ducey’s appointment of McSally comes mere days after Kyl tendered his resignation last week. The governor appointed Kyl in September to fill the seat previously held by the late Sen. John McCain.
Although Kyl could have held the seat until a special election is held in 2020, he promised to serve only through the end of the year.
McSally said she is eager to get to work with Sinema, with all signs indicating that she will not let the contentious Senate race of the past keep them from working together.
“Over the last year, I’ve traveled across this great state, meeting with countless Arizonans, and listening to them,” McSally said in a statement. “I’ve heard about the challenges they face and the hopes they have for the future – and I’ve learned a lot. I am humbled and grateful to have this opportunity to serve and be a voice for all Arizonans.”
In determining who to appoint to replace Kyl, Ducey was thinking long term. More specifically, he was looking for a Republican who could run a strong campaign in two years and possibly again in 2022, at the conclusion of what would have been McCain’s six-year term.
Ducey’s appointment of McSally sets her up as the woman to beat in the 2020 special election, should she decide to run. With her national name recognition and the $1 million in campaign funds left over from her Senate run this year, McSally could be a strong contender in Arizona’s next Senate race.
She will also have the benefit of being the incumbent, should she seek to extend her Senate tenure.
Ducey faced outside pressure to appoint McSally. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lobbied the governor to appoint the two-term congresswoman from Tucson who was the country’s first female combat pilot.
Both McSally and Sinema are breaking barriers in the Senate. Before this year, Arizona had never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate. Now, McSally becomes the first woman appointed to a Senate seat from Arizona while Sinema holds the title of the first elected woman senator from Arizona.
But if McSally does decide to run in 2020, she won’t be able to get too comfortable in the Senate because the 2020 race will start ramping up almost immediately as Democrats are already lining up to jump into the race.
Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has expressed interest in running in 2020, as has former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, who recently switched parties from Republican to Democrat. Mark Kelly, the husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords may also jump into the race.
Ducey and McSally will hold a joint press conference sometime today to discuss the appointment. Details of when and where the press conference will be held have not yet been announced.
Gov. Doug Ducey won’t add his voice to that of two other top elected Arizona Republicans in criticizing President Donald Trump.
The governor on Wednesday dodged multiple questions about what he thought of the speeches by John McCain and Jeff Flake, the state’s two senators, chiding the president for creating a toxic political atmosphere. Both said Trump was more interested in finding scapegoats than solving problems.
And during his Senate floor speech on Tuesday, Flake specifically called out those who are “compromised by the requirements of politics”.
“Because politics can make us silent when we should speak,” the senator said. “And silence can equal complicity.”
But Ducey, asked if his failure to speak out as the senators have done makes him “complicit,” instead responded, twice, with a criticism of the federal government. And the governor was visibly perturbed when told none of that answered the questions about his silence about Trump.
“Yes, it’s answering the question,” he snapped.
“We’re getting things done in the state of Arizona,” Ducey said. “I challenge Washington, D.C. to get something done.”
The governor’s comments — or lack thereof — come on the heels of two high-profile speeches by the senators pushing back against Trump, his policies and his behavior.
It started with a speech by McCain last week while he was receiving the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia from the National Constitution Center.
He specifically lashed out at the change in direction in foreign policy that he said is based on “some half-baked spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”
Flake picked up on that theme with his Tuesday floor speech where he spoke about the “undeniable potency to a populist appeal” that he said resulted in “giving in to the impulse to scapegoat and belittle.”
That, he told colleagues, “threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people.” And he had a specific warning for fellow Republicans, saying “those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.”
But Flake did not stop there. He also spoke out against “the coarseness of our leadership”and “the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.”
Ducey, reminded of the statements after a speech Wednesday — and specifically about Flake’s statement that “silence can equal complicity” — was not interested in expressing his own views.
“You know, I hear a lot out of Washington, D.C.,” he responded to the question of whether his silence makes him complicit with what’s going on in the nation’s capital.
“I don’t see much action,” the governor continued. “What I’d like to see is some results out of Washington, D.C.”
Pushed further, Ducey sought to compare what he said is the gridlock at the nation’s capital with what he said is being accomplished on a bipartisan basis in Phoenix.
“I don’t see any of that coming from Washington, D.C.,” he said. “I, like many other Americans, are just tired of it.”
Ducey also said he has no interest in joining in the hunt to replace Flake, preferring to seek reelection next year.
“I love being the governor,” he said.
And Ducey said he is unlikely to throw his support behind anyone in the GOP primary.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey says he still has hopes for congressional passage of the latest Republican effort to repeal former President Barack Obama’s health care law, despite Sen. John McCain’s announcement that he won’t vote for the bill.
A Ducey tweet reacting to McCain’s announcement Friday doesn’t mention McCain but says the governor still supports the bill and encourages others to do the same.
Ducey also asserts that “51 votes are still possible,” a reference to the number of “yes” votes needed for Senate approval.
Ducey had come out in favor of the bill Monday.
He says the legislation’s block grant approach “is far superior to anything Washington,. D.C. has proposed on health care policy in recent memory, because it shifts dollars and decisions back to the states.”
Gov. Doug Ducey announced his support today for a Republican health care plan that could drop millions from coverage, an endorsement that came despite the lack of analysis from the state’s health care number-crunchers.
The Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would spend less money overall on health care and put more power in the hands of states through block grants.
Ducey called the plan the “best path forward” to repeal Obamacare in a tweet today.
He said he’s going to keep working with Congress and the Trump administration to advocate for state flexibility in health care spending.
“Congress has 12 days to say ‘yes’ to Graham-Cassidy. It’s time for them to get the job done,” the governor wrote on Twitter.
In general, the plan would get rid of tax credits for middle-class people and end Medicaid expansion in 2020 in favor of a market-based block grant program that would give states a lump sum of money to spend on health care.
Proponents of the bill say they’re just a few votes shy of passing it in the U.S. Senate.
But while the plan hasn’t yet been officially scored by the Congressional Budget Office, some groups, such as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, have said it would drop “many millions” from coverage.
Last week, Ducey said he needed to know more about the Graham-Cassidy plan and how it would affect Arizona before taking a position on it. But he said then he was supportive of block grants, a central component of the bill.
There are a lot of people who provide statistics on the effects of legislation, he told reporters last week, but he will rely primarily on the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System’s analysis, he said.
But AHCCCS has not yet completed an analysis of the Graham-Cassidy plan, so it’s unknown exactly what the impacts of the bill would be on the state.
Still, the governor’s office said Ducey is supporting the plan because Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced, and the Graham-Cassidy bill is the best way to do that.
“This should come as no surprise,” Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak said of the governor’s support for Graham-Cassidy.
The governor’s office has “publicly expressed openness to some form of a block grant with flexibility for governors” since February, Ptak said in an email.
Ducey’s support for the plan could be instrumental in its success. Sen. John McCain has repeatedly said he’s leaning on Ducey’s analysis of a repeal-and-replace plan, making Ducey’s role in the process outsized.
When the previous attempt at Obamacare replacement, the so-called “skinny repeal,” came up for a vote, McCain joined two other senators to vote against the plan. He has called for a return to regular order in Senate, and has said any plan should have debates and hearings.
McCain spokeswoman Julie Tarallo told Capitol Media Services on Monday that her boss is reviewing the bill “to assess its impact on the people of Arizona.” But she said he is wary of these kind of last-minute maneuvers with the details hammered out in offices and sent to the floor in a rush.
“As he has said before, Sen. McCain believes health care reform should go through the regular order of hearings, open debate, and amendments from both sides of the aisle,” Tarallo said.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, on the other hand, gave Graham-Cassidy the thumbs-up.
“#GrahamCassidy plan to #RepealAndReplace #Obamacare has my support. It ought to be brought to the senate floor,” Flake tweeted Sunday.
The legislation is being crafted by three Republicans: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Dean Heller of Nevada.
In essence, it would blow up the Affordable Care Act with its system of mandated health insurance and subsidies for those who cannot afford the premiums. Instead, the federal cash — at least some of it — would be given to the states in the form of block grants to decide exactly how they want to fashion their own health care systems for the needy, those who do not qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford commercial health insurance.
States could also scrap many of the regulations that now exist under the Affordable Care Act. And it would cut federal Medicaid dollars.
-This story includes information from Capitol Media Services.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico James Jones, left, and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey talk about the importance of U.S.-Mexico trade at a Woodrow Wilson Center event in Washington. (Photo by J.T. Lain/Cronkite News)
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey told a U.S.-Mexico diplomacy conference June 14 that maintaining good trade between the countries is important, and he expects the state to have a “seat at the table” in any upcoming trade negotiations.
Ducey’s comments, to a conference of business and community leaders from both sides of the border, come a month after President Donald Trump notified Congress of his plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump has called NAFTA “the worst trade deal ever” and pledged to rework it to get higher-paying jobs for American workers and more economic growth for the nation.
Ducey and other Republican lawmakers in Arizona have praised the deal, which they said has brought billions in new trade to the U.S. While he backs “free and fair trade,” however, Ducey said he is not opposed to a revised version if the pact can be improved.
“The world has changed tremendously since the 1990s,” when NAFTA took effect, said Ducey, adding that he wants Arizona to take a look at the agreement to find areas where it can be modernized and improved.
But some state lawmakers say the pact has done a good job as is.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., tweeted that trade between the U.S. and Mexico increased from $50 billion to $500 billion – a 900 percent jump. He is running a social media campaign, #nafta4az, asking Arizonans to send him their personal stories in support of the agreement.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., tweeted that withdrawing from NAFTA would be “a disaster.”
Ducey said Mexico is Arizona’s largest trading partner and he sees economic growth opportunity at the border. But he acknowledged that there are problems and political realities Arizona has to face with Mexico.
James Jones, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said during the luncheon that relations between Arizona and Mexico were strained in recent years.
Arizona made headlines with its SB1070 law, the harsh “papers please” immigration law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants. Long lines coupled with intricate inspections at ports-of-entry caused truckers to drive to California or Texas – where inspection lines were shorter – bypassing Arizona entirely.
Ducey stressed the importance of a good relationship with Mexico that he said lets both parties “communicate and put problem solvers together” to jointly address any negatives.
Gov. Doug Ducey (Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)
Gov. Doug Ducey wants Congress to adopt limits on what jurors can award to medical malpractice victims, a cap that Arizona voters have previously rejected multiple times.
Ducey told Capitol Media Services that limit on damages should be part of anything that becomes a replacement of the Affordable Care Act. He said some of the high cost of health care in Arizona can be blamed on high malpractice insurance premiums and awards to patients in lawsuits.
The governor’s comments came as the U.S. Senate killed the last-ditch effort by Republican leaders to repeal what has become known as “Obamacare.” It was John McCain, the state’s senior senator, who cast the deciding vote on the “skinny repeal” plan which would have annulled the Affordable Care Act now with a promise to come up with something else later.
Ducey press aid Daniel Scarpinato said Friday his boss is “disappointed” that Congress has essentially thrown up its hands and “will be taking a recess without repealing Obamacare.”
“The problems with Obamacare and the health insurance markets are real and continue, especially in Arizona,” he said. But the governor would not comment on the fact that it was McCain, as the deciding vote, who killed the repeal.
Ducey, however, still believes that the Affordable Care Act can be repealed and replaced.
Potentially more significant, the governor already has ideas on what needs to be in what comes next. And a key provision of that is what has been dubbed “tort reform.”
In essence, Ducey wants federal law to set limits on non-economic damages in malpractice cases. That category covers everything from the pain and suffering of patients — or survivors — to punitive damages that can be awarded when juries conclude a doctor’s actions were so egregious as to impose a financial punishment and send a message to others.
Ducey acknowledged that what he wants would overrule two provisions in the Arizona Constitution that date to the first days of statehood.
One, in the Declaration of Rights — the state’s version of the Bill of Rights — says “no law shall be enacted in this state limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the death or injury of any person.” And another section says “the right of action to recover damages for injuries shall never be abrogated, and the amount recovered shall not be subject to any statutory limitation.”
Proponents asked voters for outright repeal in 1986 and 1990. And four years later they sought to amend those same provisions, albeit to allow for “no-fault” auto insurance.
All three were defeated, leaving the legislature powerless to impose caps.
But the congressional action Ducey wants would override what voters here have rejected. That’s because the constitutional provisions are limits on the power of state government: They offer no protections against changes in federal law.
The governor defended the idea, saying he sees it as “allowing justice when there is wrongdoing, but not pushing doctors out of the marketplace, not making it so burdensome to practice medicine,” he said.
“We’ve certainly seen our (health care) costs rise in Arizona and in America,” Ducey said. “And I think part of it is how expensive the liability (insurance) and litigation has become.”
Ducey said Arizona should look to other states. One of those often cited is Texas where there is a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages for all doctors and other individual health care providers.
The idea of a federal override of the Arizona Constitution drew fire from David Diamond, president of Arizona Attorneys for Justice, a group composed of attorneys who represent plaintiffs in civil lawsuits. He said it would be wrong for Congress to impose its will.
“Arizona voters have three times voted down efforts to amend their constitution to allow caps on damages,” he said in a statement.
“This bill would ignore their wishes and impose the very caps they rejected,” he said. “This is overreach by the Big Brother federal government at its worst.”
Ducey said he has no specific language in mind for what he wants to see in limits.
“I want to see when someone is wronged that they are able to access justice,” the governor said. “But I also think we can do a better job so that we’re bringing doctors into the field and not putting them in a position where their premiums are so high they can’t afford to practice anymore.”
It wasn’t a question of tort reform that caused McCain to buck his party.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 25, 2017, as the Senate was to vote on moving head on health care with the goal of erasing much of Barack Obama’s law. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
McCain had, in some ways, been Ducey’s D.C. surrogate in the fight, saying he would not support a measure without changes sought by the governor. And Ducey had demanded several provisions, including ensuring that Arizona is not penalized for having expanded its Medicaid program before most other states, and protecting the federal dollars for that program, at least for the foreseeable future.
On Friday, McCain issued a statement saying said he could not support the “skinny repeal” because it would not have replaced the Affordable Care Act with something that “increases competition, lowers costs and improves care for the American people.” And in a separate statement, he said Republicans should give up on their bid to craft something on their own, saying partisans on both sides of the issue should “stop the political gamesmanship and put the health care needs of the American people first.”
Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act formally fizzled Tuesday and Gov. Doug Ducey said the state’s senior senator and his desire for “procedure” is at least partly to blame.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave up on his plan to have a vote before the end of the month when he found himself short of the 50 votes needed out of his 52-member Republican caucus. John McCain is among those refusing to go along with a last-ditch draft of a plan crafted by Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
The plan has effectively run out of time as Senate rules allow for this kind of change to be approved by a simple majority only before the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30. With all Democrats opposed, Vice President Mike Pence would provide the tie-breaker if McConnell could get to 50.
Once the new fiscal year starts, it takes at least 60 votes to block any sort of filibuster, effectively eliminating any chance Republicans can pass something on their own.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona (Photo by Claire Caulfield/Cronkite News)
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Ducey said he always expected McCain to “make up his own mind” on these kind of issues. But he also took a slap of sorts at the senator who based his objections not so much on what was in the Graham-Cassidy plan — a plan Ducey praised for returning funds and decision-making to states — but the fact that McConnell was trying to fast-track the legislation with minimal hearings which provided no real opportunity for negotiations with or amendments from Democrats.
“I know to the senator (McCain) procedure seems to be of paramount in importance, things like ‘regular order,’ ” Ducey said. That refers to the normal procedure for hearing bills, having them go through committee hearings and providing a chance for debate.
The governor, for his part, said following these procedures “are not as high of a concern for me as a governor.” More to the point, Ducey said that McCain’s refusal to go along because of those procedural concerns, coupled with objections from several other GOP senators, is bad news for Arizonans.
“We’ve got citizens that need a fix now,” the governor said, a need that Ducey said transcends any concerns about time-consuming procedures.
“So to me the result happening sooner rather than later is more important than that,” he said. “And I guess we can go to work with the Senate having a priority on regular order.”
There was no immediate response to the governor’s comments from McCain.
McConnell told reporters that he still has hopes to repeal and replace the law. But he said efforts to craft a plan that could cobble together the necessary votes just ran out of time.
“We aren’t going to be able to do it this week,” he said.
In fact, it is unlikely to happen at all this year. McConnell said Republicans now need to regroup and focus on the other big priority: revamping the tax code.
Some of the GOP foes of Graham-Cassidy had their own concerns.
For example, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was holding out for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act. By contrast, what was being proffered kept many of the taxes to pay for it but instead redistributed the money to the states in the form of block grants.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., however, called the bill “deeply flawed” because of cuts in Medicaid funding and problems she saw in protecting people with prior-existing conditions.
But McCain has made it clear for days that he did not like the process. In fact, in an extensive floor speech the senator cited the failure to follow “regular order” as his reason against voting for the “skinny repeal” proposal that came before the Graham-Cassidy plan.
Gov. Doug Ducey said Wednesday he has seen no evidence of “widespread fraud or irregularity” in the conduct of the Arizona election.
But he said he has no interest in using his voice to shut down those claims that are being spread by supporters of President Trump who continue to argue that the election was illegally stolen by the Democrats.
What Ducey was willing to do is condemn Trump supporters who have been making threats against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and even have picketed her house and yelled at her.
“That’s unacceptable, completely unacceptable,” he said. “And I denounce any threats of violence against anyone in elective office, or any Arizonan or American.”
And the governor said the Department of Public Safety has offered additional security for Hobbs and her staffers.
Katie Hobbs
“But that’s different than a court challenge,” he said, pointing out that there is still litigation over the vote tallies.
“We are going to allow whatever legal challenges that come to be swiftly adjudicated inside the state of Arizona,” he said. “And I will respect the election.”
But that lone remaining case goes solely to the question of whether the decision of the method to decide which batches of ballots to set aside for a hand count in Maricopa County complies with state law.
At a hearing Wednesday, attorneys for the county argued that the legal challenge by the Arizona Republican Party comes too late. But the judge postponed a request by attorneys for the party to bar the supervisors from formally certifying the vote, something set now for Friday
None of that, however, has kept Trump supporters from making even more charges and raising other questions.
That continued Wednesday as Kelli Ward, chair of the state Republican Party, demanded that even more ballots be pulled out for a hand count than required by law. And she resurrected charges from a now-dismissed lawsuit that thousands of people who cast their ballots at polling places were disenfranchised by being told to push “the green button” which would override mistakes they made in voting for more candidates for an office than allowed.
Ducey, for his part, said he will not use his voice, either as governor or the highest elected Republican in the state, to quell that talk even if it could undermine public confidence in the electoral process. Instead, he retreated to a generic defense of how voting occurs here.
“I’ve said and I’ve bragged on Arizona’s election process that we’re good at elections,” he said.
The governor pointed out that Arizona was one of the earliest states to allow all residents to vote by mail, a process that Trump repeatedly criticized as leading to widespread fraud.
In fact, more than 88% of the votes in the presidential race were in early ballots.
But Ducey balked at making any comment about how this most recent election was conducted.
“You want me to make a declaration before the legal process plays out,” he said.
And the governor said it’s not for him to decide that the process was fair when his name was not on the ballot. That, he said, is up to the candidates.
“In the Senate race, the sitting senator was satisfied with the vote count, saw no legal irregularity that needed to go to the court, and conceded,” Ducey said, referring to Martha McSally whom the governor appointed to the seat formerly held by John McCain. “I followed up with a congratulatory call to Senator-elect Mark Kelly.”
There will be no such call to Biden, the governor said until “the legal challenges play out.”
The entire controversy is mired in politics.
Aside from the challenge to the Maricopa County hand-count procedure, supervisors in Mohave County voted 4-1 to delay the legally required formal certification of the vote tally there.
Board members conceded they do not question the accuracy of the count performed in their county but instead said they wanted to see how things played out elsewehere.
And two Pima County supervisors, both Republicans, also refused to vote for the formal tally. But that didn’t stop the process as the other three board members gave their approval.
Kirk Adams (Photo by Ellen O’Brien/Arizona Capitol Times)
Gov. Doug Ducey’s Chief of Staff Kirk Adams announced his resignation Monday.
Adams, who started at the beginning of Ducey’s first term,served through Ducey’s first term, announced on Twitter that he will return to theprivate sector, although he did not specify his plans.
“I will be forever grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to serve as Governor Ducey’s chief of staff,” Adams said in a statement “The decision to leave this role is not one I made lightly — I’ve often said I have the best job in the country, and that is attributed to the governor’s leadership and the exceptional team we built over the last four years.”
When I was elected Governor in 2014 — there was a clear choice to lead the transition team, and later to serve as my chief of staff. 1/4 https://t.co/Sf1s7R2HrH
Adams told the Arizona Capitol Times that he will take a few weeks to spend time with friends and family — including taking his family on a trip to New Zealand next month — before deciding on his next steps. He also joked on Twitter that he might finally be able to fit in a few rounds of golf.
In Adams’ resignation letter dated Nov. 12 — less than a week after Ducey was re-elected for a second, four-year term — the governor’s right-hand man said he left it all on the field over the past four years.
Adams said there was no specific event that made him realize it was time to move on.
“I have only a gut feeling that now is time,” he wrote.
Adams also said in his resignation letter that he has no specific plans for what comes next in his professional life.
In an interview with the Capitol Times last year, Adams said his biggest worry about leaving the Governor’s Office was that his next job may not be as fulfilling and exciting as serving as Ducey’s chief of staff.
“I’ve enjoyed the complexity of a role like this,” he said in the interview. At the time, he was the second longest currently serving gubernatorial chief of staff in the country.
Ducey expressed his gratitude for Adams on Twitter, saying he was a remarkable chief of staff. Adams, who will nearly finish out Ducey’s first term as governor, has already served for longer than many gubernatorial chiefs of staff, which on average, serve about three years.
The chief of staff job is a high-stress position that comes with long hours. It is very unusual for a gubernatorial chief of staff to serve through a governor’s multiple terms because of the taxing nature of the job.
Ducey praised Adams for developing Proposition 123, which settled a long-standing lawsuit over education funding. He also praised his right-hand man for championing his teacher pay raise plan and the Arizona Opioid Epidemic Act earlier this year.
“Kirk’s long list of accomplishments prior to joining our team has grown exponentially over the last four years thanks to his unrivaled talent, policy depth, remarkable leadership and ability to build consensus among Arizona stakeholders,” Ducey said in a statement. “I am grateful to Kirk for his service and for his work to build an exceptionally talented team that will help continue Arizona’s success as a national leader for opportunity, jobs and economic growth.”
Some personal news: After 4 yrs as chief of staff for @dougducey, the time has come for me to depart from this role.
Adams’ name was tossed around frequently as someone Ducey might appoint to fill the U.S.. Senate seat held by John McCain before the senator passed. With U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl’s plans unclear — he may step down before the end of the year — Adams has once again been rumored to be on the shortlist to fill the Senate seat.
Prior to serving as Ducey’s go-to guy, Adams served in the Arizona House of Representatives and was Speaker of the House for a two-year stint that ended in 2011. An Arizona native, he also mounted an unsuccessful congressional campaign in Arizona’s 5th District.
Before he became Ducey’s chief of staff, Adams served as a co-chair on the governor’s transition team.
Adams is also well known in the Capitol community as the creator of the end-of-session Twitter tradition #startyourownrumor. Adams spurred the tradition in 2011 when as Speaker of the House, he tweeted out numerous fake rumors as the Capitol community was abuzz with rumors that Adams was going to run for Congress.
But the tweetstorm has grown over the years into self-deprecating comic relief for Arizona political nerds and a sign that the Legislature is close to adjourning sine die. Every year on the day of sine die, Adams kicks off the fun by starting his own rumor on Twitter and then others join in using the #startyourownrumor tag.
It is unclear if Adams will still lead the sine die rumor mill after his departure or if that task will carry over to his predecessor.
Gov. Doug Ducey appoints Rep. Martha McSally to the fill a U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death John McCain. PHOTO BY DILLON ROSENBLATT/ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES
Martha McSally can keep John McCain’s Senate seat until at least the 2020 election, a federal judge ruled late Thursday.
Judge Diane Humetewa, a President Obama appointee, rejected arguments that the U.S. Constitution requires there be a special election within a year − if not less − when there is a vacancy in a Senate seat.
She acknowledged that the Constitution allows a governor to fill a Senate seat on a “temporary” basis. And Humetewa said that 27 months will have elapsed between McCain’s death last August and the next regular election in 2020.
But the judge said there is nothing in the law that says 27 months is too long for a temporary appointment. And Humetewa said that allowing Gov. Doug Ducey to put McSally into that office until the 2020 election does not infringe on the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which gives voters the right to choose their own senators.
In an extensive ruling, Humetewa also said that any argument in favor of forcing a special election is overshadowed by all the reasons advanced by attorneys for Ducey not to have one.
For example, she said, allowing McSally to serve until 2020 − when she would have to run for the final two years of McCain’s six-year term − actually increases the right to vote. She cited figures advanced by Ducey’s lawyers which show that special elections have a much lower turnout than regular November elections.
“The court finds voter turnout to be an important state interest,” Humetewa wrote.
The judge also said the state is entitled to consider that it would cost money to have a special election.
“Conversely, there would be no additional cost to the state to hold the vacancy election at the next general election in November 2020, as that election is already scheduled to take place,” Humetewa said.
And the judge also said a special election could lead to “confusion and inconvenience to voters,” including “the potential for months of highly politicized advertising leading up to the special elections, which would otherwise not occur at this time, and not allowing adequate time for voters to make an informed voting decision.”
Attorney Michael Kielsky, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of voters from various political parties, said allowing an unelected appointee to serve as a senator for that long “seems weird, violating the spirit if not the letter of the 17th Amendment.” He vowed to appeal.
Arizona law says if a Senate vacancy occurs more than 150 days from the next election then any temporary appointee can serve only until that election. But anyone named within 150 days of a vacancy can serve until the following election.
McCain died just days before the 2018 primary, freeing up Ducey under Arizona law to tap someone to serve through 2020.
He originally named former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl to the post. But Kyl quit at the end of last year, allowing Ducey to name McSally, who by that time had lost her own Senate race to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
Kielsky found the whole process flawed, especially with that 27-month gap between McCain’s death and the 2020 election. Humetewa, however, wasn’t buying it.
“The 27-month period, on its own, is not unreasonable considering case precedent, and does not amount to an unreasonable restriction on plaintiffs’ right to vote,” she ruled.
Nothing in Thursday’s ruling affects vacancies in the U.S. House which constitutionally can be filled only through a special election, with no opportunity for a governor to name an interim replacement.
In this July 19, 2017 photo, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. walks to his seat as he attends a luncheon with other GOP Senators and President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington. Flake’s re-election race is becoming a case study in the GOP’s convulsions between the establishment, a furious base, and angry donors. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s re-election race is becoming a case study in the GOP’s convulsions among the establishment, a furious base and angry donors.
After bucking Donald Trump in a state the president won, Flake is bottoming out in polls. Yet Republicans look like they may be stuck with a hard-core conservative challenger who some fear could win the primary but lose in the general election.
A White House search for a candidate to replace former state Sen. Kelli Ward in the primary appears to have hit a wall. And now conservatives want to turn Arizona into the latest example of a Trump Train outsider taking down a member of the GOP establishment.
“People are fooling themselves if they think Jeff Flake is anything but a walking dead member of the United State Senate,” said Andy Surabian, whose Great America Alliance is backing Ward.
“I don’t see how he survives a primary. I don’t see how he survives a general. The numbers just don’t add up,” added Surabian, who worked at the White House as an adviser to Steve Bannon, then the president’s top strategist.
Despite discontent among some Republicans over Ward, Bannon met with her last week at a conservative conference in Colorado Springs to encourage her campaign, according to a Republican official who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the previously unreported private meeting.
Ward unsuccessfully challenged Arizona’s senior senator, John McCain, in last year’s election, losing in the primary by a wide margin. But in Flake, she would face a more vulnerable candidate at a moment when the GOP establishment is on the defensive, facing a simmering anti-incumbent mood heightened by Republicans’ failure to make good on seven years of promises to scrap Barack Obama’s health care law.
Flake is in danger of becoming the latest victim of this voter wrath. Yet, rather than making an effort to soothe pro-Trump GOP voters, he’s all but dared them to take him down by kicking off his campaign with an anti-Trump manifesto, “Conscience of a Conservative,” a book in which he bemoaned his party’s failure to stand up to Trump in last year’s presidential race.
“We pretended that the emperor wasn’t naked,” Flake wrote.
Trump, in turn, has lashed out at Flake on Twitter, calling him “toxic,” and praised Ward. White House officials say there’s little chance Trump will have a change of heart over supporting Flake. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity to disclose private deliberations, said Trump is irritated not only by Flake’s public criticism, but by what Trump sees as the senator’s attempts to use his critiques of the president to gain attention.
Nevertheless, Flake, 54, insists he won’t be getting out of the race. The primary is Aug. 29.
“We always knew we would have a tough primary. We always knew we would have a tough general,” Flake said in a brief interview at the Capitol. Asked about Trump’s opposition, Flake smiled and said, “There’s a long time between now and next August.”
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has protected vulnerable GOP senators in the past, but his ability to do so in the future was thrown into question last month by Sen. Luther Strange’s loss to rabble-rousing Roy Moore in a runoff in Alabama. A McConnell-aligned super PAC had spent around $9 million to help Strange.
Trump was encouraged by McConnell and others to back Strange, a decision which he reportedly now regrets and which only added to the frictions between the president and the Senate leader. Flake’s candidacy could provide occasion for yet more conflict between the two, given the possibility that they will be on opposite sides in the primary.
Adding to Flake’s problems, donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP campaign arm, have dried up after the GOP failed to deliver on repealing and replacing the Obama health law. Some donors say they intend to withhold money from incumbent senators like Flake until they start delivering on Trump’s agenda, a strategy encouraged privately by some top White House officials.
“Donors are going to start cutting off funding for all senators until they get Trump’s initiatives passed,” said Roy Bailey, a Trump supporter and fundraiser in Texas. “I think there’s a real kind of movement going around that is catching momentum.”
Flake’s campaign points to strong fundraising numbers and upcoming events including a fundraising visit Monday by Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio. But Flake can’t even count on support from fellow members of his Arizona delegation. GOP Rep. Trent Franks demurred when asked if he would be supporting Flake for re-election
“I’m probably not going to, for a lot of reasons, not going to address that,” Franks said. “Obviously, Sen. Flake knows how profoundly bewildered and disappointed I was with his actions that, in the general election last year, if everyone had followed that line of reasoning, would have resulted in Hillary Clinton’s election.”
Franks’ name is one of several that have circulated as potential primary challengers to Flake, along with Rep. Paul Gosar, state university board member Jay Heiler and former state GOP Chairman Robert Graham. Several Republicans said the White House has been searching for some alternative to Ward.
Yet Ward shows no sign of stepping aside, and another consideration, usually unspoken, is McCain’s brain cancer, which will likely mean another vacant Senate seat at some point in the future.
Ward’s erratic history, which causes mainline Republicans to view her as damaged goods, is underscored by comments she made after McCain’s July cancer diagnosis, where she urged him to step down and suggested she should be considered to replace him.
“Look, you see what her numbers were in the McCain race – I don’t know what would make us think different now,” said Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz. Whichever Republican emerges from the primary will likely face Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, seen as a strong candidate.
It’s all adding to a season of trouble for GOP senators such as Flake and Dean Heller of Nevada, who also faces a primary challenge from the right. The good news for Senate Republicans, who hold a 52-48 majority, is that they have an extremely favorable map next year that has them defending only two genuinely endangered incumbents, Flake and Heller, while Democrats are on defense in 10 states Trump won.
In this Oct. 11, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally in Davenport, Iowa. Arizona Sen. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP’s standard-bearer in the 2008 election, has died. He was 81. His office says McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He had battled brain cancer. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Two former presidents are expected to speak at Sen. John McCain’s service and he will lie in state in both the nation’s capital and Arizona as part of a cross-country funeral procession ending with his burial at the U.S. Naval Academy, according to plans taking shape Sunday.
McCain had long feuded with President Donald Trump, and two White House officials said McCain’s family had asked, before the senator’s death, that Trump not attend the funeral services. Vice President Mike Pence is likely to attend, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
A day after McCain died of brain cancer at 81, his family, friends and congressional and state leaders were working out details of the farewell to the decorated Vietnam War hero, prisoner of war and six-term senator.
The tributes were to begin in his home state, move to Washington in the first week of September and end with McCain’s burial on a leafy hill at the academy in Annapolis, Maryland, next to his best friend from the Class of 1958, Adm. Chuck Larson.
Trump tweeted that his “deepest sympathies and respect” went out to McCain’s family. First lady Melania Trump tweeted thanks to McCain for his service to the country.
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who blocked McCain’s own White House ambitions, are among those expected to speak at McCain’s funeral.
“These were bitter contests, both of them,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and “to ask them to speak at your funeral, and for them to be honored at the opportunity, that tells you all you need to know.”
Flake told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that McCain “was quick to forgive – certainly put the good of the country above himself, and the fact that his former opponents will be there speaking says all we need to know.”
McCain died at his Arizona ranch after a yearlong battle with brain cancer.
A black hearse, accompanied by a police motorcade, could be seen driving away from the ranch near Sedona where McCain spent his final weeks. For 50 miles along Interstate 17 southbound, on every overpass and at every exit ramp, people watched the procession. Hundreds, including many waving American flags, parked their cars and got out to watch.
Dozens line Interstate 17 as they wait for the procession with the hearse carrying the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018, in Anthem, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Congressional leaders announced that McCain would lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, though they did not give a date. “The nation mourns the loss of a great American patriot, a statesman who put his country first and enriched this institution through many years of service,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Arizona will accord McCain that honor on Wednesday, when he would have turned 82. “This is a rare and distinct occurrence for a truly special man,” GOP Gov. Doug Ducey said in a tweet.
Ducey does not plan to announce his selection of a Senate successor to McCain until after McCain’s burial. Under state law, the governor’s appointee to serve until the next general election in 2020 must come from the same political party. A statement from Ducey’s office said that “now is a time for remembering and honoring a consequential life.”
Trump’s brief Twitter statement said “hearts and prayers” are with the McCain family.
Trump and McCain were at bitter odds until the end. The president, who as a candidate in 2016 mocked McCain’s capture in Vietnam, had jabbed at the ailing senator for voting against Republican efforts to roll back President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Earlier this summer, McCain issued a blistering statement criticizing Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Obama, who triumphed over McCain in 2008, said that despite their differences, McCain and he shared a “fidelity to something higher – the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed.”
Obama said they “saw our political battles, even, as a privilege, something noble, an opportunity to serve as stewards of those high ideals at home, and to advance them around the world.”
Bush, who defeated McCain for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, called McCain a “man of deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order” and a “friend whom I’ll deeply miss.”
Other tributes poured in from around the globe.
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted in English that McCain “was a true American hero. He devoted his entire life to his country.” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said McCain’s support for the Jewish state “never wavered. It sprang from his belief in democracy and freedom.” And Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, called McCain “a tireless fighter for a strong trans-Atlantic alliance. His significance went well beyond his own country.”
McCain was the son and grandson of admirals and followed them to the U.S. Naval Academy. A pilot, he was shot down over Vietnam and held as a prisoner of war for more than five years. He went on to win a seat in the House and in 1986, the Senate, where he served for the rest of his life.
“He had a joy about politics and a love for his country that was unmatched,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. “And while he never made it to the presidency, in the Senate, he was the leader that would see a hot spot in the world and just say, we need to go there and stand up for that democracy,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who developed a friendship with McCain while they served together in the Senate, said the Arizona lawmaker will “cast a long shadow.”
“The spirit that drove him was never extinguished: we are here to commit ourselves to something bigger than ourselves,” Biden said
The Senate’s top Democrat, New York’s Chuck Schumer, said he wants to rename the Senate building that housed McCain’s suite of offices after McCain.
“As you go through life, you meet few truly great people. John McCain was one of them,” Schumer said. “Maybe most of all, he was a truth teller – never afraid to speak truth to power in an era where that has become all too rare.”
Republican-turned-Democrat Grant Woods announced Friday he will not run for the U.S. Senate in 2020.
Woods announced his decision on the Bruce and Pamela show on KTAR News 92.3 Friday morning.
“I am not going to run as a Democrat … I’m not going to run against Democrats in a primary,” he told KTAR News. “My ambition is to serve my country, to serve my state and to get people who don’t respect basic values like Donald Trump out of office.”
With Woods opting not to run, there are still zero candidates who have confirmed they will.
Grant Woods
Whomever does win in 2020 will hold the seat until 2022 when the term ends. John McCain held the seat from his re-election in 2016 until his death in August 2018. Gov. Doug Ducey then appointed Sen. Jon Kyl, who served only from September to December. Ducey turned to Republican U.S. Sen. Martha McSally, who took her oath in January after losing to Democratic U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for the seat Republican Jeff Flake vacated. There will be another election in 2022 for the full 6-year term.
Woods told Arizona Capitol Times his decision crystallized over the last month for him that for a year and a half he would be running against Democrats and not McSally or Trump. “That’s not why I was interested in this,” he said. He repeatedly said Democrats are not the problem right now, but the way things are currently going they may be.
He was interested in running at first because “the country is in crisis because of President Trump and because people like Martha McSally have continued to enable him rather than fighting him.”
Woods said he has not talked to any potential senate candidates yet, but did not say who if any of the candidates he would support against McSally, just that McSally needs to go.
“We beat her once, it’s a joke that she’s there so we need to beat her again,” he said.
He still thinks he could beat McSally one-on-one, but is not a fan of how late the primary is. The primary election is his biggest reason to not seek the seat.
“If it was a March primary, maybe things would be different,” he said.
Rep. Ruben Gallego has floated the idea of running, and Mark Kelly, U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton and Hiral Tipirneni’s names have been thrown out as possible candidates as well. With Kelli Ward as new AZGOP chair, there’s also no telling if the party will support McSally’s re-election bid. Ward lost a tough battle in the August primaries to McSally, and also lost the 2016 primary to McCain.
Woods, a close friend of McCain’s delivered a eulogy at his funeral in August.
Woods said he does hope more Democrats enter the race that aren’t as liberal as Kelly and Gallego.
Woods was the Arizona Attorney General from 1991 to 1999 and before that he worked as chief of staff for McCain.
He said has has only run for one office, and running for senate is not his ambition.
He doesn’t really have any other political ambitions, but dodged a question about potentially seeking the governor’s seat in 2022.
“I’m just hoping to make it to ‘22,” he said. “It’s not my driving force in life that I need to be in office.”
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 Internmestic Partners, becomes the first entry into what is expected to be a crowded race. Incumbent Doug Ducey has to leave office at the end of 2022 due to term limits.
He told Capitol Media Services that his experience, in local, state and national government and, more recently, as a business owner, makes him uniquely suited to become the state’s next chief executive.
“The last nine years I’ve spent creating jobs in the private sector,” Lopez said. He said average Arizonans are worried about the next 10 years.
“And politicians, unfortunately, focus on four years and the next election cycle,” Lopez said.
But he is much more specific in his attacks on the people who are now running the state.
In polished videos in English and Spanish shows Gov. Doug Ducey sitting down with President Trump at a photo op at the White House where the president touted the amount of federal cash going to the state for Covid relief.
Marco Lopez
“Let’s face it: State leaders failed us even as the coronavirus cost us lives and hammered our economy,” Lopez said.
And he was even less charitable about his feelings about the Republican-controlled legislature.
“Our legislature is run by extremists, promoting bizarre conspiracy theories instead of actually getting things done for you,” Lopez said in his video.
The slap, he said, was intentional.
“You know there’s people who still refuse to acknowledge the election results were fair and balanced,” Lopez said.
“Arizonans have moved on and are now worried how to get their kids to school and what jobs they’re going to have available after this pandemic eases up,” he continued. “They’re not worried about what’s happening there at the Capitol with all these conspiracy theories.”
Lopez said he has long roots in Santa Cruz County where his parents had lived for years.
But he actually was born across the border in Nogales, Sonora.
“On the day that I was ready to be born, my mom went from our homes in Nogales, Ariz., crossed into Nogales, Son., gave birth to me in a private clinic there that was the same place that my older sister was born in,” Lopez explained. “And the next day I was back home.”
But being born in Mexico — and with his parents having only status as permanent legal residents — he had to get naturalized in 1996.
At age 22, Lopez was elected mayor of Nogales where he grew up.
He left that job after then-Gov. Janet Napolitano appointed him in 2003 to head the Arizona-Mexico Commission, later going on to be director of the Arizona Department of Commerce.
When Napolitano resigned to become director of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration she took Lopez along where he became chief of staff of Customs and Border Protection.
But his political experience goes back even farther, to when he was part of the advance team when Al Gore was running for president in 2000.
Lopez, now 42, founded Intermestic Partners in 2011. He said it works with “companies that are looking to invest and grow in the U.S.”
He also is an advisor to Carlos Slim and the foundation that operates in the name of the Mexican billionaire which is involved in providing broadband access to homes. He said that the foundation is on target for connecting 890,000 households throughout the country, including about 11,000 in Arizona.
One issue for all candidates, including Lopez, is going to be funding. It took Ducey as an incumbent more than $12 million to get re-elected in 2018, including $8 million funneled into the campaign by the Republican Governors Association.
Lopez declined to detail his budget but said he intends to seek donations rather than try to self-fund his campaign. But he also acknowledged he does not have high name ID in Arizona, saying he hopes to boost that by talking with voters throughout the state
No one else has formally announced for the post that Ducey has to vacate at the end of 2022 due to term limits.
Other possible Democrat contenders include Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Greg Stanton, a former Phoenix mayor now serving in Congress.
Potential Republican contenders including Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Treasurer Kimberly Yee, developer Karrin Taylor Robson, Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri, and Kirk Adams, a former chief of staff for Ducey.
But the situation is more complicated for Republicans.
First, they also need to field someone to run that year against newly elected Sen. Mark Kelly. The Democrat is completing the last two years of the term that originally belonged to John McCain and will have to seek his own six-year term at that point.
Second, the party has to decide whether to endorse a traditional business-friendly Republican like Ducey or find someone more aligned with Trump who has promised to take an active role in endorsing candidates in Republican primaries in 2022.
Grant Woods gives a tribute during a memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
John McCain’s first congressional chief of staff and the former Republican state attorney general is weighing a bid to win his seat when it becomes available again in 2020 — as a Democrat.
“What changed for me is the passing of John McCain,” Grant Woods told Capitol Media Services on Wednesday. He said that not only caused him to reflect on McCain’s role as someone willing to speak out but what his absence will mean for politics in Arizona and nationally, particularly in the age of Trump.
For the moment, the seat is occupied by Jon Kyl, appointed earlier this week by Gov. Doug Ducey to fill the seat in the wake of McCain’s death until the 2020 election. At that point there would be another election to fill out the last two years of McCain’s original six-year term.
But Woods is convinced that Arizona is looking for someone in the McCain mold rather than a Trump sycophant. And that someone, he said, could be he.
Woods is no stranger to bucking the party line.
As far back as 2010 the Maricopa County Republican Committee stripped him of his power as a precinct committeeman to vote on matters of party platform and other issues. His crime: publicly supporting Democrat Felecia Rotellini for attorney general — a job he held for eight years through 1998 — over Republican Tom Horne.
More recently he backed Fred DuVal for governor over Doug Ducey. And just this year he helped push an initiative to undo legislation approved by Republican lawmakers to allow for more groups and individuals to influence elections through anonymous financial donations.
But Woods, who has a law practice, has eschewed another bid at politics, at least until now.
“These are not ordinary times,” he said.
“The country, I think, is really in a chaotic, difficult place,” Woods said. “So I have to do some real soul searching and just make a decision here.”
Some of the urging, he said, comes from people he knows in Washington. But he’s also getting a big push here in Arizona, although not from Republicans.
Former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson said he has set up an online petition to “draft” Woods to run in 2020. Johnson, a Democrat turned independent, said he would prefer for Woods to run without party affiliation but understands that may not be the best path forward.
Woods, for his part, said an independent candidacy might make sense. But that has its own hurdles.
“You’d have to run with a lot of money behind you,” he said.
Even that guarantees nothing.
In 1986, Democrat-turned-independent Bill Schulz spent $2.2 million, a large sum for the time, in his bid to become governor. But all that likely ended up doing is siphoning votes from Democrat nominee Carolyn Warner, paving the way for Republican Evan Mecham to get elected with a plurality of the votes cast.
That’s why Woods said he is weighing a bid as the Democrat nominee.
That, of course, raises the question of whether Arizona Democrats would be willing to embrace someone as their candidate who has played for the other team for years.
DuVal, his party’s standard-bearer in 2014, has no problem with that — and not just because Woods backed him that year over Ducey.
“He has always been sort of center-left but has clearly (been) stimulated by Trump to become more pronounced in his leanings,” DuVal said. “So he clearly is in sync with where much of the party is.”
And there’s something else more pragmatic.
“Democrats are hoping to win,” DuVal said.
Woods said he is counting on that desire to achieve acceptance.
“People in politics, one mistake they often make is they don’t fully appreciate that in order to achieve the change you want you have to win,” he said. Democrats, who trail Republicans in voter registration, haven’t been able to do that, with all statewide offices and both U.S. Senate seats now held by the GOP.
But what about running as a Republican?
“I don’t think that’s a realistic possibility,” Woods said, even though he won two Republican primaries for attorney general. But that was then.
“Things have changed,” he said.
“I haven’t changed but the party has changed,” Woods said. “If it wants to be the party of Trump, that’s not me.”
Nor does he believe that the more moderate elements of the party could reclaim it, at least not in the current political climate.
“Jeff Flake couldn’t run,” Woods noted, having effectively been forced out by challenges from those more conservative. In fact, he said, the only person who displays the independence of McCain who could actually win among Arizona Republicans is John McCain.
Johnson said that’s precisely why he backs Woods.
“I’d like to see somebody replace John McCain when the seat becomes permanent that is like John McCain,” he said.
That still leaves the question of whether Woods could pick up sufficient GOP support, even if he ran as an independent — or a Democrat.
“I think there’s a wide swath of the Republican Party in Arizona who would look for a John McCain-type leader,” said Johnson.
Woods said he will make a decision after the first of the year.
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett talks about overseeing a 2020 election ballot audit ordered by the Republican lead Arizona Senate at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, during a news conference Thursday, April 22, 2021, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
As Amy Chan, former Secretary of State Ken Bennett’s elections director describes it, he was such a great boss she was sad to leave his office when she did.
Chan, a Republican who is now the chair of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, has been one of the harshest critics of the Senate’s election audit, and doesn’t mince words about it.
But when it comes to her former boss, who is the face of the audit, she was less than willing to say anything critical because she still cares deeply for the man and maintains a close relationship with him as well as others from that office.
Chan said she knows his involvement is uncharacteristic of who he truly is and she was surprised to hear on April 1 when Senate President Karen Fann appointed Bennett as the liaison and de facto spokesman for the audit.
It also didn’t sit well with her.
“I wouldn’t want him to become involved in something that might turn out to be such a mess,” she told the Arizona Capitol Times, adding that she thought it would be another example of his overall good reputation being tainted by a controversy based mostly in false claims.
Critics of the audit say it lacks transparency, is being run by someone whose credibility is in question for his stated beliefs the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump, and he and the companies involved lack experience in election audits and sound elections practices and policies.
The controversies include auditors allowing former state Rep. Anthony Kern – an outspoken figure in the “Stop the Steal” movement who was photographed on the U.S. Capitol steps after his fellow protesters breached multiple barriers and broke into the building on January 6– to count ballots.
Chan said Bennett has a lot of integrity and a well-deserved good reputation.
Amy Chan
“I know how sincere he is, and that if he’s doing this, he’s doing it in earnest, but my concern is that being involved with something like this is gonna’ have a negative impact on that,” Chan said.
Bennett said he’s involved for a simple reason.
“I’m doing [the audit] because I want to make sure that Arizonans have confidence in their elections,” he said.
Birther Denial
During his tenure as Arizona secretary of state, Bennett made it through relatively unscathed and without scandals or controversies – save for one that drew national attention.
In fact, Bennett’s office on the Seventh Floor of the Executive Tower has widely been considered one of the most competent offices in the past 20-or-so years in Arizona.
Bennett, a Republican from Prescott, ran the office and oversaw the state’s elections from 2009 to 2015, at first being appointed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer who elevated from that office when Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano took a job in the Obama administration.
His one major scandal – if it can even be called such a thing – involved the birth certificate of President Obama, who was running for re-election in 2012 against Mitt Romney.
Despite the plethora of evidence including emails, radio interviews and even his own apology for delving into birtherism, Bennett is now denying that it ever happened.
Over multiple interviews with Capitol Times, and on several other occasions lately, Bennett said he was never trying to keep Obama off the ballot in 2012 and that he never asked for proof of citizenship.
In 2012, Bennett threatened to withhold Obama’s name from the ballot if he couldn’t receive confirmation from Hawaii that the president was actually born in the United States.
Bennett wrote an email on April 16, 2012, to the Hawaii deputy attorney general saying, “If the State of Hawaii does not confirm that [Obama] was born in Hawaii, his name will not appear on Arizona ballots.”
Those who have known Bennett over his many years in the public eye, found that his birther flap was uncharacteristic of the kind and welcoming person who not only occupied the second highest office in Arizona, but previously as Senate president.
Chan said to this day, almost a decade later, the birther story is still the biggest regret she has from that office. The whole thing was “unfortunate,” Chan said.
Chan left the office toward the end of 2013, but she reminisced about how Bennett would make a calendar with everyone’s birthday and wish them a happy birthday. Or, how he would bring in his vacuum from home and clean the floors of the office late at night. Or, how he and others would paint the walls of the office because they didn’t have enough money in the budget to pay people to do it.
“He just made it a really friendly collegial atmosphere. Always say hello to everybody, smile, wish them a good day. … he’s just a very personable human being. He’s got a very friendly demeanor, so he brings that with him to his job as secretary as well,” Chan said.
She said he’s smart and always wanted to really learn the ins and outs of the job overseeing the elections. But not just that part of the job. Also, the business side and administration.
“I think he did a fantastic job with it all,” she said.
Bennett over the years also grew a reputation as a fun person who would break out into pre-planned songs. He would bring out his guitar and write lyrics set to a popular song’s melody.
12 News reporter Brahm Resnik shared lyrics to a song Bennett wrote for him in 2012 about Resnik becoming an American citizen, set to the melody of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” The lyrics Bennet wrote poked fun of his birther flap from just a few months prior.
Even back then, Bennett declared that he was no birther – he was just investigating because citizens wanted him to investigate. Which echoes his involvement in the Senate’s audit of Maricopa County ballots.
Just as he did with Obama’s birth certificate, Bennett now claims he doesn’t think there was any problem with the election. But there could be. He just wants to make sure because people believe something is wrong, he says.
For that,The Washington Post editorial board, poked fun at Bennett with an editorial that said he was caving to a small fringe of the GOP that demanded the investigation.
“If one-fifteenth of 1 percent of Arizonans demanded that Ken Bennett, the state’s Republican secretary of state, go to work in the nude, would he comply? Not likely,” The Post wrote.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his wife, Cindy, right, arrive to deliver more than 15,000 petition signatures for position on the August ballot to Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett ,left, Friday, May 21, 2010, in Phoenix.(AP Photo/Matt York)
McCain
In between the Bennett of 2012 and the Bennett of 2021, he also dipped into the fringe Republican thinking on a couple of other occasions, but usually surrounding a political campaign.
Most notably, during his late bid to challenge Gov. Doug Ducey in the 2018 GOP primary, Bennett raised eyebrows when he announced his candidacy following the groundswell Red for Ed movement. It seemed like he was going to take a pro education approach to defeat a popular Republican at the time, but instead he ran from the right of Ducey and tried to appeal to fringe conservatives.
He was criticized by conservatives for his approach and even Republican columnist Phil Boas of The Arizona Republic penned a column on why Bennett needed to drop out.
Much of it surrounded a tweet from Bennett about how he would never appoint Cindy McCain to the U.S. Senate to replace her husband John, who at the time was battling cancer.
Bennett didn’t apologize at the time for his remarks and didn’t when talking to the Capitol Times in late-April.
Even though President Trump was feuding with the McCain family at the time, Bennett said he wasn’t trying to appeal to Trump’s base.
“I don’t think U.S. Senate seats are family heirlooms to be passed from one family member to another. It had nothing to do with any disrespect for John or Cindy,” he said.
And as for emulating Trump talking points, he said that’s not at all what he was doing. He feels the same way about the audit.
Both things, he told Capitol Times, have nothing to do with Trump.
Heart Sank
Bennett said he would not have made some of the same decisions about the audit as Senate President Karen Fann made, but he wouldn’t get into specifics.
“I was Senate president 15 years ago. She made the choice of the contractor, I didn’t,” he said.
Chan said it’s a matter of credibility, which the people leading the audit lack.
Chan, with a coalition of other election officials in Arizona and nationally, has done her part to push back.
In one recent Twitter post she said it “never should have taken place [because] it was under false claims purposefully done to undermine the faith & confidence of the voters & nonvoters of this country. That’s what really bothers me. That it’s being done at all.”
She said she reached out to Bennett when she saw he was getting involved because she wanted him to know what she was thinking. She didn’t try to convince him otherwise, but just wanted to be heard by the man who she called a boss for four years.
“Anyone you care about who goes into something that you feel is a toxic situation I suppose you want to just say that to them [directly],” she said.
Her heart sank a little when he got involved.
“I hadn’t spoken with him about any of these issues, really, over the years and so I didn’t know where he stood on them. But also, I think my heart sank because I felt like I could just tell already what a mess this might turn out to be.”
Father Edward Reese, from left, Vice President Joe Biden, Larry Fitzgerald, Tommy Espinoza, and Grant Woods wait to speak during memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Former Vice President Joe Biden described the loss of his friend and colleague Sen. John McCain as “all-consuming, like being sucked into a black hole inside your chest.”
The personal loss felt by many was apparent in every tribute delivered at North Phoenix Baptist Church on August 30, but Biden’s eulogy spoke to a grander loss for democracy – the loss of the civility and values that allowed a Democrat like Biden to befriend a Republican like McCain.
“John’s code was ageless, is ageless,” Biden said. “It wasn’t about politics with John… but the underlying values that animated everything that John did, everything he was.”
As he delivered that line, his voice rose and echoed around the church. He’d been speaking softly, often directly to McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain, and children, his tone somber.
But as he turned to McCain’s approach to politics, he took time to excoriate the way things are today.
He said all the parties do today is attack the motives of their opponents’ arguments rather than their substance, something he and McCain lamented. And he told of how he and McCain, late in their careers, received awards for simply working together.
“Think about this,” he said. “Getting an award for your civility. Getting an award for bipartisanship.”
He said the moment McCain parted ways with someone he disagreed with was not the point at which he reached a different conclusion but the point at which someone showed themselves to lack basic decency and respect and the inability to know “this project is bigger than yourself.”
McCain’s approach to his role first as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives then three decades as a senator was lauded by all who spoke at the funeral. There were light-hearted stories about his “ridiculously bad driving,” as told by former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, and his insistence that Democrat Tommy Espinoza speak on his behalf at the Republican National Convention.
But no matter how many laughs the speakers elicited, they always returned to his character and dedication to ensuring people’s right to live free.
“In the end, when it’s all said and done, this Republican-Democratic thing is not that important,” said Woods, who served as McCain’s chief of staff. “We’re all Americans.”
McCain practiced the old way of governing, the way that did not simply allow him to work across the aisle but compelled him to do so.
Woods said that’s what has brought Arizonans out to mourn him en masse – a worry about the bigger picture for a country without McCain and a hope that the leaders who follow him will follow his example.
“He fought the good fight. He finished the race. He kept the faith. Now my friend, we can finish the song,” Woods said, referring to McCain’s favorite Christmas hymn “Silent Night.” “Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.”
At least now, Pastor Noe Garcia quipped, McCain’s biggest worry can be figuring out which channel in heaven will let him watch Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, Jr., who also spoke at the service.
And even in her grief, his daughter Meghan McCain mirrored her father’s hope: “John McCain, hero of the republic and to his little girl, wakes today to something more glorious than anything on this earth. Today the warrior enters his true and eternal life, greeted by those who have gone before him, rising to meet the author of all things. The dream is ended: this is the morning. ”
As he concluded his tribute, Biden harkened back to that optimism McCain had for the country. He said McCain will be so missed not for his heroism but because he knew “heroes didn’t build this country” – ordinary people willing to do extraordinary things did.
In short, he said, “John McCain’s impact on America is not over.”
Congressman Ruben Gallego says he won’t run for the U.S. Senate, likely avoiding a contentious fight for the Democratic nomination to finish John McCain’s last term.
Gallego told The Arizona Republic Monday that it’s not in the best interests of the state or the Democratic Party for him to engage in a bitter primary fight with retired astronaut Mark Kelly.
Gallego is well-connected to the liberal base of the Democratic Party. Kelly jumped into the race last month and has signaled he’ll run a centrist campaign like the one waged in 2018 by his fellow Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
The Arizona race is expected to be one of the top Senate contests in the country. Republican Sen. Martha McSally was appointed to the seat and is looking to keep it.
Congressman Ruben Gallego is considering a run for the United States Senate in 2020, when a special election will be held for the final two years of the late Sen. John McCain’s term.
Gallego told the Arizona Capitol Times that Democratic senators and activists have encouraged him to run, and that he is seriously looking at the race.
“We’re going to get through these November elections, make sure the Democrats take control, and then after that, I’m going to meet together with family, friends and supporters and decide next year whether to run for Senate,” he said.
The biggest determining factor, he said, is whether he’ll have enough time to spend with his son, who turns two years old in January.
“That’s definitely the most important thing, and, after that, to make sure that we’re going to be doing right by the state by making sure we take it back. And if we think that we can put the strongest campaign together to make sure that we’re a check on the president, then we’ll do it,” he said.
Gallego expects the Democratic base to be enthusiastic in 2020, with higher turnout among Latinos and millennials, and he believes he can energize those voters. He said he could face a contested primary, though that wouldn’t deter him.
“We feel confident we would win a primary, so that won’t be the determination of whether I run or not,” Gallego said
So far, the only candidate who has expressed interest in seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 Senate race is former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. Woods, a close confidante of McCain who served as his chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives, is a Republican but is considering running as a Democrat.
Gov. Doug Ducey appointed former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl to McCain’s seat on September 4. But Kyl said he won’t run in 2020, and he may not serve past the end of the year. If Kyl steps down early, Ducey will have to appoint someone else to the seat.
Gallego is running for his third term in the House of Representatives. He faces a Green Party opponent but has no Republican opponent in the general election.
Attorneys for the state and Republican legislative leaders are asking a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit by Democrats challenging the way candidates are listed on the ballot.
Attorney Mary O’Grady, representing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, does not dispute that a 1979 Arizona law spells out that the party whose candidate got more votes in the last gubernatorial election in each county gets to list its candidates first. That means that in 2020 GOP candidates will be listed ahead of Democrats in 11 of the state’s 15 counties.
But in new legal filings from earlier this month, O’Grady told Judge Diane Humetewa, a President Obama appointee, that even if people tend to choose the first person on the ballot, that doesn’t make the system illegal.
“Arizona’s ballot order statute establishes logical, efficient, and manageable rules that determine the order in which candidates’ names appear on a general election ballot,” O’Grady wrote. And she argued that nothing in the law precludes those who have sued – Democrats and Democratic organizations – from voting for the candidates of their choice.
In their lawsuit, the challengers say the statute is illegally “diluting” some people’s votes, citing research which shows that, everything else being equal, people tend to vote for the first candidate on the list.
They said that can be important, citing what is expected to be a tight race for the U.S. Senate.
Republican Martha McSally, appointed to the seat that used to belong to John McCain, faces a stiff challenge from Democrat Mark Kelly. If the law remains in place, McSally will be in the No. 1 position in most counties, including Maricopa where most voters live.
But attorney Kory Langhofer, representing Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers, argued that even if there is some such edge for the first position on the ballot – what he said has been dubbed the “donkey vote” – that does not make it an unconstitutional government-imposed burden. Anyway, he told Humetewa, it’s not like ballot order is the only thing that might make people decide how to vote.
“Even assuming that the ‘donkey vote’ exists, and even if it were possible to quantify its precise impact on election outcomes, ballot order is merely one of many cognitive shortcuts that voters employ in their electoral decision-making,” Langhofer wrote. He said there are other studies which show the impact of party label, incumbency, gender, name familiarity and even “religious-ethnic cues apparent from candidate surnames” that may influence voters’ decisions.
O’Grady, in her own arguments, told Humetewa that there are even simpler reasons for the judge to throw out the case.
First, she said, the individuals that sued lack legal standing, as they have suffered no particular harm — other than being unhappy about election results. And she said that does not change even if some voters do lean toward selecting the first candidate listed.
“The lack of an entirely rational electorate is not an injury-in-fact’ necessary to invoke (constitutional) standing,” O’Grady wrote.
She similarly argued that the committees who sued, including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Priorities USA, a political action committee that backs Democrats, also have not identified any members who are actually harmed. Instead, O’Grady said, the groups are alleging “nothing more than a statistical probability that some of its members might be injured,” an allegation the attorney said is not enough to sue.
But that does not mean such a lawsuit is legally impossible.
“Candidates themselves may have standing to bring the equal protection claim alleged,” O’Grady wrote.
A hearing is set for March.
Much of the focus is on Maricopa County, where unless the law is enjoined, nearly two-thirds of the state population will get ballots with Republicans in top position in every partisan race.
According to the lawsuit, Maricopa voters have favored Republican gubernatorial hopefuls in all but two elections in the nearly 40 years that the ballot order statute has been in place. The only exceptions have been in 1982 when they supported Democrat Bruce Babbitt over Republican Leo Corbet, and in 2006 when Janet Napolitano, seeking a second term, outpolled Republican Len Munsil.
In this Feb. 18, 2010 file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. listens to a question from the audience at a Veterans Town Hall Meeting in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
U.S. Sen. John McCain, a towering figure in American politics and on the world stage, has died, his office announced today.
“Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28pm on August 25, 2018. With the Senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years,” his office said.
McCain, 81, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2017. Last Friday, his family said he had chosen to discontinue medical treatment as the “progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict.”
On Twitter, Cindy McCain said her heart is broken.
“I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years. He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best,” she said.
In a statement, Gov. Doug Ducey called McCain a giant.
“He was a giant. An icon. An American hero. But here at home, we were most proud to call him a fellow Arizonan. Like so many of us, he was not born here, but his spirit, service and fierce independence shaped the state with which he became synonymous,” Ducey said.
House Speaker J.D. Mesnard said Arizona lost a relentless warrior: “Our nation has lost a steadfast defender, and the world has lost a beacon of democracy.”
Former Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said just as important as the battles McCain fought was how he fought them – with a “combination of valiance and decency that few have.”
On Twitter, former President Barack Obama said few have been tested the way McCain was.
“But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are all in his debt,” Obama said.
Joe Biden, the former vice president, said McCain was many things. “But, to me, more than anything, John was a friend. He will be missed dearly,” he said.
U.S. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, called McCain a truth teller, a man “never afraid to speak truth to power in an era where that has become all too rare.”
***
Editors’ note: This profile of John McCain was first published in December last year, when he received the Arizona Capitol Times’ Leaders of the Year Lifetime Achievement award.
The English poet William Ernest Henley wrote “Invictus” at the turn of the 19th century, roughly 60 years before the birth of John McCain, but Henley might as well have been contemplating McCain’s life.
The poem, read in secret by American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, eloquently expresses the grit and perseverance that McCain, now larger than life, has come to be known. Part of that can be explained by the American public’s tendency toward mythmaking, of which McCain is a happy participant. As Mark Leibovich wrote for TheNew York Times Magazine, he’s invariably the maverick, the curmudgeon, the war hero, the sore loser, the last lion, the loose cannon, the elder statesman, etc.
But what his supporters and critics can agree on is that behind each caricature is a man who has lived many a night black as the pit from pole to pole, and under the bludgeoning of chance, he is unbowed.
The arch of McCain’s life is well known. Born at the Coco Solo Naval Station in Panama on August 29, 1936, to an illustrious family of sailors, John Sidney McCain followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps by joining the U.S. Navy. He was dispatched during the Vietnam War, when, based on his recollections, a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole blew off his jet’s right wing on his 23rd bombing run.
John McCain while a prisoner of war.
He ejected, shattered his right leg and both arms, was pulled out of a lake, and went in and out of consciousness for the next few days.
McCain would spend the next five years in wretched conditions that included beatings and solitary confinement. He refused to be sent home when offered the chance because, he said, he had “no right” to go ahead of other men captured before him.
“When the pressure was on, you seemed to go one way or the other,” he wrote of his captivity. “Either it was easier for them to break you the next time, or it was harder. In other words, if you are going to make it, you get tougher as time goes by.”
That kind of resilience would resurface time and again after McCain came home to the United States and later entered politics, first as a member of the House of Representatives, which he won in 1982, and four years later, as a United States senator.
That’s not to say McCain is without fault. His record will forever be marred by the Keating Five scandal. He was cited by a Senate committee for “poor judgment” – a mild rebuke – for having met with regulators.
His outbursts are legendary. In 2015, McCain said then-candidate Donald Trump’s visit to Phoenix has “fired up the crazies.”
He is famous for his temper, and it’s a testament to his outsized stature that having been at the receiving end of that temper is considered a badge of honor.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake thought he was lucky enough to have escaped it during his 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I got to the Senate and my first vote that I cast was on some obscure Senate rule or part of the rules package,” Flake fondly remembered the episode. “He came over and just let me have it.” Several senators who witnessed it told him, “You’ve been initiated now,” Flake chuckled.
On a more pleasant occasion, Flake said he can’t forget the day he and McCain were on the same plane on the way to Arizona for the funeral of Congressman Bob Stump. Flake, who had just been elected to the U.S. House, had been getting a lot of heat for his opposition to earmarks.
U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake
“Senator McCain walked back to where I was on the plane and stuck his finger in my chest, and I thought, ‘Oh, no. He’s going to go after me, too,’” Flake said. “He said, ‘Don’t back down.’”
McCain can be stubborn, with humorous results.
Former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl recounted how McCain recoiled at the charge – completely erroneous, Kyl maintained – that the reason he fought for a spot at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for Arizona’s then hometown airline was so he could take advantage of direct flights.
“At that time, we had to connect in Dallas or Chicago, and flying every weekend – that got old fast,” Kyl said. “Finally, he had enough of the false accusation and blurted out that he would prove it false by refusing to take the direct flight if we got it.”
McCain would continue to change planes in Dallas for years even after getting the slot. “[He] told me that was the second stupidest thing he had done in his life! Second, of course, to running into an anti-aircraft missile over Vietnam Nam, as he joked – self-deprecating humor being another of his traits,” Kyl said.
He is a survivor – of imprisonment, of losing not one but two presidential campaigns (2000 and 2008), of the ideological wars still being fought in his party.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 25, 2017, as the Senate was to vote on moving head on health care with the goal of erasing much of Barack Obama’s law. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
This year, McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and he acknowledged that his prognosis is “very poor.”
The possibility that McCain might step down from his U.S. Senate seat is filling some quarters in Arizona with dread.
“The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is one reason that no one stays up worrying about Davis-Monthan or Luke Air Force or the Goldwater Range,” said lobbyist Kevin DeMenna.
Kyl, the former U.S. senator, said McCain fits neatly in the long line of Arizonans who represent America’s national aspirations.
“So, even when he fights for military bases in Arizona, for example, it is out of principle, not parochialism. In that regard, he is an advocate for closure of military bases no longer needed for our national security,” Kyl said.
Of late, he has found – or maybe rediscovered – his voice as a statesman, the lion from the desert railing against “half-baked, spurious nationalism” and excoriating his colleagues for their partisan rigidness.
Lobbyist Chuck Coughlin, who was finance director of McCain’s first U.S. Senate campaign, said Arizona’s senior senator has lived up to the tradition of public service carved out by the likes of Barry Goldwater.
“He lives up to his own standards and his own beliefs, regardless of political or partisan criticism. He leaves a fine example for everybody else for being true to yourself,” Coughlin said.
Indeed, McCain had little control over being shot down in Vietnam and fracturing different parts of his body.
But he had complete control over how to respond.
In the end, many would agree that McCain has mastered his fate, and he is the captain of his soul.
Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, for the U.S. Senate race against Republican incumbent Martha McSally, poses for a photo outside of the Udall Park Main Recreation Center, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020. (Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star via AP)
Editor’s note: This is a developing story that will be updated as more results become available. This story was first published at 9:04 p.m., and last updated at 1:13 a.m.
Democrat Mark Kelly will be the next U.S. Senator from Arizona flipping the second seat in as many years, defeating Republican Martha McSally who also lost in 2018.
Kelly has 53.4% of the vote compared to McSally’s 46.6%. Kelly is crushing McSally in Maricopa County by nine percentage points, where only one candidate has won a statewide race without taking the largest county in the state, which makes up about 60% of the electorate.
McSally will also make history, but not for something in her favor. She will be the first candidate to lose two consecutive elections for the Senate to Democrats in state history. The last time Arizona had two Democratic Senators was in 1953 with Carl Hayden and Ernest McFarland.
There are still several votes to be counted.
Now Kelly will join Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in Washington D.C.
In the 2018 election between Sinema and McSally, it was much tighter and took several days to get the final results. But this cycle, Kelly led in virtually every poll by an average of 5.2 percentage points.
McSally held a lead on election night and Sinema began to eat into that lead days later eventually coming out on top and emerging victorious by 2.4 percentage points.
Another difference this cycle is the amount of money each candidate raised. While the campaign trail was rough for both candidates each brought in an historic amount of cash. McSally broke records every fundraising quarter raising roughly $56.9 million to date, but Kelly outpaced her at every turn – raising nearly $90 million in total, which is unheard of in Arizona.
Sinema and McSally raised $44.5 million combined in 2018.
This Senate race is a special election after the death of Sen. John McCain in 2018 and the subsequent appointments of Sen. Jon Kyl and McSally. McCain was re-elected to the seat in 2016 so the winner will only hold it for two years before having to run again in 2022.
Kelly will be the sixth person to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate since August 2018 – joining the aforementioned four and Republican Sen. Jeff Flake who Sinema replaced after he retired.
And the winner of this race can also be sworn in as soon as canvassing is complete, a talking point that came up before the nomination and confirmation of SCOTUS Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
In this Oct. 2, 2017, file photo former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., right, listens as her husband Mark Kelly, left, speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Kelly said Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019, that he’s running to finish John McCain’s term in the U.S. Senate. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Former astronaut Mark Kelly waded into the political arena Tuesday, making a bid for U.S. Senate and hoping to prove to Arizonans he about more than just gun control.
Kelly officially said he wants the seat formerly held by John McCain and currently occupied by Republican Martha McSally. She was appointed to fill the vacancy by Gov. Doug Ducey but has to run in 2020 for the final two years of McCain’s term.
While Kelly has achieved some national attention, particularly for commanding the space shuttle, he is better known in Arizona as the husband of former state senator and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She left Congress after being shot in the head during a 2011 assassination attempt and mass shooting outside a Tucson grocery store that left her partially disabled and six others dead.
Since that time the pair have been on a crusade of sorts to convince state and federal lawmakers to enact what they believe are reasonable restrictions on weapons. That starts with closing what some have called the gun-show “loophole” that exempt people who buy weapons from another individual from having to go through the same background check as they would if purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer.
Now Kelly needs to convince Arizona voters that he’s about much more than that.
In an interview with Capitol Media Services, Kelly provided some specifics.
For example, he said physical barriers do make sense along some areas of the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico, notably in urban areas.
“We can’t have an incredibly porous border,” Kelly said.
“But in some places it would be better if we applied technology,” saying that’s the way problems were solve at NASA with “a science-based approach.”
Still Kelly said he wants more enforcement border checkpoints.
“It’s too easy to illegally move drugs through these ports of entry,” he said.
Kelly said he got an important lesson in the importance of health care following the 2011 shooting and the hospitalization of his wife.
“She nearly died,” he said. “Her recovery took a long time.”
The issue, said Kelly, is that this kind of thing, whether it’s an injury or illness, happens to millions of others across the country.
“And often it happens when they don’t have health care coverage and it is devastating to them and their families,” he said. “It often ruins their lives.”
That, he said, goes beyond the physical problems, leaving crippling medical bills.
The top priority, said Kelly, is ensuring that people have access to health care and do not lose their coverage for pre-existing conditions. But he balked at whether he supports some type of single-payer system where the government is responsible for obtaining coverage for all residents.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m going to have to figure this out over time.”
Kelly’s other key issue is climate change.
“I’ve seen changes in this planet from orbit,” he said. The problem, said Kelly, is that people in Washington are not taking this seriously.
“Often, we have people in D.C. that don’t even believe in science,” he said.
Kelly stressed that while he is campaigning for the Democratic nomination he is coming at the campaign and the job with the idea of being independent and working across the aisle on key issues.
“I don’t look at this through a partisan lens,” he said. “I think Arizonans need people who are independent, at least independent-minded.”
That may play in a general election campaign, as it did for Democrat Kyrsten Sinema who defeated McSally in the general election race for the Senate seat being vacated by Jeff Flake.
But Kelly first needs to win the Democratic primary, a hurdle Sinema did not need to face last year. And former state House Minority Leader Chad Campbell said Kelly is not simply going to be able to claim the Democratic nomination. What he said Kelly needs to do is provide Democratic voters with the kind the specifics on issues of importance to them to get their support.
“He’s going to have to demonstrate to voters he has a vision of some of the other big issues,” said Campbell, now a political consultant.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego
There’s also the question of whether Kelly, a relative newcomer to Arizona and Arizona politics, can gather the votes against those with deeper roots, including Congressman Ruben Gallego.
“I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m looking seriously at running for the U.S. Senate in 2020, and that hasn’t changed,” Gallego posted on Twitter shortly after Kelly’s announcement. “I’ll be making a final decision and announcement soon.”
Gallego has his own back story, including being the son of Hispanic immigrants and a Marine Corps veteran serving in Iraq. More significant, he also has an extensive voting record both in the Arizona Legislature and, since 2015, as a member of Congress.
“Ruben represents a big challenge,” Campbell said, saying Kelly will need to “earn his Democratic credentials.”
Kelly brushed aside the question of that lack of a record for voters to consider.
“Well, I’m not a politician,” he said. “Obviously, I’m new to this.”
But Kelly said that he does have 25 years of service in the Navy, including his own military record during the first Gulf War where he flew 39 combat missions as part of Operation Desert Storm. Then there’s his record as commander of the space shuttle.
“I’ve solved problems looking at data and science and information and I hope to apply that in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Gallego is not the only obstacle to the Democratic nomination. Former Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, just elected to Congress this past November, also is exploring his options.
Republican political consultant Stan Barnes said whoever survives the Democrat primary will find that McSally will be a stronger candidate than she was last year when she lost the Senate race to Sinema.
Barnes said he believes McSally learned her lesson and will not wage the same kind of negative campaign that left her short of votes at the end. And he said McSally also will have the benefit of 2020 being a presidential election year, enabling her to take advantage of support from and for President Trump.
U.S. senator John McCain looks on during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)
Everything is just fine…really? We are speeding around the corner… Seriously? It’s time to let
our guard down…what?
Let’s examine and update. Nationwide more than 61 million Americans have filed jobless claims since March 15, and as our country has passed the grim (actually very grim) milestone of 210,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, more than 25 million of our fellow citizens are still struggling with lost income.
At one point, Arizona was the world’s hotspot for the coronavirus outbreak. Over one million in the state lost work and over 500,000 Arizonans are still out of work, struggling to make ends meet on $240 a week. And while it is difficult for some to embrace the truth, more than 5,000
Arizonans, disproportionately the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, have lost their lives.
Acknowledge it or not, this overview and considerable other information and data underscore a failure of leadership, unless you’re totally dismissive of the truth. We must keep reality in mind as we cast our ballots.
Let’s take COVID relief for instance. The federal government (taxpayer money) in March provided an extra $600 a week for those losing their jobs because of the coronavirus. That kept many, many families afloat as more than one million Arizonans lost their jobs. That also made a palpable difference in Arizona, which infamously claims the second-lowest unemployment payments in the country.
However, “leadership” in the U.S. Senate spent months blocking bills to extend that $600 weekly payment and let it expire at the end of July. But the demand to provide those out of work with more relief has not gone away. It has actually only grown as bills, rents and mortgages come due.
In addition, mayors across the state have been passionately asking for more funding to address budget shortages caused by the pandemic. Fewer people working means that local revenues shrink, which in turn means that school, public safety and public health are placed on the chopping block.
So, what did the president do, himself suffering from COVID? He pulled the plug on negotiations for additional relief. (Maybe he will replug and unplug several more times.) His top aide, Larry Kudlow, said that with so few weeks left on the calendar this year, our government (our taxpayer funds) should turn their attention to confirming a Supreme Court nominee instead. There is a history lesson here. In a not dissimilar situation, the revered Abraham Lincoln chose to postpone the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. The United States Senate should do the same and instead focus on constructing the relief package for the American people. Recent polling suggests that 74% of voters want (and need) more economic relief before even considering the Supreme Court’s future. Evidently President Lincoln’s leadership is a lesson unlearned by some of those we elect (and pay) to look out for the wellbeing of the USA citizenry.
Given the written comments and stance on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of the current nominee for the Supreme Court and the reality that the Supreme Court will hear arguments with respect to the ACA repeal lawsuit on November 10, just one week after Election
Day, I believe it is fair to say the timing and the best interest of America’s citizens are worthy of thoughtfulness. That thoughtfulness should be directed to the urgent need of We the People and not a political move which President Lincoln would have had us dismiss.
If it wasn’t for the late Sen. John McCain, the U.S. Senate would have succeeded in repealing the ACA and all of its protections three years ago. McCain knew what it meant to put the interests of constituents before the interests of party. We desperately need that kind of leader now. I remain hopeful.
Reginald “Reg” M. Ballantyne III is former chairman of the American Hospital Association and commissioner of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Then-U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., delivers her signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State’s office Tuesday, May 29, 2018, at the Capitol in Phoenix. McSally ran and lost as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retirement Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. Gov. Doug Ducey later chose her to fill out the term of John McCain. The former chairman of the Arizona Libertarian Party has challenged Ducey’s ability to name a replacement until the 2020 election. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Saying time is running out, the former chairman of the Arizona Libertarian Party wants the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to order an election – and soon – to decide who fills out the term of John McCain.
In new legal papers, Michael Kielsky notes that a lawsuit to challenge the ability of Gov. Doug Ducey to name a replacement until the 2020 election was filed in November. Now, more than six months later, U.S. District Court Diane Humetewa has failed to act.
Kielsky told Capitol Media Services that, at the very least, every day of delay is a day that the voters of Arizona do not get to decide who represents them in Washington. Instead they are stuck with Martha McSally whom Ducey appointed earlier this year.
But Kielsky, who represents two registered Democrats, one Republican, one Libertarian and one independent, said there’s a more practical reason to try to push the process along.
He said if the case drags on much longer it will end up being within six months of the 2020 election, when McSally will have to put herself before voters if she wants to serve out the final two years of McCain’s six year term. And the law is clear that the governor does have the legal authority to appoint replacements within six months of an election, meaning McSally would get to stay through at least 2020.
“We’re going to get to some point, and that point is approaching more quickly of course, where the whole lawsuit would be moot,” Kielsky said.
Ducey, however, is in no rush to have the case decided and risk the chance that a court would determine that there has to be an election for the seat McSally occupies before 2020. In fact, the governor’s attorneys already have filed legal briefs with Humetewa not only defending his right to keep McSally in office through 2020, but telling the judge there is no reason to force her to make a decision quickly.
At this point it doesn’t appear that the appellate judges are interested in stepping in.
In an order late Friday, they ordered Kielsky to either dismiss the appeal himself or show them why they should not toss the case due to lack of jurisdiction.
That order did not go unnoticed by Dominic Draye, one of the governor’s attorneys.
“I think that racing to the 9th Circuit before the district court has even entered a ruling is a bad idea,” he said. And Draye said the Friday afternoon order by the appellate court suggests that the judges agree with that analysis.
Kielsky’s argument is based on the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which took the power to name U.S. senators away from state lawmakers and gave it directly to voters.
It also says when there are vacancies, the governor “shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.” Ducey has done that, setting the primary for Aug. 25, 2020, and the general election for Nov. 3 of that year, to determine who fills out the rest of the term which ends at the end of 2022.
Kielsky, however, contends the Constitution requires the appointment to be temporary “until the people fill the vacancies by election as the Legislature may direct.” And he argues that there should be a special election long before next year, an election that could result in voters choosing someone other than McSally, and other than a Republican, to serve through the end of McCain’s term in 2022.
McSally actually was Ducey’s second pick after McCain died last August.
He originally tapped former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl who served through the end of the year and also provided a crucial vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kyl then went back into private practice.
That gave Ducey the chance to name McSally, who just months earlier had lost her own bid for the U.S. Senate as she was beaten by Democrat Kyrsten Sinema to fill the seat vacated by the retirement of Republican Jeff Flake.
Attorney Brett Johnson, one of the lawyers representing Ducey, has argued that the “inconvenience and expense of a special election outweighs any advantage to be derived from having a more prompt vacancy election.”
In his own legal filings, Johnson also told Humetewa that a special election would give an edge to “special interest groups and candidates with considerable self-wealth or funding” because of what he said is the cost of having to finance an off-year campaign. By contrast, he argued, having the vote to fill the balance of the Senate term at a regularly scheduled election “creates a greater opportunity for a stronger pool of candidates to run.”
Editor’s note: This story has been revised to add information on a late 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals order.
In this May 16, 2011, file photo, former NASA astronaut STS-134 commander Mark Kelly, front, waves a he leaves the Operations and Checkout Building with fellow crew members, including Mike Fincke, for a trip to Launch Pad 39-A, and a planned liftoff on the space shuttle Endeavour at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. A Kelly victory would shrink the GOP’s Senate majority at a crucial moment and complicate the path to confirmation for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara, File)
I have been a registered Republican almost all my adult life who has always been comfortable engaging with people across the aisle on issues I care about deeply. I am still a Republican. But in the U.S. Senate election for Arizona, I won’t be supporting a Republican. I am supporting Democrat Mark Kelly.
To me, Mark represents the type of leadership that is becoming increasingly rare in Washington: he’s an independent thinker, focused on helping his constituents regardless of party, and is a veteran. Experience tells me that these are the type of leaders who get things done. I have spent over 25 years of my life working to get things done to make our communities healthier and safer. Mark Kelly will be a true partner in that work.
In October 1994, my life was irrevocably changed. My younger brother, an off-duty Rochester, Michigan, police officer, was ambushed and killed at the hands of a violent gunman. Adam was 27 years old; an Air Force veteran of the Gulf War. He left behind a wife who was five months pregnant and an 18-month old daughter.
The trauma of his murder left me reeling and questioning my privileged suburban life — I realized anyone can be touched by violence. The following spring, I saw an advertisement in The Arizona Republic for the Brady Campaign asking for volunteers. I called and was eventually connected with Sarah Brady, who invited me to Washington D.C. to meet with our elected officials. It was the first time I told senators my survivor story, and why we need to make sure our laws prevent firearms from being in the wrong hands.
The late Sen. John McCain was there in that Senate hearing room to listen to my testimony. We spoke about expanding the Brady Bill, which had been passed in early 1994, to protect Americans. Like me, McCain was a Republican who was concerned about making Arizona’s communities safer and was willing to talk across the aisle to look for solutions. John McCain was a man of honor, and he served our country with conviction.
Geraldine Hills
Upon returning to Arizona, I founded a nonprofit, bipartisan group dedicated to fighting gun violence. We worked closely with Congresswoman Gabby Giffords when she was a state legislator – she sponsored bills protecting Arizonans from gun violence. In time, I met Mark Kelly.
Mark is a man of integrity and, importantly, he is a problem solver — he approaches issues from a practical point of view. He is not afraid to speak truth to power, unlike his opponent. Martha McSally has spent too much time and energy looking for ways to excuse President Trump’s behavior.
As a mother, a grandmother and a woman of faith, I believe Trump has deeply weakened the moral integrity of our country. We need leaders who will stand up for what is right — to tell us the hard truth, no matter what party they belong to.
Right now, our country is divided. We are sicker, we are poorer, and we are weaker in the eyes of the world. We need strong leaders who will rebuild our economy, fix health care, and protect Social Security, Medicare and the environment. We need to send people to Washington who can look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we face. I know that Mark will do that as senator.
In this election, we need to elect a senator worthy of filling the seat that belonged to John McCain — McSally is not worthy of that seat. Mark Kelly is.
So I’m calling on my fellow Republicans – it’s clear that Martha McSally will not be a senator for Arizonans and will not look for bipartisan solutions to the challenges we face today. Vote for Mark Kelly and send a real public servant to the Senate — a leader who will look out for Arizonans.
Geraldine Hills is the founder and president of Arizonans for Gun Safety.
Health care has been one of the most hotly contested issues behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and in communities all across the country this year. Here in Arizona, thousands of residents have voiced their concerns about the devastating effect the House and Senate proposals would have to individuals, families and the economy. Gov. Doug Ducey has argued against any bill that would cause “Arizonans to have the rug pulled out from underneath them.” And Sen. John McCain’s pivotal vote against the “skinny repeal” bill gave us a chance for a better approach.
McCain warned that it is time to return to regular order and involve both sides of the aisle to deliver affordable health care to the American people. Unfortunately, another small group of Republicans only is attempting to revive the dangerous ideas that have already failed, as well as block emerging bipartisan efforts to strengthen federal health care policy.
Dana Wolfe Naimark
U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., have developed a bill with reported input from Ducey and other Republican politicians. Like every other repeal bill so far, this proposal would pull coverage from hundreds of thousands of Arizonans and tens of millions of people nationwide. The proposal shares the same flaws of the other bills: ending Medicaid expansion and cutting Medicaid coverage for seniors, people with disabilities, and families with children; increasing out-of-pocket costs for people who purchase health insurance through the Marketplace; and leaving governors, such as Ducey, to decide who will get health care in the years to come.
If this bill becomes law, Arizona will be damaged. We would lose more than $1.6 billion in federal health care funding by 2026, as the bill replaces guaranteed federal funding for Medicaid and Marketplace subsidies for middle income families with an increasingly shrinking block grant. After that, block grant funding would completely disappear, eliminating the resources that cover 425,000 Arizonans. Changing Medicaid into a block grant or per capita cap means putting 1.5 million children, seniors, and people with disabilities at risk of losing coverage – with governors deciding who gets hurt first. The bill does not adjust federal funding to pay for public health emergencies like the opioid crisis, newly discovered prescription drugs, or changing demographics. In fact, funding cuts would be deepest precisely when need is greatest.
Ducey should know this bill would mean a reversal on his promise and McCain understands that without engagement with Democrats and stakeholders in the health care world, this proposal offers the same failed plan just with a different name. Parents and grandparents, people with disabilities, seniors and working adults, hospitals and physicians all reject this misguided approach. Arizona leaders should say no to Cassidy-Graham and focus on bipartisan solutions that strengthen our health care system.
— Dana Wolfe Naimark is the president and CEO of Children’s Action Alliance.
A casket carrying Sen. John McCain arrives at the Arizona Capitol on Aug. 29, 2018, where he is to lay in state. McCain would be 82 today. PHOTO BY KATIE CAMPBELL/ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES
Americans think of two things when they think of Arizona: U.S. Sen. John McCain and the Grand Canyon, said Gov. Doug Ducey at a memorial service for the late senator Wednesday.
“Imagining Arizona without John McCain is like picturing Arizona without the Grand Canyon. It’s just not natural,” Ducey said.
McCain’s close friends, family and colleagues reminisced about Arizona’s senior senator and paid tribute to his life at a private memorial service in the rotunda of the old state Capitol building.
His body will lie in state Wednesday — an honor bestowed only to a great few Arizonans. It would have been his 82nd birthday.
McCain’s casket, draped in an American flag, sat atop the seal of Arizona. Later in the the day, the Capitol was open for the public to pay their respects.
McCain was more than a politician. He was a motivator to be better and do better, Ducey said. He was the only politician who, upon his death, could get Arizona and America to set aside politics and come together, he said.
“John McCain was about more than politics,” Ducey said. “He brought us above politics.”
Make no mistake, McCain took part in politics, plowing through elections with the energy and ferocity of a warrior. And he would fight like hell for the causes and issues he believed in, he said.
But McCain also called on everyone to look beyond their own self-interests. When he talked about “country first,” it was more than a campaign slogan or something to slap on a campaign sign, Ducey said.
McCain lived his life and political career by the idea of putting his country first, he said.
“We sometimes think that politics is life and death, but John McCain knew better because he had actually seen death and dying and tragedy,” Ducey said.
McCain’s love for America and its values stems from his more than five years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. By learning about and understanding McCain’s time as a POW, the senator’s wisdom, values and life take on a much greater context, Ducey said.
Former Sen. Jon Kyl paid homage to McCain, saying the senator was an avid fighter for American values and a staunch defender of American national security.
McCain was a world traveler, said Kyl, who trekked across the world with the late senator. McCain knew more international leaders, more world history and had traveled to more countries than any other American official, he said.
He also knew when and where to assert American influence better than any other political leader, Kyl said.
“He represented our values all over the world as a senator from Arizona,” he said. “America is stronger for his fierce defense of our values.”
While he wasn’t born in Arizona — he moved here at age 45 — he quickly came to feel at home, and felt privileged to represent the Grand Canyon state. McCain is often referred to as Arizona’s favorite adopted son
Despite McCain’s death, his fight for America isn’t over yet, the burden has simply shifted, Ducey said. All Americans are obligated to continue the fight on his behalf, he said.
“As we march forward with the courage and resolve that he would have demanded, may we take comfort in knowing in that fight, John McCain will always have our back,” Ducey said.
Those in attendance at the memorial service included McCain’s wife, Cindy, and his sons Jack and Jim and his children from a previous marriage. His daughter, Meghan, sobbed at her father’s casket. Former Govs. Jan Brewer, Janet Napolitano and Fife Symington attended the service. Ducey was accompanied by his wife, Angela.
Legislative leaders J.D. Mesnard and Steve Yarborough were in attendance, as were Secretary of State Michele Reagan, Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Treasurer Eileen Klein.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake gave the benediction at the ceremony.
McCain died of glioblastoma — an aggressive form of brain cancer — Saturday at his family’s cabin near Sedona.
The private gathering Wednesday was the first in a series of events commemorating McCain’s life. A memorial service will be held at North Phoenix Baptist Church Thursday, before his body is flown out of state so he can lie in state at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Friday.
Sen. John McCain says he won’t vote for the Republican bill repealing the Obama health care law. His statement likely deals a fatal blow to the last-gasp GOP measure in a Senate showdown expected next week.
The Arizona Republican says he can’t back the partisan GOP measure because “we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats.”
He also says he can’t back it without knowing the proposal’s impact on insurance coverage and premiums. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said its estimates on that won’t be ready next week.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has said he’ll oppose the bill and Maine Sen. Susan Collins says she’s leaning against it.
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Photographer Timon Harper was listening to NewsTalk 550 KFYI one morning and heard Sen. John McCain say he was eyeing a presidential run. It was the late-1990s.
Harper, a firefighter by trade, said the fire station where he worked was just down the street from the radio station so he decided to head over to meet the senator.
“I waited outside for him. I had never met him before but I figured this would be my only opportunity to introduce myself before he got too big and I wouldn’t be able to access him anymore,” he said.
Harper was impressed.
He said growing up he always had this idea that members of Congress were chauffeured around in a black SUV. For some that may be true, but to his surprise, he said after their meeting, McCain hopped into his intern’s small Honda Civic.
“It showed me they’re no different than anybody else,” he said.
That was a lesson McCain taught him over and over again throughout their lengthy working relationship, he said.
Harper photographed McCain on the campaign trail during his various Senate campaigns and during his presidential runs in 2000 and 2008.
He said the senator always told the same jokes at every fundraiser, but the one that always stood out to him was one where McCain would tell the crowd what his response was when someone would ask him how he was doing after losing a presidential race.
“He would say ‘Sleeping like a baby – I’ll sleep two hours and wake up and cry. Sleep two hours and wake up and cry. Just like a baby,’” Harper recounted. “The fact that he was willing to tell that story, to show his emotion, just humanized him even more for me.”
Harper said something that photography has taught him is that the best way to get to know someone is not by reading about them in the news or seeing them on TV but to watch how they act when no one is watching.
“You learn a lot about a person just by the staff they hire and how they are behind the scenes and he was a genuine guy,” he said.
Proof of that is no more evident than the thousands of people who waited outside the Capitol in the summer heat August 29 to pay their respects. Or from the outpouring of support for McCain and his family that erupted on social media.
It’s also obvious from the sheer number of people, many holding American flags and McCain campaign signs, who lined the path the motorcade carrying the senator’s body took to a memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church on August 30.
McCain died August 25 after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.
Many Arizonans have a McCain story, as do a slew of others across the country.
He was Arizona’s senior senator and one of the top-ranking officials on Capitol Hill, but he was never too big or too busy to help the little guy.
No one knows that better than Gibson McKay who, while serving as a legislative aide to McCain in the 1990s, was frequently on hot dog duty.
McCain was a big fan of the pure Vienna beef hot dogs at the Great Dane Dog House, a staple on Seventh Street in Phoenix.
“Hot dogs and coffee,” McKay said. “That guy survived on those two things alone.”
The shop was often their first stop when McCain arrived home from Washington, D.C.
McCain’s favorite dog? The Maxwell Street, a Polish sausage served with grilled onions, mustard, pickles, tomato and hot pepper.
The senator developed a rapport with the shop’s owner, Tony “Dane” Rigoli, a looming Italian American who steamed or grilled dogs on Seventh Street for three decades. The friendship was a testament to the type of person McCain was, a powerful senator who enjoyed connecting with everyday people.
“He loved bellying up to the hot dog bar or talking sports with the most common among us, whether you knew who he was or not,” McKay said.
One day McCain learned that Rigoli’s son was stationed in Germany while serving in the Army. The son’s wife was ill and needed treatment best offered stateside. McCain wrote a letter to the Army general in Germany urging him to reassign Rigoli’s son to a station in the United States and placed phone calls to high ranking Army officials to move the reassignment along.
“He made a call, wrote a letter, a couple of things like that, and that was it,” McKay said. “John McCain calls the general of the Army, they listen.”
McCain never told Rigoli what he had done. But the next time McKay went into the Great Dane for a dog, Rigoli was ecstatic to have his son and daughter-in-law back home.
“It was just his hot dog joint guy. The best lobbyist in the world is sometimes a hot dog joint guy,” McKay said.
When he was back in Arizona, McCain acted no differently than any other Arizonan. He went to sporting events and shopped for groceries at his local supermarket. He was Arizona’s favorite adopted son.
McCain wasn’t born in Arizona, but he quickly grew to love this state, saying often he was privileged to serve this state.
McCain, a Vietnam veteran, had a reputation for helping veterans, but he didn’t limit his services to just Arizonans.
In 2009, Jame Koopman of Aurora, Colo. was desperate to get his uncle’s Air Force records to show that he served during the time of the Vietnam War.
Koopman’s uncle, Fred Rivera Jr., had dementia and was desperately trying to get his benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The problem was, he didn’t have any of his military paperwork.
Koopman reached out to Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., to no avail. That’s when he contacted McCain’s office. After several letters back and forth with the senator’s office, he ended up getting his uncle’s records on microfilm.
He saved printed copies of the letters, and he has studied them so closely that he can tell McCain’s signature is a tad different on each letter. Because of that, Koopman is convinced McCain personally signed the letters.
“I just thought it was pretty cool because I’m nobody anyways,” Koopman said. “He didn’t have to answer back. He could have sent a letter saying, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ but he helped out.”
Former McCain staffer Jim Waring said helping veterans was a point of pride in the late senator’s office.
Veterans from across the country would call the office because they either didn’t know how to get help elsewhere or they didn’t feel comfortable requesting help from their elected officials.
McCain staffers repeatedly heard veterans say, “I believe that he will help,” said Waring, who is the vice mayor of Phoenix.
“Veterans were convinced he was on their side,” he said.
Katherine Benton-Cohen, an Arizona native, can’t help but remember getting a tour of the U.S. Capitol and the Library of Congress from McCain.
Her mother, Jenice Benton, was tasked with decorating McCain’s office when he moved into the Russell Senate Building after first getting elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986. Benton-Cohen’s parents were Democrats, but they were also early supporters of McCain’s Senate bid.
On the tour, the young girl from Tempe was amazed by the Library of Congress and all its beauty and intricacies. But McCain was also in awe of the building, Benton-Cohen said.
“I just remember his enthusiasm, his exuberance and his respect for this beautiful place,” she said.
Now, as an associate professor of history at Georgetown University, she takes her students to the Library of Congress often.
McCain was “painfully deprived of his freedom,” but his suffering only made him more resolute in his mission to protect democracy for others, said Bettina Nava, the senator’s state director.
During her time working for McCain, one Sunday stands out.
Nava spoke to a grieving father first, but as soon as she told his story to McCain, the senator was on the phone ready to intervene.
The man’s daughter died while doing humanitarian work for a nonprofit abroad and the family couldn’t get her body back to the United States.
McCain intervened immediately, working on an international level to bring the young woman home to rest.
More than anything about that day, Nava recalls listening to McCain speak to the father.
“That’s one that I can hardly talk about it to this day,” she said.
He was reverent and respectful. She remembers him trying to maintain his composure and taking a deep breath as he got off the phone.
He felt those moments, which Nava estimated numbered well into the thousands, reminded him of why he had to persist.
“He knew how fragile democracy was, and he felt honored that he was entrusted to serve and ensure democracy’s safety,” Nava said.
McCain was devoted to helping people. His office acted as an agency in and of itself, intervening on behalf of citizens seeking assistance with everything from getting Social Security checks they relied on to seeking military honors for fellow veterans.
He touched too many lives to count exactly, she said.
“It’s beautiful for me to be looking on Facebook and Instagram and … everybody has a John McCain story. Everybody has a John McCain photo,” Nava said. “He was that accessible. He was just a man of the people.”
Staff writers Katie Campbell and Ben Giles contributed to this report.
In this Feb. 18, 2010 file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. listens to a question from the audience at a Veterans Town Hall Meeting in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
John McCain, the six-term Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, has chosen to discontinue medical treatment for his brain cancer, his family said Friday.
In a statement, the family said McCain had surpassed expectations for survival, but “the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict.” The family added, “With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment.”
The senator, who would be 82 next week, has been away from the Capitol since December. If he should resign his seat or die soon, Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey would name a replacement through the 2020 election. The winner of that election would serve the remainder of McCain’s term through 2022.
The GOP currently holds a bare 51-49 Senate majority.
McCain has been a frequent target of criticism from President Donald Trump, especially for his vote against a Republican replacement for “Obamacare,” the health care law approved under President Barack Obama.
Trump signed a military policy bill this month named for McCain, but in a sign of their testy relationship the president made no mention of McCain’s name in remarks at a signing ceremony.
The son and grandson of Navy admirals, McCain is a former Navy pilot and was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years. He was elected to Congress in the early 1980s and elected to the Senate in 1986, replacing Barry Goldwater who retired. McCain gained a reputation as a lawmaker who was willing to stick to his convictions rather than go along with party leaders. It is a streak that draws a mix of respect and ire.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Twitter that he was “very sad to hear this morning’s update” from McCain’s family.
“We are so fortunate to call him our friend and colleague. John, Cindy, and the entire McCain family are in our prayers at this incredibly difficult hour,” McConnell said.
Arizona Gov. Ducey called McCain “an American hero” who always put his country before himself.
Ducey said a “spirt of service and civility” guided McCain’s life, standing as a model for Americans regardless of political affiliation.
McCain’s wife, Cindy, tweeted: “I love my husband with all of my heart. God bless everyone who has cared for my husband along this journey.”
McCain underwent surgery in July 2017 to remove a blood clot in his brain after being diagnosed with an aggressive tumor called a glioblastoma. It’s the same type of tumor that killed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at age 77 in 2009.
McCain rebounded quickly, however, returning to Washington and entering the Senate in late July to a standing ovation from his colleagues. In a dramatic turn, he later cast a deciding vote against the Republican health care bill, earning the wrath of Trump, who frequently cites McCain’s vote at campaign events.
McCain’s condition worsened last fall and he has been in Arizona since December. A source close to McCain who asked not to be identified said Friday the senator was at his Arizona ranch with his family.
He is a long-term survivor of melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. Doctors classified his brain cancer as a “primary tumor,” meaning it’s not related to his former malignancies.
McCain ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, then won it in 2008 before losing the general election to Obama.
He returned to the Senate, determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded.
When Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015, McCain, the scion in a decorated military family, embraced his new influence as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”
Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”
Former Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a close friend, said Friday that “becoming John McCain’s friend has been one of the great blessings of my life. Today I am praying for him and his family.”
Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, said on Twitter, “No man this century better exemplifies honor, patriotism, service, sacrifice and country first than Senator John McCain. His heroism inspires, his life shapes our character. I am blessed and humbled by our friendship.”
In this Feb. 19, 2020, file photo, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally for President Donald Trump in Phoenix. PHOTO BY RICK SCUTERI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Sen. Martha McSally has a commanding lead over her Republican challenger and will face Democrat Mark Kelly in the November election.
To nobody’s surprise McSally has a 57.2 percent lead over businessman and political unknown Daniel McCarthy, who goes by “Demand Daniel,” in early results. McCarthy challenged the appointed incumbent from the far right and ran a similar campaign to Kelli Ward in 2018 filled with attacks on McSally that include calling her a “liberal.”
McSally already has support from the Republican establishment and President Trump is setting records in fundraising for her campaign. Even with her impressive numbers, she still trails Kelly, who is leading the country in fundraising as if he were a presidential candidate.
Kelly brought in $44.6 million for his campaign to date and still has $21.2 million to spend. McSally raised $26.9 million to date and is left with roughly $11 million in the bank.
McSally, a former Air Force colonel was the first woman to fly a jet in combat, an impressive feat, but voters will now get to choose between her and a former astronaut in Kelly.
Kelly has been soaring over McSally in virtually every political poll leading by an average of nine percentage points. Republican consultants say they are worried she doesn’t have much time to turn things around before some of her supporters will have to rethink their financial backing.
Former Arizona Speaker of the House and Gov. Doug Ducey chief of staff Kirk Adams said McSally has until Labor Day to turn her flailing campaign around and prove the race against Kelly is still competitive.
“There’s no doubt about it, Mark Kelly has been running a fantastic campaign at this point … McSally has some work left to do,” Adams told 12 News on July 26.
There are plenty of Senate seats national Democrats are trying to win to regain control of the chamber and Arizona is now viewed as the most likely to flip into Democratic hands. If that happens in November, McSally would be responsible for handing two U.S. Senate seats to Democrats over just two years.
The seat McSally and Kelly are fighting for used to be filled by Sen. John McCain. The winner of the general election will only serve through 2022 since that’s when McCain’s term would have ended. McCain beat Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in 2016, and when he died it was after the deadline to hold a special election in 2018 so Ducey had to appoint his replacement.
Ducey at first appointed former-Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican, who held the seat through the end of December. McSally was still battling Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in a close battle to replace Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, and eventually lost. But having received more than 1 million votes, Ducey appointed her to hold the seat hoping she could win the next election.
Ducey’s appointments of both Kyl and McSally, though in line with the Constitution, drew some controversy and a subsequent lawsuit arguing he should have issued an emergency special election rather than wait 27 months from McCain’s death to the next qualifying election on Nov. 3, 2020.
U.S. senatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., celebrates her primary election victory, Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, in Tempe, Ariz. McSally will face U.S. Rep. Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz., in the November election as they seek the seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Rep. Martha McSally won the Republican nomination for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, setting up a November contest with Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema.
Republicans picked the candidate backed by the party establishment and seen by analysts as the GOP’s best chance at holding the open seat in what is shaping up to be a difficult election for the party.
McSally, a former Air Force colonel who represents a Tucson-area swing district and was the first woman to fly a jet in combat, defeated former State Senator Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Barb Ruguone, 78, cast her ballot Tuesday for McSally at a Phoenix library. “She seems like she’d be the most upfront, the most forward. It seems like she wouldn’t be intimidated,” Ruguone said.
McSally and Sinema both want the seat being vacated by Sen. Jeff Flake, who is retiring.
The primary happened in the shadow of the death of Arizona’s senior senator, John McCain, whose body will lie at the Arizona Capitol on Wednesday. Both nominees have pledged not to campaign then or Thursday in his honor.
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., talks to campaign volunteers at a Democratic campaign office on primary election day Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
In a statement, Sinema mentioned McCain, who was known for bucking his party. “It’s up to all of us to follow his lead of always putting country over party,” the Democrat said.
McSally began her victory speech with a moment of silence for McCain. “It’s difficult to celebrate anything this week,” she said.
But much of McSally’s speech was a lacerating attack on Sinema. “This is how I see this campaign,” McSally said. “It’s a choice between a doer and a talker. Between a patriot and a protester.”
Arpaio, a former six-term sheriff of Maricopa County who’d never lost a GOP primary, was in third place. In a low-key event at a Greek restaurant near his home, he said he’d dedicate himself to ensuring President Donald Trump gets re-elected in 2020.
In the state’s 9th Congressional District, Steve Ferrara, the former Navy chief medical officer, won the GOP nomination to face Greg Stanton, Phoenix’s Democratic former mayor.
Arizona has an open Senate seat this cycle after Flake decided to leave office. The seat is considered a key pickup for Democrats in their bid to take control of the chamber, meaning the general election will be among the closest-watched Senate races in the nation between now and November. Television ads have already bombarded Arizona residents throughout the summer months, and a competitive general election is likely to draw in millions of dollars in outside spending for television ads and other campaigning.
Sinema was long favored to win the primary and is seen as a competitive Democratic candidate in a general election that could hinge on how voters feel about Trump and his policies. While her centrist approach and Blue Dog Democrat status may not appeal to the state’s voters who are far to the left, her willingness to be bipartisan could curry favor among the state’s large crop of independent voters. If she’s victorious, Democrats could pick up an Arizona Senate seat for the first time since Dennis DiConcini left office in 1995.
In a state whose electoral votes went to Trump, the Republican nominee could use voters’ support for the president to their advantage. McSally, Ward and Arpaio all campaigned on their various connections to Trump during the primary. In mid-August, McSally’s campaign boasted about the president calling her “terrific” while introducing her at an event. Meanwhile, Ward was endorsed by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and Arpaio noted his early support for Trump’s presidential run.
The Republican candidates also distanced themselves from the ailing McCain, who died after most ballots had already been cast by early voters. McSally drew criticism from McCain’s family when she did not mention his name in the signing of the recent defense bill, which was named after McCain. Hours before McCain died on Saturday, Ward suggested in a since-deleted Facebook post that his family had announced he was ending medical treatment to hurt her campaign. After McCain’s death, Sinema and Ward suspended their campaigns for Wednesday and Thursday.
A Democratic victory in the Senate race could suggest the state could be up for grabs in 2020. Bill Clinton was the last Democratic presidential nominee to carry Arizona in 1996.
The Colorado River is a major source of water for Arizona. The management of its supply involves numerous stakeholders and agencies. (Photo courtesy of Central Arizona Project)
After 44 years, the adjudication of water rights in Arizona is still far from being resolved, and water policy experts say that resolving these competing claims is essential to providing certainty about water rights.
Two general stream adjudications are currently underway that affect the most populous areas of the state: the Gila River Adjudication in the Maricopa County Superior Court and the Little Colorado River Adjudication in the Apache County Superior Court. The proceedings’ goal is to establish the extent and priority of all water rights for both river systems.
The Gila River alone provides about 20 percent of Arizona’s water, while its tributaries, the Salt and Verde Rivers, provide nearly 40 percent of the water to the Phoenix area through the Salt River Project.
“As we get to this time in our state where we have less extra water … it’s really critically important that we have clarity and certainty about water rights,” said Sarah Porter, director of the ASU Kyl Center for Water Policy.
General stream adjudications are relatively common proceedings in Western states, and states such as Wyoming and Washington only resolved decades-old adjudications in the past five years. In Arizona, however, few cases have been resolved in the past four decades of proceedings, and there’s a lot of work still to be done: there are over 38,000 parties in the Gila Adjudication and over 5,800 parties in the Little Colorado Adjudication.
“A lot of moving slowly is a result of the court process itself and the due process rights of claimants,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Department of Water Resources. Nevertheless, “we need to move forward and get that adjudication toward the finish line in a somewhat timely manner.”
Some progress is being made. At the beginning of September in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Jeff Flake and Sen. John McCain introduced S.1770 to finalize the Hualapai Tribe’s water rights on the Gila River, and the bill has been referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Water policy experts emphasized that finally resolving the general stream adjudications will be an important step not just for water managers and water users, but also for business in Arizona.
Real estate agents, corporate site developers, and other economic decision makers “have zero tolerance for uncertainty about water rights,” Porter of ASU said.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., left and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Tom Tingle)
Claiming they’re being ignored by John McCain and Jeff Flake, Republican state legislators took the first steps Tuesday to allowing them — and not the voters — to choose who gets to run for the U.S. Senate.
On a 6-3 party-line vote, members of the House Committee on Federalism, Property Rights and Public Policy approved a a measure which would give lawmakers the power to nominate Senate candidates. Legislators from each political party would choose two nominees for each open seat, with the four names going on the general election ballot.
HCR 2022 now goes to the full House. If it gets approved there and by the Senate, the change would have to be ratified by voters in November.
In essence, the proposal would partly return Arizona to the way things were prior to 1913 when U.S. senators were chosen outright by the legislatures of each state, with no popular vote at all.
The 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution overruled that, providing for direct election of senators in the same way voters get to choose members of the House of Representatives. But Rep. Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert, said nothing in that amendment requires a popular vote to determine who gets to be on that general election ballot.
Grantham argued that his measure would bring Arizona back closer to the original intent of the Founding Fathers who wanted the Senate to be not only a check on the popularly elected House but also to be responsive to the states and their lawmakers.
That argument hit a responsive chord with Rep. Noel Campbell, R-Prescott.
“Does anybody think that Sen. Flake and Sen. McCain pay any attention to the Legislature of this state?” he asked.
“I think not,” Campbell continued. “They don’t talk to us, they don’t consult us, we’re irrelevant to them.”
Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, agreed that the state’s U.S. senators pretty much ignore state lawmakers.
“I’ve called a number of times to try and get help,” he said.
“I don’t even get a secretary,” Finchem explained. “I get a voicemail that says, ‘We are currently not taking any more messages.’ ”
But that’s not the only problem Finchem has with the current method of choosing senators.
“The purpose of the Senate and the way it was originally constructed was to exempt it from the passions and the emotions of the people,” he said.
“What we have now is 100 panderers,” Finchem said. “That’s one of the reasons we’ve got trillions of debt.”
Rep. Tony Navarrete, D-Phoenix, said one problem with what HCR 2022 proposes is that it limits nominations to political parties that have representation in the Legislature. That, he said, effectively takes away the voice of the one third of Arizonans who are politically unaffiliated but, under current law, allowed to vote in the Republican or Democrat primaries.
Bryan Masche, who accosted Sen. Victoria Steele, D-Tucson, in the parking lot of the Arizona Senate on May 8, was part of a group of protesters who encountered lawmakers after the chamber adjourned sine die. PHOTO FROM TWITTER
The scene Sen. Victoria Steele encountered when she walked out of the Senate last week was like nothing she has seen in nearly a decade at the Capitol.
Steele, D-Tucson, knew demonstrators stood outside. She had seen some on her way into the Senate that morning, but, at the time, they kept their distance, heckling and promising to recall every lawmaker who voted to end the session — never mind that they all face elections in a few months anyway.
But after the Senate voted 24-6 to adjourn sine die, the group of about 20 people – none wore a mask – in a parking lot reserved for lawmakers shifted from yelling at a distance to surrounding senators’ cars, banging on windows and screaming into the vehicles.
Steele walked out to see a fellow senator who voted for the sine die motion, Phoenix Republican Kate Brophy McGee, trying to back her car out as demonstrators swarmed around her and uniformed Department of Public Safety officers stood watching. Steele grabbed her phone and started recording as she walked to her own car.
Victoria Steele
“They could have stood six feet away and yelled to me and talked to me, and I would have listened,” Steele said. “But when I got out there and I saw them screaming and I saw Kate Brophy McGee honking her horn to try to make them move, I knew they didn’t want to talk.”
The demonstrations on May 8 — as well as a previous rally at the Capitol during which a man threatened to shoot legislative Democrats — shook lawmakers.
Steele said the parking lot demonstration and “Reopen Arizona” rallies remind her of the atmosphere in southern Arizona a decade ago shortly before then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot. Giffords, a Democrat who represented a district that voted for Sen. John McCain for president in 2008, was in a swing district that’s a top electoral target of the then-nascent Tea Party. McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, put crosshairs over Giffords’ district in a map depicting the 20 districts Republicans wanted to reclaim.
Giffords retained her seat, and investigators found no evidence that her shooter had clear political views or that the shooting was politically motivated. But that shooting at a congressional event followed months of Tea Party activists denouncing Giffords as a traitor to the Constitution, broken windows in her Tucson office and an incident in which a protester who attended one of her constituent meetings dropped a gun on the floor.
All of that, Steele said, reminds her of what’s happened over the past several weeks.
“Are they just being loud and obnoxious and saying stupid things or are they dangerous?” she asked. “I live about a mile away from where Gabby was shot, and I saw how nasty things were getting before that.”
Fellow Tucson Democrat David Bradley, the Senate minority leader, said he hasn’t seen the tactics used by lockdown protesters at any point during his 16 years at the Capitol, including when the Tea Party was at its strongest. The Red for Ed movement crowded the Capitol grounds and the Tea Party was angry, he said, but neither major protest movement made people feel unsafe.
David Bradley
“I don’t remember them ever accosting people in the parking lot or following people into the building,” Bradley said.
One huge distinction between the current protests and the ones before is the importance of personal space, Bradley said. In pre-pandemic times, someone yelling in a lawmaker’s face could just be part of the job. But now, getting closer than 6 feet is threatening.
The videos Steele took of her encounter with protesters show a man identified as Bryan Masche follow her to her car and loom over her as she unlocked it. Masche was at one time the star of a reality television show about raising sextuplets. The show went off the air around the time Masche was arrested for domestic violence. He pled guilty to misdemeanor counts of threatening and intimidating and disorderly conduct, according to media reports at the time.
Steele asked the man to give her some distance, but he said he didn’t have to go anywhere and ordered her to get in her car.
“This guy is like 2 to 3 feet away from my face, and he is spewing his droplets into my face,” Steele said. “I don’t know if this guy was exposing me to COVID-19, and I take care of my elderly parents.”
Brophy McGee has encountered similar demonstrations. Her work with the Department of Child Safety earned her the ire of a cadre of parents who have lost custody of their children, and in some cases she’s had to seek security escorts from meetings because those parents followed her.
Despite being a practiced hand at dealing with angry people, Brophy McGee said she found the protesters “very scary.”
“Security got me into my car and I appreciated that, but then all hell broke loose,” she said. “They ran up to my car. They pounded on the windows. They got in my face. I’m used to being confronted. Shoot, I was on a school board. I’ve worked with angry people and angry constituents a fair amount, and I get it, but I think they went beyond the pale.”
Senate President Karen Fann planned to meet May 13 with Democratic leaders to discuss security concerns related to last week’s protests.
Fann encountered the demonstrators when she arrived around 8:30 a.m. on May 8, and one handed her a two-page paper explaining that they would immediately try to recall any senators who voted to adjourn sine die. But by the time she left late that afternoon, the parking lot was clear, and Fann said she saw encounters other senators had solely through videos posted on Facebook.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., left and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Tom Tingle)
On the day of President Donald Trump’s visit to Phoenix, the latest poll delivered grim news to U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, one of the president’s most vocal critics within his party.
The poll shows Flake losing to contenders in both the primary and general elections.
The poll, which was conducted by Phoenix consulting firm HighGround, shows Flake down by double digits to primary challenger Kelli Ward, a former legislator, who leads 42.5 to 28.2 percent.
According to the poll, 5 percent support another candidate while 24 percent didn’t answer.
In the general election, the poll shows Flake losing to U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who is considering challenging Flake for his U.S. Senate seat.
Sinema leads Flake 40.5 to 32.5 percent, with 27 percent saying they don’t know who they would vote for or who refused to answer.
In a head-to-head matchup, HighGround’s poll gives Sinema a slight advantage over Ward, though the congresswoman’s lead is well within the margin of error.
Sinema leads with 31.8 percent to Ward’s 30.5 percent. In this theoretical Sinema-Ward matchup, the largest chunk is made up of people who are undecided or who declined to answer (that group accounted for nearly 38 percent of the respondents).
Inside the Phoenix Convention Center, where he held a rally, Trump didn’t mention Flake by name, but nonetheless took a swipe at him. Trump said Arizona’s other senator is “weak on borders,” eliciting boos from the crowd.
Plus, Trump added about Flake, “nobody knows who the hell he is.”
Despite his digs at Flake, Trump didn’t endorse or even mention anyone who is or could run against the incumbent in a Republican primary. Some had speculated that a Trump tweet from last week praising Ward could mean a presidential endorsement today.
The live-caller poll, which includes a mix of people called on cell phones and land lines, was conducted on August 18 to 19, and has a margin of error of +/- 4.88 percentage points. HighGround surveyed 400 people who have voted in at least two of the past three general elections for the general election questions. The general election sample was 44.2 percent Republicans, 31.8 percent Democrats and 24 percent independents or others.
For the primary election question, HighGround polled 273 Republicans and independents. Of those 273 people, 65 percent were Republicans and 35 percent were independents.
HighGround’s Paul Bentz told our reporter that the GOP number should have been higher, since Republicans are likely to make up about 85 percent of the primary electorate. Flake trails Ward, 46-26, among Republicans, Bentz said, meaning a higher percentage of Republicans would have widened the gap even further in favor of the challenger.
Respondents were vetted only based on general election voting history, not primary voting history.
Reporter Rachel Leingang contributed in this story
In this May 20, 2020, file photo, then-Arizona National Guard Maj. Gen. Michael McGuire, director of the Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, answers a question at a news conference in Phoenix. McGuire, the former head of the Arizona National Guard, has filed papers to run for the U.S. Senate, joining what’s likely to be a crowded field of candidates seeking the Republican nomination. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, Pool, File)
Retired Maj. Gen. Michael “Mick” McGuire, who led the Arizona National Guard through the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, formally began his campaign for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, becoming the second major Republican looking to unseat Democrat Mark Kelly.
McGuire introduced himself with an online video highlighting his military career and presenting himself as a political outsider tired of “weak leaders” and “politicians who sit on the sidelines.”
In his video, McGuire describes himself as a “constitutional conservative” and calls for securing the border. He says he opposes abortion, will protect 1st and 2nd Amendment rights and “will walk shoulder to shoulder with law enforcement.”
McGuire, who retired earlier this year from the military and from his post as head of Arizona’s emergency management agency, was a visible presence and a booming voice beside Gov. Doug Ducey during televised briefings about the pandemic. The guard helped deliver goods and stock shelves at food banks and grocery stores as supply chains froze up and panicked shoppers snapped up food and paper products last year.
The Guard also built temporary medical facilities and flew supplies to the remote and underserved Navajo Nation as the outbreak hit the reservation hard. Guardsmen also responded to racial justice protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
About 85% of the Guard has been called up in the last year, more than have ever responded to domestic needs, McGuire said in April at a news conference where Ducey introduced his successor at the National Guard.
McGuire also oversaw the deployment of Guardsmen to the southern border.
McGuire, an Air Force Academy graduate, flew F-16 fighters before joining the Arizona National Guard in 2001, where he continued as an F-16 instructor pilot and flew MQ-1B Predator drones. Gov. Jan Brewer appointed him adjutant general, the Guard’s top leader, and head of the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs in 2013. Ducey kept him in the job when he took office in 2015.
Solar energy entrepreneur Jim Lamon was the first major Republican candidate to jump in the race. Other Republicans considering a Senate run include U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs and Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
Kelly, a retired astronaut, won a special election last year to finish the late John McCain’s last Senate term. He is now running for a full six-year term. The race is one of the most high-profile contests in 2022 and will help determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, who is the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, speaks to supporters of President Trump at a rally in Mesa on Oct. 19, 2018.
Martha McSally scored the political redo of a lifetime when she was appointed to the U.S. Senate on December 18.
In a way, by appointing McSally to fill the seat that will soon be vacated by Sen. Jon Kyl, Gov. Doug Ducey wiped the slate clean for the two-term Arizona congresswoman who lost her bitter U.S. Senate bid earlier this year.
While her campaign loss and the political miscalculations that may have led to her downfall won’t quickly be forgotten, the appointment allows McSally to showcase another side of herself and gives her the chance to start fresh. A do-over could prove essential if McSally hopes to have a fighting chance of winning the Senate race in 2020 and again in 2022.
From when she is sworn in next year until 2020, McSally will have to walk a fine line if she wants to be re-elected in what may be an even tougher election year for Republicans. President Donald Trump will presumably be at the top of the ballot, and is sure to have an effect on down ballot GOP candidates.
Although McSally has not said if she will run in two years to keep her seat, it’s practically a given that she will mount another Senate campaign.
McSally’s already hinted that she wants to conduct herself differently than she did during this campaign cycle. At a press conference December 18 where she accepted the appointment, McSally vowed to serve by the guiding principles of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain. She also praised McCain as a giant and an American hero.
“I’m going to commit to holding myself to the standard of service that Senator McCain indemnified, putting country before self and always striving to do the right thing for Arizonans,” she said.
McSally mentioned McCain more in her brief remarks than she did throughout her entire Senate campaign.
During the Senate race, McSally worked to distance herself from McCain for fear that she might alienate Trump voters. Her strategy was painfully obvious when she took credit for a new defense spending bill named after McCain and stood with Trump when he signed it.
But neither Trump nor McSally mentioned McCain’s name during the event.
The incident hurt McSally’s standing with the McCain family. McSally met with Cindy McCain just days before the appointment in an attempt to mend the rift.
If McSally is truly turning over a new leaf, she may also want to reconsider how closely she embraces Trump in the future, said Zachary Smith, a regents professor of politics and international affairs at Northern Arizona University.
“Things have changed. Her path is going to have to be, be with Trump but not be with Trump,” Smith said. “She’s still going to have to talk about how great Trump is, but I think she can now nuance that.”
In other words, McSally is going to have to take a page out of Ducey’s playbook.
The governor successfully distanced himself from the president throughout his contentious re-election campaign by intentionally keeping Trump and his administration out of his talking points.
Democrats made gains in Arizona in 2018 and early signs indicate Democrats could have a fighting chance again in 2020 because of the sheer emotional reaction many have to Trump.
If McSally thought her 2018 Senate bid was tough, she may have to wade through an even more complicated political environment in two years.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics has classified Arizona’s 2020 Senate race a “toss-up” and predicts the state’s Senate race will be one of the most competitive in the country as Democrats look to take back the upper chamber of Congress.
The McSally appointment doesn’t change the rating.
Though she’ll technically be an incumbent, McSally won’t have the traditional benefits of incumbency, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Instead, she’ll have to reinvent herself and move to the political middle, which could help her in 2020, he said.
“She’s now in John McCain’s seat,” Kondik said. “I think it would behoove her to try to find a few places where she could move to the middle on issues to try to get back some of those swing voters who maybe voted for Donald Trump grudgingly and then maybe switched to Sinema in 2018 and are probably up for grabs in the next Senate race.”
But McSally’s ability to move to the middle depends on if she can fend off a primary challenge. She’ll likely have to move further to the right if she does face a primary against familiar foes like Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Kondik said.
This year’s GOP primary challenge between McSally and Ward devolved into a contest of who was closer to Trump, which made it hard for McSally to court moderate Republicans in the general election.
Sinema, who did not face a serious primary contest, was able to focus on defining herself for a general election electorate and did not have to spend campaign cash fending off primary challengers.
“I think what Republicans would hope for is that the shoe would be on the other foot this time,” Kondik said. “McSally could maybe use her appointed incumbency to fend off a credible primary challenger and for the Democrats to have a primary of their own.”
Some Republicans are also eager for a McSally transformation to include a complete overhaul of her campaign staff and consultants.
In a campaign postmortem, McSally’s campaign consultants, Axiom Strategies — a national GOP campaign firm — chalked up her loss to outside factors. Their four-page memo made the case why, for numerous reasons, McSally’s loss was not her fault.
The memo has irked some Republicans because it publicly gave the appearance that McSally was not owning up to her campaign mistakes.
Instead, consultants chalked up her loss in the Senate race to Sinema’s money advantage, lack of primary election and having the home court advantage in the state’s largest media market.
Ben Domenech, whose wife is Meghan McCain, a TV personality and the late senator’s daughter, called the memo “disappointing” in a recent post on “The Federalist,” a conservative online magazine he runs.
The memo doesn’t address any of McSally’s failures as a campaigner and seems to indicate the candidate and her team did not take a hard look at where they went wrong in the race, he wrote December 18.
“Whether she holds the seat in 2020 comes down to whether McSally has the capacity and the humility to learn from her mistakes as a campaigner, and chooses a new political team with a proven record of winning in purple states,” Domenech said.
Gov. Doug Ducey appoints Rep. Martha McSally to the fill John McCain’s senate seat currently held by Jon Kyl who will step down Dec. 31, 2018. PHOTO BY DILLON ROSENBLATT/ARIZONA CAPITOL TIMES
Because she will be sworn in first, Sinema will become Arizona’s senior senator and first female senator, which Ducey said honors the wishes of the state’s voters.
Sinema defeated McSally by about 55,000 votes in Arizona’s Senate race where more than 2.4 million votes were cast earlier this year.
But McSally isn’t bitter. In accepting the appointment, she promised to work with her former opponent once they are both sworn in.
The concept of seniority, which is assigned based on when incoming senators are sworn in, was developed in the first half-century of the Senate, resolving the institution’s struggle to find an “equitable means for distributing special status among members,” including committee assignments and getting more desirable office space
McSally will be Arizona’s junior senator.
At a press conference Tuesday to announce the appointment of McSally to the U.S. Senate, Ducey said Sinema deserves senior standing.
“I’m also going to respect the will of the voters. Sen.-elect Sinema was elected to the office and she’s going to be first,” he said.
Ducey could have pushed for McSally to be sworn in immediately — as Sen. Jon Kyl was when he accepted the appointment to fill the seat previously held by Sen. John McCain. In that scenario, McSally would become Arizona’s senior senator.
McSally will fill McCain’s seat when Kyl steps down at the end of this year.
Although senior status is mostly symbolic, Ducey likely would have faced a wave of criticism if his administration pushed for McSally to be sworn in before Sinema.
Every state has a senior and a junior senator. Typically, there is a sizeable experience gap between the two senators and the senior member has more knowledge of the chamber and more clout amongst its members. In this case, both Sinema and McSally will be coming into the Senate at roughly the same time.
Sinema will be sworn in with other new senators on Jan. 3. McSally will be sworn in sometime after that, Ducey said.
Once they’re sworn in, McSally vowed Tuesday to work with Sinema — putting aside the “spirited” election matchup that pitted the two congresswomen against each other this year.
Arizona’s senators have a long, storied history of working together, McSally said, characterizing the teamwork as a state tradition. The two-term congresswoman from Tucson said she and Sinema share a lot of common ground and will work together just like they did when they were both in the House.
“The election is over and the people have spoken and I’m honored to have this appointment,” McSally said. “And now, for all of us, it’s about moving forward and it’s about the challenges that we have as a state and as a country and continuing to be problem-solving for the people that we represent.”
Her statements glossed over her contentious Senate matchup with Sinema in which the attacks turned both negative and personal.
Sinema has not publicly acknowledged Ducey’s appointment of McSally. McSally said she texted Sinema the news early Tuesday morning.
Part of the reason Arizona’s senators have often worked well together is that in the state’s recent history, both senators have represented the same political party. McSally, a Republican, and Sinema, a Democrat, represent opposing parties with Democrats in the minority in the Senate.
Arizona hasn’t had Democratic representation in the Senate since Dennis DeConcini took office in 1977, serving first with Republican Barry Goldwater and then McCain.
Now, of the six states with two female senators, Arizona will be the only one in which the women are from different political parties.
Some have criticized Ducey for appointing McSally after she lost the Senate race, arguing the governor’s appointment was unfair considering voters rejected McSally in November.
Arizona Democratic Party chairwoman Felecia Rotellini said McSally and Republican leaders in the Senate are rejecting the will of the voters to advance the GOP agenda.
“After running a divisive, dishonest campaign for over a year, Arizona voters rejected McSally because they don’t trust her to fight for them when it matters most,” she said.
Ducey credited Sinema for her decisive victory in November, but said McSally still earned votes of confidence from a large swath of Arizona voters.
“The voters did make their choice and I believe that the voters had two excellent choices in this past election, he said. “Martha McSally received over 1 million votes to the United States Senate.”
In this June 24, 2021, file photo, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., smiles as she returns to the Capitol after a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington. More than her shock of purple hair or unpredictable votes Sinema is perhaps best known for doing the unthinkable in Washington: spending time on the Republican side of the aisle. Her years in Congress have been a whirlwind of political style and perplexing substance, an anti-war liberal-turned-deal-making centrist who now finds herself at the highest levels of power.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
More than for her shock of purple hair or unpredictable votes, Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is perhaps best known for doing the unthinkable in Washington: She spends time on the Republican side of the aisle.
Not only does she pass her days chatting up the Republican senators, she has been known to duck into their private GOP cloakroom — absolutely unheard of — and banter with the GOP leadership. She and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell talk often by phone.
Sinema’s years in Congress have been a whirlwind of political style and perplexing substance, an antiwar liberal-turned-deal-making centrist who now finds herself at the highest levels of power. A key negotiator of the bipartisan infrastructure compromise, she was among those President Biden first called to make the deal — and then called upon again as he worked furiously to salvage the agreement from collapse. A holdout to changing the Senate’s filibuster rules, she faces enormous pressure to act while voting rights in her own state and others hang in the balance.
David Lujan
“If anybody can pull this off it’s Kyrsten,” said David Lujan, a former Democratic colleague of Sinema’s in the Arizona Legislature. “She’s incredibly smart, so she can figure out where people’s commonalities are and get things done.”
The senator’s theory of the case of how to govern in Washington will be tested in the weeks ahead as Congress works to turn the infrastructure compromise into law and mounts a response to the Supreme Court decision upholding Arizona’s strict new voting rules.
She is modeling her approach on the renegade style of Arizona Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018 and was known for his willingness to reach across the aisle. But aspiring to bold bipartisanship is challenging in the post-Trump era of hardened political bunkers and fierce cultural tribalism. Many in her own party scoff at her overtures to the GOP and criticize her for not playing hardball.
Her name is now uttered alongside West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin as the two Democrats standing in the way of changing the filibuster rules requiring 60 votes to advance legislation — a priority for liberals working to pass Biden’s agenda in the split 50-50 Senate. This year she cast a procedural vote against raising the minimum wage and has opposed the climate change-focused Green New Deal, even though she’s not fully opposed to either policy. She declined a request for an interview.
“It’s the easiest thing in the world for politicians to declare bipartisanship dead and line up on respective sides of a partisan battle,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press. “What’s harder is getting out of our comfort zones, finding common ground with unlikely allies, and forming coalitions that can achieve durable, lasting results.”
Sinema arrived in Washington with a burst of energy and a swoosh of fashion. She quickly became known as one of the best vote counters in the House, on par with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, because of her visits to the other side of the aisle. She voted against Pelosi for speaker more than once.
Her maiden speech in the Senate drew from McCain’s farewell address, a marker of where she was headed. She changed the decades-old Senate dress code by simply wearing whatever she wants — and daring anyone to stop her. The purple wig was a nod to the coronavirus pandemic’s lockdown. (In off hours, she has been spotted wearing a ring with an expletive similar to “buzz off.”)
“People may debate her sincerity, but the truth is, she makes an active decision that she’s going to work well with other people — and I haven’t seen her slip up,” said Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who served with her in the House.
Sinema’s status as a bipartisan leader fascinates those who’ve watched her decades-long rise in Arizona politics, where she began as a lonely left-wing activist who worked for Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green Party presidential campaign and then slowly retooled herself into a moderate advocate of working across the aisle.
Steve Yarbrough
“Ideologically, it does surprise me,” Steve Yarbrough, a Republican who served 12 years with Sinema in the Arizona Legislature, said of her transformation. “But given how smart and driven she is, well, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”
That Sinema even made it that far seemed improbable. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she moved with her mother and stepfather from Tucson to the Florida panhandle, where she lived in an abandoned gas station for three years.
Driven to succeed, she graduated from the local high school as valedictorian at age 16 and earned her bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in Utah at age 18, leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which she’d been raised, after graduation.
Sinema landed in Phoenix, where she earned several more degrees — including a law degree and a doctorate — worked as a social worker and then a lawyer, vociferously protested the Iraq War and fought for immigrant and LGBTQ rights at a time when Arizona was veering right. In 2004 she was elected to the state Legislature representing a fairly liberal area and initially was a backbencher who lobbed rhetorical bombs from the left.
But Sinema has written and spoken extensively of how she discovered the merits of moderation while serving in the GOP-controlled state Legislature. She wrote a book titled “Unite and Conquer” about the need for leftists to compromise and cut deals.
In 2006, she co-chaired a bipartisan group to fight a gay marriage ban on the ballot and had to decide whether to simply condemn the ban or try to defeat it, said Steve May, the Republican former state lawmaker who collaborated with her.
An avid consumer of polling, she helped hit upon a strategy of targeting older, retired heterosexual couples who could also lose benefits under the ballot measure due to their unmarried status. They narrowly succeeded in defeating it. (Another ban passed two years later.)
“She came from doing speeches and leading protests, and she learned she can actually win,” May said.
When a congressional seat opened up in a bluing stretch of Phoenix’s eastern suburbs, Sinema ran and won.
She had remade herself into the ideal candidate for a state that was slowly becoming competitive. And in 2018, she seized the moment, winning the open Senate seat.
Her infrastructure work is only one of several bipartisan “gangs” in the Senate where she is testing her theory of governance. She is about to roll out a minimum wage proposal with Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and is involved with others on immigration law changes.
“Kyrsten is always honest and straightforward, two often underrated qualities that are the mark of a successful legislator,” said Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican whip, who is among those Sinema often seeks out for conversation.
In a statement to the AP, Thune said that “while we certainly don’t see eye-to-eye on every issue,” he trusts that she is transparent with him, and he respects her “sincere pursuit of bipartisanship.”
Charming and funny in private conversations, Sinema prides herself on competing in marathons and triathlons, while maintaining a notoriously colorful wardrobe — even in her Green Party days, she referred to herself as a “Prada socialist.”
Dashing from the Senate recently, she brushed off reporters’ questions about the infrastructure talks. On that day she wore a faux tuxedo bib dress paired with a suit jacket. Why?
She does what she wants, she suggested, by way of a shrug, before she climbed into a waiting car.
In this April 17, 2012, photo, James Hodgkinson of Belleville protests outside of the United States Post Office in Downtown Belleville, Ill. A government official says the suspect in the Virginia shooting that injured Rep. Steve Scalise and several others has been identified as Hodgkinson. (Derik Holtmann/Belleville News-Democrat, via AP)
The revelation that alleged Alexandria, Virginia shooter James Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders volunteer whose social media postings were filled with anti-Trump and anti-Republican rhetoric brought a round of recriminations from some Arizona Republicans who blamed the “left” for the attack.
Others, however, called for a measured response to a shooting that wounded five, including U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, who was practicing baseball along with other Republicans.
Some, like U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, lamented the toxic political environment, saying she fears it might push individuals teetering on the edge toward violence.
Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, took to Twitter to talk about prayers for the victims but also to call the shooting a “wake up call to the left.”
“U can’t laugh @ severed heads & cheer assassination plays, then act surprised,” he wrote.
Former legislator Kelli Ward, who lost to U.S. Sen. John McCain in last year’s primary and is now challenging U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, wrote on Twitter that the shooter was politically motivated.
“We must start taking threats seriously. The violent #progressive rhetoric to #Resist goes too far,” she wrote.
Flake was at the baseball practice when the shooting occurred, and CNN cited him as saying once the shooter was neutralized, he and U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup went out to where Scalise was lying to apply pressure to his wound.
Former lawmaker Adam Kwasman, who worked for the 2010 Jesse Kelly campaign that some Democrats unfairly blamed for inciting 2011 Tucson shooter Jared Loughner, urged people in a Facebook post to be “responsible and measured” in their responses.
“We must refrain from casting blame on anybody except for the madman who committed the crime. I sure wished others would have done the same in light of the Tucson attack,” Kwasman wrote, referring to the 2011 shooting in Tucson that seriously injured 13 people, including then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and killed six people.
While emphasizing that the investigation is ongoing and the shooter’s motive is being ascertained, McSally said that the shooting appears to be a “potential political act of violence,” and said she fears today’s political environment has created a toxic mix that could push people toward violence.
McSally said she hopes that today’s shooting will serve as a wake-up call, specifically to “tone the temperature down.”
McSally, a U.S. Air Force veteran, said she has fought for America, and the enemy is “not our neighbor or someone who is in our family or our community that’s of a different political view than us.”
She said folks can have differing views and rigorously debate the policy issues of the day, “but do it in a way that isn’t hateful, demonizing, with vitriol, that creates an environment that [pushes] someone who is maybe unstable or prone to acts of violence to take action.”
The circumstances behind the shooting or the shooter’s intentions are yet unknown, but, McSally added, “But people are fooling themselves if they think the environment that we’re in right now doesn’t have the potential to incite someone who is not stable to do something like this.”
She noted that the FBI has arrested a Tucson man on suspicion of threatening her. After that incident, McSally said she told her family, staff and friends that she feels that “it’s only a matter of time before these threats of violence turn into acts of violence toward somebody. And unfortunately, that prophecy came true this morning.”
In this June 3, 2016, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets the audience as he arrives to deliver a speech in Singapore. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP’s standard-bearer in the 2008 election, died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)
Rick Davis, Sen. John McCain’s former presidential campaign manager and a family spokesman, read the following farewell statement from the senator at a news conference at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix on Monday:
“My fellow Americans, whom I have gratefully served for sixty years, and especially my fellow Arizonans,
Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead. I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.
I have often observed that I am the luckiest person on earth. I feel that way even now as I prepare for the end of my life. I have loved my life, all of it. I have had experiences, adventures and friendships enough for ten satisfying lives, and I am so thankful. Like most people, I have regrets. But I would not trade a day of my life, in good or bad times, for the best day of anyone else’s.
I owe that satisfaction to the love of my family. No man ever had a more loving wife or children he was prouder of than I am of mine. And I owe it to America. To be connected to America’s causes – liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people – brings happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures. Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.
‘Fellow Americans’ – that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and power in the process.
We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.
We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.
Ten years ago, I had the privilege to concede defeat in the election for president. I want to end my farewell to you with the heartfelt faith in Americans that I felt so powerfully that evening.
I feel it powerfully still.
Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.
Farewell, fellow Americans. God bless you, and God bless America.”
Two senior staffers for Gov. Doug Ducey are leaving their jobs after nearly seven years.
Chief of Staff Daniel Scarpinato and Deputy Chief of Staff Gretchen Conger announced in a joint statement from the governor’s office that they would be leaving their posts with new jobs already lined up. Scarpinato who elevated to Ducey’s right hand man in late 2018 – after Ducey’s re-election – from the communications director job, will join an advertising and political consulting firm called Ascent Media as a partner.
“Daniel has been a trusted and important part of my team since the beginning,” Ducey said in a written statement. “His leadership of our team through challenge after challenge has been critical to our success. I am beyond thankful for his dedication and service from our 2014 transition to my re-election, through COVID and the completion of our most successful legislative session to date. While Daniel is moving on, I know he will continue to have an important impact on politics and policy in this new and exciting role.”
Scarpinato said working for Ducey was “the greatest honor of my career.”
“Not only has the Governor been the most phenomenal boss I’ve ever had, but this team is one I’ve been so proud to be part of — dating back from day one, right up until now. They are the best,” he said.
While Scarpinato will remain in Phoenix, his deputy will not.
Conger will leave the office to join the campaign for Sarah Huckabee Sanders who is seeking the nomination for Arkansas governor. She will serve as a senior advisor.
Conger, was widely viewed as the person who would become chief of staff over Scarpinato in 2018, she ended up as his deputy after serving as Ducey’s Director of Legislative Affairs before being elevated to Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Budget in 2016.
“Gretchen has been a critical part of the team that has accomplished some of our most important initiatives and reforms, from the expansion of school choice to universal licensing to historic tax cuts,” Ducey said.
An announcement is coming soon about who will be Ducey’s third chief of staff.
Ducey’s first chief of staff was Kirk Adams, the former House Speaker and congressional candidate, who served in the role for four years.
Long before joining the governor’s staff, Scarpinato dabbled in journalism. He reported for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, covering former Gov. Janet Napolitano, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid before making his way to Phoenix to become editor of Capitol Times sister publication Yellow Sheet Report. From there he worked on the unsuccessful congressional campaign for former lawmaker Jonathan Paton in 2010, became a spokesman for the Arizona House and the national press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Conger was a legislative intern under Gov. Jan Brewer, worked in state government for a bit before landing a gig with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. She worked there for three years before landing a job with Ducey’s Day One crew.
Ducey only has a year and a half remaining in his final term as governor and will be the first governor since Gov. Bruce Babbitt to serve two full terms – he will just have to do so without most of his senior staff.
Torunn Sinclair sits surrounded by the bare walls of her office at the Arizona Republican Party’s headquarters.
She has dropped a Diamondbacks hat atop a stack of papers, filled a faux-vintage cream vase with white and red roses from an admirer and left a John McCain sticker somewhat awkwardly placed above the door. Beyond that, the state GOP’s new communications director has had little time for decorating in the past two months.
At the old age of 24, she has carved out a place for herself in state politics as something of a social media wunderkind. She once led a successful Twitter campaign to promote her “Today Show”-themed dorm floor at Arizona State University — Matt Lauer retweeted, and Al Roker showed up to do the news live. It’s still on her resume.
She went on to work as the first digital press secretary for the Governor’s Office. And there, she got a blank slate to build momentum behind the rising stock of Gov. Doug Ducey.
Torunn Sinclair (Photo by Rachel Leingang/Arizona Capitol Times)
You went right from college to a successful gubernatorial campaign. How?
I got really lucky. I did. I have a great mentor in Melissa DeLaney. I met her when I was an intern at the Greater Phoenix Economic Council in college. Melissa was the communications director there before she left for Governor Ducey’s campaign. I was graduating, and pretty much right when she started, she called me and was like, “Hey, do you want to come volunteer? There might be a possibility for a job.” That’s where it started. I was in the right place at the right time. I was never involved in politics in college. I grew up watching Fox News with my grandparents and my parents. We were always politically savvy, politically involved, but I had never really volunteered on a campaign before. My only experience was I phone-banked once for John McCain in 2008. But other than that, nothing. I was really thrown into the deep end, and I loved it.
Will you stay in communications, or are you thinking of running for office?
No. No, I’m not running for office. I love communications. I love PR. I actually started journalism school thinking I’d be a journalist. I did one journalism internship my first semester there, and I could not stand it. It was not for me.
While you worked for the governor, he was called the “hashtag governor.” You were primarily behind his Twitter, so what did you think of that?
He’s the first governor of Arizona that’s really had a full-time, constant social media presence. Governor Brewer had started to get into the social media world a little bit more, but Governor Ducey was really the first governor breaking news on Twitter instead of calling a reporter. Sometimes he would just tweet about it. I really think that’s a new norm, and I think that’s good. It’s a way for him to speak directly to Arizonans and get his message across just to the people.
Lately, we’ve noticed the governor’s account uses a lot of emojis. Especially when he was celebrating education wins – apples everywhere.
It’s funny. That’s something Scarp (Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato) and I would always talk about – the emoji use. Scarp loves using emojis, but the governor does, too. If you’re just texting the governor, he likes to use emojis.
Are we talking smiley faces?
Yeah! I got a smiley face and a baseball the other day.
Because you obviously love the Diamondbacks.
I went to my first game for my sixth or seventh birthday. We played the Giants. Ever since, I started asking my dad, “Hey, can we go to a ballgame? Hey, can we go to a ballgame?” I’ve already been to three games this season.
Baseball is one thing we agree on, but you threw some major shade at the last Harry Potter book on Twitter–“#disappointed.” What’s up?
I was so disappointed. I love J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter is the reason I love to read. But I totally thought she sold out. I didn’t think it was a good plotline. I didn’t know where it was going. It was all over the place. And I read it in a day because it’s J.K. Rowling and it’s Harry Potter, but it just – I was not impressed at all.
You’re pretty fond of John McCain, too, but your tweets don’t reveal much about your opinion of the president. What are your thoughts on your party’s leader?
He’s our president. I like our president. I think he is going to enact some good, conservative policies. I’m a really big fan of Ivanka, I’m a big fan of Melania, and I’m a huge fan of John McCain and Jeff Flake. Republican values are Republican values.
But McCain and Flake have been at odds with the president.
Being a Republican isn’t all one thing, especially on regulatory issues. A lot of what Donald Trump is doing in D.C. in terms of cutting regulations — so is Doug Ducey. He’s doing it here. It’s about finding those areas that you can agree on and working together on them.
You went to journalism school where partisanship is a no-no. Was it surprising to you that you got involved in such a partisan career?
Yeah, especially because I have a lot of Democrat friends, too, so it’s always about trying to maintain that balance and be able to put that aside. Politics is one thing, and I love it and it’s a lot of fun. But at the end of the day, it’s also – you can have friendships outside of politics. And journalism really taught me that. Your first class, they ask you to stand up if you’re a Republican, stand up if you’re a Democrat. And then, they tell you, “Never do that again… You are not biased. You have to maintain your credibility.”… At some point for me, it just – I’m not going to be a journalist. I’m a Republican.
Anti-Trump protesters chant behind a barricade across the Phoenix Convention Center, where President Donald Trump is holding a rally, on August 22, 2017. (Ellen O’Brien, Arizona Capitol Times)
President Donald Trump disparaged the media, Democrats, Americans who want Confederate monuments taken down, “weak leaders,” his White House predecessor and a long list of other opponents at a rally in Phoenix tonight.
Trump always found large, energetic audiences when he campaigned in Arizona, and his supporters inside the Phoenix Convention Center tonight were no different.
Outside, protesters spoke out against Trump’s policies and a potential pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which the president hinted is coming. Phoenix Police used tear gas to disperse protesters after the rally ended.
In a wide-ranging speech, Trump keyed in on several issues affecting Arizona. Here’s what you need to know about how his visit intersected with state politics:
**Arpaio pardon coming?**
Much of the speculation about today’s rally centered on a pardon for Arpaio, who was convicted of contempt of court for defying a court order related to his anti-immigrant policies.
Trump didn’t pardon Arpaio tonight, but hinted a pardon is coming soon.
In this Jan. 26, 2016, photo, then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is joined by then Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio at a campaign event in Marshalltown, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
“Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe?” Trump asked the crowd, who responded with sustained cheering.
Trump said Arpaio was convicted for doing his job, and he should have been tried by a jury, something Arpaio’s lawyers also argued for.
“I’ll make a prediction,” Trump said. “I think he’s going to be just fine.”
But Trump said he didn’t want to pardon Arpaio tonight because he didn’t want to cause any controversy.
**McCain and Flake**
Though the president never mentioned either of Arizona’s U.S. senators by name, he went after them. He said aides had asked him not to name any names in his speech tonight, so he decided not to, which he called “very presidential.”
Trump repeatedly said the country was “just one vote away” from repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, a clear swipe at Sen. John McCain, who was the deciding vote against a “skinny repeal” plan a few weeks ago and whose opposition halted the repeal-and-replace effort for now.
Trump urged Arizonans to “speak to your senator,” meaning McCain, about health care. Trump also said he would repeal Obamacare even if he has to shut down the federal government.
He didn’t say Sen. Jeff Flake’s name either, but noted that Arizona’s other senator was “weak on borders,” eliciting boos from the crowd.
Plus, Trump added about Flake, “nobody knows who the hell he is.”
**No endorsement**
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., left and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Tom Tingle)
Despite his digs at Flake, Trump didn’t endorse or even mention anyone who is or could run against the incumbent in a Republican primary.
Some had speculated that a Trump tweet from last week praising Kelli Ward, the former state senator who is running against Flake, could mean a presidential endorsement today.
People entering the Phoenix Convention Center said they weren’t allowed to bring in Ward signs or wear Ward shirts, though some people standing in line had Ward campaign paraphernalia.
One man recounted how he had to borrow a shirt from a random person in line after he wasn’t allowed in because he wore a Ward t-shirt.
Former Arizona GOP chairman Robert Graham and Arizona Treasurer Jeff DeWit have been floated as potential Flake opponents who Trump could back, but they, too, remained unmentioned tonight.
**Where was Ducey?**
Gov. Doug Ducey (Photo by Katie Campbell, Arizona Capitol Times)
Gov. Doug Ducey met Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this afternoon, but he did not attend the rally.
Instead, Ducey spent the evening at the Emergency Operations Center, where state law enforcers worked to keep the downtown area safe for the large, tense event.
During the rally, Trump said he thought it was a good idea that Ducey decided to spend his time on security, though, the president joked, not that many protesters had shown up anyway. (Many protesters showed up and later clashed with the police.)
Trump said Ducey was a “hell of a governor.”
**NAFTA**
Arizona’s business and political leadershavefor months emphasized how the North American Free Trade Agreement positively affects the state’s economy. But their efforts may not have worked, at least with the president.
Trump said the United States has been “badly taken advantage of,” largely by Mexico, through NAFTA, and he would “probably end up terminating” the trade deal. (Actually, negotiators from Canada, U.S. and Mexico this month began sifting through the decades-old trade deal.)
Trump told the crowd he had promised them from the beginning that NAFTA would be renegotiated or terminated.
“I personally don’t think you can make a deal without terminating it, but we’ll see. You’re in good hands,” he said.
**Arizona regulars**
As was the case during Trump’s campaign rallies, DeWit, who was also the chief operating officer of Trump’s campaign, kicked off tonight’s rally.
Arizona Treasurer Jeff DeWit
DeWit highlighted the stock market’s rise and new jobs added, and said Obamacare will hopefully be done for soon if Congress gets its act together.
“We elected our president to go and drain the swamp, and drain the swamp he’s doing,” DeWit said.
Trump also acknowledged and thanked Republican Reps. Andy Biggs, Trent Franks and Paul Gosar, who attended the rally tonight.
Once Trump took the stage, he praised Arizonans, saying they were “hardworking, American patriots,” and said the state has been on his side since he held his first rally here.
“You were there from the start, you’ve been there ever since, and I will never forget. Believe me, Arizona, I will never forget,” Trump said.
From left are Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party and Raquel Terán, chair of the Arizona Democratic Party. ( Ward photo by Randy Hoeft/Yuma Sun via AP and Teran photo by Gage Skidmore)
In a state that has turned from red to purple, Arizona’s Republican and Democratic parties continue to push away from the center – one opens the door for more voices to be heard and the other shuts out those who disagree.
It was easy to predict who would win each party chair on January 23 — Raquel Terán for the Democrats and Kelli Ward for the Republicans — but what wasn’t as expected was what those margins of victory would be.
Terán, a Latina state representative in west Phoenix, got her political upbringing in the post-SB1070 movement. She’s a progressive through and through, but told Arizona Capitol Times she will make sure that whether a Democrat is progressive or moderate, they will have the same access to party resources, helping more members pick up seats like the party did in 2018 and 2020.
Democrats won several legislative seats in 2018, and four statewide races including the first U.S. Senate seat in roughly 30 years. In 2020, while less successful, Democrats picked up one seat in the state Senate, the other U.S. Senate seat and also handed its electoral votes to a Democrat for the first time in 24 years.
Ward, a far right Republican loyalist to former President Trump, was elected to her second term leading the AZGOP, but on January 27, several Republican state committeemen questioned Ward’s victory and are looking into a full audit of the results. Party officials did not release any numbers for all of the races and resolutions and speculate that something nefarious could have happened.
It’s a show of irony as Ward has been a top voice pushing several debunked conspiracy theories that the election was stolen from Trump despite a lack of evidence and every court from local to the highest in the country throwing out cases left and right.
Ward previously served two terms in the state Legislature before running in GOP primaries for the U.S. Senate in 2016 and 2018 – and losing. As her political career began to fizzle out, Terán’s began to take flight. Ward did not respond to multiple attempts for comment on this story.
Teran was first elected to the state House in 2018 along with her current seatmate Robert Meza.
Aside from the two party leaders having their fair share of differences, the party meetings could not have gone any differently. Terán won with 75% of the vote. Ward won in a run-off just barely eking out a victory by 3 percentage points, but no specific vote totals were revealed.
The Democratic Party election, which was wide open after former chair Felecia Rotellini decided not to run again, also voted to condemn Trump and the riots on January 6, and urged U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly to convict the former president when the impeachment trial takes place next month. Both Sinema and Kelly endorsed Terán for party chair.
The Republican Party voted to censure Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of U.S. Sen. John McCain, who branded himself as one of the most textbook Republicans in state history after Barry Goldwater. The party also voted to say there are only two genders and calls for revoking birthright citizenship, among other resolutions that passed.
In between the November 3 election and the AZGOP meeting, several conservatives — and even more moderate Republicans — had had enough of Ward’s behavior and criticized her at every opportunity. One of those conservatives was Kirk Adams, the former Arizona House speaker and former chief of staff to Ducey.
Adams was dismayed that Ward won the chairmanship, saying true conservatives must do their part to quiet the noise coming from Ward and her crew of conspiracy theorists by “call[ing] out their [expletive].”
Adams has been talking to just about any reporter who calls to say that Ward winning the chair again isn’t an end to the Republican Party here, but it’s not a good sign, and it’s not reflective of all Republicans.
“You have to let voters know that this is not a Republican brand. Or if they think it is, [explain that] there are a lot of other Republicans who don’t think this way – give us a second look,” he said. “But if we sort of ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil’ we don’t want to tick anybody off, then her style of politics becomes the Republican brand.”
While Ward pushes away those who she calls RINOs or Republican in name only, Terán said she is trying to bridge the divide in her party that she now gets to lead.
Geoff Esposito, a progressive lobbyist and political consultant, has been following Terán’s career for years and believes she is the right person to lead.
“There are people who are just symbols of their generation in the moment and Raquel is that in so many ways,” Esposito said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a candidate for party chair that has engendered such enthusiasm from all the various factions of the party … she has a unifying presence that everyone from the progressive left to the moderates see something that inspires them and that they can support.”
Compared to Ward, Esposito said Teran clearly has a vision for the party to move forward where the Republican Party continues to be more divisive than ever. “We’ll see how that holds over the next two years,” he said.
2022 is a big election year for Arizona since Kelly’s Senate seat will be up, and all five statewide offices will be on the ballot, with the governor’s race wide open after Ducey terms out, plus two seats on the Corporation Commission and a redistricted Congress and Legislature. Both parties have a lot to work with leading up to that election.
Adams said he believes that Republicans can continue to win in Arizona, despite now having an obstacle in Ward. He said there are several financial backchannels Republicans can use without having to go through the state party, but it just makes it more challenging. To win, Adams said, Republicans must continue to put forward good candidates because it’s no longer useful to rely on having an “R” next to your name.
He said Republicans are increasingly willing to vote for sufficiently moderate Democrats, such as Sinema and Kelly, and the GOP needs to court “Ducey-Sinema” voters, who are the voters of the future, he said, not simply rely on the fringe that Ward represents.
Adams has made it clear he thinks Ward is extreme and said Republicans who still haven’t made a point to come out publicly against Ward and her loyalists are still learning to navigate the waters in a post-Trump world.
“Others have governing responsibilities that need to be tended to as a first priority. So they’re focused on that,” he said.
Count Kathy Petsas, the Republican chair of the Legislative District 28 party, among those who condemn Ward.
She stands by Ducey, who lives in her district and is a state committeeman, and has adamantly criticized Ward for being a terrible choice to lead the party. She said not a single committeeman in LD28 voted for Ward in 2019 or this year. That includes Ducey, Attorney General Mark Brnovich and several other elected officials.
“She is unfit to lead,” Petsas said, adding that she (Petsas) is tired of being lumped into the Ward-faction of the party just because she makes a lot of noise.
Only 1,300 people participated in the AZGOP election, Petsas said, compared to roughly 1.5 million registered Republicans in Arizona. They do “not represent the diversity of thought, respect for the rule of law, economic pragmatism, and integrity of the full party.”
If the nation’s eyes weren’t already on Arizona for the most expensive and consequential U.S. Senate race in our state’s history, the possibility of Mark Kelly being sworn in to replace Sen. Martha McSally in time to vote on a new Supreme Court nominee has now put us under an inescapable microscope. The despicable but not surprising reality is Senator McSally’s complete inability to even pretend that she’s anything more than Trump’s puppet, as if she could even attempt to muster up whatever dignity she has left to take a stand for our democracy and the people she was appointed to represent.
Instead, typically and in line with her brand, she has once again left Arizona voters behind, leaving all principle and morality in the trash alongside us. She and the rest of the GOP know that voting for a Supreme Court justice now is a stark contradiction to what they did in 2016 when Mitch McConnell said – nine months out – that an election year was no time to fill a spot on the Supreme Court.
Here we are, six weeks until a presidential election, with some parts of the country already voting, and Republicans are attempting to sell out and undermine the power of our democracy for a greasy, malicious political power grab. There’s no question that Republicans are scared of what this country is starting to look like and consequently the result of a government truly based on the people’s choice isn’t something their party can survive right now.
The simple fact is that the GOP has completely lost their way. They elected a racist reality TV star as their leader, installed a cheap loyalist with no backbone in Arizona, and are now further spiraling down a path that is a far cry from John McCain’s party. They are going back on their word, throwing out decency, and hastily speeding up this process because they know it is one of their last chances to hold our country back from progress.
However, the young people of Arizona have a message for them: if Republicans want to play dirty, then they’ll find the fight they’re looking for here. If they think the largest, most diverse, most educated generation in American history will take this lying down, they have another think coming. At NextGen Arizona, the largest youth vote organization in the state, we’re prepping for the biggest battle of our lifetimes. We’re suiting up in droves right now to show the GOP where the real power lies. The future of Arizona and this country belongs to young, Black, Brown, LGBTQ, working-class, multiracial Americans and we cannot wait to stand over Senator McSally and Trump when we prove that in November. Shots fired and it’s on.
Kristi Johnston
Arizona press secretary for NextGen America.
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