voting patterns | Arizona Capitol Times

House Dem leader crosses aisle more often than party colleagues

The following story is the second of five to be published over the next two weeks based on voting data the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting pulled for the 2017 legislative session. The nonprofit group analyzed the number of floor votes that each lawmaker cast the same as every other lawmaker. The result is a first of its kind look at voting patterns between Arizona legislators, revealing alike votes and disparities – some known anecdotally, others not seen before – between lawmakers, at times regardless of party affiliation. Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting set a minimum threshold of 230 alike votes in the House of Representatives and 435 alike votes in the state Senate to gauge how often lawmakers vote alike with one another.

The threshold could be expanded or shrunk, but think of the analysis like a microscope: zooming in too far, or not far enough, won’t reveal anything of interest. Finding the right magnification, or in this case, the right threshold of alike votes in each chamber, produces significant results and visualizes alike votes among legislators.

Unlike their Republican counterparts, Arizona’s Democratic lawmakers are a less cohesive voting bloc. And it’s the example set by the minority party’s leadership that differs the most.

In the Senate, minority leaders don’t often vote with the GOP. In the House, it’s the top Democrat, Rebecca Rios of Phoenix, who casts the most votes with her Republican colleagues, according to an analysis by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

Find the interactive data tool below. (Data by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting; Graphic by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)

Rios serves as the minority leader of the House Democratic Caucus, but she also voted alike with Republicans more often than any other Democrat in the chamber. Only one other House Democrat, Rep. Mark Cardenas of Phoenix, came close to casting as many alike votes with Republicans as Rios.

None of Rios’ fellow Democrats in leadership – Assistant Minority Leader Randy Friese of Tucson and Whip Charlene Fernandez of Yuma – voted alike with GOP lawmakers at a threshold of 230 alike votes, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each representative HERE.]

Current lawmakers and former minority leaders were surprised to learn that a Democratic caucus leader would vote with Republicans so often. Even Rios was at first put off by the distinction.

“Ew,” she said. “I don’t want this title.”

There’s no single bill that exemplifies that discrepancy, but perhaps Rios’ background as a lawmaker best explains her bipartisan streak, some said.

Senate Minority Leader Katie Hobbs, D-Phoenix, said Rios came from a rural district that is tough to represent, and she has worked in the mining industry as a lobbyist.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each senator HERE.]

“. . . so those the folks that represent those areas tend to be the Democrats that don’t always vote in line,” Hobbs said.

That’s not the district Rios represents now – her Legislative District 27 is overwhelmingly blue, but that doesn’t mean she lost the characteristics of her rural background while representing parts of Pinal County, Hobbs said.

Rios’ length of service at the Capitol also may have an impact on the way she votes, said former legislator Eric Meyer, who served as House minority leader in 2015 and 2016.

House Minority Leader Rebecca Rios (D-Phoenix) (Photo by Rachel Leingang/Arizona Capitol Times)

Rios served in the House from 2005 to 2010 before returning in 2015 after a five-year hiatus. That gives her some familiarity with the legislative process, and connections with other lawmakers, that other members of the House’s Democratic leadership team don’t have.

That’s perhaps why Rios’ leadership team doesn’t have the same pattern of alike votes with Republicans, Meyer said.

“They just don’t have as much experience. And with the amount of turnover, it takes time to build relationships maybe and feel comfortable,” he said.

Rios agreed that her “heart is still in rural Arizona,” and that her length of service has given her a perspective that shapes the way she votes.

“You learn to vote based on issues, as opposed to the party or the bill sponsor,” she said.

Besides, she said, “the majority of the votes we take typically are not high profile, partisan issues.”

While she leads her caucus on votes that matter, particularly on core issues that Democrats identify as a caucus each year, she’s still a reliable party leader.

Hobbs credited Rios for leading efforts to keep her caucus unified in votes against certain bills, such as a university bonding package in the fiscal year 2018 budget.

Being a leader also can mean being more flexible when voting on bills.

Meyer noted that it’s natural for minority leaders to form some connections with Republicans given how frequently minority and majority leadership must interact.

There is plenty of negotiating done behind the scenes to keep the House running smoothly, and that takes steady hands and good relationships between Republican and Democratic leaders, he said.

As for the Senate, Hobbs said it makes sense that Democratic leadership would vote infrequently or not at all with Republicans, since it’s often leadership’s job to keep Democrats in unison as the opposition vote against the Republican majority.

Still, at a threshold of 435 alike votes, even two members of the Senate minority leadership team cast alike votes with one GOP senator: Assistant Minority Leader Steve Farley of Tucson and Whip Lupe Contreras of Avondale, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis.

Rios said relationships among GOP and Democratic leaders do impact voting, “to the extent that when you’re in leadership, you don’t have the luxury of just saying ‘no’ and being partisan for the sake of being partisan.”

And if any member of her caucus has a gripe about Rios’ bipartisan streak, she’ll be happy to hear them out.

“Show me the votes, and I would be more than willing to sit down and discuss each and every vote,” Rios said.

Find out more about your lawmakers’ voting patterns below:

Swing-district Dems use divergent vote tactics in Legislature

Moderate GOP lawmakers exist in name only, study finds

Small group of Republicans buck their party, vote their conscience

Some GOP lawmakers vote solid red, support caucus bills

Moderate GOP lawmakers exist in name only, study finds

The following story is the third of five to be published over two weeks based on voting data the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting pulled for the 2017 legislative session. The nonprofit group analyzed the number of floor votes that each lawmaker cast the same as every other lawmaker. The result is a first of its kind look at voting patterns between Arizona legislators, revealing alike votes and disparities – some known anecdotally, others not seen before – between lawmakers, at times regardless of party affiliation. Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting set a minimum threshold of 230 alike votes in the House of Representatives and 435 alike votes in the state Senate to gauge how often lawmakers vote alike with one another.

The threshold could be expanded or shrunk, but think of the analysis like a microscope: zooming in too close, or not far enough, won’t reveal anything of interest. Finding the right magnification, or in this case, the right threshold of alike votes in each chamber, produces significant results and visualizes alike votes among legislators.

So-called “moderate” Republican state legislators in Arizona aren’t so moderate after all.

Only a handful of Republican senators and representatives vote alike with a few Democrats in their respective chambers, according to an analysis by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Most of the time, they’re still reliably conservative and mostly cast votes in a similar fashion to their Republicans colleagues.

Collectively, four GOP senators voted with seven out of the chamber’s 13 Democrats at least 435 times. That’s about 52 percent of the 841 votes cast on the Senate floor in 2017.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each senator HERE.]

Those same four Republican senators voted just as many times with most, if not all, of their Republican colleagues.

In the House, 18 Republican representatives collectively voted with five of their chamber’s 25 Democrats at least 230 times, or 20 percent of the 1,126 floor votes cast this year.

Every Republican in the House also voted at least 230 times with the rest of the GOP caucus.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each representative HERE.]

Few bipartisan votes not enough

The way some Democrats see it, those few bipartisan votes aren’t enough to make these Republicans moderates. A majority of the time, they’re still loyal votes for the GOP majorities in the House and Senate, and when it comes to issues of great importance, they’re becoming less likely to break ranks.

Some Republicans say the analysis doesn’t tell the whole story. By treating all votes equally, patterns emerge that gloss over a select group of bills that divide lawmakers on ideological and partisan lines, and it’s those few votes that matter most.

Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, embraces the label. McGee represents a moderate district – she won a closely contested race last fall against a popular Democrat – so a moderate voting record is only natural.

Others, like Sen. Karen Fann, pointed to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis as a means to reject the stereotype. The Prescott Republican voted at least 230 times with only one Democratic senator, but she voted just as many times with each of her Republican colleagues, too, making her the least-likely swing vote of those considered to be moderate senators.

Whether it’s conservative or moderate, Rep. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, called the labels “a bunch of crap.”

“Your analysis will show that if you have an ‘R’ after your name or you have a ‘D’ after your name, you’re voting with your caucus most, if not all of the time,” Shope said.

Defining vote

Brophy McGee has worn the moderate label since at least 2013, when she voted for what’s still considered to be the most volatile piece of legislation among Republican circles in years: Medicaid expansion.

Most of the lawmakers identified by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis as moderate voted for the Medicaid expansion during former Gov. Jan Brewer’s final term in office.

Brophy McGee pointed to the bill, which expanded access to health care, as one that makes her proud to be a legislator. Legislative District 28, with its roughly 43,000 independent voters, doesn’t want legislators who will treat the Arizona Capitol like a “do nothing Congress,” Brophy McGee said.

“The moderate label, the way I apply it, is the way I think my constituents think of it. They elect people to go down to the Legislature and get things done, and they expect us to come up with solutions,” she said.

For certain votes, that means bucking the majority of the Republican caucus, like her decision to vote this spring against a bill to dramatically expand access to private school vouchers. Brophy McGee was the only Republican senator to vote against the voucher bill, and she called her failure to defeat the bill “my greatest disappointment” of the 2017 legislative session.

That sentiment isn’t popular among some of her 16 Republican colleagues, but the vote shows the difficult waters Brophy McGee navigates as a Republican. While she votes with her caucus a majority of the time, she’s held to a different standard based on an issue or two.

“I am constantly working with my colleagues in less competitive districts and in leadership so that they understand there are going to be issues where I will not be a yes, and they need to be prepared for that and they need to count their votes,” she said.

Red meat

It’s those kind of votes that result in moderate Republicans having their party loyalty questioned, something that irks Shope, the speaker pro tem in the Arizona House.

“I think it’s crap,” Shope said of criticism Brophy McGee took on the voucher bill vote. “I think that Kate does a good job representing her district. I’m happy that she’s there. She’s a million times better than the alternative in my opinion. I wish the folks who criticize her or others for a vote here or there would just take the time to take a deep breath and realize that we’re all, for the most part, 95 percent of the time working towards the same goals.”

Shope was one of those “moderates” who voted for Medicaid expansion in 2013, and despite figurative calls for his head, he has been able to carve out a productive legislative career. To Shope, there aren’t really moderates at the Arizona Legislature on either side of the aisle, just varying degrees of liberalism and conservatism.

Now that he serves in a GOP leadership role in the House, Shope said he has grown even more appreciative of his fellow Republicans, be they far right or right of center, and how they represent their constituents. The perspective has made him protective of his fellow Republicans, and lawmakers in general, of labels such as moderate, Shope said.

“I think the labeling of those kind of words often, and I think your analysis will bear this out, often highlights more style differences than voting differences,” he said. “The fact that I don’t use red meat type of language, whether at the Legislature or at home in the district, or I’m not confrontational, I think probably lends more to that idea that I am not as conservative as someone else.”

Local ties

Moderate is an unfair label to Republicans like Fann, who has a better record of voting with the Senate Republican Caucus than other senators perceived as more conservative than she. She voted alike with all of her 16 GOP colleagues at least 435 times. The same cannot be said for four Republicans who have a penchant for butting heads with their own caucus.

Fann said it’s important to identify the issues on which she crosses party lines, noting that she, unlike her more “moderate” colleagues, voted against Medicaid expansion in 2013.

“When we talk about a plethora of things, generally I am more conservative than the ‘moderates,’” she said. “But now let’s look at the categories for what I do vote against some of my more conservative people, and those would be the city and town things.”

Fann said her previous election to a local office gives her and other Republicans a unique perspective, one she shares with Shope and Brophy McGee.

Fann served as a councilwoman and mayor pro tem in Prescott. Brophy McGee served on the Washington Elementary School District Governing Board until 2007, while Shope still serves as president of the Coolidge Unified School District Governing Board.

Except in cases of extremely egregious behavior by local governments, “90 percent of the time, I support my cities and towns,” which explains her so-called moderate streak, Fann said.

Battle lines

A few bipartisan votes here or there doesn’t make a moderate anyway, according to Sen. Katie Hobbs, D-Phoenix.

Like Shope, the Senate minority leader said there aren’t truly any moderates left among legislative Republicans since the Medicaid expansion vote in 2013. That bloc fell apart the following year, she said, since it was only held together by the Republican leadership of Brewer.

It was Brewer who truly stuck her neck out for Medicaid expansion, giving legislative Republicans a leader to follow, Hobbs said. Now the voting bloc once considered moderate has shrunk, Hobbs said. In the Senate, that’s Brophy McGee and Fann, Sens. Bob Worsley, R-Mesa, and Frank Pratt, R-Casa Grande.

“They kind of divided on what they would vote with us on, and it was never enough to stop something,” Hobbs said.

Even if the moderates aren’t as influential as they were years ago, it’s still fair that they be judged not by their collective votes, but by the votes that truly matter to the Republican Party, according to Constantin Querard, a GOP political consultant.

Querard said it’s a flaw to give equal weight to every vote taken on the House and Senate floor when so many are simply housekeeping bills – nonpartisan measures that are approved with nearly unanimous consent that don’t inspire any sort of ideological battles. Republicans should be judged on bills that create fault lines within the party, he added.

“If you’re trying to demonstrate graphically the degree to which someone crosses some sort of battle line, you should only consider bills where there’s some sort of battle,” Querard said.

Such a method would only highlight the different value sets some in the Republican Party have over others, according to GOP lobbyist Gibson McKay. Whether its health care or abortion, it’s all a value judgement to individual lawmakers and Republicans, and such clearly drawn lines don’t allow for the nuance of lawmakers who aren’t representing the Republican Party, but are instead representing their constituents.

“That doesn’t serve the black and white purposes of those in the chattering class who like to interpret these things,” McKay said.

For instance, Brophy McGee’s vote against the voucher bill may not win her the approval of some Republican legislators, but it was likely appreciated by her district’s moderate electorate, said McKay, who lives in LD28.

“Do I agree with her 100 percent of the time? No, but I don’t agree with my wife 100 percent of the time,” McKay said. “Sometimes we have to consider that Kate has represented her constituency pretty well for the decade or so she’s been around.”

Find out more about your lawmakers’ voting patterns below:

Swing-district Dems use divergent vote tactics in Legislature

House Dem leader crosses aisle more often than party colleagues

Small group of Republicans buck their party, vote their conscience

Some GOP lawmakers vote solid red, support caucus bills

Small group of Republicans buck their party, vote their conscience

The following story is the fourth of five to be published over two weeks based on voting data the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting pulled for the 2017 legislative session. The nonprofit group analyzed the number of floor votes that each lawmaker cast the same as every other lawmaker. The result is a first of its kind look at voting patterns between Arizona legislators, revealing alike votes and disparities – some known anecdotally, others not seen before – between lawmakers, at times regardless of party affiliation. Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting set a minimum threshold of 230 alike votes in the House of Representatives and 435 alike votes in the state Senate to gauge how often lawmakers vote alike with one another.

No man is an island, they say.

Tell that to Sen. Warren Petersen and Reps. Eddie Farnsworth and Rusty Bowers.

These Republicans certainly don’t vote alike with Democrats, according to an Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis. They also have the distinction of being the most likely to buck their own party.

The three East Valley Republicans have an independent streak, the analysis shows, a tendency to vote no on bills that the rest of their Republican colleagues approve. In some cases, they’re the lone no vote on a bill, period, even when all Democrat and Republican lawmakers in both the Senate and House of Representatives approve of a bill.

That was the case with Bowers, who was the only lawmaker in either chamber to vote against HB2192, a bill that placed restrictions on the driver’s licenses of parents who aren’t making child support payments.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each representative HERE.]

Bowers, who represents Mesa, said he’s not trying to make a distinction as an outlier, or abide by some “strict code.” He’s just casting votes based on the knowledge at hand, like when he was the lone vote against HB2192 in the House – he heard from court officials how detrimental losing one’s license can be.

“To restrict a driver’s license, except in a case where somebody’s a danger to other people’s lives, how’s he going to fulfill obligations if he doesn’t have a car in order to get to work. Or, how’s he going to fulfill obligations if he can’t get to a court date or meet a probation officer,” Bowers said.

Bowers will sometimes get a few “eyeballs” – curious stares or glares, he said, when he’s the lone dissenting vote. The same could be said of Petersen and Farnsworth, who both hail from the same legislative district in Gilbert.

Petersen was one of only three lawmakers in the Senate to vote against a bill to lower the minimum age at which restaurant workers could serve alcohol from 19 to 18 years old, and was one of just two senators to vote against a measure to extend a window for Native American military veterans to recover income taxes withheld from their paychecks while they were on active duty. Farnsworth and Bowers voted against that bill, too.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each senator HERE.]

Farnsworth was the only representative to vote against a bill to make wulfenite Arizona’s official state mineral. He even voted against one bill in the budget – a package of bills that Republicans routinely approve.

Petersen and Farnsworth did not respond to multiple calls for comment.

Rep. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, wasn’t surprised. He said those lawmakers are part of a caucus of “no,” a cluster of Republicans who regularly don’t vote yes with their colleagues. But they’re not necessarily voting no for the sake of it – they’re just voting their conscience, according to GOP political consultant Constantin Querard.

There’s something of a luxury to being in the majority with votes to spare that makes it easier to vote against legislation knowing full well that a colleague’s bill will still get approved. Still, the lawmakers with independent streaks are also ones with strongly held beliefs and values that inform most of their votes.

“Those guys, that’s not artificial independence,” Querard said. “They take their oath very seriously, they have very critical eyes when it comes to legislation, and they do what they believe to be right.”

Find out more about your lawmakers’ voting patterns below:

Swing-district Dems use divergent vote tactics in Legislature

House Dem leader crosses aisle more often than party colleagues

Moderate GOP lawmakers exist in name only, study finds

Some GOP lawmakers vote solid red, support caucus bills

Some GOP lawmakers vote solid red, support caucus bills

The following story is the fifth of five to be published over two weeks based on voting data the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting pulled for the 2017 legislative session. The nonprofit group analyzed the number of floor votes that each lawmaker cast the same as every other lawmaker. The result is a first of its kind look at voting patterns between Arizona legislators, revealing alike votes and disparities – some known anecdotally, others not seen before – between lawmakers, at times regardless of party affiliation. Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting set a minimum threshold of 230 alike votes in the House of Representatives and 435 alike votes in the state Senate to gauge how often lawmakers vote alike with one another.

It’s a numbers game at the Arizona Capitol. Lawmakers need 31 yes votes in the House of Representatives and 16 votes in the Senate to get bills approved.

Nothing makes that task easier for GOP-sponsored bills than a reliable Republican.

Representatives like Vince Leach, R-Tucson, and Don Shooter, R-Yuma, and Sens. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix and John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, are among the Republicans most faithful to their own caucus when it comes to voting, according to an analysis by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

In graphs depicting the voting patterns of the 2017 legislative session, their deep red dots indicate a propensity for voting alike with members of their own GOP caucus, and a distaste for bipartisan voting. That’s a contrast to some Republican lawmakers, and Democrats, who are lighter shades of red and blue, indicating they don’t always agree with legislators in their own party.

Their party loyalty can be ascribed to a variety of reasons: their seniority at the Capitol, and their positions as committee chairs. In the House, Leach and Shooter are “kind of in another layer of the leadership team,” said Rep. T.J. Shope, a Coolidge Republican who serves as speaker pro tem.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each representative HERE.]

In the case of Kavanagh and Shooter, heading the powerful Appropriations committees gives them a de facto leadership role since they control the committee that gets a first say on annual budget proposals, Shope said.

Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma (Photo by Rachel Leingang, Arizona Capitol Times) — Sen. Don Shooter (R-Yuma) (Photo by Rachel Leingang, Arizona Capitol Times)

For Shooter, it’s simply a matter of being a “team player” in the Republican Party.

“It’s a team, and that’s the reason I traded (seats) with (Sen. Steve) Montenegro,” said Shooter, who swapped chambers with Montenegro in the 2016 elections – the two represent the same Legislative District 13. “It wasn’t particularly good for me, but it was good for the team so I took one for the team,” he added.

While Shooter also said he casts votes on behalf of the team, that doesn’t mean he’s not voting his conscience or is taking orders from leadership.

“I don’t do a damn thing I don’t want to do,” Shooter said.

It’s actually the caucus that drives leadership, and not the other way around, Kavanagh said.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each senator HERE.]

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, smiles as he addresses the legislature in the Arizona House of Representatives at the Arizona Capitol Monday, Jan. 13, 2014, in Phoenix. The Republican lawmaker wants the state constitution amended to allow cuts to public employee pensions and increases in employee contributions if the systems are badly underfunded. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) — Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, smiles as he addresses the legislature in the Arizona House of Representatives at the Arizona Capitol Monday, Jan. 13, 2014, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

“There is no party line. Leadership does a lot of things, but they don’t sit down and decide what we vote for and we all fall in line,” he said. “Leadership has to agree with the caucus, not vice versa.”

With that in mind, Kavanagh attributes his reliably-red voting pattern to a simple truth in Arizona politics.

“We’re a red state, and we’re a conservative, red chamber, and I’m a conservative member,” Kavanagh said. “So it makes sense that I would be solidly conservative and vote with the caucus.”

Find out more about your lawmakers’ voting patterns below:

Swing-district Dems use divergent vote tactics in Legislature

House Dem leader crosses aisle more often than party colleagues

Moderate GOP lawmakers exist in name only, study finds

Small group of Republicans buck their party, vote their conscience

Swing-district Dems use divergent vote tactics in Legislature

The following story is the first of five to be published over the next two weeks based on voting data the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting pulled for the 2017 legislative session. The nonprofit group analyzed the number of floor votes that each lawmaker cast the same as every other lawmaker. The result is a first of its kind look at voting patterns between Arizona legislators, revealing alike votes and disparities – some known anecdotally, others not seen before – between lawmakers, at times regardless of party affiliation. Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting set a minimum threshold of 230 alike votes in the House of Representatives and 435 alike votes in the state Senate to gauge how often lawmakers vote alike with one another.

No legislative votes are picked apart come election season quite like those of lawmakers from Arizona’s swing districts.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle must consider the repercussions at the ballot box on controversial votes when they serve a district with roughly even splits among Democrats and Republicans, or a strong base of independents.

In a state as conservative as Arizona, it’s still rare for Democrats to hold those seats. Conventional wisdom is for such a lawmaker to vote in a pattern slightly left of center – reliably with Democrats on most issues, but they will sometimes vote with lawmakers across the aisle when it comes to policies that divide the electorate in a given district.

First-term Sen. Sean Bowie is a perfect example of that wisdom. The Phoenix Democrat won a competitive race in Legislative District 18, where GOP voter registration outpaces Democrats by nearly 5,000 voters.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each senator HERE.]

So it comes as no surprise that Bowie voted alike with Republican senators more than any other Democratic lawmaker, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting’s analysis of votes during the 2017 legislative session. Whether it’s because his votes are politically expedient, or achieve the goals of his more conservative constituents, Bowie’s voting pattern fit the model for an Arizona Democrat in a swing district: play to both sides of the aisle.

Reps. Mitzi Epstein, D-Phoenix, and Kelli Butler, D-Paradise Valley, don’t play by those bipartisan rules. Epstein, who represents the same district as Bowie, and Butler, who represents a district where registered Republicans outpace Democrats by nearly 11,000 voters, cast no alike votes with Republicans at a threshold of 230 alike votes, according to the analysis.

[Use the interactive data tool created by AZCIR to discover the alike votes between each representative HERE.]

Voters in those swing districts will have the final say in 2018 on whether they prefer a bipartisan voting record like Bowie’s or a solid blue streak like Epstein and Butler’s.

“That is what they both will be held to, not only the fact that they are both Democrats, but what is your actual voting record?” said Janie Hydrick, chair of the LD18 Democratic Party.

Independent streak

In LD18, Bowie and Epstein both boasted of their efforts to meticulously analyze bills, meet with stakeholders and arrive at independent decisions to cast votes on bills. While their methods were similar, the decisions they made were far different.

Sen. Sean Bowie (D-Phoenix) (Photo by Rachel Leingang/Arizona Capitol Times)

Bowie said his votes often hinged on thinking what’s best for his entire district. Sometimes that meant ignoring calls to vote with his own caucus, and instead joining Republicans to approve bills.

“There were a couple of bills, especially toward the end of session, that were bills that were going to impact my district,” he said. “Something like the university bonding bill, which I know every Democrat in the House voted against it. I worked in higher education before getting elected, I’m very aware of the cuts to higher ed by the Legislature, and I thought that was a very important bill, not just for the universities, but for my district.”

Bowie’s district is full of ASU employees, himself included. Bowie worked at ASU in an administrative role prior to his election, and now serves as an adjunct professor. The fact that so many of his constituents also work at the university made his vote to approve more funding for the state’s three public universities a no-brainer, Bowie said.

So, too, was a vote on the final day of session to offer a manufacturing tax credit that would apply to Intel and Honeywell, two of the largest employers in LD18, he said.

“They were looking to expand their facilities in my district, and we had a lot of pressure from Democratic groups to not support that, but at the end of the day, I knew it was going to help my district,” Bowie said.
Epstein voted against the university bonding bill as part of a show of force by House Democrats, all 25 of whom opposed the bill.

She gave preliminary approval of the tax credit bill in a committee vote, but she missed the vote on the floor when it was narrowly approved in the House by 32 votes.

Epstein said her business experience provided crucial insight when researching bills and considering their economic impact. Her decisions to vote against bills that most Republicans support comes from a fierce independent streak, she said, not towing the Democratic Party line, and that voters in her district “should be dancing in the streets that I don’t bow to somebody else’s prior decisions.”

Find the interactive data tool above. (Data by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting; Graphic by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)

“It’s not about whether I voted with the Democrats or Republicans. It’s about, was I willing to stand up to power and say, ‘Hold it. You have to actually give me a good reason to vote for this, or I’m not going to vote for it,’” Epstein said. “And if Democrats were in the majority, I’m that person who’s going to stand up to them, too.”

For Bowie, representing his constituents means sometimes voting with the Republican majority.
“It’s a moderate, high income, well-educated district, and I think they’re looking for legislators who care more about what’s best for the community and what’s best for the cities there than necessarily what’s best for the party or ideology,” Bowie said.

Pragmatic wing

The LD18 election will be a perfect test of disparate voting patterns of the district’s two Democrats. Darin Fisher, himself a former legislative candidate, is now a Democratic precinct committeeman in the district. He said Bowie fits the mold of LD18 Democrats and has the voting record to prove it.

“We’re not the hardcore progressive wing, we’re the pragmatic wing. People call us blue dogs, people call us all sorts of things – DINOs,” Fisher said. “But the reality of it is, particularly when you’re in the minority, you have to understand that you still have to govern. Sean understands I think so much better than Mitzi the nuances of governing, and how things actually work, particularly in a state like Arizona.”

Governing means being willing and able to cross party lines when you vote, and Bowie’s got a reputation that proves he’s capable. Even Republicans have taken notice, Fisher said, giving Bowie support from moderate Republicans in LD18.

At the other end of the voting spectrum, Epstein is “a little bit too beholden” to the hardcore progressive Democrats of the district, Fisher said.

“Mitzi, she’s just not a policy wonk, so rather than digging into the details, she takes more direction from leadership as opposed to actually staking out her own positions,” he said.

Hydrick, the Democratic Party chairwoman in LD18, said Epstein’s well-versed in the subject that matters most to voters in the district: public education.

“There were a lot of votes this session about education, and Mitzi is absolutely firm – she’s always been an advocate, outspoken for public education. And that’s what she ran on. That’s what she promised people she would do. And that’s what she did when she got into the Statehouse,” Hydrick said.

Bowie, on the other hand, is “looking at it not as, particularly as a Democrat who will vote down the line on what Democrats hold, but what the district, as a whole district, would favor,” she said.

Bowie’s varied voting record will help him gain bipartisan support in the 2018 election, Hydrick said, while Epstein will be leaning on her votes on education policy to cut across party barriers, Hydrick said.

“There are a lot of moderate Republicans who support public education, there are a lot of independents who support public education. Of course, that’s one of the tenants of the Democratic platform,” Hydrick said. “So she has a broad base.”

To Fisher, Epstein’s base is not as broad as Hydrick believes. Epstein will have to rely on overwhelming support from Democrats to overcome a voting record that shows little deference to GOP interests.
Bowie likely won’t find as strong support as Epstein among Democrats, but given his penchant for crossing the aisle, he has appeal with centrist Republicans and conservative independents, Fisher said.

Bad ideas

When Butler won in 2016, she continued a trend set by former Rep. Eric Meyer of a single-shot Democratic candidate winning a seat in Legislative District 28, where Republicans hold a healthy voter registration majority.

Despite her lack of alike votes with Republicans, Butler said her votes “absolutely” represent her district’s values.

“I got elected to go down there and fight for education and for the economy, and I was focused on those priorities,” Butler said. “And when there was something that was not going to create a good solution that was going to help our schools and our teachers and our students, I had no problems voting against it.”

In a Legislature where Republicans decide which bills get through the legislative process, a Democrat must cast more votes on bills sponsored by Republicans. And Republicans had a lot of bad ideas, Butler said.

“I was not down there to play games, and I had absolutely no trouble voting against bad ideas. And so I saw far too many things that were bad ideas, and I was not going to support those,” she added.

Butler’s voting pattern is contrasted by the district’s senator, Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix. She was one of a handful of GOP senators who voted alike with Democrats most frequently, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis. So while even a Republican in a swing district fits the conventional wisdom of spreading out votes across the aisle, those bipartisan votes Brophy McGee took were often related to education, an issue that plays across party lines in LD28, Butler said.

As for how her voting pattern will affect her campaign in 2018, Butler said that never came up during the legislative session.

“I wasn’t thinking about my re-election strategy when I was voting. I literally was doing my best to understand the issue and vote the way I thought I will be able to talk to, answer to my voters for,” she said.

Meyer, the former representative Butler replaced, said Butler’s voting pattern may have something to do with post-presidential election pressures from the progressive left – an influence that can be significant on a freshman lawmaker.

But like Epstein, Meyer argued that Butler’s strong support of public education will play well in an issues-based campaign in LD28. Democrats, independents and Republicans in LD28 with kids in Arizona’s public schools will all favor a candidate who took votes to ensure as much money as possible is available to public schools, he said.

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