CEBV Weekly: April 15, 2024
Sending us back to 1864 — but we won't go.
This week, our Ducey-packed state Supreme Court reverted us to a Civil War-era 1864 abortion ban, dating back to when slavery was legal and women lacked the right to vote. The entire nation is captivated and horrified by what happened here in Arizona.
That seismic shock you felt on Tuesday was our political ground shifting. The ramifications cannot be overstated: November 2024 is now a one-issue election.
Republican campaign consultant Barrett Marson said Republicans are potentially walking into a buzzsaw on abortion, and largely will lose the ability to focus on favorable issues like the economy and border security because of Tuesday’s ruling. “This will now be a one-issue campaign. This will be an election about abortion rights, and that’s not where Republicans want to be,” he said. (AZ Mirror)
In the words of Stephen Colbert, “GOP candidates are now backpedaling like a tweaked-out unicycle chimp” to try to get away from the consequences of their own actions. For example: On Wednesday, Matt Gress (R-4), who introduced five bills last year to codify fetal personhood, abruptly changed course and, in what now appears to be an orchestrated stunt, motioned to vote on a previously unheard Democratic bill to repeal the Civil War-era ban. Why? He knows his actions have placed his Scottsdale swing-district seat in jeopardy, and he’s trying to stay in power.
Gress said that he never sponsored legislation that specifically codified a fetus as a person. Last session, he sponsored HB2417, which would have allowed a pregnant woman to qualify as “two persons” and drive in a HOV lane without carrying two or more passengers. (Arizona Capitol Times)
A vote to repeal the 1864 ban never happened, of course. Gress's Republican colleagues made a substitute motion to recess, then to adjourn until April 17. In a press release, Speaker Toma said they needed more time to “listen to their constituents” and “carefully consider appropriate actions” regarding the one-line, seven-word bill — as if they hadn’t known exactly what they were doing since 2022 and before.
Not to mention that Gress sided with his GOP colleagues and voted to quash his own motion with the closed-circuit cameras rolling (because he thought no one would notice?), lied about it on national television, and got caught.
Further highlighting the hypocrisy, Toma and President Petersen then immediately left the state to spend several days schmoozing with rich donors in Kentucky at a $10,000-$25,000 “Bourbon Trail Experience” fundraiser designed to help them retain majority control of the Arizona legislature.
The extremist Arizona GOP knows exactly what it has done. Jimmy Kimmel concisely connected the dots on late-night TV, saying, “If you’re wondering what kind of people would do something like this, a Republican state senator named Anthony Kern had a group of anti-abortion extremists on the floor — and I mean on the floor — of the Senate chamber praying in tongues together.” Watch and weep at Arizona politicians who have once again made us a national laughingstock:
Arizonans have the receipts. Regardless of what Republicans may be saying now that the fraught consequences of their out-of-touch decision are becoming reality, they’ve been working to catapult us back to 1864 for years, and we know it.
The simple truth is that Republicans wanted this outcome. They voted for it in 2022. They want to avoid actually having to vote to explicitly implement that ban, because they know it’s wildly out of line with what Arizonans want. But there’s nowhere to hide on the campaign trail. (Jim Small, AZ Mirror)
A result of court-packing. Remember, former GOP Gov. Doug Ducey led “one of the (nation’s) more aggressive and more successful efforts” to politicize the judiciary. He expanded Arizona’s Supreme Court in 2016, even though every single one of the court’s justices lobbied against it. He then packed the court with new justices that adhered to his personal worldview. (5 of the 7 justices are now Ducey appointees.) And now that they’ve voted exactly as expected, he says the abortion ruling from the justices he chose goes too far? Sorry, we don’t buy it.
Which side are you on? Some elected officials are using the 60 days before this harmful, archaic ban goes into effect try to protect Arizonans from it. Governor Katie Hobbs issued an executive order directing Attorney General Kris Mayes to assume all prosecution-related duties regarding the 1864 ban, shielding Arizonans from the political whims of extremist county attorneys. Mayes, for her part, believes the 1864 ban violates the Arizona Constitution’s explicit right to privacy and is looking at legal options to protect Arizonans. But others want to double down: House Speaker Ben Toma is openly discussing putting a competing abortion measure on our November ballot, with the goal of confusing voters and keeping the Arizona for Abortion Access citizen’s initiative from passing.1
Stay engaged, show up and turn out. As CEBV’s Youth Organizer Isabel Hiserodt makes clear in her blazing op-ed, young Arizonans refuse to go back — not to pre-Roe policies, and certainly not to the lawmakers that passed them. We’re doubling down on our support for these organizers and their work to engage the youth electorate.
⏰ If you have 15 minutes: Arizona desperately needs a different legislature. Find the competitive legislative district nearest you2, then sign up to volunteer for, or donate to, the candidates that best represent your values.
⏰⏰ If you have 30 minutes: Contact Gov. Hobbs and ask her to veto one or more of the bad bills headed to her desk (see the “Veto Watch” section below).
⏰⏰⏰ If you have 60 minutes: Join us on Zoom at 4pm on Sunday for our next CEBV Happy Hour conversation. This week we’ll feature a panel of powerful lobbyists who pull back the curtain on how they work with Arizona legislators both behind the scenes and in public: Jen Marson with the Arizona Association of Counties and Alexis Susdorf from State 48 Public Affairs. We’ll meet every Sunday at 4 PM through the end of session. Sign up in advance here.
Thursday’s simultaneously dreaded and anticipated Arizona’s Finance Advisory Committee meeting represented the last purely financial hurdle to negotiating a state budget. Representatives from the governor's office, the treasurer's office, the Department of Revenue, and private-sector advisors sent shock waves through the state at their last meeting in January, when they projected a 2024-25 budget shortfall of $1.7 billion.
The "good" news? They now project Arizona only faces a combined deficit of $1.3 billion. Once lawmakers add in some necessary line-item spending, Arizona will need $1.8 billion in “shortfall solutions,” down only slightly from $2.2 billion in January.
The culprits are greater-than-expected declines in individual income taxes due to Gov. Ducey's ruinous tax cut for the rich, along with lower-than-anticipated sales tax collections. These two categories make up over 80% of Arizona’s revenue, unlike most other states that depend on property taxes. Volatile sales taxes constitute nearly 50% of Arizona's revenue; the average of other states is 18%. GOP lawmakers abolished Arizona’s statewide property tax in 1996.
The other culprit, of course, is Arizona’s runaway $1 billion universal ESA voucher program. (As any householder knows, spending money you don’t have on items you don’t need is a great way to run up a deficit.) Our dire fiscal predicament represents all the more reason for lawmakers to put voucher expansion on the chopping block. Republican legislative leaders are dug in — they’re fiercely protective of the voucher cash grab — but public education supporters are equally adamant that constitutionally mandated funding for public schools stay beyond the red line.
What will get sacrificed instead? Public health and safety? Road projects? Spin the wheel and see who loses.
This past week, Gov. Hobbs exercised her power to protect Arizonans from the following harmful, CEBV-opposed legislation.
Vetoed: Wednesday 4/10
HB2393, Kolodin (R-3), would have privatized our elections by allowing political parties to set up their own private voting process for the presidential preference election, harming overseas military’s current ability to vote securely and electronically
HB2404, Gillette (R-30), would have banned voter registration for anyone whose mailing address is out of state, hurt everyone from retirees and winter visitors to college students
HB2504, Biasiucci (R-30), would have banned research and health care institutions from doing genetic sequencing if a piece of the machine was produced in China or Hong Kong (aka, a “foreign adversary”)
HB2612, Dunn (R-25), would have banned people from holding elected public office in Arizona if they were also convicted of the crime of helping their neighbors vote by collecting early ballots
HB2658, Chaplik (R-3), would have banned pedestrians from soliciting donations on a painted or raised traffic island or median, criminalizing homelessness and raising constitutionality issues
On the Governor’s Desk
GOP lawmakers passed the following 7 bills, which CEBV opposes, this week. They now await Gov. Hobbs’ veto. You can email the governor’s team at engage@az.gov to request she do just that.
SB1146, Kern (R-27), would further the false conspiracy theory that mRNA vaccines have entered the US food supply by allowing meat, poultry and seafood products to be labeled "mRNA free"
SB1151, Kern (R-27), would allow public schools to post and read aloud the Ten Commandments in classrooms
SB1153, Kern (R-27), would kneecap our state government’s ability to regulate unaccountable, wasteful spending by restricting Arizona agencies from creating rules that would increase regulatory costs by more than a nominal amount
SB1189, Wadsack (R-17), would ban Arizona cities from prohibiting or regulating gun shows within their boundaries
SB1299, Kern (R-27), would make it harder to ban motorists from turning right on red lights by adding a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy
SB1330, Mesnard (R-13), would removes the word “drop box” from elections statute, replacing it with “container” or “ballot box,” potentially ushering in restrictions on drop boxes and voting by mail
SB1628, Kerr (R-25), would eliminate legal recognition of transgender people by inserting a narrow, inflexible and unscientific definition of biological sex into Arizona law
2024 Session Timeline
These “deadlines” are highly flexible and can be changed or waived at any time with a simple majority vote.
Tuesday, 4/16 100th Day of Session (the stated end goal; can be changed) Sunday, 6/30 Constitutionally mandated deadline for a state budget
Flag this handy list of contact info, committee chairs and assignments, updated for 2024.
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The content of this proposed referral is unclear, as Republican leaders don’t have a strategy that unifies all their 31 lawmakers. Even as terrified swing-district representatives backpedal their previous support of the 1864 ban, their fellow Republicans are fighting them: the extremist “Freedom Caucus” is openly celebrating and will likely oppose any attempt to loosen the noose, while Arizona’s very own Aunt Lydia, pro-1864 Christian nationalist lobbyist Cathi Herrod, watches to make sure it doesn’t slip.
Those districts are 2, 4, 9, 13, 16, 17, 23, and 27.
