Jim Weiers disenfranchises nearly 2 million Arizonans

Fact to remember: in terms of controlling the agenda of the Arizona House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House, the Jim Weiers mentioned in the title of this post, is God. And he gleefully uses that power to push around the Democrats in the legislature.

Actually, there is one difference between God and Jim Weiers - God occasionally listens to prayers.

Anyway, in my previous post, I covered Rep. Ed Ableser's eye-opener about bills that have not been heard in a House committee by the end of next week are dead this session.

He then announced a startling figure -

Of over 830 bills, memorials, and resolutions introduced in the Arizona House of Representatives this session, 279 were sponsored by Democrats.

5 of those bills have been heard in committee. (The numbers may change a little by the end of next week, but probably not by much.)

That's 1.7% of the bills introduced by Democrats even have a chance of coming to a vote before the whole House.

In Arizona's 30 legislative districts, 11 of them have an all-Democrat delegation in the legislature (both state reps and the state senator).

Based on 2000 census figures, 1,801,450 people live in those districts. There are 4 districts with split delegations, but I'm not counting those as part of this.


That's better than 35% of the population of Arizona (5,130,632).


There are many reasons why the Republican Party is in decline both nationally and in Arizona; the utter contempt for the voters illustrated by this is only one of them.

BTW - one of those aforementioned split districts, LD10, is Weiers' own. Apparently, he didn't get the hint when Jackie Thrasher kicked his long-time running mate Doug Quelland to the electoral curb in November.

We need to help her finish the job in 2008; she won't just be helping her district, she'll be helping more than 1/3 of the state.

Good night!