Arizona's legislative Rs attempt to influence another body

[Begin sarcasm]

I know, you're as shocked as I am that they've overstepped their bounds. Or tried to use their positions to put their fingers on the scale.

[/end sarcasm]

:)

From KTAR -

Arizona Senate Committee accuses Clean Elections of unlawful debate rule change

The Arizona Senate Committee claimed on Thursday that the Clean Elections Commission has illegally barred the Green Party’s U.S. Senate candidate from participating in upcoming general election debates.

Eduardo Quintana, 2024 Arizona Senate candidate and chair of the Green Party in Pima County, won his side of the primary as a write-in candidate but is not featured in the Oct. 9 debate to be broadcasted across several platforms by Arizona Media Association. As is, the scheduled debate will feature Republican Kari Lake and Democrat U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.

The accusation was submitted via letter by Committee Chairman Jake Hoffman in response to Clean Elections’ recent rule change that requires a candidate to have received at least 1% of total ballots counted in their primary election. According to Arizona Media Association, that 1% minimum threshold was 12,400 votes for Quintana, who only garnered 282.

I presume that the "committee" in question is Senate Government; Hoffman is chair of two Senate Government and Senate Executive Nominations aka Senate Inquisitions Committee.  And this isn't about a nomination.

Short attention span musing

...Could someone please tell the Harris campaign to stay off the "send" button?  If they've got energy to burn, knock on a few doors, instead.

In the last three days, I've received 41 emails from one or another arms of the Harris campaign, which is about 35 more than necessary.

...Speaking of the Harris campaign, she's selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

Two things:

1. Do I believe he'll be great VP?  Yes, unequivocally.

2. When I hear the name "Walz", I think of former NHL center "Wes Walz".  Wes is unrelated to Tim (as far as I can tell), but while Tim is the governor of Minnesota, Wes played for the Minnesota Wild.

It turns out that while Tim is from Nebraska, Wes is from Canada.  While, as a a Canadian, Wes can't be POTUS and probably shouldn't be in the line of succession to the presidency, this all made me think.

Wes Walz, or another former hockey player, should take a newly-created high sub-cabinet position with the state department in a Harris Administration.

Undersecretary of Hip Checks. :)

I expect that certain international negotiations will go very smoothly.

Of course, if Cheeto wins, the newly-created position would be "Undersecretary of Kissing Vlad's butt."

...Arizona has returned $29 million to the feds.  The funds were intended to aid underperforming schools but it was never used.so it had to be returned.  The current Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, may have worked against the best interests of public schools and lost the money, but he attempted to blame his predecessor, Kathy Hoffman, for his own malfeasance in office.  Hoffman and others would have none of it.

From the linked story (italics from the story) -

[snip]

{From an emailed statement from Hoffman}“Tom Horne has had nearly two years of responsibility over the federal funds and this is his mistake to resolve. There were no issues with the school improvement grants during my administration. Schools should not have suddenly found out they had $29 million cut from their budgets just as the new school year is starting. My office prioritized transparent and frequent communication with our school leaders. Tom Horne does not seem to have continued that policy.”

[snip]

However, both the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, as well as the Arizona School Administrators Association say they’ve heard that communication has been lacking from Horne’s office.

“The fact that the superintendent wants to blame the former superintendent for what happened, it doesn't matter. The situation is what it is, and he should be doing everything he can to fix this and take accountability for it,” AEA President Marisol Garcia said. “This is a position where we elect people to lead us and it doesn't matter how it happened. We now have to deal with it.”

Governor Katie Hobbs also chimed in with a press release excoriating Horne.

If someone uses their office to impede a criminal investigation, does that constitute malfeasance in office?

*I* think so, but I'm not a lawyer.

From an opinion piece in the Arizona Republic by Laurie Roberts, dated 1/6 -

Far-right wants to impeach Kris Mayes for enforcing election law in Cochise County

Impeachment fever has reached Arizona as the Maricopa County Republican Party brain trust on Tuesday called for the ouster of Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes.

The party’s hard-right leaders are furious that a pair of Republican Cochise County supervisors have been indicted on charges that they interfered with the 2022 election.

Apparently, it’s now a “grotesque abuse of office” to require county supervisors to follow state law — the one that says they must certify election results within 20 days of an election.

[snip]

Hoffman puts impeachment on the table

So much so, in fact, that they plan to embark upon a little weaponization of their own.

“You can bet your a-- that the @AZFreedomCaucus will be looking at every possible option to make weaponizing our state’s government and abusing Executive power as painful as humanly possible,” Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek and Freedom Caucus chairman, announced on social media shortly after last week’s indictments.

Hoffman's posts on Elon Musk's vanity project/hatefest X, formerly known as Twitter -

Hoffman was one of the fake electors in AZ being investigated by AG Mayes.

Assuming that Hoffman goes forward with his scheme and isn't just talking out of his posterior spouting talking points, he may find himself with some credibility issues.  He engaged in some antidemocratic behavior and is seeking to use his position to forestall an examination of that behavior.

Of course, he could find another R to be the public face of his impeachment scheme, one with a reputation for being an honorable human being.

Of course2, he may that difficult to pull off, for two reasons - 1. R legislators in AZ tend to fall into one of three character categories bad, very bad, and less bad.  2. There was a time when certain Republican legislators were wrong, politically, but were otherwise decent people.

That time is not now.

AZ Senate Inquisition Committee meets again on Monday

Was going to copy the term used by AZBlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona, "MAGA Fascist Star Chamber Committee", but decided that "Inquisition Committee" was shorter and just as accurate.

On the agenda, set for an auto-da-fe imposed by committee chair Jake Hoffman are

Jennifer Toth, nominee for director of ADOT

Elizabeth Thorson, nominee for director of ADOA

and Karen Peters, nominee for director of ADEQ

The meeting/shitshow is scheduled for Monday at 9:30 a.m. in SHR109.

Time for some 2024 speculation

Yes, the 2022 election is barely in the books and the inevitable lawsuit has been filed but not resolved, but 2024 races have already started.

First, a few caveats:

1. No actual humans were spoken to during the production of this post.  This is purely about me throwing ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks.

2. Any names/people mentioned here are folks who I think may look at running for a particular office but that doesn't mean that I think that all will actually run for that office.

3. Anyone who currently holds an office will be presumed to retain that office, if they actually run for it.  Some will be vulnerable and will lose their offices.

US President:

The 2020 nominees, Joe Biden and Cheeto, are making noises about running (actually, Cheeto has already announced his candidacy).  However, I don't believe that either will actually run in 2024.  They'll both be *old*.  Right now, both are making noises about doing so because of Biden's desire to not to already be seen as a lame duck POTUS and Cheeto's desire to not be seen as incarcerated.

And his ego.  Cheeto's vanity is boundless.  For him, the presidency is less about public service and more about self-aggrandizement. And profit.

US Senate seat from Arizona:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's seat is up for election, and her decision to change her registration to Independent opens up the Democratic primary in a big way,

The Republican primary was already going to be wide open but her move may make it wilder.

Doug Ducey, the current governor in AZ, has long been rumored to be eyeing Sinema's seat.

Mark Brnovich, the current Attorney General in AZ, may have lost the R Senate primary in 2022 and is term-limited as AG, but he doesn't seem to be going away - he's running radio ads catering to rural voters.  He may simply be burning off his budget, but I think that he's keeping his options open.

Paul Gosar and/or Andy Biggs, both are batshit crazy members of Congress.  Assuming they avoid going to prison over their involvement in the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

Kelli Ward, currently the batshit crazy chair of the AZGOP.  Assuming she avoids going to prison over their involvement in the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

An unnamed vassal of a rich guy who's looking to by a Senate seat.  Think: 2024 version of Blake Masters/Peter Thiel.

Other election-denying/anti-democracy Rs may also looking at the seat.

With Sinema's change, the R primary transitions from being the political equivalent of a pro wrestling battle royal to being an outright bar brawl.

If Sinema appears on the ballot, it will have the effect of siphoning votes away from the Democratic nominee, so if the R nominee isn't a batshit crazy ones, they'll win in a walkover; if the R voters pick a crazy nominee in their primary, the race will closer, maybe close enough for the D nominee to win.  For the record, while I consider Ducey and Brnovich to be poor public servants and simply lousy human beings, they're not batshit crazy.

The Democratic primary will be less wide open than the Republican primary but it will be more open than it would have been before Sinema left.

Ruben Gallego, current member of Congress, is the very early favorite here because he was already going to challenge Sinema in the primary when she was still a D.

Greg Stanton, current member of Congress and former mayor of Phoenix, has already made noises critical of Sinema.  From Twitter (pic taken yesterday) -

Other Ds who may be looking at the race -

Kate Gallego, current mayor of Phoenix.  Termed out and will not be in office in 2024.

Regina Romero, current mayor of Tucson.

Raquel Teran, currently in the AZ State Senate and the chair of the Arizona Democratic Party.  In AZ, it's almost a tradition that one doesn't become a state party chair without running for high office.

Kathy Hoffman. currently the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction.  She lost her re-election bid in 2022.

US Congress -

I expect that most of the current officeholders here will retain their office, but three of the Rs will be especially vulnerable - Juan Ciscomani in southern AZ and Eli Crane in Northern AZ because they will be first termers and David Schweikert because he's ethically challenged.

Also, if Ruben Gallego and/or Stanton run for the Senate, it wouldn't be surprising to see 1 or 2 (or more) of the others listed as potentially running for Senate to look at those seats instead.

Arizona Corporation Commission -

Three seats will be on the ballot.  They're currently held by D Anna Tovar and Rs Lea Marquez Peterson and Jim O'Connor.  While I expect that all of them will run for reelection I cannot and will not guess at what the primary fields will look like here.

Rep. Jake Hoffman may have been democratically elected by the voters in LD12, but he's using his position to get his hate on for both voters and democracy

He's been heavily involved with efforts to overturn the 2020 election and install Cheeto against the will of the voters of the US, as AZ BlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona has documented here and here.

But that doesn't qualify him for the Legislative Loon Award.

Nope, only stuff that he does and says while the lege is in session does that.

Rest assured, though, he's accomplished a lot there, 

Already he has proposed (with a rogue's gallery of co-sponsors) -

HB2236, Barring the registration of voters unless the voter specifically asks to be registered.

HB2237, Barring same-day voter registration and making it a felony to so.

HB2238, Barring the use of ballot drop boxes.

HB2239, Barring electronic vote "adjudication".

HB2240, Barring centralized voting centers.

HB2241, Requiring voters to present ID to deliver an early ballot.

HB2242, Making it a felony to not "validate" the registration information of a new voter.

HB2243, Adding to the verbiage required to be on voter registration forms (to be fair to Hoffman, this one seems like it may be the least bad of all of his proposals).

HB2491, Requiring that an as yet to be determined number of factors be used to verify each signature on an ealy ballot.

HB2492, Mandating that proof of citizenship be provided when registering to vote with a non-federal form, and making it a felony to fail to do so.

HB2493, Appropriating money from the state's general fund for an "election integrity fund".

HB2494, Requiring that the AZSOS  and county recorders document any attendance at voter registration events that they attend and work, and do so on their websites.

His fans shouldn't worry - while there's a definite pattern to his lunacy and hatred, he's something of a Renaissance Man (though he and his fans may long for serfdom and despise the renaissance).

He's also proposed

HB2235, In only counties with 500K people or more (In AZ, that's the counties of Maricopa and Pima (both of which Biden/Harris won in 2020..[start sarcasm} but I'm sure that's just a coincidence {/end sarcasm]), beginning in 2025, making county supervisors the lowest-paid county-level elected officials.

HB2495, An anti-LGBTQ+ measure, banning the use of "sexually explicit materials" in public schools.  Basically, all sex-ed classes would banned under this measure.

HB2496, Creating a list of exemptions for student activity fees at public universities.

HB2497, the latest attempt to thwart the will of the voters on income tax rates.

HB2498, Banning Covid vaccine mandates.

Yup, Rep. John Kavanagh may be the early favorite for the Legislative Loon Award, but Hoffman is a definite contender for the title.

Kathy Hoffman, defending Arizona's schools, calls out Arizona's governor

From KTAR- 

Arizona’s schools chief slams Ducey for limiting COVID mitigation policies

Arizona’s schools chief didn’t mince words Wednesday criticizing Gov. Doug Ducey limiting the ability for schools in the state to enforce COVID-19 mitigation measures, including requiring face masks.

“You can tell that he’s not asking our school leaders what would help them have in-person instruction, he’s just making big political moves to get on national TV,” Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Gaydos and Chad.

Pic courtesy the AZ Department of Education