Is Doug Ducey the governor of Arizona, or Andy Tobin's "goombah"?

...Either that or we should change the name of the office of the governor to that of the protector of Andy Tobin's Employment Security...

From KNXV-TV (Phoenix channel 15) (emphasis added) -

Former Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin has been appointed to the Arizona Corporation Commission to fill the seat vacated by Susan Bitter Smith.

The appointment by Gov. Doug Ducey was announced Wednesday.

{snip}

Tobin is currently the director of the Arizona Department of Insurance and the interim director of the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions. He will leave both positions when he joins the Commission, said Ducey.

Before that, he was the director of the Arizona Department of Weights and Measures.

Mitch M. at Arizona' Politics observes that Tobin will take a significant cut in pay when he takes the job on the ACC.

However, I will observe, that given the behavior of the ACC and its members, that we need not worry about Tobin.

Only his *official* pay will be cut.

AZ House Speaker Tobin calls Chad Campbell "insincere" and "immature"...

...and says Campbell should have cleared his proposal to address the epidemic of gun violence sweeping the state and nation with Tobin first.

On Sundays here in AZ, like most of the country, local TV stations broadcast their political or public affairs programming, usually early in the morning.

Phoenix station KPNX (Channel 12 to those folks who aren't into alphabet soup early in the morning) broadcasts a program called "Sunday Square Off" at 8 a.m. local time.  The host is Brahm Resnick, a recently naturalized Canadian immigrant.  He's pretty even-handed, letting his guests say what they're going to say without interfering with them, but not afraid to press someone for details when they are being vague on an issue (given that he usually deals with politicians, that happens.  Frequently. :) ).

The show, while aired on Sunday, is recorded on Friday, which means that Resnick and his station can post teasers and previews on Saturday.

Which they did this week, here.

A transcript of the relevent part of the teaser -

Resnick - Now do you doubt his sincerity?

Tobin - Oh well sure, this is about him running for governor.  I'm very disappointed and it's immature..."here's my plan" and all you press guys show up and they put microphones in his face.  So he gets attention and that's OK.  Well how about picking up the phone and saying "hey Andy, what about something like this?"

Something tells me that the upcoming session of the lege will be a long and contentious one, judging by the fact that the Republican leadership is already resorting to name-calling.

Oh, and the leader of the caucus that barely acknowledges the existence of, much less deigns to speak to, Democratic members of the House and their constituents, whining about it when somebody doesn't talk to *him*?

Is there such a term as "operational hypocrisy"?  If not, there is now, and Tobin is serving up a big steaming pile of it...

Andy Tobin: AZ House Hypocrite-In-Chief

Laurie Roberts, a columnist for the Arizona Republic has mounted a public awareness campaign/series of columns called "De-kookify the Capitol".  In it, she shines a light on some of the looniest members of the lege.

And being a pretty honest person, Roberts' had to select Republicans as the kookiest members of the lege (one of the downsides of having a supermajority is that the kooks get to run wild.  And run they did...)

Naturally, House Speaker Andy Tobin had to weigh in on the matter, even though he wasn't named as one of the "kooks" (and trust me, if I had written the list, it would have had 61 names on it, including his).

He responded with an op-ed piece published in the Republic, excoriating Roberts for daring to criticize the members of the lege, and the Republic for publishing that criticism.

Most All of it is utterly hypocritical BS, and Tobin sets the tone for his piece in the opening sentence (emphasis mine) -

Only The Arizona Republic would allow one of its employees to disrespect public servants...

Tobin and his cohorts have spent years disrespecting teachers, police officers, firefighters, highway workers, and any other people who serve the public by working to make society a more educated, safer, and smoother-functioning place.

Tobin et. al. have mounted repeated attacks on teachers (union busting bills), all state employees (turning the state's merit protection employment system into a winner-takes-all spoils system controlled by politicians), public safety (guns on campus), democracy (birther bills, interfering in municipal elections), women's rights to control their own bodies (anti-choice and anti-contraception bills), Arizona's future fiscal stability (massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy) and Arizona's Latino population (creating a state-sponsored militia force to target Mexican immigrants, among *many* other bills).

What they haven't done is pass any bills that actually *help* the public, even refusing to change a couple of words in Arizona law that would have allowed long-term unemployed Arizonans to receive a few more weeks of federal unemployment benefits.  A change that would have cost the state absolutely nothing.

However, Tobin tries to wrap himself and his gang caucus in some sort of mythical "public servant" cloak that he apparently believes immunizes him (and the rest of the wingnuts in his caucus) from criticism.

Such immunity from criticism doesn't exist, even for actual public servants.  If it did, much of the time, the lege would have nothing to spout off about.  OK, other than women, Latinos, members of the LGBT community, other racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities, people who disagree with them, black helicopters, UFOs...

And the only way that Tobin et. al. can be considered "public servants" is if "public" is defined as "lobbyists ranging from Cathi Herrod to Chuck Coughlin and all of the wingnuts and corporate stooges in between".

Speaker Tobin - what kind of cheese would you like with that whine?

Nearly every Sunday morning at 8 a.m., Channel 12 in Phoenix airs Sunday Square Off, a weekly political discussion show.  When discussing issues and matters where there is a partisan divide, host Brahm Resnick will bring in a lineup of guests that crosses that partisan divide; when discussing issues and matters that are less partisan and more observational, a panel of journalists and Capitol observers are brought in.

This week's episode was primarily focused on the wrap-up of the legislative session, so the panel was less political and more neutral.

The neutral panel was critical/skeptical of a few things - the lack of transparency surrounding the budget, the no notice passage of a huge tax cut for the wealthy, the move to remove oversight of private prisons - but overall, they were pretty gentle with the lege and its shenanigans, but that wasn't good enough for Andy Tobin, speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives. 

When Resnick linked to the video archive of the episode on his Facebook page, Tobin chimed in -

This was a follow-up to a post that Tobin put up on his own FB page where he complained about the Arizona Republic declined to publish an "op-ed" that he wrote.

He might have left it at that, taking advantage of the benefit of the doubt to maintain at least a vestige of credibility.

Of course, he didn't.  He posted his "op-ed" and removed all doubt.

His piece was less "op-ed" suitable for a newspaper and more "hit piece" suitable for a mailer.  Apparently, Tobin was interested in saving some postage and is upset that the Republic isn't giving him an in-kind contribution for his Congressional/legislative campaign.

Not quite sure which he is going for, at least based on the hit piece op-ed, but he spent the entire piece blaming Arizona Democrats, President Obama, national Democrats, and the federal government for all that ails AZ, while blithely ignoring the fact that he and his Republican associates have controlled the Arizona Capitol for generations, and even had a supermajority in both chambers for the last two sessions.  They were able to push through absolutely anything they wanted in Arizona.  In addition, he ignored the fact that his associates have controlled the US House of Representatives for the last two years, and have done everything to attempt to block an effective economic recovery.

Note: I saved a copy of his hit piece in the event he pulls it down, but I don't expect him to do that.  He's too proud of his contempt for reality to ever do something like that.

Tobin in as AZ House speaker, Adams out and running for Congress

In a bit of a surprise (to me, anyway), Rep. Andy Tobin (R-LD1) was elected Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives.

From the Arizona Republic story written by Mary Jo Pitzl -

The Arizona House of Representativesgot a new leadership lineup Thursday when members elected Rep. Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, as speaker and Republicans chose Rep. Steve Court, R-Mesa as their majority leader.

Tobin replaces Kirk Adams, who resigned from the House and promptly announced his bid for an open congressional seat in the southeast Valley. Adams revealed U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl as his honorary campaign chairman.

The reason that I was a a little surprised by Tobin's elevation to the speaker's post isn't that I think he is less qualified than the other Republicans (hey - I'm a Democrat, so I think *all* of the Rs are unqualified for the job :) ), but he's a rural Republican, and generally, the center of Republican power in AZ is Maricopa County.  The House hasn't had a Speaker from a rural district since the late Jake Flake in 2003/2004. 

However, the election of Rep. Steve Court as Majority Leader does maintain the rural/urban balance.

The election of Tobin does signal one thing:

Arizona will continue to be the country's embarrassment.


From the press release emailed by the Republican House caucus -

Last – but certainly not least – Speaker Tobin is a devoted Yankee’s [sic] fan...

So, in addition to the anti-immigrant hysteria, the pro-gun fetishism, the "birther" insanity, and more abominations, Arizona has now solidified its position as the America's shame -

We have a Yankees fan in high public office.

...So sayeth the lifelong Red Sox fan... :))