Today's Shorts: Republican Disarray, 'Go Big or Go Home' & Calling on the Ancestors
Libertarian bullies have been wreaking havoc in the Arizona Legislature. Now they're doing the same in Congress. Dems, go big or go home! Ohio abolitionists, please haunt Jim Jordan.
The other day a friend of my said to me, somewhat proudly,
“Arizona’s known for a lotta firsts.”
To which I replied,
“Well, yeah, but … they’re not necessarily good things to be first at.”
Republican Chaos: Arizonans have seen this movie before
In an historic move on October 2, 2023, “Freedom” Caucus member Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) called for a vote to remove Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the Speaker’s chair. On October 3, 2023, by a vote of 216-210 the US House of Representatives made history and removed McCarthy as Speaker. All of the House Democrats and eight Republicans voted to oust McCarthy.
On September 30, McCarthy revealed a deal with the Democrats to stop the US government from shutting down that night and set up a 45-day deadline for a budget. They did the right thing.
That bipartisan effort to stop a federal government shutdown, preserve people’s paychecks and protect our country’s financial standing prompted Gaetz and other Republican hardliners to move against McCarthy. (Mind you, all of them — including McCarthy — are election deniers and acolytes of former President Donald Trump. It’s not as if McCarthy is a flaming liberal. They are eating their own.)
As of today, October 20, the US House of Representatives has been without a Speaker for more two weeks. In the background, the 45-day deadline for stopgap funding to keep the US government open is creeping up.
The House should be hard at work on the budget instead of playing political games. The hardliners don’t have the votes. None of the ultra conservative Republicans, who have tried to win the Speaker’s chair, have been able to get a majority of Republicans to vote for them.
Democrats are hanging tough against all of the hardcore conservative Republicans who have stepped up to run for Speaker and who are to the right of McCarthy — Reps. Austin Scott (R-GA), Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Jim Jordan (R-OH). Today, literally moments ago, Jordon lost his third bid for Speaker of the House.
Why not propose a moderate who can get the House back to the budget?
Republicans don’t have the votes to continue the status quo of one-party rule.
That’s a good thing.
How did we get here?
In order to win the Speaker’s chair back in January 2023, McCarthy suffered through 15 humiliating rounds of votes and made many concessions to the far right wing of his party. He let them chair committees, let them propose and bring their extreme bills to the floor and agreed to a rule change that allowed any member to call for a vote to remove the Speaker. That last concession did him in. It was a rough nine months for McCarthy as Speaker. Rather than deal with Democrats, McCarthy catered to the right and like rabid dogs, they viciously bit the hand that reached out to them.
Apparently, the ‘Gang the Couldn’t Shoot Straight’ didn’t have a game plan
beyond dumping McCarthy.
Mainstream Congressional Republicans need the Democrats to govern, but they have not completely accepted that fact.
The problem is that for years, mainstream Republicans — like Senator Mitch McConnell and former Arizona Speaker Rusty Bowers — have been bowing to right wing extremists in order to hold their thin majorities together and to pass their worst ideas on party line votes. At the federal and state levels, the Republican Party chose to cling to power, rather than to govern. McConnell and other old timers like Senator Lindsey Graham initially balked at Trump’s brash authoritarian ways, but eventually supported the extremists in their party in order to hold power. The old school Republicans wanted to continue the status quo, which has allowed them to game the system and pass loads of legislation on a party line vote with little or no debate.
Ironically, one of the newly elected Republicans from Arizona, Rep. Eli Crane, said he voted for the right-wing rule changes, against McCarthy, and for Jordan for Speaker because he wanted to end the status quo in Congress.
Dude, you and your cronies helped the Democrats break your own party’s status quo. (Woo hoo!)
All of the items listed in Crane’s defiant X Post (above) existed under Trump. In fact, Trump and the Republicans gave us that $33 trillion debt when they passed the Trump Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TTCJA) — the biggest overhaul of the US tax code ever — on a party line vote with NO DEBATE. Is that the “status quo” Crane, Gaetz, Jordan and other are fighting against? I, too, am against the massive corporate tax giveaways and the “Opportunity” Zones in the TTCJA and against any legislation that passes on a party line vote with no debate. Crane, don’t shut down the government. Repeal the TTCJA instead.
Crane’s website touts an April 2023 “documentary” called “The 20”, which was released only four months after he took office. It focuses on the fight that Crane, Gaetz, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and others are waging against the rest of the Congress (AKA “the establishment”.) I wonder who bankrolled that “documentary.”
While the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight is playing ideological games in Congress, the clock is ticking away toward 45-day deadline to pass a budget OR allow the government to fail, which would make the US look extremely weak internationally at a time when the world needs our leadership.
The “status quo” would bring together as many people as possible to negotiate a budget (hopefully a bipartisan budget). If Jordan, Gaetz, Crane, Biggs, and Reps. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and the other Republicans who backed Jordan for Speaker are “fighting against the status quo,” does that mean they plan to let the government default in a few weeks if they take charge?
Some have referred to the Republican Party’s self-immolation as an insurrection from within. When you look at the negative international, financial and societal implications of a prolonged Republican stalemate, their failure to find a leader and their failure to work across the aisle to form a functioning government and develop a budget, the current situation gives credence to that argument.
By population and geography, these six Republicans represent most of Arizona The voters don’t want childish, dangerous games in the Congress — or the state legislatures. We don’t want the government and deny soldiers, sailors, air men and senior citizens their pay checks and to further damage our country’s financial standing on a not-well-planned political lark. VOTE THEM OUT.
Hounded by Libertarians, McCarthy Is Following in AZ Speaker Bowers’ Footsteps
Since the 2020 election, Arizona has been in the thick of the Libertarian uprising now gripping Congress. That year several new hardcore Libertarians — including Reps. Jake Hoffman1, Joseph Chaplik, Rev. Lupe Diaz, Quang H Nguyen, Jacqueline Parker, Beverly Pingerelli and Judy Burges — were elected to the Arizona House by moving into open safe seats, defeating more moderate Republicans or defeating Democrats.
Far-right Libertarians like Reps. Mark Finchem and Shawnna Bolick were already in the House. With all of that angry energy swirling around, other incumbents — like Reps. John Fillmore, Keven Payne and Frank Carroll — moved to the right during the two-year session.
When the defiant, anti-mask, election-conspiracy-theory Republican Freshmen Class arrived for their orientation in Phoenix, in the fall of 2020, they arrived ready to shake things up. The extreme right wing of the Republican Party, including “Stop the Steal” election deniers like Finchem called for “rolling the Speaker” and ousting Bowers from the chair in the fall of 2020. They labeled Bowers a RINO (Republican in Name Only). Seriously? Bowers is a 25+ year veteran of the Arizona Legislature2 with loads of tax giveaways, bills “written to get around the gift clause” and other terrible Republican laws to his name. He has a solid record against reproductive choice, unions, cannabis and fully funding public education or any social safety net. Bowers is no moderate.
Bowers got into trouble with the right because he and Republican Governor Doug Ducey both notoriously stood up to Trump and the election deniers. Neither of them participated in the pre-insurrection plot to disrupt the certification of presidential election results.
The would-be election disruptors wanted Arizona to cast off its elected list of representatives to the Electoral College and adopt Arizona’s fake elector list which includes Hoffman and the former head of the Arizona Republican Party Kelli Ward and her husband Michael Ward. Arizona — beginning with “A” — was key to the plot because Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) was prepared to jump up on January 6, 2021 and declare the fake electors to be the real Electoral College representatives from Arizona.
Bowers, who later told the January 6 Committee that he was under extreme pressure, said to the conspirators in the fall of 2020, essentially, that disrupting an election was not in his job description. He told the committee that he repeatedly asked the election deniers for proof of fraud, and they never gave him proof the election was stolen. (Like McCarthy, Bowers did the right thing and was later targeted for it.) Ducey publicly silenced Trump’s phone call when he was in the midst of the election certification ceremony. Things could have been a lot worse on January 6, 2021 if Bowers, Ducey and Vice President Mike Pence had caved to pressure and handed the presidential election to the loser … Trump.
It also should be noted that in late November 2020, some Arizona Republicans, including elected officials, met with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a major player in promoting the election fraud lies and the events leading up to the insurrection.
Also, the Q Shaman and other Trump supporters — draped in Trump flags and shouting “Freedom!” — stormed the Arizona House lobby in early December 2020 when the newly elected Arizona Legislature Freshman Class was having orientation. Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton was there and shot the embedded video of people rushing in the sliding doors.
“It was an awful day, being trapped in that building and then escorted out to our cars by DPS police. What an introduction to my new role as a state rep,” Rev. Stahl Hamilton told me via text. “And less than a week later Derek [and I] got COVID.” The new member orientation was a super spreader event.
Election deniers and Trump supporters occupied the House lobby most of the day, until long after 5 p.m. House Security was able to lock the doors to the stairwells and the first floor offices before the intruders could go beyond the lobby, but nobody tried to remove them. Election deniers did a dry run in Arizona, one month before insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The 55th Legislature was sworn in five days after the DC insurrection on January 11, 2021. The Democrats wore facemasks, many sewn by volunteers in Tucson. Most Republicans didn’t.
There was a lot of security on Opening Day because there had been rumors of attacks on state capitols. It was a tense day and another COVID super spreader event, but it was just the beginning of a two-year wild ride in which Democrats watched the Republican Party devolve into chaos. Their disagreements gave us many opportunities to pass Democratic legislation. The Bowers leadership team knew they would need Democratic votes to pass even the most modest spending proposals, and they worked well with Minority Leader Reggie Bolding and Assistant Minority Leader Jennifer Longdon.
To keep his seat, Bowers made many concessions to the right — outlined in my video update below from March 2021 — but failed to appease them. They dogged him — and a lot of other people — for two years.
What made matters worse for Bowers was that the Senate leadership — President Karen Fann, Majority Leader Warren Peterson (Hoffman’s seatmate), and Majority Whip Sonny Borrelli — were solidly in the Stop the Steal camp, while the House leadership wanted to forget the 2020 election and get back to business. Mainstream Chamber of Commerce Republicans like Bowers and House Majority Leader Ben Toma3 wanted to get back to the AZGOP status quo and push out more corporate tax cuts and some pork barrel road projects, along with privatization, deregulation and attacks on public education — standard Republican fare for decades. (Is this the status quo Crane is talking about?)
What’s Next for Congress? Take a Peak Bowers’ Budget Battles in Arizona
During Bowers’ four years as Speaker, the House was split 31 Rs to 29 Ds. It takes 31 votes to pass legislation. During my first four years in the House, the Republicans were masters at gaming the system, rearranging schedules, changing rules and brokering deals to get all 31 of their members to vote on the Republican agenda, which consisted of 300+ bills each year4.
After the 2020 election, Bowers no longer had a solid 31 Republican votes to pass all of their bad ideas on a party line vote. He knew he had to get Democratic votes on some issues — like basic school funding, basic healthcare changes (to keep up with the times) and tax giveaways5.
Bowers and his leadership team managed to put together two budgets with the Libertarian block in the 55th Legislature, but Republican infighting led to two of the longest sessions in the history of the Arizona Legislature6. The first year — 2021 — the budget process dragged out forever due to Republican disarray and a lack of 31 votes on multiple budget proposals.
In order to “buy”7 all 31 Republican votes on the budget and cut the 29 Democrats (and all of our constituents) completely out of the process, Bowers and his team made lots of deals in 2021. They stuffed the budget with pork barrel projects, radical financial ideas like the Flat Tax and many ideological bills that were not related to money — like a ban on critical race theory in schools, voter suppression tactics and stripping then Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of some of her powers. The session ended on June 30, 2021, the last day to pass a budget. I said “happy birthday” to my one-year-old granddaughter from the floor of the house while my husband and helpers moved my furniture out of my Phoenix apartment and into storage.
That budget was a mess. The state got sued for stuffing unrelated bills that couldn’t pass on their own into the budget. The non-money bills were tossed out by the courts, and we were forced to hear them all again individually in 2022. (What a waste of time and money!)
Unfortunately, the Flat Tax survived. In 2023, we are feeling the negative financial impact of the deals Bowers and Toma made in 2021. The video below is a good explanation why the Flat Tax is a fiscally unsound idea and why it is beginning to break the Arizona budget, along with Empowerment Scholarship Award (ESA) expansion, which also passed under the leadership of Bowers and Toma. (Both of these should be repealed or radically changed to stop dramatic drain on our state’s finances that they were designed to create.)
In 2022, the budget process also dragged out, with multiple Republican budgets being floated and shot down in bipartisan votes. My YouTube Channel has tons of daily Legislative updates that detail the drama in both years and show how wild the voting got because Bowers needed us, but just as with his party, we were all pretty much free agents in our votes, as the bipartisanship video, above, notes.
Also, in the mix in late June 2022 was Ducey’s water bill, which had been struggling all session, and the impending SCOTUS decision on Roe v Wade. Ducey and Bowers needed Democratic votes for the budget and the water bill. They knew that Hoffman, Chaplik, Parker and most of the Libertarian block planned to vote “no” on all parts of the budget.
In a deal brokered with the Republican leadership, a group of Democrats, including Bolding, Longdon and others, agreed to vote “yes” on all parts of the budget in order to pass it and keep the government open. Democratic ideas were included in the budget — like increases in funding for maternal and child health, my signature issue. I was excited to be able to vote “yes” on some parts of the budget and “no” on other parts. Isn’t that how it should be, instead of block voting by party? This end of session video talks about the process.
Thanks to Libertarian intransigence, the Arizona House passed it’s
FIRST BIPARTISAN BUDGET IN YEARS in June 2022.
The budget passed before the last day of session, which was a good thing, because SCOTUS struck down Roe v Wade on June 24, 2022, the day we were supposed to sine die. There were water negotiations happening all day because Ducey didn’t want us to end the session without a water bill. I was one of the holdouts and made this video while I was waiting to cast my “no” vote.
As negotiations, bill revisions and briefings were happening inside, a rally of pro-abortion protesters was amassing outside. About 6:30 p.m., I went out to the rally on the lawn, walked around and talked with abortion rights supporters. Most of them didn’t realize that both houses of the Legislature were still in session and that we were all inside.
At about 8 p.m., while we were still waiting for the final version of the Water Initiative, from the top of the old Capitol building, the Department of Public Safety started tear-gassing and flash-bombing the pro-abortion protestors who were banging on the glass doors of the Senate.
People, mostly young women, began streaming passed my office window in the dark … screaming and crying.
We were told to leave our offices, turn off the lights if we had windows and go to the second floor. From the mezzanine, we could see the chaos.
While we were all standing there, some House Republicans relished in the scene of DPS going after the protesters so harshly.
Speaker Pro Tempore Travis Grantham said, “Good!” When another Republican confirmed they were using flash bombs.
I walked over to Grantham (Hoffman’s other seatmate) and said that it was difficult for me to watch scores of women running in terror from Arizona Department of “Public Safety” officers.
He replied that the women “should have stayed home.”
That didn’t go over big with me, obviously.
“Right they should have stayed home barefoot and pregnant!” I said as he walked away smugly.
I was so sick of their bullshit and had no patience to hang around for a few more hours while they wrangled over Ducey’s bill.
Many of us "No" votes on the Water Bill were also disgusted by the over-the-top DPS reaction to the protestors, and we walked out in protest. The vote in the House was 48-1-11. The vote in the Senate was 25-1-4. Many (but perhaps not all) of the 15 people who didn't vote were against the Water Bill. The session didn’t end until after midnight.
It was a dramatic end to my six years in the Legislature. I retired in January 2023. The Libertarians never “rolled” Bowers during the session, but they beat him in his bid to return to the Arizona Senate in the fall of 2022.
Dems: Go big or go home. Run in every race in 2024!
The Republican Party is so far off the rails that the train has tumbled down the steep rocky embankment, bouncing on jagged boulders, as it careens toward the abyss of total collapse and members fly out the windows. No, I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic.
Democrats — and anyone who wants our cities, states and country to have functioning governments that work for the people instead of corporations and special interest groups — it’s time to seize the day.
With everything that is going on in the country and the world, this is no time for a completely dysfunctional political party to hold the US House of Representatives hostage while they squabble over which nut will take over the Speaker’s chair.
Why not propose a moderate who can get moderate Democratic and Republican votes with an agreement about shared power? (No Lucy and the football!) A leader with bipartisan support would be better for the country than an attack dog like Jordan who has never passed any legislation in 16 years or a Trump sycophant like McCarthy.
There’s a lot of chaos in the world.
We don’t want or need chaos in our governments.
As noted above, there has been no Speaker of the US House of Representatives for more than two weeks. And, in other news,
The Ukraine-Russia War continues to rage.
A horrific new, bloody conflict has erupted between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
After the hottest July and hottest August on record, it’s still 100 degrees in Tucson in mid-October.
Refugees are surging at the US-Mexico border (and other borders around the world), while local governments are going broke trying to help them.
Far too many military and governmental positions remain unfilled because of grandstanding by Little Napoleons who are driven by power and ego. Looking at you Tuberville in DC and Hoffman in AZ. Who do you think you are, holding up the functions of government with your petty ego trips?
The cost of housing is skyrocketing, homelessness and hunger abound and government appears powerless.
Billionaires rule the world … etc.
This is no time for a dysfunctional government run by media whores wrapped in money and self interest.
In 2024, Democrats must run in every race — no protected seats and no write-offs as unwinnable.
Arizona’s Congressional delegation has nine representatives in the House: six Republicans (David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani, Debbie Lesko, and Paul Gosar) and three Democrats (Raul Grijalva, Ruben Gallego and Greg Stanton.) All six Arizona Republicans joined Trump in backing election denier Rep. Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House. At the very least, this shows poor judgment.
Voters don’t want an attack dog as third person in line for the presidency. Lesko is stepping down, so that will be an open seat. Ciscomani, who is playing a fake moderate, has shown his true colors. Both of these seats should be vulnerable, especially new-comer Ciscomani’s seat, which he barely won in 2022. [Go, Kirsten Engel!]
The Legislature is in the same stalemate as it is has been for a few years. Unfortunately, due to the Flat Tax and unlimited Empowerment Scholarship Award (ESA) expansion — both passed on a party line vote by Republicans — Arizona is facing budget cuts. We need elected with the guts to repeal or radically change these destructive, ideological laws. We need Senators and Representatives in the Legislature who will work for, speak for and fight for the people — and not for the powerful.
It’s time to go big or go home to save our state and our country.
Ohio Abolitionists should haunt Rep. Jim Jordan
Libertarian election-denier Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has one of the two most gerrymandered Congressional districts in Ohio, next to — literally — Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s (D-OH) 9th district, which runs along Lake Erie and includes my Mom’s hometown of Amherst, Ohio.
Amherst is in Lorain County, which you’ll note has been split into three different Congressional districts8. My Dad’s home town of Oberlin is in Jordan’s 4th district.
From its founding in the early 1830s to the Civil War, Oberlin was an important stop on the Underground Railroad and has been dubbed The Town that Started the Civil War.
The Oberlin abolitionists fought against slavery for decades up until a pivotal event in September 1858 when Kentucky marshals came to town and arrested fugitive slave John Price, who had been living as a free man in Oberlin. The intent was to take him back to Kentucky and back to slavery. In what is now known as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, the villagers of Oberlin sped south to Wellington on their horses and buggies to confront the marshals in an attempt to save Price from slavery.
The Oberlin rescuers included black and white men, who were professors and students of Oberlin College, lawyers and townspeople. Their two primary arguments against slavery were: 1) slavery is against the Will of God and, therefore, against our religion and can’t be tolerated, and 2) Ohio was a free state, and the Ohio Constitution superseded the federal Fugitive Slave Act.9 When negotiations failed, the rescuers stormed the Wellington Hotel, where Price was held, recaptured him and took him back to Oberlin and to freedom across Lake Erie.
The rescuers were arrested and jailed in Cleveland. Only two went to trial and were found guilty — Simeon Bushnell (a white man) and Charles Langston (a free African American man). By the time they were charged in April 1859, the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue had become a cause celebre in abolitionist circles on the east coast and in Europe. The story fanned the flames of war.
I love Oberlin. Three Powers siblings came to Oberlin from Massachusetts at the beginning. I grew up with one foot in Amherst and one foot in Oberlin. It is an abomination that quirky, free-spirited, historic Oberlin is in that flame-throwing racist bully’s Congressional district.
And since it is the Halloween season, when the veil is thin …
I think it would be totally appropriate for those abolitionists, who have been rolling in their Civil War graves at thought of that bully becoming Speaker of the House, to come out and do some haunting. Right? Why not?
Hoffman, who slid into an open seat in the Senate in 2022, was also one of Arizona’s fake electors and a Twitter troll farm director during the 2020 election cycle.
Technically, Arizona has term limits — eight years in each Chamber — but there are ways around those laws. The Legislature has many recycled Legislators who have been in office for more than 16 years.
Toma is now Speaker of the Arizona House.
Republicans are not the party of small government. That is a campaign lie.
Tax giveaway votes are always bipartisan. Libertarians and Progressives vote “no” on most tax giveaways. Corporate Democrats and Republicans vote “yes” with the Chamber of Commerce.
This year’s session was even longer and was the most expensive in history — thanks to Libertarian Senate President Warren Petersen’s stubborn attitude to our newly elected Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs. Stop wasting taxpayer money, Warren.
“Buy” is the verb used by some Republicans in court documents after the state was sued over the budget stuffed with non-money items. Democrats told them they’d get sued, but they don’t listen to us.
Generally, when drawing district maps, the map-makers try to respect natural and political boundaries and keep counties intact.
Yes, those two arguments have been around for a long time. The Arizona Legislature didn’t come up with them.