AIRC Update: Commissioners start to lawyer up

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports that AIRC Chair Colleen Mathis has hired former Arizona U.S. Attorney General Paul Charlton to represent her against Arizona AG Tom "banned for life by the SEC" Horne's politically motivated witch hunt against the AIRC. IRC chair hires former US Attorney for AG’s probe – Arizona Capitol Times:

Following a [unanimous vote on Monday] by the Independent Redistricting Commission to authorize the hiring of additional lawyers, IRC Chairwoman Colleen Mathis has secured the services of former Arizona U.S. Attorney General Paul Charlton.

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Mathis has emerged as a focal point of Horne’s investigation, as commission Republicans Scott Freeman and Richard Stertz told the Attorney General’s Office that Mathis attempted to solicit their support for contractor Strategic Telemetry outside of the confines of a public meeting.

Additionally, Stertz told Horne and Assistant Attorney General Mark Wilson that Mathis shredded documents related to how the commission scored applicants for the contract.

Charlton called the accusations “wholly false,” and said that he and his client look forward to proving in court that no open meeting laws were broken.

A court hearing on the matter is scheduled for Oct. 3 before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dean Fink.

So let's review. In one corner we have the ethically challenged Tom "banned for life by the SEC" Horne who is pursuing a politically motivated witch hunt against the AIRC and trying his case in the media on innuendo, speculation and conjecture. In the other corner we have the highly respected and formidable lawyer Paul Charlton, who is known to be extremely thorough in trying his cases on the facts and the law. Charlton says Horne's politically motivated accusations are "wholly false" and that he looks forward to proving it in court. That's not braggadocio on his part.

I look forward to seeing Paul Charlton humiliate the ethically challenged Tom Horne in court. That's entertainment.

I would also like to see Paul Charlton depose Scott Freeman and especially Jesse Kelly's embed commissioner on the AIRC, Richard Stertz, to find out who they have been talking to about this coordinated Tea-Publican assault on the AIRC to undermine the commission.

UPDATE: Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix New Times raises an excellent point that I forgot to mention in my haste. Tom Horne's Redistricting Investigation Blasted by ex-AG Terry Goddard:

Goddard and host Ted Simons did not cover is the fact that Horne's office has a serious conflict of interest in its investigation of allegations of Open Meetings Law violations by the AIRC.

As I've pointed out in a previous blog and in this week's column, the Arizona State Bar's ethics rules preclude Horne from investigating a former client, which the AIRC was for several months until the AIRC hired its own lawyers, former Solicitor General Mary O'Grady and current State Bar President Joe Kanefield.

"If [the AG's office] ever gave them advice about open meetings issues, there are certainly questions about whether they should be making this big of a deal about whether or not there was a violation," Goddard told me, when I asked him about the issue recently.

"An even more profound question," he added, "is why is Tom Horne trying so desperately to try the case in public?"

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Not only is Horne conflicted, we now know, as I reported in the column this week, that he and AIRC commissioner Rick Stertz had at least one ex parte communication via text message prior to the probe's beginning. That's despite the fact that Stertz, who was appointed to his post by state Senate President Russell Pearce, has denied any such communications.

Lemons says "At present the Arizona GOP is at war with the AIRC, and will do anything to obstruct its goal: to rewrite [Arizona's] political map as necessitated by the 2010 census figures and to gain pre-approval of that map from the U.S. Department of Justice." But to what end?

If the AIRC cannot complete its constitutional task, redistricitng does not default to the Tea-Publican dominated legislature but rather to a panel of federal court judges who will not be favorable to Tea-Publicans in redistricting. I suppose Tom Horne could file appeals from the district court panel lines, leaving the current state legislative (but not congressional) district lines intact for 2012 — as occurred with the last redistricting litigation – but is the Tea-Publican end game really just to get past the 2012 election? Or are they placing all their bets on the Felonious Five of the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the 46 year old Voting Rights Act, and possibly Arizona's constitutional provision creating the AIRC as well? The GOP war on voting continues.