Arizona Senate to sine die today; House GOP in revolt

It seems Republican legislators have divided into warring camps and are fighting amongst each other, and with the governor. The Arizona Capitol Times reports, A majority under pressure reveals legislative fissures:

Early the morning of May 7, a Thursday, a motley crew of senior Senate Republicans and their Democratic counterparts, disregarding a chorus of conflicting desires from the membership as a whole, pulled the plug on the 2020 legislative session.

It appeared to be a practical decision. More than a month of quarantine has exposed deep fault lines within the majority party, schisms so vast that further legislating would likely devolve into an attritious slog. Those divisions haven’t gone away – a sizable chunk of legislative Republicans want to get back to business, and many of those same lawmakers have repeatedly threatened to raise hell at figureheads in their own party for putting the state under a quasi-lockdown for the past several weeks.

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The governor’s executive orders have highlighted three distinct factions in the House and Senate Republican caucuses: those who trust that the governor made the right decision, those rankled by some orders but not willing to roll their party leader and those who are ready to burn it all down.

Leading the charge of the “spread the coronavirus” and anti-vaxxer wing in the House, see earlier post, Kelly Townsend, desperately seeking attention, is Rep. Kelly Townsend:

[T]he incubation chamber for this most recent strain of intra-party dissent, is Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa. She’s been vocal – on social media, in the press and at protests in front of the Capitol – in her insistence that the stay-at-home order amounts to a tyrannical overreach by the governor.

Townsend has gone as far as to write a letter to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, asking him to issue an opinion on the constitutionality of the stay-at-home order.

And, in a move that is perhaps even more significant now that legislative adjournment is imminent, she drafted a concurrent resolution that would effectively end the governor’s declaration of emergency, terminating the stay-at-home order with it. Ending the session early, she said, would amount to a failure of leadership.

A declaration of emergency can be terminated in two ways – by the governor’s decree or by a concurrent resolution of the Legislature. Although Townsend was the first to raise the possibility, a growing number of her colleagues in the House, including Majority Leader Warren Petersen, have joined her in calls for legislative action. In the Senate, Michelle Ugenti-Rita hoped to carry a companion resolution, but she said on Facebook May 7 that Senate Prsident Karen Fann will not allow her to introduce it.

“I wish Warren Petersen was our speaker,” Townsend said. “He would be able to take care of this without giving up. I hope [Bowers] does the right thing.”

Townsend’s seatmate, Sen. David Farnsworth of Mesa, said he strongly supported both proposed resolutions. Farnsworth, who has attended two protests at the Capitol calling on the governor to immediately reopen the state, said there are always crises to provide excuses for the government to grow its authority, but lawmakers and the people of Arizona must remind the governor that his first duty is to protect the individual liberties of Arizonans.

“If I were king of Arizona, I would open it up,” Farnsworth said. “If people want to stay home, let them stay home and cower under the covers.”

Frustration with the governor’s handling of the virus has spilled over into frustration with leadership within the Legislature. Whispers abound about a ploy to instate more outwardly conservative leaders, those who might be more ideologically sympathetic with the Liberty Caucus – a group of Tea Party-style Republicans who came to power in the state more than a decade ago under the guidance of then-Rep. David Gowan, who would go on to be House speaker and then join the Senate.

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The Senate’s new plans to adjourn sine die on May 8 also came as a surprise to many members, said Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler. Mesnard, who favors continuing the legislative session indefinitely so lawmakers can easily come back to pass legislation or serve as a check on the governor, said Republicans received individual follow-up messages after a closed caucus meeting on the morning of May 7 asking if they would support sine die or a bill proposed by Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, to protect people and businesses that disobey Ducey’s executive orders from punishment or civil liability.

After that, Mesnard said he learned about sine die plans from reporters who called following Fann’s early morning press release.

“When leadership wants to do something, unless there’s enough folks pushing back, it will happen,” he said. “The Senate leadership has made clear that it wants to sine die. I don’t think that there are enough folks pushing back.”

Mesnard said he’s counting on Republicans in the House to push back, something Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake, said he and his fellow colleagues in the Liberty Caucus are doing.

“We’re in a situation where we need to speak up,” Blackman said, adding that he’s counting on that group to fight to “get back to work,” presaging the likely pushback that a motion to adjourn will get from some in the GOP.

Despite opposition from the radical Republicans, the Senate is going ahead with plans to sine die today. The Arizona Republic reports, Arizona Senate plans to end session at the Legislature on Friday; House reverses course:

The Arizona Senate plans to officially end its annual legislative session on Friday, President Karen Fann announced Thursday morning, effectively killing hundreds of bills unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic.

“There is a strong consensus that this is the right thing to do,” Fann, R-Prescott, said in a statement. “Recognizing that the health of Arizona citizens and our economic recovery are our highest priority, we are setting aside any legislative business that does not directly support this mission.”

Senators will meet at 11 a.m., according to a legislative spokesman. Fann said she’d made her decision “after conversations and communications with members of the Arizona Senate and House.”

Late Thursday, after a lengthy call with Republican representatives,Speaker Rusty Bowers issued a statement:

“The House will not reconvene on Friday as previously planned,” he said. “Members of the House Republican Caucus believe that there is important work for us to do on behalf of the people of Arizona.

“We intend to remain in session and, together with the Senate and Governor, work in support of the safe and expeditious reopening of our society, our economy, and protection of our state’s small businesses and communities.”

If the Senate ends its work and the House stays open, House members theoretically could pass some legislation already approved by the other chamber. It’s not clear what will happen next.

Legislative leadership already attempted to resume proceedings — which were temporarily halted March 23, as the number of COVID-19 cases climbed — once before. They’d hoped to bring a formal close to the annual session and await better data on an expected budget shortfall they could address, if needed, in a special session over the summer.

But that plan dissolved after several Republican lawmakers said they weren’t on board: Some pushed for resuming work on a broad slate of bills, while others argued for focusing on coronavirus-specific legislation.

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It was unclear whether legislative leadership had won over the majority of Republican lawmakers.

In an interview, Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, said he had concerns about lawmakers adjourning too early, given the rapidly evolving pandemic.

“I’m not suggesting that we should start business as usual at this moment, because I think at whatever point, hypothetically, that we do start business, it needs to involve the public. They need to be able to participate,” he said. “But I think it’s extremely unwise and disappointing to foreclose that possibility for the rest of the year.”

Mesnard said he was “elected to do a job” and was “hearing more and more from my constituents that they want me to do that job.”

“If we end the session, then the only thing we can do is whatever the governor allows — he would have to call us into special session and would decide the terms of that session,” he said. “Ending now would stop (the Legislature’s) ability to be a check and a balance, and I”m not on board with that at all.”

Two hours after Fann’s announcement, Rep. David Livingston, R-Peoria, posted on Twitter, simply: “I disagree with Sine Die.”

Possible deal?

One way to sway certain GOP lawmakers displeased with what they view as Gov. Doug Ducey’s heavy-handed actions to control the pandemic could involve agreeing to consider measures that would counteract those actions.

For example, Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, and Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa are pushing mirror resolutions that would overturn Ducey’s emergency declaration and associated executive orders.

Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, also wants to pass legislation that protects people and businesses who defy pandemic-related executive orders — perhaps a more palatable option for Republicans who don’t want to risk losing federal dollars by overturning the state of emergency.

Fann seemed to allude to those lawmakers’ priorities in her statement, saying legislators would “identify the solutions necessary to accelerate our economic recovery while working to ensure that the constitutional liberties of all of Arizona’s citizens are preserved.”

Democratic lawmakers, for their part, have said they’d support returning to address the state’s response to the coronavirus, but not other legislation. Adjourning sine die would effectively allow them to kill many of the Republican bills they’d opposed.

Who knows what’s going to happen later today. It sounds as if the radical Republicans intend to turn today’s proceedings into a real shitshow, because nothing demonstrates leadership in a time of crisis like self-serving internecine warfare amongst Republicans.