Michael Bryan

Michael founded BlogForArizona.net as the Howard Dean presidential campaign blog for Arizona in 2003, and has been blogging ever since. The Blog is now coming up on 20 years of continuous publication, a major achievement for any political blog, which usually have the life-spans of mayflies. Michael is an attorney living in Tucson with his wife Lauren. In 2008, Michael remade BlogForArizona into a collaborative project. Michael is now but one of the contributors to the blog and provides editorial and publishing direction in consultation with the Board of Directors and the other authors. If you want to keep up with the latest Arizona and National political news in an entertaining quick hit of news and opinion, check out the BlogForArizona twitter feed, which Mike largely curates and writes. Michael is also an AAPC member who occassionally consults on political campaigns, strategy and communications.

Arizona’s Lawmaker’s Power Rankings

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Piglipstick
Congress.org and Knowlegis compile congressional power rankings of elected officials. The rankings are based upon 15 characteristics of power. These
characteristics were measured and weighted to determine the
relative power demonstrated by Members of Congress. Those characteristics may be grouped into three broad categories.

1) Position: How much power could the legislator wield through
his/her position in the Congress by virtue of tenure, committee
assignments or leadership position? This Power Category included
weightings for all committees, subcommittees, and leadership positions,
taking into consideration majority or minority party status of the
member.

2) Influence: How much power did the legislator demonstrate to
influence the congressional agenda or outcome of votes through the
media, congressional caucuses or money contributed to other Members of
Congress by his or her campaign committees or leadership PACs?

3) Legislative Activity: How much power did the legislator
demonstrate through the passage of legislation or shaping legislation
through amendments? The team eliminated from that data items which did
not substantially change the bill or existing law. These included
amendments dealing with technical changes or bills of a ceremonial or
commemorative nature such as naming of post offices or other public
buildings, or non-binding resolutions that expressed the "sense of the
Congress."

The results for the Arizona delegation:

Sen. John McCain, Senate Rank #3
Sen. Jon Kyl, Senate Rank #17

Rep. Jim Kolbe, House Rank #30
Rep. Rick Renzi, House Rank #84
Rep. Jeff Flake, House Rank #140
Rep. J.D. Hayworth, House Rank #142
Rep. Trent Franks, House Rank #220
Rep. Fred Pastor,  House Rank #229
Rep. John Shadegg, House Rank #243
Rep. Raul Grijalva, House Rank #279

Lewis Gould: Grand Old Party, A History of the Republicans

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The master of strategy Sun Tzu wrote, "know thy enemy." In order to overcome an adversary, you must first understand him. This is a lesson that the Republicans have forgotten in their effort to conduct a "war on terrorism," but one which Democrats should heed in seeking to overthrow the current dominance of the GOP … Read more

Brewer Claims Voter Outrage

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Republicans are strongly implying that Secretary of State Jan Brewer is responsible for the large increase in voter registration in 2004, despite her support of Prop 200 and generally acting like Arizona’s own Katherine Harris. What is responsible for the surge in voter registration is not Brewer’s non-existent leadership, but the contentious and close-run 2004 … Read more

Anonymous Mailings Targeting PCs?

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I wasn’t going to give the cowards behind two recent anonymous hit mailers the satisfaction of spreading their disease for them, but since other local bloggers have already broached the subject, I decided to put in my two cents. I’m not going to itemize or debunk the charges, Ted has done that quite sufficiently at … Read more