Democratic House Minority Leader Cano’s Session Update

Hello from Arizona’s State Capitol! This month, Democratic lawmakers have led the way to remind House and Senate Republicans of the real issues affecting our state. We’ve got jobs to create, schools to fund, and roads and bridges to fix.

Instead, the GOP Majority has spent the last 60 days focused on culture wars that only seek to divide Arizonans. For example, the GOP has advanced legislation to ban drag queens, ban vote-by-mail, and ban minimum-wage ordinances.

None of these proposals are good for our state – that’s why House Democrats are rising together to demand better of our state lawmakers. Here are the highlights you need to know:

Democrats Refuse to Be Silenced

House Democrats represent 48% of the State House, but 98% of the bills we’ve voted on have been Republican-sponsored legislation. To make matters worse: for the few Democratic bills that have made it through the committee process with bipartisan support, the GOP Majority recently changed the rules and told Democrats they won’t consider bringing our bills to the House floor unless we have wet signatures from at least 16 of 31 Republican members – a majority of the majority. That means if all 29 members of our caucus support one of our colleague’s bills, but only 15 of 31 Republicans like the idea, then it’s dead.

Republican overreach. Arizonans are sick and tired of the political gridlock.  House Democrats introduced strong bipartisan legislation to advance our economy, but Republicans let almost all of these proposals go nowhere. Until we flip the House, we won’t be able to expand paid family leave benefits, fund our community colleges to increase workforce, or provide universal pre-k to Arizona’s families. Our state deserves better.