by Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings
From the Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) –
Republican legislative leaders aren't happy with their choices for the Independent Redistricting Commission and are asking that a nominating commission reconvene and reconsider.
Kirk Adams, the Republican Speaker of the Arizona House, and Russell Pearce the Tea Party Republican President of the Arizona Senate, profess reservations about the eligibility of three members of the pool – two, Republicans Mark Schnepf and Stephen Sossaman. are members of water district boards, and one, independent Paul Bender, has held offices in a couple of tribal courts. Redistricting commission members cannot have held public office within the last three years. However, the tribal courts are part of sovereign nations, not Arizona.
Whatever the letter to Chief Justice Berch says, however, the Republicans seem to have two real main objections to the list of candidates that they have to choose from.
1. Nine of the ten R candidates are from Maricopa County. Under the law, only two of the four members can be from the same county. As both Kirk Adams and Chad Campbell (the House Democratic leader) are expected to pick Maricopa County residents, that would leave one eligible person for Russell Pearce to pick, Benny White of Tucson.
2. OK, they reallllllly don't want Bender in the pool of applicants. Apparently, his personal politics make most Democrats look like the second coming of Barry Goldwater.
The word from sources is that Pearce and Adams don't have much of a shot with this, but since we are in Arizona, the place where the principle of the rule of law has been replaced by the principle of IOKIYAR, anything could still happen.
Stay tuned…