Superior Court Judge Saves Republican Legislators From The GQP Crazy Base Over Precinct Committeeperson Elections

The MAGA/QAnon cult members are trying to take full control of the Arizona Republican Party by carrying out the directives of their insurrectionist leader, Coup Plotter Steve Bannon. How Steve Bannon convinced Trump supporters to take over the GOP ‘precinct by precinct’:

An army of conspiracy-minded Trump supporters are moving to influence and run the Republican Party at a local level, galvanized — at least initially — by none other than former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist Stephen Bannon, ProPublica reports.

In February 2021, Bannon told his podcast listeners of the “precinct strategy,” in which Trump voters could take control of the GOP by flooding “into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts,” ProPublica writes. Precinct officers are typically in charge of routine, administrative tasks, but collectively, “can influence how elections are run.” In some states, they even have a say in the selection of poll workers and election board members.

“We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct,” said Bannon to his listeners.

But a funny thing happened on the way to their hostile takeover.

HB2839, which both chambers of the legislature passed unanimously, temporarily converted precinct committeemen into appointed positions for the two-year term beginning in 2022 as a way to deal with complications from redistricting.

Instead of submitting their nominating petitions to county election officials, as they normally would, precinct committeemen candidates submit them instead to their county political parties, who make the call on who fills those slots.

This meant the “RINOs” (Republican in name only), i.e., the wealthy country club Republicans and Chamber of Commerce types, could prevent the “populist” (fascist) hostile takeover of the Arizona Republican Party as directed by the insurrectionist leader, Coup Plotter Steve Bannon.

Oh, Republicans caught hell from the MAGA/QAnon cultists.

The #azleg hysteria over the PC elections is amusing because it's utterly inconsequential to all but a very, very, very small number of voters.

That's not hyperbole: in 2020, there were 18 contested GOP PC races in 748 MariCo precincts. In 2018, there were 9.

That's it.

— Jim Small (@JimSmall) March 22, 2022

The MAGA/Qanon cult members in the Arizona legislature quickly proposed “repeal and replace” legislation with a “retroactivity clause” which purported to fix the problem (it does not). Counties: retroactivity clause won’t put party activists back on Arizona ballot (excerpt):

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate both approved bills [last] week to repeal a provision from recent legislation that eliminated elections for precinct committeemen, who are the elected, voting members of political parties’ legislative district-level organizations, for 2022.

To get around that lack of Democratic support, the Senate and House versions of the bill to restore elections for PCs, as the positions are often known, have retroactivity clauses.

But in this case, a retroactivity clause won’t cut it, according to Jennifer Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties. The problem is that the legislation as it stands now won’t permit counties to take the steps they’ll need to take to actually put precinct committeeman races on the ballot.

GOP lawmakers can pass a bill to restore those elections. But without an emergency clause, the new law won’t go into effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends. The deadline for candidates to submit their nominating petitions is April 4, and the deadline for precinct committeeman candidates to even file as write-ins is April 18.

The deadline to file as a write-in candidate for most offices is June 23. But for offices with elections that can be legally canceled if there aren’t more candidates than positions, such as school boards and precinct committeemen, state law sets the deadline earlier.

Neither the House or Senate bills passed with emergency clauses. Only one Democrat in the Senate and three in the House voted for the plan. Republicans need four Democrats in the Senate and nine in the House to join them. That means the counties can’t legally accept nominating petitions for precinct committeeman candidates to appear on the ballot, Marson said. Until a new law goes into effect, the counties are still bound by the provisions of HB2839.

“Retroactivity without emergency is not going to help this situation,” Marson said.

* * *

Gov. Doug Ducey [was] widely expected to call a special session soon that will include the precinct committeeman issue. That would allow the repeal to officially go into effect 90 days after the special session ends, not after the regular session concludes, ensuring that the new law becomes effective before the Aug. 2 primary election.

However, that still won’t get the new law in effect before the filing deadlines pass.

“From our perspective, the reality is they need an emergency clause. I don’t care if you do it in a regular session or a special session, you have to have an emergency clause,” Marson said.

Miracle of miracles, the MAGA/QAnon cult members trying to take full control of the Arizona Republican Party got bailed out by a judge this week. Judge rescues GOP lawmakers from pickle of their own making:

A judge in Prescott has saved Republicans in the Arizona Legislature from a political mess they created when they repealed elections for political party precinct committeemen and set off a firestorm among Republican party activists.

Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper [appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey] ruled Tuesday that the law eliminating elections for party offices was illegal special legislation and therefore void.

Republicans in the House and Senate have been frantically searching for a solution since they got rid of elections for precinct committeemen in a section of a larger emergency measure they enacted on March 3. That bill was designed to fix a glitch created by the once-a-decade re-drawing of congressional and legislative district lines that led to wild swings in the number of qualifying signatures candidates need to gather to appear on the ballot.

But buried in the bill, and apparently overlooked by Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers, was a passage making precinct committee offices for the state’s 30 legislative districts appointed this year. Precincts can have more than two dozen committeemen. Elections are held only if there are more candidates than available seats, which happens rarely.

The weekend after the law unanimously passed the House and Senate and was swiftly signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Arizona Republican Party activists went ballistic when they discovered their elections had been eliminated for 2022. They hammered Fann, Bowers and other GOP lawmakers and called the move undemocratic.

Democrats who rely less on elected committeemen to do grassroot party work [says who?] were in no hurry to help and did not support legislation designed to restore the elections. [The real reason is that Democrats rarely have contested precinct committeemen elections.]

That left Republicans on the hot seat, since without Democratic votes they lacked the 2/3 majority they needed for an emergency clause that would restore the elections before the Aug. 2 primary.

Enter lawyers for the Arizona Republican Party, who filed suit in Prescott and sought to have the part of the law eliminating precinct committeemen elections thrown out. [Republicans suing themselves essentially.]

Judge Napper wrote that the main part of the bill creating new rules for determining how many signatures a candidate needs to qualify for the ballot was legal because it broadly applied and had a “perhaps sensible means” of standardizing signature requirements for congressional and legislative offices.

But he said that eliminating elections for precinct committeemen, and only those offices, was not at all rational.

Instead, that part of the bill “discriminates against elected party precinct committeepersons apart from all other candidates for federal, state, and local offices whose rights to run for election (and the rights of the electorate to vote for them) are not altered,” Napper wrote.

Precinct committeemen help with grassroots party activities and craft lists of potential replacement lawmakers if there is a vacancy, but otherwise have no official duties.

The Republican-controlled Legislature had been considering adding the restoration of precinct committeemen elections to a planned special session on tax cuts. But with Tuesday’s ruling, GOP lawmakers won’t have to worry about whether that fix might actually work [it wouldn’t have.]

I can’t say that I disagree with the reasoning of Judge Napper. But what this does is open up the Arizona Republican Party to the hostile takeover by the MAGA/QAnon cult members at the directives of their insurrectionist leader, Coup Plotter Steve Bannon.

What will the “RINOs” (Republican in name only), i.e., the wealthy country club Republicans and Chamber of Commerce types, do now to prevent the “populist” (fascist) hostile takeover of the Arizona Republican Party? Or will they just get on board the anti-democracy fascist Trump Train to destroying American democracy?