Jennifer Samuels looks to Ride the Red For Ed Wave to a State House Seat in LD 15

LD 15 Democratic State House Candidate Jennifer Samuels

After sorting out which Starbucks to meet at on Tatum Road in Northern Phoenix, Jennifer Samuels enthusiastically relayed why she wants to become one of the Democratic nominees for one of the LD 15 State House Seats in August and ride the Red for Ed Wave to victory in November where she can promote a forward-looking agenda.

LD 15 includes parts or all of Peoria, Phoenix, Cave Creek, Paradise Valley, and Deer Valley. A Democrat has not recently won in this district and Mrs. Samuels is hoping, with her ideas and supporters, to change that and win this November after winning a slot in the Democratic primary this August.

If she wins in the August primary, her two likely Republican opponents will be conservative advocates State Senator Nancy Barto and House Majority Leader John Allen, two reactionaries who, according to Mrs. Samuels, have lost touch with the people in their district, and who feel it is appropriate to sell firearms without background checks, to intrude on a woman’s privacy if she is exercising her right to choose, and to hinder the democratic process by making it harder to put ballot initiatives up for a vote.

Mrs. Samuels feels she can be a better advocate for the people in LD 15 and is running on a pragmatic problem-solving agenda that emphasizes education, school safety, and the economy.

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Anti-choice AZ GOP legislators continue to promote idea that women don’t really ever pay for anything, refuse to protect doctors’ personal info

Sen. Barto was gloating about SB1318 passing the Senate on Thursday afternoon. Here’s Sen. Kelli Ward (R) echoing the “pay for it yourselves, floozies” canard:

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Cathi Herrod demonstrates how anti-choicers erase women’s contributions, experiences, etc.

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

frowny cathi

I’ll say one thing for Howie Fischer of Arizona Capitol Media Services – he has a long record of thorough coverage on the battle over reproductive rights here and of getting opponents of it on record. Fischer’s report on Wednesday’s Senate Health and Human Services Committee vote on SB1318 contains this interesting nugget from Center for Arizona Policy head Cathi Herrod (italics and emphasis mine):

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Republican senator signals the return of SB1062 under, you guessed it, the banner of Hobby Lobby

hl 1062

On Monday the AZ Republic featured a pair of op-eds from a Republican State Senator and the outgoing Democratic House Minority Leader about the prospect of a reformulated SB1062 in the upcoming Arizona legislative session.

Here’s Senator Nancy Barto (R) explaining why opponents of discrimination are misguided meaniebutts:

To start — the vast majority of the attacks against this simple bill were at best misunderstandings of the legislation, or at worst outright lies with the endgame of conditioning the public into automatically equating faith with bigotry — in the name of equality and fairness.

On the contrary, SB 1062 brought Arizona in line with federal law and would not have created any “new right” to discriminate (i.e. refusing people taxi, hotel or restaurant service).

The Supreme Court made this clear in June when they said the Green family, who own Hobby Lobby, couldn’t be forced to pay for abortion-causing drugs in their insurance plans as “Obamacare” mandated — meaning they didn’t have to surrender their First Amendment rights simply because they started a business.

This is exactly what SB 1062 would have clarified in Arizona.

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