sb1062

Appalling AZ Republic false equivalence on national legislative orgs

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

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I don’t know for sure, but Alia Beard Rau’s recent piece looks like it started to be about the influence that American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Goldwater Institute, and Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) have on the Republican-controlled AZ Legislature, but then she was pressured by an editor to make it a “both sides” thing. Or maybe not, but whatever happened, the article is a testament to the incredible lengths the MSM will go to imply that the left is as powerful and corrupt as the right is.

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Clean Elections could not possibly have caused SB1062

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

This FiveThrirtyEight piece has been getting passed around by both opponents of Clean Elections operating in bad faith and by well-meaning people who think it’s legitimate because it’s on Nate Silver’s site.

In 2010, Arizona enacted an immigration law so stringent that the U.S. Supreme Court was forced to intervene. Four years later, the governor had to veto a nearly successful effort to allow businesses to deny service to, among others, LGBT people. After that measure failed, the Arizona House of Representatives last month passed a bill meant to increase scrutiny of abortion clinics.

These bills are coming from lawmakers who’ve assembled the most conservative state legislature in the country. That’s according to Princeton University’s Nolan McCarty and University of Chicago’s Boris Shor, who tracked the ideology of state legislatures over the past 20 years and found that Arizona’s lawmakers are more conservative than those in Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. Modern, tea-party Republicanism has found no more accommodating home than the Arizona statehouse…

…Given all that, why do these hyper-conservative state legislators keep getting elected? Because the Arizona electoral system allows for extreme candidates to compete on an equal playing field with their more moderate competitors.2

Arizona has one of the most advanced clean election laws in the country. As long as a candidate for the state legislature reaches a minimum fundraising level ($1,250), the state essentially funds her campaign.3 (Only Connecticut and Maine have similar laws on public financing for state legislature candidates.) That allows candidates to stay viable even if they don’t have connections to the state party or local business leaders.

This is the perfect formula for the tea party to take on the GOP establishment. Imagine a tea partyer who doesn’t owe anything to established business interests in her district — that’s the kind of state legislator who might support a “religious freedom” law even if businesses are hurt by it. Indeed, a study by Harvard University’s Andrew Hall and a separate study by the University of Denver’s Seth Masket and the University of Illinois’s Michael Miller both show that clean election laws lead to more extreme candidates.

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They are none of our Business

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The AZ Republic’s Sunday oped was exultant over the business community possibly “getting its mojo back” due to things like the SB1062 veto and the large contributions that Republicans who went with the Medicaid expansion are getting.

Needless to say, they’d have you believe none of what is wrong with Arizona can ever be laid at the feet of business leaders even when the ed board has to admit (grudgingly) that it really is their fault, as in here:

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Is Cathi Herrod really all that?

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I’m becoming increasingly skeptical that Cathi Herrod, President of Center for Arizona Policy, is (or ever was) as all-powerful as she is reputed to be. Let’s look at recent evidence: First there’s the humiliating defeat of the religious bigot bill SB1062 and the swift public recanting and repudiation of by it three Senators who had voted for it. And then comes this, a new PPP poll of the Governor’s race:

Moving on to the Governor’s race for this year, it looks pretty wide open for both the Republican primary and the general election. The leader for the GOP nomination is ‘undecided’ at 34%. 5 candidates have measurable amounts of support at this point- Ken Bennett at 20%, Christine Jones at 16%, Scott Smith at 12%, Andrew Thomas at 9%, and Doug Ducey at 6%. Al Melvin, John Molina, and Frank Riggs all register at 1% in the poll.

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CAP is at it again with a heinous anti-choice bill

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Fresh on the heels of their embarrassing defeat with SB1062, comes the Center for Arizona Policy with HB2284, which would allow surprise inspections of abortion clinics and impose criminal penalties on anyone who is not the parent or guardian of a minor who assists her in getting an abortion.

Democrats and progressive orgs plan a response, similar to the SB1062 one:

As long as the legislature is still in session, none of us are safe from Cathi Herrod, the Center for Arizona Policy, and other aligned organizations. Fresh from losing the battle against legalized discrimination, they now want the government to meddle in women’s healthcare with surprise inspections of clinics that provide healthcare and abortion services. This law is intended to frighten women out of utilizing these healthcare resources–as well as frighten clinicians & doctors out of offering these services. This bill, if passed into law, would be unconstitutional, illegal, and drastically misaligned with the priorities of Arizonans.

We must keep fighting for what is right: our dignity, privacy–and our freedom.

ACTION:

1) Share this event with ALL of your contacts.
2) Join the presser on the Capitol lawn at 1 PM.
3) Call Speaker Tobin at (602) 926-5172 or email him at atobin@azleg.gov to voice your opposition to this bill.
4) Fire up Brewer’s phone lines again at: (602) 542-4331.

#NotYourWomb

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