Fresh on the heels of the SB1062 veto, and with national columnists hungry to meet deadlines with something “insightful” about Arizona, the Chamber of Commerce crowd is really pushing the “Clean Elections done it!” myth hard.
Here’s New York Times liberal Gail Collins repeating the narrative:
“I remember having a meeting with some folks I’d call country-club Republicans, and listening to them bemoan the fact that they have no more influence because of the Clean Elections law,” said Rodolfo Espino, a professor at Arizona State University.
We will come to a screeching halt here and re-examine that thought.
Yes! Part of the super-weirdness of Arizona politics appears to be the result of the state’s 1998 public financing law, which provided tons of matching funds to unwealthy-but-energetic candidates from the social right at the expense of the pragmatic upper class. The Supreme Court took the teeth out of the law in 2011, but, by then, the traditional Republican elite had lost its place at the head of the political table.