Brewer pressures lawmakers with warnings

Governor Jan Brewer is using what some legislators say is a “fairly juvenile approach” to pressuring Republicans to support her Medicaid proposal. Brewer is sending messages to lawmakers that any of their bills are at risk for veto until she gets the Medicaid expansion she wants.

Reportedly the Governor sent an emissary to the House and Senate to warn them to focus on her priorities or else.

According to the Yellow Sheet, Senate president Andy Biggs said that bills were not “addressed on the Senate floor because the Ninth Floor had advised lawmakers to “pace ourselves” on sending bills to the governor’s desk. “We’re not trying to cut everything off, but I think members do have some concerns, you know, if you stick a bill up there that might not be signed, if I could put it that way,” Biggs said.

The Yellow Sheet reports that a House source said leaders there were given similar advice.

Brewer’s petulant behavior is nothing new. Last year she exercised the same immature judgment when it didn’t appear that legislators would not support her budget.

However, Brewer’s PR team claimed her request for a slow down “wasn’t a threat, implied or otherwise.” Brewer’s spokesman Matthew Benson told the Yellow Sheet that the governor simply wants to see some movement on her top priorities, especially Medicaid and TPT reform, before the Legislature sends her a “pile of unrelated bills.”

Benson admitted that Brewer has done this foot stomping move before but said legislators would know if this time she was making a serious threat. “If there’s any threat to be made, it would be laid out more clearly,” Benson told the Yellow Sheet.

“She did that last session where she said very clearly, ‘Don’t send me bills until I get my budget.’ That is a different scenario than what we’re talking about right now. This is simply the governor saying, ‘Look, it’s the middle of March,” Benson is quoted in the Yellow Sheet. “‘ I’d like to see some movement on Medicaid and TPT.’”

One of the Yellow Sheet’s legislative sources questioned the Governor’s tactics, “When she jumps out in front and doesn’t work with anyone on an issue like this, one that’s so controversial, I don’t really know what the expectation was. Their strategy so far has been good – if the goal was to drive Republican support away.”

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