Arizona State Rep. David Stringer has issued a clarification of his comments related to immigration which he says were taken out of context. Stringer came under fire for a snippet of a speech he made before a Republican group while advocating for prison reform.
“While the media focuses on 51 seconds that are taken out of context, I want you to be able to listen to my remarks in their entirety,” Stringer posted on Facebook. “My focus was largely on criminal justice reform and at the end I spoke about the negative effects that overwhelming illegal immigration, in combination with high levels of legal immigration, was having on our ability to properly assimilate newcomers to this country. My remarks were not anti-immigrant, but pro-assimilation.”
In 2017 at the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said, “What we reject is immigration without assimilation, and that is what we have had in the past few decades.” Although the sentiment was identical to Stringer’s; Ducey, along with AZGOP Chair Jonathan Lines have called for Stringer to resign from the Legislature.
Since first being elected, Stringer, a staunch criminal justice reformer, has taken on powerful forces connected to the criminal justice system and the deep pockets of private prison industry insiders. So it came as no surprise that Ducey, Lines, and House Speaker JD Mesnard followed the lead of the chamber of commerce in condemning Stringer.
Mesnard went one further than Ducey and Lines. He issued a statement announcing his decision to essentially scrap criminal justice reform. “I am dissolving the Ad Hoc Study Committee on Criminal Justice Reform, which Representative Stringer had been chairing. This does not mean that the discussion about criminal justice reform is over, as I know there is strong bipartisan interest to look at the issue, and I thank the members for being willing to serve on this committee. However, so as to avoid compromising the issue, future work will not take place in the form of this committee.”
While Mesnard’s move outraged Democrats, it likely ensured that money from the private prison industry to other Republican candidates will continue to flow.
At issue are the comments Stringer made specifically about the demographic shift in the state, where a majority of public school students are minorities. “That complicates racial integration because there aren’t enough white kids to go around. Immigration is politically destabilizing,” said Stringer.
Although Stringer’s comments have been described as racist, he made them on the heels of a contentious fight over school desegregation dollars this year. In that debate, the fact that “there are not enough white children to go around” was a key issue. Arizona’s second largest school district located in Tucson is under a desegregation order. The district has not been able to achieve desegregation in part due to a racial imbalance created in part by white flight to charter schools and by massive levels of illegal immigration.
The imbalance in Arizona’s schools is such that in 2013, progressive activist and then-school board candidate, Betts Putnam Hidalgo said during the Call to the Audience portion of a school board meeting, “Let’s not throw out desegregation. If we are not committed to desegregation, why did we fight for Brown versus Board of Education?” Hidalgo discussed the fact that some parents, who have Hispanic children, are now changing their classified ethnicity as white in order to save the segregated schools by making them appear to be integrated. “Please, please,” Hidalgo implored, “let us be more ethical than that.”
Ethics has long been a cause for Stringer, who has fought his fellow representatives on both sides of the aisle on another controversial matter. When members of the House moved to remove Rep. Don Shooter in the wake of numerous sexual harassment allegations this year, Stringer stood against Shooter but for his due process rights. In the end, Stringer, an attorney by trade, failed to convince his fellow legislators to conduct a hearing in which Shooter could offer a defense.
Stringer is unapologetic for his comments, and by the looks of it, his constituents appear to be still supportive. In the MCRC Briefs, a popular website for members of Arizona’s GOP, retired businessman Tom Steele wrote: “LD-1 Rep David Stringer is under attack by RINO’s within the AZGOP starting with the Arizona GOP Chairman Jonathan Lines, who is himself serving under a “cloud.” Rep Stringer spoke of a few statistics of the effects of immigration on Arizona schools, communities and Arizona’s political future. That’s it. No racist remarks; only a few statistics.”
Steele also called on his fellow republicans to stop the “senseless attacks” on Stringer. He asked his fellow republicans to condemn Lines and others for “their gross over reaction” to Stringer’s comments.
Given the fact that conservative former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett is waging a credible primary challenge to Ducey, it appears as if public’s sentiment is with Stringer.