Among concerned conservatives in Arizona, there has been a lot of negative reaction to Brnovich’s decision to allow businesses to demand that their customers show proof of vaccination as a condition to do business.
That negative reaction is ill-founded. While no one in his right mind would claim that Brnovich has been a stellar supporter of conservative causes, this problem cannot be rightfully pinned on him.
At the risk of a pedantic statement of the obvious, it must be pointed out that we are supposed to have a well-defined separation of powers. The legislature makes laws, the executive enforces laws, and the judiciary makes sure we are playing by the rules.
It is the duty of the attorney general to enforce the laws of the state. The problem with this covid passport business is that there is no law to enforce. The branch of government responsible for that shortcoming is the state legislature, more specifically, all democrat and two republican members of the AZ senate.
During the last legislative session, we did not have any bills that addressed private businesses use of covid passports regarding both customers and employees, but house bill HB2190 would have taken us half way there by prohibiting the use of vaccination status as a condition of customer service or admittance.
Bill HB2190, introduced by representative Bret Roberts (LD11), reads in part, “prohibits a business entity from conditioning a service, product or admission on disclosure of whether a person has received a COVID-19 vaccine.” This bill failed in the senate when Shope (LD8) voted NO and Ugenti-Rita (LD23) did not vote. In the defeat of HB2190, these two republicans aided and abetted the democrats, all of whom voted NO.
The problem is a common one, and it permeates all aspects of legislative activity, not just covid-related bills. We currently have 31 republican representatives and 16 republican senators. Given that democrats consistently vote in unison against all bills that even remotely advance conservatism, all it takes is for one republican to vote NO or not vote at all, for a bill to fail. That gives 47 republican legislators the ability to single-handedly defeat any bill that they don’t like. It also gives them the ability to retaliate against other members for behavior they did not like. We saw plenty of this irresponsible behavior during the last legislative session.
The only viable, effective, long-term solution is to elect more conservative republicans to the state legislature. Considering that the next primary election is 12 months away (August, 2022), and the next general election is 15 months away (November, 2022), there is no time to waste.