There are widespread calls for an immediate repeal of part of the emergency election legislation signed into law last week by Gov. Doug Ducey, as demands are growing for an explanation of why many of the 85 lawmakers who voted for the bill now claim they did not realize what they were approving.
On Thursday, a new state law took effect to address how candidates for various offices can get their name on the primary election ballot in August. The law started as House Bill 2839, which most of Arizona’s 90 lawmakers understood was intended to establish the minimum number of signatures needed on the nomination petitions for 2022 congressional or legislative candidates by the April 4 deadline.
HB2839 clarified the calculation as well as some of the requirements for the filing statements of interest, nomination papers and nomination petitions from candidates for election in 2022. But many of the 85 lawmakers who voted for HB2839 apparently did not read the full bill or the summary fact sheet.
If they had, they would have known Section 4 of the bill drastically changed how political party precinct committeemen (PCs) will get into office in 2022.
According to Senate President Karen Fann, she and House Speaker Rusty Bowers are fully aware of the dissatisfaction with PC provision in the new law which was introduced, approved, and signed into law all in one day. There are plans, she said Sunday, “to fix the PC issue” on Monday.
PCs are elected for a two-year term during a party’s Aug. 2 primary election. The PCs establish a direct link between a political party and the voters in a local election district, with their minimum duties set out in statute to assist the PC’s political party in voter registration and to assist the voters of that political party to vote on election days.
Under the new law, a PC candidate who would normally be required to submit nominating petitions to the county election department will now only need to submit a nomination paper or “other similar written statement of candidacy” to their political party’s county committee not later than April 18.
While most PC candidates would be happy to skip signature gathering, the new law entirely removes voters from the process for 2022. Instead, full authority has been given to a political party’s local county committee to decide who the candidate will be for each precinct committeemen position.
Unless Section 4 is repealed, the political party committees in each county must submit one precinct committeeman candidate’s name to the county board of supervisors for each election precinct in the county. The county board of supervisors is then required to appoint that person as PC.
“The county political party committee is the sole determiner of the single political party precinct committeeman candidate whose name is to be submitted for appointment from each election precinct in the county,” the new law reads.
The new law also deems PCs who are appointed for the 2022 term of office to be treated as elected PCs “for all purposes.” This is a critical definition because elected PCs and appointed PCs are treated differently in various statutes, including how legislative vacancies are filled.
According to public records, House Speaker Bowers used his authority to suspend the rules to allow for introduction of House Bill 2839. He then authorized another exception so the bill’s required three readings in the House were all done that morning.
HB2839 cleared the House on a 58 to 0 vote and was then transmitted the same day to Senate President Fann who used her authority to suspend Senate rules to push the bill to a 27 to 0 vote. The bill was immediately forwarded to Ducey who signed it before the end of the day.
Now, there is a sense of buyer’s remorse among an increasing number of lawmakers who voted for the bill, which was distributed to members without capitalizing the text of Section 4. Typically, when state law is being amended, as Section 4 did with PC elections, the text is capitalized to draw lawmakers’ attention to the change.
With the rush by legislative leaders to get the HB2839 to Ducey, most lawmakers never understood someone was seeking to alter state election law so drastically with Section 4. Which Fann admitted Sunday.
One longtime supporter of grassroots civic involvement said it should have been “readily apparent” to any legislator reading the PC provision of HB2839 that something was not right.
“It is a concerted effort to shift power from the local grassroots level to the county level,” says Jose Borrajero. “That county level includes not only the county party committees but, even worse, the county boards of supervisors.”
Borrajero operates The Arizona People’s Lobbyist, an online tool which provides several resources for citizens wishing to be involved in the legislative process. He believes the vast number of bills which have come before the Legislature this year likely played a part in the PC provision getting into law.
“With 1,700 plus bills introduced, there is no way that legislators can read all the bills they vote on,” Borrajero said. “They need to either substantially limit the number of bills introduced, or find staff that is more willing and able to spot this sort of mischief.”
There are also questions about who wrote HB2839 and why the political party precinct committeemen language was included. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs asked legislative leaders last month to address issues with congressional and legislative nomination petition signatures, but she never mentioned issues with PCs
One of the biggest supporters of HB2839 was the Arizona Association of Counties (AAOC), the lobbyist organization for the state’s 15 county governments. AAOC was involved in drafting the language of the bill to address “some concerns,” according to Fann. The final language was not available until Wednesday night.
“So in all honesty, yes we were concentrated on the legislative and congressional issues,” Fann admitted. “We made the error of believing that everything would be fine with the county fix.”
Tyler Bowyer, who represents Arizona on the Republican National Committee, says the most important job that exists within the Republican Party is the Office of Precinct Committeeman.
“There’s zero excuses for what’s happened this far,” Bowyer said, noting there are millions of voters across Arizona watching how state lawmakers address complaints about removing voter control over the selection of PCs.
Fann acknowledged no one from the Legislature reached out ahead of time to the chairpersons of the state political parties or the various county party chairs. She called that oversight “the other error” in how HB2839 was handled.
“Had we done that, all of this would not have blown up,” Fann explained. “They could have pointed out some concerns that they might have had with the issues of going to the board of supervisors to help make temporary appointments.”