Week 9 of the 2022 legislative session was the second week of major loses for Republicans.
This week’s attempts at fixing last week’s HB2839 debacle have been largely unsuccessful so far. Even though both bills intended to fix the problem (HB2840 and SB1720) have advanced in committees, they have done so without a single Democrat vote. Because of the composition of both legislative chambers, Republicans will need substantial assistance from Democrats in order to be successful.
With the foregoing in mind, we at People’s Lobbyists are recommending that both Republican leadership and grassroots rank and file move with caution in their efforts to fix HB2839. To that end, we should keep the following in mind:
- Whatever is wrong with Democrats, and as much as they enjoy watching Republicans squirm, they did not create this problem and should not be blamed for it. It was Republican legislators that suspended the rules and rushed passage of this garbage of a bill in one day. It was a Republican governor that signed the bill.
- Whatever is wrong with Republican legislators, we are not in a position to dump on them. Let’s not forget that it was not just a handful of Republicans that voted for HB2839. All Republicans in the House voted YES, and so did all Senate Republicans, except for one. Calls for “primarying” them are irresponsible unless their replacements are very likely to keep the seats in Republican hands. Most of the Republican efforts should be aimed at wrestling seats away from Democrats, to at least keep their very thin lead, or better yet, widen that lead in each chamber to more than one.
- Disastrous as it was, the passage of HB2839 is not the end of the world, for two reasons. First, most precinct committeemen are not active anyway. Second, those who are active will very likely continue their activism regardless of their status as PC’s.
This week’s loses for conservative grassroots Republicans was even greater as the result of major failures in the area of election integrity.
SB1358 – hand counts; precincts; procedures manual
SB1119 – electronic ballot images; public record.
SB1475 – (NOW: election complaints; attorney general)
SB1478 – elections; county supervisors; ballot; markers
All four bills suffered a Senate Third Reading defeat as a result of the handywork of the dynamic duo Boyer and Ugenti-Rita. Three of these bills experienced a defeating NO vote by these two Republicans. In the case of SB1475, Boyer acted alone, with the same disastrous result.
Not all news from the capitol was bad. We did manage to make some progress in the advancement of gender sanity.
SB1138 – (NOW: irreversible gender reassignment surgery; minors)
SB1165 – interscholastic; intramural athletics; biological sex
Both bills cleared the House Judiciary Committee without any assistance from the Democrats.
Someday, psychiatrists may come up with a reason why so many Democrats are obsessed with gender obfuscation. Until then, we should be glad that we still have a Republican majority in both chambers, to help keep in check some of that obfuscation.
For a complete report on the bills that we have been tracking, including links to the text of the bills themselves, go to REPORT
For a lot of tools and information to assist grassroots activists, go to https://azpeopleslobbyist.com/