On February 26, the Arizona Senate approved Senate Concurrent Resolution SCR1024 Since this would be an amendment to the AZ constitution, it has to go to the voters for approval or rejection. It also has the added benefit that it avoids Hobbs’ veto obsession. According to the official Senate Fact sheet, this bill does the following:
Subject to voter approval, constitutionally requires a member of the Legislature to be a resident of the district, rather than the county and a member of the political party from which the member is elected for at least one year before the election.
The vote went 16-12-2. All the Republican Senators voted YES and all the Democrat Senators voted NO.
There was something odd about the way the Democrats voted. There is nothing odd about Democrats voting in lockstep against a common-sense bill. The odd event is that a few days earlier, during the Senate Government Committee hearing, all Democrats voted in favor of SCR1024. This raises the question of what changed between the committee vote on February 11 and the full chamber vote on February 26.
It did not take long to learn what had changed. On February 25, during the Committee of the Whole, an amendment was added to SCR1024. It added the requirement that candidates must be members of the party they are running under for at least one year before the election. It is quite apparent that Democrats are OK with requiring candidates to be residents of the district, but oppose the requirement that they be members of the party for one year.
This has led to suspicions by some Republicans that some Democrats may be considering running Democrats disguised as Republicans in the primary to weaken the true Republicans. A bonus would be if they were to win as Republicans and be able to sabotage votes on key Republican issues.
Normally, very few people would pay attentions to these suspicions, but some events happening in LD9 have added fuel to the fire. It seems that three candidates running as Republicans have credentials better suited to Democrats. According to the Arizona Republic, “Three Republican candidates for the state Legislature in Goodyear and Mesa are drawing scrutiny for their fledgling GOP credentials… In Mesa, Republican candidates John Pochervina and Fernando Monarrez filed statements of interest in January for the two open state House seats in Legislative District 9, which covers west Mesa.”
Another reason for being suspicious is that this strategy has worked for Democrats in the past. There are numerous cases of Democrat or Democrat-leaning individuals running as Republicans and when elected voting against key Republican positions.
If the suspicions raised are accurate, one thing is for sure. Even if SCR1024 passes both legislative chambers and is approved by the voters, it will not have any effect until after the 2026 general election.
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