In a surprise move for many critics, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill that would have required President Barack Obama and other presidential candidates to prove they were born in the United States before their names could have been placed on the state ballot. We previously discussed the bill and the serious constitutional questions that it raised. A former Secretary of State, Brewer objected to one state imposing such conditions on candidates.
Brewer stated that “[a]s a former Secretary of State, I do not support designating one person as a gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate, which could lead to arbitrary or politically-motivated decisions. She went on to suggest that some of the conditions were simply demeaning: “I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for President of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth to submit their ‘early baptismal or circumcision certificates’ among other records to the Arizona Secretary of State. This is a bridge too far.”
The move saved Arizona the expense of a costly challenge that would have likely resulted in a defeat for Arizona in the courts.
However, thirteen other states are currently considering the same type of legislation. While the veto in Arizona may deter some, this may still become a court battle leading up to the elections.
Source: CNN
Dats what you think
Bdaman,
Good – it helps President Obama get reelected. (I have no objection to the birthers shooting the Republicans in the foot.)
Sb it’s only going to intensify.
this bill is D-E-D dead.
It is but the issue is not and it will only going ti intensify.
BOOK TO REVEAL OBAMA’S ‘TRUE’ IDENTITY?
Jerome Corsi where’s the Birth Certificate
Trump, Abercrombie spar over “birther” issue
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/14479029/trump-abercrombie-spar-over-birther-issue
James and drf,
The Arizona speaker has already said that the Republicans wont try to override the veto – this bill is D-E-D dead.
drf,
Rachel Maddow made the same point — the Republicans have the votes and are likely to override the veto.
Arizona Bill Would Allow Insurers From Out Of State To Circumvent Consumer Protections
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/18/arizona-across-state-lines/
Last week, Arizona passed a bill that will serve as a test case for one of the GOP’s most popular solutions to the health care crisis: allowing individuals to purchase coverage across state lines:
SB 1593 eliminates laws requiring insurers that sell their products to Arizona residents be licensed and regulated by the state Department of Insurance.
Proponents say the increased competition will provide more opportunities for Arizonans to get the coverage they want at a price they can afford.
But the flip side is that the legislation wipes out more than two-dozen mandates for what conditions must be covered for policies issued in Arizona. These range from chiropractic care and breast reconstruction to how much time a woman would be allowed to remain in the hospital following delivery.
Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, said that is good news for those who don’t want or need that kind of coverage and the costs entailed, while those who want coverage for specific conditions can shop for a policy which includes that.
The Affordable Care Act already includes a similar provision that would allow states to form across state compacts, establish a set of rules and mandates and allow individuals to purchase coverage that follow those guidelines.
Arizona is doing something entirely different. It wants to allow insurers to completely circumvent state-based patient protections and coverage requirements and offer bare-bones coverage to the healthiest applicants. Insurers would be able to cherry pick the most profitable patients (who don’t need coverage for things like breast reconstruction), further dividing the insurance risk pool and likely increasing costs for the sickest beneficiaries.
shire
i think they had less courage of convictions and more fear of being blamed.
the few that stayed with their convictions made targets of themselves
@drf: I think the Democrats had your aversion to symbolic victories in 2006. That would explain why they did jack-all while in control of both houses. How did that work out for everyone again?
I have my tin foil hat on here, but it should be noted that the AZ legislature has the votes to overturn Brewers veto. She can play the good guy by vetoing a bill that can, in turn, be passed by an override. It gives her deniability, but still allows for a ridiculous law to be passed.
She has an image problem, and this veto allows her to point to something as proof that she isn’t some right-wing zealot, but is instead a reasonable conservative that has rational limits on what can pass as law in AZ. Her image is improved, a crazy law is passed, and everyone can brag to their base come next election cycle.
It is the new GOP strategy of pushing for symbolic wins, over actual legislative wins. The GOP can vote to kill healthcare, and when the President vetoes the bill, the GOP now can claim they did the right thing only to be stopped by Obama. They knew going into the debate that anything they passed would not be signed, and that they lacked votes to override a veto. They wasted the time to win the messaging on the issue, and keep the base energized. As long as they are seen as fighting the President, winning a legislative battle is just a luxury they don’t need. It seems to me to be a very special flavor of dishonesty, and sadly I think it is working.
Then again, I could just be paranoid.
All the Sheriff’s Men
SCA Report Details Depth of Conspiracy Between Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and State GOP; Repubs Took Anti-Dan Saban Ad Material and Dirty Money From Arpaio’s Buddies
By Ray Stern, Fri., Apr. 1 2011 @ 7:49PM
Randy Pullen, former chairman of the state Republican Party, knew the SCA donation was illegally earmarked, sources told state and federal investigators.
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Lisa Allen was dismayed when she saw the super-sleazy TV ad against her boss’ opponent, Dan Saban, air on September 30, 2008.
She thought the ad, which stated that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s opponent had masturbated on county time and had once been accused of raping his own mother, put the county law enforcement agency in a bad light.
“We just look like scum,” Allen told investigators two years ago.
She’s sure right about that. But the scumminess goes way beyond the content of a political smear ad.
The recently released SCA report by the state Attorney General’s Office exposes evidence of big corruption within both the MCSO and the state Republican Party.
Our previous stories on the secret fund known as “SCA,” (Sheriff’s Command Association,) detail a conspiracy to launder tens of thousands of dollars from Arpaio’s rich supporters and his command staff through the fund. The money was funneled into the Republican Party, where it was used to pay for an attack ad against Arpaio’s opponent in the 2008 election, Dan Saban. The report sheds new light on the scheme to violate campaign laws, while detailing lies and acute memory losses of key players.
Arpaio’s chief deputy, David Hendershott, is suspected of conducting an illegal enterprise and obstruction of justice in the SCA case.
Arizona law prohibits contributions to political parties or political action committees that are made in the name of another person or are earmarked toward specific candidates. The maximum contribution to a county candidate in 2008, the year of the election in question, was $390. In that year, corporations weren’t allowed to contribute money for the purpose of influencing an election (in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporate money could be used in campaigns).
The report contains strong evidence that those campaign laws were broken by sheriff’s officials and representatives of the state Republican Party. Investigators suspect key players of even more. Search warrant returns show that, in addition to campaign violations, Captain Joel Fox is suspected of fraudulent schemes for his role in the SCA, and Chief Deputy David Hendershott is suspected of “illegal conduct of an enterprise and obstructing criminal investigations or prosecutions.”
The report states:
* David Hendershott, Arpaio’s chief deputy and campaign manager, masterminded the SCA effort and solicited many, if not most, of the secret contributions. A total of $101,500 was raised over two years.
* Working with another of Joe Arpaio’s key confidante’s, Larry Black, Hendershott had contributions sent to Black’s subordinate, Captain Joel Fox. That way, Hendershott and Black could keep their names out of it. Fox has long maintained that he was the founder and only decision-maker for the SCA fund.
* During the run-up to the 2008 campaign, Black frequently was seen in his office on the 19th floor of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Phoenix — Sheriff’s Office headquarters — working on the material for the planned anti-Saban ad. Lisa Allen saw him looking at a Saban deposition transcript, and Sheriff’s Captain Jim Miller told investigators it was common knowledge around the office that he was working on the ad. The Republican Party later used the SCA money to produce an ad based on Black’s work.
* In summer 2008, state Representative Jim Weiers set up a meeting between Black, Fox, and Republican political consultant Chris Baker. We put in a call to Weiers today — he hasn’t called back.
* After two meetings at restaurants with Black and Fox, Baker received an $80,000 check from the SCA account. He’d later receive another $25,000 check.
* Baker took the check directly to Randy Pullen, then chair of the state Republican Party. Pullen told an assistant to put the money in the party’s state account, despite her protests that the contribution might be improper.
* The Republican Party used $78,000 of the money to fund an independent expenditure committee, Arizonans for Public Safety, created the day after Pullen received the check.
* Baker was then employed to work on the anti-Dan Saban ad. He told representatives of Anthem Media, which produced the TV ad, what the ad should say.
* The TV ad aired just once, on September 30, 2008. Pullen and other high-ranking Republicans watched the ad while attending an event at John McCain’s Phoenix headquarters.
The Party’s general counsel, Joe Abate, was present. He told investigators that Pullen told him about “some money given to the party [that] was supposed to be used for a specific purpose, but Joe Abate could not remember what the purpose was. He believed Randy Pullen said the money was earmarked…Upon leaving the meeting, Joe Abate thought that the party may be in some trouble.”
Former state Republican Party chair Mike Hellon, also at the event, asked Pullen why he would create such a “sleazy” ad. He says Pullen responded, “Because there were some supporters of Joe Arpaio who gave us some money, and that is what they wanted us to do with it.”
* Days later, someone tipped Hellon that Bruce Ash, a Republican committeeman, told a Capitol Times reporter that he’d been informed by Randy Pullen that the money would never have been donated if the party hadn’t agreed to do the ad. Hellon told state investigators that he phoned Ash “and told him that he had better shup up, because he just told the media that the state party is guilty of a felony.”
* Hellon also described how U.S. Senator Kyl was duped into raising funds to replace the SCA donation, which had to be returned to contributors.
The Republican Party was forced to give back the $105,000 in SCA donations after questions were raised about the anonymous contributors. Legally, it could only accept the donations if the names of the individual contributors were known. But this became a problem for the state party, which had spent the money on negative ads targeting both Dan Saban and Tim Nelson, the opponent of former County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
The Party was “basically broke during the 2008 election cycle,” Hellon told investigators. He said Pullen asked Kyl to tap some of his rich contributors “so the party could do a get out the vote campaign.”
A fundraising dinner was held for “12 or 15 guys, and somewhere in the range of about $85,000 was raised. Instead of using the money to have a get-out-the-vote effort, Pullen used it to repay the SCA money,” Hellon said.
* The big-money contributors to the SCA, including local developer and Phoenix Coyotes owner Steve Ellman, were also contacted by either Sheriff’s Office or party officials and asked to resubmit checks directly to the Republican Party — which they did.
* A “day or so” after search warrants were served at the home of Joel Fox, Hendershott visited several subordinates for a chat. Scott Freeman, the office’s chief of special operations, recalls that Hendershott wanted to remind Freeman that Hendershott had nothing to do with the SCA fund. “Scott Freeman told Chief Hendershott that was not his recollection,” investigator Mike Edwards wrote.
Freeman had been among several deputies asked to contribute to the SCA through payroll deductions. But Freeman let Hendershott know he wasn’t going to lie for him. He told his boss that he specifically recalled how Hendershott invited him to contribute, telling him to “contact Larry Black about how to set it up.”
* The AG’s office, in a search warrant for Hendershott’s e-mails, wrote that Arpaio’s second-in-command was suspected of violating campaign laws, obstruction of justice, and running an illegal enterprise.
The FBI, which conducted its own investigation of the MCSO along with AG sleuths, found additional dirt Hendershott in “file reviews and interviews” from other investigations, the SCA report says:
Developer Steve Ellman told another rich guy that their contributions would go to help Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s campaign. Once Fox gave their money to the Republican Party under the mysterious name of “SCA,” the contributions became illegal earmarks.
* “Per an interview, on or about 10/12/05, David Hendershott made a request of Alltell Rep, Mark Walker, to destroy all cell phone call records because he was concerned that campaign phone calls made from MCSO phones could be tracked,” the report states.
Although that pre-dates the SCA mess, the FBI’s accusation raises questions about what other kinds of evidence Hendershott or others in his command might have destroyed. As we mentioned in a previous blog, Arpaio’s spokeswoman, Lisa Allen, told investigators that when the Sheriff’s Office learned it was under investigation, Black had urged her to delete anything on her computer related to the 2008 campaign.
The FBI also accuses Hendershott of ordering a Verizon rep to “write a false document that indicated no bad credit with Verizon in order to facilitate the financing for his home.”
The Verizon rep, Dawn Shackner, “later became a civilian employee of MCSO.”
We should mention that the SCA report contains no direct evidence that Arpaio knew anything about the scheme. Perhaps Hendershott kept him in the dark intentionally, protecting him from the storm he figured would later come. We can’t help but wonder if there was discussion about the SCA within what Sheriff’s Office employees called Arpaio’s “inner, inner circle,” of his closest aides: Hendershott, Black, and Brian Sands.
The scandal essentially began in summer 2006, when Hendershott invited County Elections Director Karen Osborne for an unusual sit-down meeting at a Phoenix CoCo’s restaurant.
“We’ve got big money we can get to out there; there is big money we can bring in to this effort,” Hendershott reportedly told Osborne.
By effort, Osborne told investigators, Hendershott meant his intention to “crush” Sheriff Arpaio’s competition.
Hendershott wanted to set up a political action committee, but Osborne told him no corporate money could be mixed with the PAC’s donations. Corporate money could be given to a “political organization that only focused on issues,” she advised.
A few weeks later, Black and Fox set up two political action committees and opened the SCA bank account. The PACs were never used, but the SCA account grew rich.
Hendershott and Black persuaded several high-ranking deputies to contribute, telling them the money would be used to help deputies. The pair also contacted “several rich individuals” and asked them for fat checks.
Ellman, who gave $25,000, told Anchorage businessman Tom Gimple that the contributions would be used to support Sheriff Arpaio. Hendershott began e-mailing Gimple, recommending a donation of $25,000, and telling Gimple how to make out the check and where to send it. (Gimple sort of screwed it up by writing, “Vote for Sheriff Joe Arpaio” on the check, which became a key piece of evidence that the contribution was an illegal earmark.)
One contributor believed she was helping fund a toy drive.
In the months before the election, Hendershott took “weeks” off from work to focus on Arpaio’s campaign, which he considered “God’s work,” according to retired Maricopa Captain Jim Miller, who was interviewed by the FBI.
Miller told investigators that, before the anti-Saban ad was run, Black spent a great deal of time working on it in Arpaio’s 19th-floor “video room.”
Miller also confessed that it was “common talk/knowledge” around the office that the shady SCA fund “was the method used to ‘fund the hit piece on Saban,'” the report states.
Worthy of note: Randy Pullen and Bruce Ash came off as extremely evasive in their interviews. Both suffered acute memory loss at times.
By contrast, Pullen’s assistant at the time, Amy Lynn Gordon, was much more forthcoming to investigators. The talk around the office was that the SCA money would be used for an ad to help Arpaio, she said.
She said she assumed it would be a negative ad. Politically the campaign did not want its hand on dirty stuff, she said. That would be the job of the party
Asked what she understood the purpose of Arizonans for
Public Safety to be when it was first formed, Gordon said it was an independent-expenditure committee to support the sheriff. Asked if it was formed specifically to support the sheriff, she said yes. Asked how she learned that, Gordon said she gleaned it from talking to Sean McCaffrey or Randy Pullen, though she could not remember a specific conversation.
Investigators note that Pullen, in a letter to a state elections investigator, wrote: “In fact, no one at the Party ever had a direct or indirect conversation with any one with or associated with SCA regarding the intended use of the funds.”
The fact that Baker, a Republican contract worker, had meetings with SCA organizers Black and Fox, belies Pullen’s statement.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/04/sca_report_details_conspiracy.php
Raff,
Don’t you see? This is exactly the sort of dilemma that the Republicans will be finding themselves in more and more – the cost of their hate- and fear-mongering come due…
I agree the gun bill is poorly phrased for the (official) reason Brewer provides, and frankly pointless (for the reasons I am about to describe) political fodder.
Still, the idea that it would “allow” guns on a university campus implies that this was not already the case. Are there metal detectors at the gates? Do bags get searched before entering a classroom? If a student stuffed a gun in his backpack and carried it every day for all four years of his college tenure, yet drew no attention to it, would anyone EVER notice? No? Then guns are allowed on campus.
So I find it laughable to suggest that the status quo provides a safe environment. A concealed gun on campus will 99% of the time only be noticed if it is drawn, and by the time that happens, a crime much worse than “gun in a gun-free zone” is inevitably in progress anyway.
Slarts,
You could be right, but she is changing her stripes a bit to veto this bill.
Blouise and Raff,
I think that Governor Brewer’s decision was a strictly political one – as a former SoS, she understands what the lawsuits would cost the state as well as the futility of the issue, and, furthermore, I believe that she understands (like Karl Rove) that the birthers are a wedge for the Democrats. She had little choice but to veto the bill…
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/gov-jindal-would-sign-louisianas-birther-bill-if-it-gets-to-him.php?ref=fpb
Brewer did the right thing but, sadly, for the wrong reasons.—Blouise
We have a BINGO!!!
Blouise,
I agree. Gov. Brewer is feeling the heat and had to do something to try to restore the image of Arizona that she helped tarnish.
“I’m thinking the recall campaign against her, the significant loss of resort and convention revenues to the state and the constant national ridicule (to say nothing of the money being wasted defending the indefensible SR 1070) are having the desired affect.”(rcampbell)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
” … National Council of Teachers of English. The council had originally arranged for its 2012 annual convention to be held in Arizona. After passage of the immigration law, the council changed the convention venue to Las Vegas. …” (Elaine)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“She is listening to the business community.” (SwM)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Lost tourisim dollars didn’t come into play here with this decision,you think? SB 1070 alone has dug deep into the state treasury with the loss convention booking also has fallen,I would imagine wiser heads got involved on passing this law IMHO.” (eniobob)
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I have to believe that you are all correct. The crazy teabagger republicans are starting to seriously hurt the business concerns of their individual states and this is not something that will be tolerated.
Brewer did the right thing but, sadly, for the wrong reasons.