Yeah, I’m spitting feathers. Given what I’ve been watching the past two weeks, it’s time to dish up more crow, because I’m eating it!
Perhaps, not debating Trumpian jabberwocky Kari Lake was a good decision for Katie Hobbs after all. Imagine, Kari in her Empress of FOX uniform, machine gunning ugliness and lies at the opponent she called “a coward.” By saying “no thanks,” the soft-spoken and often tongue-tied Hobbs avoided a shredding spectacle. As they say, debating Lake, a person who made her living reading teleprompters, “would have been bad. Very bad.”
Well, not debating Lake has turned out to be, as they say, “Smart. Very Smart.” For context, Listen to Katie bumble through a recent interview with NPR’s Scott Simon – NOT a buzzsaw journalist – and it’s clear the Governor knows her limits. She knows her strengths too: actually governing, not preening for the cameras and microphones. She’s smart. She’s calculated. She’s looking more and more effective. We just had to wait until the votes were counted...
THEN BOOM!
Over the past two weeks, Warrior Hobbs emerged. Her State of the State, Budget Message, and Executive Orders are real policy, grounded in facts, actions designed to lift all Arizonans. Time’s up for Doug Ducey’s billionaire swell pals, for the Legislature’s machine gun toting White nationalists, for the “Christians” bent on jailing pregnant women and torturing LGBTQ people. Katie The Fearless just dropped a house on all of you.
For those outside State 48, let’s get caught up.
Wasting not a second, on Day 2 in office Hobbs issued an Executive Order ending discrimination of protected classes in hiring state employees and in issuing state contracts. You know, let’s accept the beautiful diversity of Arizona.
Then in her State of The State address, Hobbs called on the Legislature’s Republican majority to knock off the culture wars nonsense and get to work. Join me, she said, together we can unify the state. Our bottom-ranking public education system would be a good place to start.
Wow. Was this an Arizona governor?
Yeah, and Hobbs doubled down in her Budget Message, first blowing up Ducey’s fraudulent “Border Strike Force,” then telling the Legislature to eliminate so called “Empowerment Scholarships.” Those are the state tuition grants for families who CHOOSE to enroll kids in expensive private and religious schools. Neither those schools nor the parents are accountable for the funds. No financial audits. No accounting for academic performance. Bif and Buffy can have their Country Day or morning prayers with free money meant for public ed. It was Doug Ducey’s crowning plunder as he marched the state into feudalism. His Lordship’s on tour now pushing this evilness nationally.
Hobbs wants Empowerment Scholarships over. Now. Let’s fund our public schools for all. YES!
No, she wasn’t done.
Third, Hobbs dammed up Arizona’s water negligence. Despite the megadrought, State 48 continues to misuse its precious groundwater and the Colorado River to water cows and grow alfalfa for giant Saudi-owned dairy farms, to water golf courses, to build wave pool resorts, and to construct endless subdivisions. Never mind, that Lakes Meade and Powell are drying up. Ignorant Arizona could care less. No more.
Hobbs released a state report Doug Ducey had covered up, piercing plans to build massive housing developments in the burbs southwest of Phoenix. The reason Ducey was hiding it? The subdivisions, which would put nearly a million people in Buckeye (population 101,000), don’t meet legal requirements for a supporting water supply. Arizona law says: no 100-year water source, no building.
Whoa. Transparency. Listening to scientists. Following the law. Taking the fight to Arizona’s real estate devlopers. That’s beyond ballsy. Reporter Don Bolles was murdered while working stories of shady real estate deals involving prominent Arizonans. Remember, Ducey’s handpicked replacement was Karrin Taylor-Robson, you know from “ Robson Communities.” Guess how Karrin made her money? Real estate developers have ruled Arizona since it was a territory.
Apparently, Warrior Hobbs is not intimidated. Time to face the facts. This is a desert. No building without a true plan to get water here.
No, she still wasn’t finished.
DOC, You’re D-O Done!
Ending her second week in the big chair, Commando Katie turned her high-powered firehose on the Department of Corrections (DOC). She appointed a reformer to put out the dumpster fire that is Arizona’s prison system – see my last column for a rundown of that atrocity. And, she issued an executive order pausing executions, a stunning combination left jab, right uppercut to the Law & Order crowd.
Some background on the DOC death chamber.
State-sponsored murder is never a good idea unless your last name is Putin, or Hitler, or Pinochet, or Pol Pot, or Mussolini, or… you get it. But, this is Arizona, and we make rules to kill people in many ways, like police traffic stops. But, sticking with the prison theme, capital punishment in State 48 has been amplified beyond what anyone might think is rational.
Arizona recently executed a certifiably insane blind man, a Black man convicted solely on questionable eyewitness accounts, a man with an IQ lower than 70 who killed and dismembered his adoptive mother. She had sexually abused him from childhood to adulthood.
Then, there was the 2014 case of Joseph Wood, whose execution by lethal injection was a textbook example of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Death is supposed to come to an inmate minutes after the drugs are applied. Woods lingered for two hours before his breathing stopped, strapped to a table, convulsing and gasping for air 640 times. Turns out the mess started with a “cocktail” of drugs authorized by former DOC Director Charles Ryan. Ryan, a true Darth Vader, acted against advice of death penalty experts and after a similar meltdown took place in Oklahoma.
Now, to be clear, those on death row have been convicted of unspeakably awful homicides. They should spend their lives locked up in prison or a state mental hospital. But no, we shouldn’t torture them.
Hobbs’ Executive Order paused all executions. It sets up a Death Penalty Independent Review Commissioner to examine the state’s processes and lack of transparency in ending lives. If this form of “justice” is to be delivered, Hobbs said, “…this is a system that needs better oversight on numerous fronts.” Or, Katie and the Legislature, maybe the death penalty needs eliminated. Death Penalty Independent Review Commissioner sounds Orwellian. But, these baby steps are a start.
A Brick To The Face
So, it’s been a street-brick-to-the-face reality check for Arizona’s Republicans, they of White supremacy, election denying, and persecution of anyone who doesn’t pass their WASP litmus test. Of course, their response has been entirely rational.
House Speaker Ben Toma labeled Hobbs’ scholarship-busting budget message “dead on arrival.” He suggested the remedy for Hobbs and her Leftist ideas is to pass no budget and shut down state government in July. A typical all too Trumpian “let’s just burn it down” plan without offering any new ideas or alternatives.
Arizona’s “Freedom Caucus” led by Senator Jake Hoffman – a guy who made his living setting up troll farms to spread disinformation – will sue Hobbs for protecting state employees. Apparently, he thinks there should be discrimination in state hiring.
Then there’s Senator John Kavanagh. Last year he tried unsuccessfully to shut down citizen recordings of police encounters. This session, he wants teachers to out LGBTQ students. He says, with no scientific support, outing the kids will stop them from taking their own lives. The bill is heading for a certain veto by Warrior Hobbs.
Undeterred, Kavanagh is pushing a bill to allow parents who don’t like what their kids are being taught, to sue teachers. If the parents win, the teacher is financially ruined. If the parents lose, they pay ZERO court costs.
Hmmm. I bet teachers are not signing up to teach social studies under the threat of poverty. Feels like a recipe for perpetual study hall. It’s vintage Kavanagh, who represents wealthy Fountain Hills, a freedom loving Republican spends large part of every session trying to limit liberty. Fortunately, he mostly fails.
Well R’s, and I mean you too Kari Lake. Looks like you bullied the wrong Governor. We’re only two weeks into a four-year term. There’s so much more to do. Whine all you want.
She’s not “a coward.” Hobbs is a Warrior Governor.
Look At ME!
So, as the Warrior was at work actually doing stuff for Arizonans, newly minted Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, took her Party Of Me to the billionaire fest at Davos. There, according to a Semafor newsletter, Sinema was “scene” yakking it up with the One Percenters:
"U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) party with Princess Beatrice … Sinema at Anthony Scaramucci’s annual Skybridge wine tasting party with a small glass of wine in each hand.”
Before her two-fisted wine fest, Sinema delivered an I-was-right-F-you speech to Davos royalty. Decked out in furs like Sansa, Queen of the North, Sinema lectured the assembled on her brilliance in not repealing the filibuster. Her message: We should all trust the system designed to protect people like me from people like you. I didn’t need to kill the filibuster to protect the mid-term election. Voters turned out in record numbers. Election deniers lost. The Evil Emperor is dead. You silly liberals. I am so much smarter than you!
Kyrsten, you’re so wrong. We were 17,116 votes away from Governor Kari Lake and 280 away from Attorney General Abe Hamedah, not exactly landslide margins. Fringe Right Wendy Rogers and Sonny Borelli and Jake Hoffman and Warren Peterson and John Kavanagh are calling the shots in the Arizona Legislature. The Mad King plots a return, and Corvette Joe’s stunning incompetence may make it easy. Disenfranchising people of color remains the Republican playbook. And let’s not forget January 6th insurrectionists Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar represent Arizona in Congress.
You know that. But, since turning “Independent” late last year, you’re dying for the spotlight, because the usual Kyrsten acts haven’t move the needle in the new year.
The I’m-The-Smartest-Kid-In-Class attitude as “Arizona Senior Senator” has made you an untouchable at home. You played the national media game, took a “bipartisan” group of colleagues to the Border, knowing perfectly well there will be Bipartisan Nothingness to fix immigration. Back here, you tried to steal credit for a tribal water deal that was in the works long before you showed up. The usual photo ops and news releases aren’t getting noticed.
So, you pulled the town hall stunt with royalty and billionaires in Switzerland. You don’t have the courage to face your voters and do a town hall here. Despite your defenders on the Right, your Davos performance took your arrogance to another level. Again, Arizona saw your biggest priority is playing to those with money, not protecting the people who put you in office.
Davos affirms that in Kyrsten’s world, it’s not all about Arizona, it’s all about ME.