Robb: What does a GOP or Democratic Legislature mean for Arizona?
Posted
Robert Robb
SUBMITTED PHOTO
By Robert Robb
There’s a lot for swing voters to weigh this election, beyond which of the specific candidates put before them is the less offensive.
Gov. Katie Hobbs says that voters have to put Democrats in charge of the Legislature to avoid being governed by GOP “insurrectionists, white supremacists and indicted fake electors.”
Scot Mussi, head of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, says voters have to keep Republicans in charge of the Legislature to keep Democrats from turning Arizona into California by adopting policies that “threaten to increase crime, crush our economy, and endanger our basic freedoms.”
What is it about politics that causes reasonably intelligent people to begin frothing as though they’ve contracted a case of political rabies?
Democrats are thought to have a legitimate shot at taking over one or both chambers of the Legislature. A non-hyperbolic exploration of what it might mean to the state if the GOP retains control, or if Democrats take over, might be worthwhile.
From a traditional conservative standpoint, things are going pretty well in Arizona. Low taxes and a reasonable regulatory environment buttress expanding economic opportunity, validated in part by our continued high-end population growth. Important conservative policy victories were recently achieved by the adoption of a low, flat, individual income tax rate and universal vouchers for education. Rising housing costs are the principal sore spot.
Things, of course, look different from a liberal perspective. Liberals believe that our level of taxation, particularly at the state level, is insufficient to support a robust K-12 public education system and an appropriate social safety net for low-income families. Moreover, the tax system relies too heavily on regressive sales taxes and not enough on more progressive income and property taxes.
In evaluating what it would mean for the state if the GOP retained control of the Legislature, one must begin with the fact that the caucuses wouldn’t be populated by traditional conservatives. It would be a pure MAGA affair.
Those who were most instrumental in achieving the traditional conservative policy achievements of a flat tax and universal vouchers — Gov. Doug Ducey, House Speaker Ben Toma and state Sen. Paul Boyer — are gone. The only carryover possibility is state Sen. J.D. Mesnard, but he is in a swing district and no guarantee to return. With Hobbs as governor, traditional conservative policy gains probably aren’t in the cards in any event.
At the national level, the MAGA populist nationalists have a governing agenda to pursue. It is inaccurate and unfair to depict the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as in essence Donald Trump’s platform. However, it is an expression of what many in the MAGA movement hope to achieve if he is given a second term.
There is no comparable governing agenda for the MAGA movement at the state level, unless you regard telling high school students what bathrooms they can use a governing agenda. It is reasonable to expect that Republican control of the Legislature in the next two years would be similar to the last two years, in which the principal objective seemed to be to nobble Hobbs, substantively and politically, as much as possible. If anything, that will become more pronounced, given the loss of Ken Bennett in a GOP primary, who occasionally acted as a brake on the excesses, and the pendency of a gubernatorial election in 2026.
This led to some substantial dysfunction in state government. The most obvious example is the abuse of the confirmation powers for state agency heads.
Hobbs won the gubernatorial election. In terms of the direction of executive branch policy, voters put it in her hands. She should have been able to appoint agency heads of her choice who support her policies.
The confirmation function isn’t intended to give the Legislature in effect a veto power over executive branch policy. That’s a violation of the separation of powers. As the Federalist Papers make manifest, it is only to weed out obviously unqualified nominees.
Hobbs’s nominees were technically qualified, yet the GOP Senate slow-walked them and rejected some on the basis of policy disagreements and politics, not technical competence. Hobbs erroneously responded by attempting to bypass the confirmation process by giving them a different title but the same responsibilities. A judge correctly found that not permitted.
State administrative law makes state agency directors the final say in a lot of circumstances. There is now a legal question about the validity of the decisions made by unconfirmed agency heads during this period. Hobbs bears some responsibility because of her attempted bypass. But the proximate cause was the abuse of the confirmation power by the GOP Senate.
This unwillingness to attempt to constructively work with Hobbs also led to the most irresponsible fiscal act in my half century of observation. Two years ago, rather than work out a budget with Hobbs, GOP leaders opted to squander a $2.5 billion general fund surplus by letting every legislator appropriate tens of millions of dollars on whatever they wanted. Hobbs went along with it to avoid a government shutdown. It caused a deficit that has been papered over by swiping money from other state accounts intended for other purposes.
Now, a GOP Legislature represents no risk to the policies that traditional conservatives believe have put the state in good stead. However, there’s no reason to believe that an even purer MAGA Legislature will be willing to work constructively with a Democratic governor, rather than seeking to undermine her at every opportunity. A degree of state government dysfunction is probable.
It’s worth noting that there wasn’t that same risk of dysfunction when Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano was dealing with a Republican Legislature populated mostly with traditional conservatives. This dysfunction is very much a MAGA phenomenon.
So, what if the Democrats take over? There are institutional restraints that make becoming California without the beaches highly unlikely.
While state revenues have picked up some of late, the state budget projections over the next two years, thanks to the squandering of the surplus, remain tight. There’s not a lot of room for a spending spree.
The state constitution requires that increases in state revenues, by taxes or fees, be passed by a two-thirds extraordinary majority. So, even in the minority, Republicans would be able to block it. And, because of that, it isn’t likely to be attempted.
The Arizona Supreme Court, in a case involving a hospital bed assessment to offset state costs for a Medicaid expansion, did create a loophole for new, administratively-set fees. Contorting the constitutional language, the court found that new, administratively-set fees could be adopted by a simple majority. It makes no sense that a legislatively-set new fee would require a two-thirds vote but establishing a new administratively-set fee can be done with a simple majority. Still, that doesn’t give a Democratic Legislature a lot of room to increase revenues. And if the loophole came before the current state Supreme Court, I suspect they would close it.
When Hobbs presented a budget in the context of a $2.5 billion surplus, it didn’t include big-ticket spending items. Instead, there were several more modest increases in social welfare programs. And my guess is that is what the state would get if Democrats take over the Legislature.
A good example is funding the waiting list for child care subsidies for low-income families. The waiting list went away due to Covid relief funds and other federal subventions. But it has returned. Getting rid of the waiting list has long been a Democratic legislative priority. Resources permitting, a Democratic Legislature would make it happen.
Beyond that, it’s really hard to project what a Democratic Legislature might do. Hobbs doesn’t have much of a governing agenda either. And most Democrats in swing districts are running on pretty vague issue platforms, mostly taking shots at their MAGA opponents.
It’s reasonable to project that a Democratic Legislature would take action on two institutional problems for K-12 spending: a permanent increase in the state constitution’s aggregate expenditure limit, for which the GOP Legislature has been approving only annual exceedances; and a replacement for Prop. 123’s higher draw on state trust land revenues, which is expiring. These are things that have fallen through the cracks in the lack of a constructive relationship between Hobbs and the MAGA Legislature.
From a traditional conservative standpoint, the greatest risk from a Democratic Legislature would be to the school choice gains the state has made. Democrats want to cap and even rollback universal vouchers and have favored measures that would impede the functioning of the state’s charter schools, particularly the highly successful, and high-performing, chains.
There are now hundreds of thousands of voting parents who have students in these choice schools, including high concentrations in some swing districts. If Democrats are politically prudent, and in Arizona they have tended to be such, they may end up treading lightly before alienating such a constituency. Regrettably, in Arizona there isn’t the support for school choice among at least some Democratic leaders that there is in other states.
Of course, a clean sweep of both chambers by one or the other party isn’t the only possible outcome. One party may be in control of one chamber and the other party of the other. Or one or both chambers may end in a tie.
If control of the chambers is split between the parties, a more constructive divided-government environment might ensue. The MAGA political instinct to lay waste to political opponents would remain strong. But there would be no ability to bypass Hobbs through a referendum, as the current MAGA Legislature has done on some issues. Getting anything done would require bipartisanship rather than brinkmanship. There should be a narrow range of issues, including a state budget, on which there would be the political space to do that.
If one or both chambers ends in a tie, I expect chaos to ensue. It is a certainty that, in the Republican caucuses, there won’t be many members, if any, suitable, by instinct or skill, for coalition formation or governance. And so long as MAGA voters remain the dominant force in GOP primaries, making a deal that gives Democrats at least an equal role is an invitation to a primary challenge. Bennett’s very infrequent brake was his doom.
Whether there will be Democratic legislators suitable, by instinct or skill, for coalition formation or governance is unknown. While in the minority, several legislative Democrats talked a good game about bipartisan governance. But can they actually play the game, or even want to?
I don’t know the extent to which swing voters weigh larger questions, such as overall party control of legislative bodies, rather than just making the less offensive choice between the specific candidates put before them. To the extent they do, there’s a lot to weigh this election cycle, much more than usual.
