Grassroots Partners - We win!

With quite a few people asking me for details on the disagreement within the AZGOP as it relates to its bylaws and an audit of the January 23rd party election, I thought it would be simpler to put it into writing and leave it on this blog so that anyone could access it at their own convenience. Years from now, it may also be beneficial to have some sort of a written record, should history repeat itself in some way.

Simplified to its most basic elements, the question is should the Arizona Republican Party follow its bylaws or not?

In this case the specific bylaw was passed at the January 23rd meeting and provides a 10-day period for election challenges so that challengers can participate or observe an audit of the results of the election and know that the results that were reported were accurate.  The written reasons for the introduction of this bylaws have at their root the election of November 2020, and the desire that election integrity be more than buzz words.  The authors of the bylaw, and the vast majority of State Committeemen who passed the bylaw, intended for the AZGOP to set a proper example to the rest of the state and country of how to properly conduct transparent and accountable elections.

It would double or possibly triple the length of this post if I were to detail some or all of the various infractions that took place during the AZGOP election. It would also put some people on the defensive and they would spend their time denying that any infractions took place, instead of considering the best way forward. The good news is that in order to determine the right way forward, it does not actually matter if any infractions took place or not.

What is clear is that the party bylaws contain a 10-day challenge, which opened the moment the gavel fell and ended the January 23 meeting. Legally, that is the moment that the bylaw changes take effect. It is why challenges were filed--nearly 40 state committeeman requested challenges in all--and it is why both the national committeeman and the executive director of the state party assured those filing challenges that the audit would take place in accordance with the bylaws.

This is where things went off the rails – because six days after the election, Ward herself went on the radio and declared that there would be no audit, that the bylaws did not allow for an audit, and that losers do not get to ask for audits.  The bylaws hadn’t changed in those six days, but whatever Ward and her team had spent the last six days checking out was sufficient to reverse the party's position and start a fight with its own membership over election integrity at a time when election integrity is the number one issue for all Republicans.

Sometime later, the attorneys for the Arizona Republican Party confirmed in writing that the bylaws did allow for these challenges and audits, but that important reversal of the chairman's stated position did not come with an actual audit. It contained more stonewalling and an insistence that the chairman was powerless when it came to an audit and that the responsibility somehow lay with the state committee itself.

Again, it is worth pausing to note that this continued conflict is only happening because the state chairman is refusing to allow an audit of the party election, in direct violation of the bylaws. 

So more than 350 State Committeemen took action, called a Special Meeting to fix things, then watched as Ward and her supporters bullied a handful into taking their names off of the filed call, a tactic which itself may not even be legal.  Why threaten people’s livelihoods to prevent everyone from participating in a fair election?  We see that kind of behavior in the third world, but why here in our own AZGOP?

Kelli Ward and her supporters insist that the election was perfect, but let's lower the bar they themselves set to nearly perfect, since a perfect election is nearly unattainable. Nearly perfect is still good enough.  If this is true, then an audit would be simple, quick and easy to perform, and would confirm that near perfection was attained, thus calming the state party and setting an example for the rest of the world both how to conduct an election, and how to provide transparency to the voters that reassure them that the election was conducted properly and that only lawful votes were cast and counted.

But that’s not what is happening.  To the contrary, Ward and her team are all in on preventing an audit, at any cost to the party, its finances, and its reputation.  Going further, Ward and some of her supporters are waging war against other Republicans who insist on election integrity and following the law, and they do so while trying to claim some moral high ground.  They claim that those who want the law followed are just sore losers, disrupters, malcontents distracting the Party from its 2022 goals, and never-Trump opponents of the America First agenda.  Ward herself has begun targeting Republican elected officials for defeat because they asked for an audit or a fresh election.

All of this is utter nonsense and a smoke screen to distract from the fact that Kelli Ward is hiding the truth about her own election behind a team of lawyers, the party’s bank account and reputation, and all while raising money in the name of election integrity from unsuspecting patriots who are sending in their $35, $50, or $100, unaware that Ward may turn around and spend that money to OPPOSE election integrity efforts in our own party.

When Kelli Ward attacks conservatives like Russell Pearce, Mark Finchem, Barbara Blewster, Frank Carroll, Randy Miller, and me as McCain supporters and opponents of the America First agenda, it should give you serious pause when it comes to her integrity and credibility on this and every other issue.  Say what you will about this cast of characters -- and individually and collectively we’ve been called more than our share of names -- but “McCain supporters” or “opponents of the America First agenda” is obviously and laughably false.

The solution to all of this is simple – follow the bylaws – have an audit – show the election was done right or, if you can’t, do it again and do it right.

That’s what we as Republicans would ask of any election anywhere else, so if you’re opposed to doing it in this case, consider the very real possibility that you place more value on personalities or factions than you do principles.  Is Election Integrity something you care about only when you don’t like who wins a race?  Do you not care about the rules, laws, or bylaws, so long as your friend or your preferred candidate wins?  If so, then so be it, but you don’t get to claim any sort of moral high ground or attack those for whom principles matter more than personalities or factions.

It may also be that you have viewed this entire dispute thinking it was all about Ward and people who dislike her and are trying to undermine her, so your natural reflexive position was to rally to her side to “stop the bad guys!”  If you’ve read this far, you now know different.

I’ve spent probably six years supporting and voting for Kelli Ward for a variety of things.  Until the last few months I have spent most of that time defending her against questions about her fitness and qualifications for various offices.  This dispute wasn’t personal for me, and I would have taken the side of doing what was right if the Chairman was Ward, Lines, Graham, Morrissey, Pullen, Salmon, Fannin, or Londen.

But isn’t it time to move on?  No, of course not.  We have to do things right and the Party needs to know that it is led by quality people who are doing things right.  If you get to lie, cheat and/or steal to be in charge, and you don’t have to follow the rules that everyone else has to follow, then you are the very swamp we are battling to rid ourselves of.  If you’re unhappy with this distracting from the 2022 fight, then blame the people who are truly responsible – those who are ignoring the rules, laws, and bylaws of our Party, and who are threatening and intimidating those who want them to follow them.  Again, this could have been finished in a single afternoon in late-January or early-February.  Every delay since then is the responsibility of those intent on ignoring the rules.

Like efforts to obstruct audits of the 2020 election are only feeding suspicions and eroding trust in elections and the institutions that run them, blocking the lawful audit of our 2021 party election is doing the same.  I agree with Russell Pearce’s recent op-ed that this won’t end until we do things right as a party.  And the longer Team Ward violates the rules to stay in power, the greater the opposition to their actions will get.  As with the 2020 election, the only way forward is through transparency and accountability.  And if you are afraid of those two things, or if you are afraid or unwilling to champion those two things, then you have no business trying to lead the Arizona Republican Party.

No issue has been weaponized by the left and the Democratic Party like the issue of race. Their goal has not been to bring Americans together or to make progress where racial harmony or equality is concerned, but to divide us and pit us against one another, more often than not at the expense of racial harmony and equality.

Along with their allies in the mainstream media, they work overtime to convince much of America that Republicans are racist and filled with hate. This is an incredibly bold lie when one considers the history of both the Republican and Democratic parties, one of which was founded to end the evil of slavery, while the other filled the ranks of the KKK and blocked civil rights legislation for decades. But the left has never lacked for chutzpah and does not possess a sense of shame, so the strategy should not be a surprise.

The bad news is that this strategy, carried out now for decades, is proving largely successful. The Democratic Party claims the African American vote as entirely its own even while taking it for granted. And far too many Americans are quick to believe the worst about Republicans simply due to their party registration. Predictably, this intense effort to divide us against ourselves has also frayed and decayed our national fabric, leaving our nation divided at a time when it is so critical that we be united. How then to fix it?

I propose that the Republican Party fix it once and for all with an intense and sustained dialogue on race, history, and our nation’s fundamental values. This will be a challenge because anyone who has paid attention to the topic knows that some Republicans are simply terrible at talking about the subject, and the left/media will want to focus all of its attention on any mistakes that are made during the conversation, as opposed to having to cover the conversation itself.

Still, it would be incredibly healthy for the country to spend several months talking about this and virtually nothing else. The effort and conversation should reach such a level of saturation that everyone in the country will become a part of it.

First, Republicans should always make it clear that not only is racism unwelcome in the party but that it is un-American and an evil that our party was created to oppose. Along with this, it should be clear that it formed and, in many respects, continues to form an integral part of the Democratic Party and its political calculations. It is racist to divide us by color, it is racist to create animosity on the basis of color, and it is racist to pit one group against another for dollars or access to programs or any other public or private benefit on the basis of color.

Second, those who trade on race and those who make a career or a living from racism should be exposed, shamed, then shunned until they are driven from the public square. That goes for publicity whores like Richard Spencer and race hustlers like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton alike.  If people knew how Jackson, Sharpton, and their ilk made their millions through actual racism and manufactured division, it would become untenable for corporate America to continue to subsidize or reward them.

Third, every substantive issue that touches on race should be exhaustively debated, whether it be affirmative action, or criminal justice reform, or access to quality education, or access to gainful employment, or access to financial capital for those who would want to start or grow a business, etc.  Clearly, this would be a very long list, but that is why this conversation should take months to do properly.

This conversation should not end until it is clear that public opinion is moving thanks to an outpouring of truth, history, and informed debate. There is far too much truth and history on the side of the Republican Party for this not to work.

That does not mean that this process will be entirely pleasant.  There will be characters and issues whose history are intertwined with the GOP for whom apologies and clear unequivocal denouncements must be made. This is nothing to be afraid of and should be embraced. In a country as large as ours and in political parties as large as ours there are bound to be a certain number of idiots or people with genuinely evil intent. So long as they are dealt with quickly and properly by political parties, the parties themselves will not be held responsible by an understanding public.

At the end of the day, the Republican Party’s commitment to equality of opportunity compares very favorably to the Democratic Party’s commitment to forcing equal outcomes, so long as the American public understands that the Republican Party wants that opportunity for all Americans.  Today, too many Americans who occupy the ideological center are convinced that Republicans are somehow mean or hateful. This is due to the endless drumbeat from the left that insists that Republicans hate you if you are old or young, or black or brown or whatever, or gay or straight, or fat or skinny, or right-handed or left-handed, and on and on.

Americans who do not understand the history of the parties and who are denied honest coverage of the party’s positions on issues and how they actually impact our daily lives are predictably turned off by what they perceive as mean-spiritedness or hate.  If people think you’re bad they won’t want to listen or talk to you.  This is why the left works so hard at this lie.  They know that if they can control how people feel, they can control how they think and ultimately how they vote.

Fail to engage any longer and allow an increasingly diverse national population to grow up accepting the lie as truth, and you condemn the GOP to permanent minority status and the United States of America to a dismal future as the socialist dumpster fire the left wishes for us all.

Expose that lie once and for all, and the lying crooks that are spreading it, no matter how long the conversation takes, and you will dismantle 80% of the Democratic Party’s message while gutting their hold on voters whose best interests lie clearly with the concepts of “liberty and justice for all” that guide the Republican party.  After all, it is Democratic policies that lock poverty into certain neighborhoods, create a culture of dependency, fight to deny parents and their kids school choice and access to quality education, place abortion facilities in minority neighborhoods, encourage illegal immigration that undercuts the wages and standards of living of minority workers more than anyone else, and so much more.  It is time to hold them accountable.

The Jussie Smollett hoax will still be some time working itself out as additional facts are brought to light, but what we know so far is that the gay actor who says he “comes really really hard at 45 (Trump)” appears to have tried to make a martyr of himself by staging an attack that was supposed to be a homophobic violent assault by Trump-supporting, MAGA hat-wearing villains.  His calculus was simple – the left wants to believe that Trump and his supporters are homophobic bigots (Smollett is black as well which feeds the racist narrative as a bonus, since initial reports were that his attackers were white) and the media won’t question the story before running with it.

By and large he was correct, and celebrities were quickly on TV in tears at the hatred in this country and how it was all Trump’s fault.  They were joined by Democrat politicians eager to pander to their liberal base in advance of the 2020 Presidential contest, so “modern day lynching” quotes were flying.

Those on the right pointed out that these types of stories, which had been frequent since Trump’s election, quite often turned out to be frauds, and they recommended that everyone take a breath and wait for facts before rushing to judgment, but facts be damned, this was a sensational story that fed the Trump anti-gay narrative that the left loved.

When I say that the whole thing turned out to be garbage I’m not just talking about Smollett and his story, both of which are turning out to be garbage.  In fact, the “Trump is anti-gay” narrative itself is largely garbage. From his acceptance speech at the RNC Convention in 2016 when observers (myself included) noted that he didn’t mention *** once yet mentioned LGBTQ rights twice, to high-profile gay nominees to federal courts and diplomatic posts, the Trump Administration is anything but anti-gay. In fact it was Democrats who largely opposed Trump’s gay nominees because Trump was nominating them, which is yet another example of how it is more important on the left to be anti-Trump than pro-gay. https://video.foxnews.com/v/5749752995001/#sp=show-clips

Trump is the first President to declare that marriage equality (gay marriage) is settled law, he renominated Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Chai Feldblum, an Obama-appointee with a track record that national conservative leaders and groups considered decidedly hostile towards religious liberty, and Trump’s personal and family history is decades long with support for gay individuals, causes and groups.

Bill Clinton made one and only one LGBT judicial nomination in eight years.  Barack Obama made eleven such nominees in eight years.  Donald Trump has already done more than Bill Clinton did in just his first two years and his totals will likely eclipse Obama’s if they continue at this pace for eight years.  But what you do, what you accomplish, and how many LGBTQ people you nominate or promote, does not matter to a left whose entire playbook is entirely dependent on identity politics.

At the same time that Smollett’s narrative was taking the country by storm, the Trump Administration was launching a global initiative to end the criminalization of homosexuality (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-launches-global-effort-end-criminalization-homosexuality-n973081).  The irony is while the Trump administration is critical of the 70 or so countries that still have laws criminalizing LGBTQ status or conduct, countries like Iran that are known to throw homosexuals off of rooftops to their death will find few more passionate defenders than Democrat members of Congress who, in their spare time, also profess loyalty to the cause of LGBTQ rights.  So the administration finds its initiatives with little to no Democrat support.

The LGBTQ Victory Institute operates a Presidential Appointments Initiative that works with administrations to promote and place LGBTQ people into federal positions, yet even while the Trump Administration was making high-profile appointments like openly-gay Richard Grenell as Ambassador to Germany (over Democrat objections), the Institute’s website made it clear that because it considered the Trump Administration hostile to their cause, it was not working with the administration in any way on any nominations.  Why?

It is a matter of survival for today’s Democrat Party that they are able to maintain the fable of Republican intolerance and hate, because the big-government Venezuela-style policies they embrace cannot deliver a majority of the voters on election day.

That’s why these groups will deny progress and even oppose progress if it comes during a Trump Administration. If they really cared about their cause they would celebrate and reward progress towards their goals, but they exist for partisan reasons alone, and the needs of the groups they purport to champion will always be a distant second to the best interests of the Democrat Party.

In the rush to claim victory for Democrats, many pundits are missing that the most likely effect of the House takeover will not be any major policy victories for the left, but rather a long-term benefit to President Trump and his 2020 re-election effort.

Republicans paying a price for failing to keep many of their promises is an accurate storyline, although the great irony is that the House moved quite a few promises along only to see them perish in the Senate.  But the Senate gets to confirm the judges, and judges have been perhaps Trump’s greatest victories in his first two years, so the Senate Republicans got to enjoy voter appreciation and gains while House Republicans paid the price.

January will bring a different dynamic to Washington D.C.   It will still be a very dysfunctional place, but Republicans will no longer be held responsible for all of it.  There will likely be a honeymoon period of 4-6 months where large issues like infrastructure will see bi-partisan support as everyone attempts to prove they deserve to have a hand in governing, but very soon the Democratic primary for President will begin and the hard pull left will make compromise almost impossible for key Congressional Democrats.

Most importantly for Trump, he will have Pelosi back as a foil and, much as Clinton benefitted from being able to run against Newt Gingrich and the GOP House, Trump will benefit from being able to point out who is blocking passage of his promises without having to point fingers at Republican leadership.

Every great movie needs a villain and Trump 2016 had Hillary Clinton.  Trump 2017 and 2018 really didn’t have a villain and you could tell the difference it made.  Looking ahead, Trump 2020 will have whoever the Democrats nominate.  In the meantime, Trump 2019 has been blessed with the return of one of the least popular Democrats in the country, and you can bet that when the honeymoon ends, you’ll be hearing an awful lot about Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic House majority from the White House.

Arizona is in the minority when it comes to our Corporation Commission.  Most states do not have an elected Commission like Arizona does, and the last several elections have made it clear that real change needs to come to the Commission soon.  I’m not talking about changing who gets elected, but changing from an elected commission to an appointed commission.

I’m writing this before the November 6^thelection because my opinion is not going to be impacted by the results and neither should yours.  Every poll I hear about suggests one Republican and one Democrat are likely to get elected unless it ends up a true blue wave election, in which case both Democrats might win.  Most years, Republicans would win both seats.  That’s not the issue.

Having watched these races and managed these races (for both Clean and traditionally funded candidates), I can tell you that these are offices that the average voter knows little about and cares little about.  They care about the issues that relate to the Commission a great deal, but they don’t relate those issues to the Commission.  They’re happy with the Commission when they get refunds and unhappy when their rates are increased, and that’s largely it.

What has been corroding public opinion of the Commission is the sense that it is bought and paid for by outside interests that voters believe are funding the candidate’s campaigns. Voters have witnessed large-scale proxy battles between solar companies and established utilities like APS and assume that whoever wins is beholden to the group that got them elected.

There are several problems that aren’t likely to be solved, making this change worth considering.  There is no public appetite to contribute enough money to Corp Comm candidates to render the outside money inconsequential.  When Bob Burns and Andy Tobin were both running for election, both as incumbents, both with capable Rolodexes, one as a former Senate President and the other as a former Speaker of the House who had raised seven figures for a run for Congress, they raised less than $95,000 total between the both of them.

Unless you are blessed with a very loyal and capable Rolodex, the only people you can raise real money from for this office are the very people voters do not want candidates raising money from – people connected to the same companies regulated by the Corporation Commission.

Nor is running under the Clean Elections system a good option.  It’s an extremely large number of five dollars contributions that must be collected and the money you receive is entirely insufficient to run a real statewide race if you are going to have to compete with these outside groups.

So, the real campaigns are run by the outside groups who remain outside of the control of the candidates or their campaigns.  In 2016 massive spending by solar groups triggered a similar sized response by APS and when the APS backed candidates prevailed, every vote they took afterwards was suspect. But the fact is that had the other slate prevailed, their votes would have been equally as suspect.

Here in 2018, the Democrat ticket of Kennedy and Sears is being backed by millions of out-of-state dollars because they have promised to advance the core of Prop127 even as the voters of Arizona explicitly reject it at the ballot box.  Moreover, those spending the millions have explicitly targeted APS in their announcements and their campaign message.  Should the Democrats prevail, voters will have zero reason to believe that they are going to act as neutral judges in rate cases involving APS, because their success was funded almost entirely by groups with anti-APS agendas.

Which means under the current situation the vast majority of candidates cannot raise enough money to run a real statewide campaign, the real messaging originates with outside groups that have business before the commission, and no matter who wins, those who get elected, and ultimately the entire Commission itself, will have completely lost the trust of the voting public.

The only practical way to fix this is to amend the State Constitution and make the Commissioners appointed positions. Appointed by the Governor, confirmed by the State Senate, serving staggered terms as they do now.

Might these outside groups redirect their spending into the Governor’s race in a hope of influencing the Commission’s makeup?  Certainly, but that spending would be diluted in a much larger pool of money representing every type of voter or interest.  And voters elect Governors to steer the general direction of the state, so having a Corporation Commission that largely reflects the philosophy or ideology of the Governor will still reflect the people’s will.

Lastly, making this change also increases the likelihood that appointees have subject matter expertise that most candidates for the Commission lack.  This will produce a more professional Commission, free from the politics that currently consumes it, and clear of the sense that nearly every Commissioner “owes” one side or the other their votes.