Latest news with #ArizonaFreedomCaucus
Axios
3 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Yee challenges Horne in GOP primary for state superintendent
State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is taking on state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne in the Republican primary, challenging him from the right over Arizona's school choice system. State of play: Yee, who is termed out, will attempt to wrest the GOP nomination from Horne as he seeks reelection. She announced her candidacy from the state Capitol Wednesday, touting her career-long dedication to education issues and pledging to "build a stronger and higher-achieving school system." Yee criticized Horne for what she called "government overreach" in his administration of the voucher-style Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program and argued that he's exceeded his legal authority in imposing restrictions on it. She also dismissed the types of excesses by some ESA parents that critics focus on as a minute fraction of a percentage of the total program. Background: Yee chaired the Senate Education Committee and focused on education issues during her 2010-2018 legislative career, as a legislative staffer and as an aide to former California Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson. The intrigue: State Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who leads the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, told reporters last month he wanted to find a GOP primary challenger for Horne, whom he called "the single greatest threat" to the ESA program. Hoffman is backing a slate of candidates for statewide offices and introduced Yee at Wednesday's press conference. Yee said parents in the school choice community had been asking her to run for superintendent well before Hoffman's recruitment efforts. Between the lines: The superintendent proposes changes to the handbook that governs the ESA program. Horne's Arizona Department of Education in March proposed changes to require a curriculum for supplemental materials; impose spending caps for expenses like computers, musical instruments and home economics appliances; and ban expenses like smartwatches, multi-person kayaks, Amazon Prime fees and certain appliances like espresso machines and freeze-dryers. The State Board of Education postponed a vote on the new handbook after about three dozen ESA parents spoke out against the changes. Horne last month asked the board to again push back the vote, saying he wanted to meet with state lawmakers who had voiced concerns to him. The other side: Horne, a longtime school choice advocate who previously served as superintendent from 2008-2011, said in a press statement Wednesday that the state education department is strongly in favor of parental choice and ESAs. But he rejected the notion that the program should be unrestricted, pointing to expenditures he's rejected like a $5,000 Rolex watch, a $24,000 golf simulator and a vasectomy testing kit. If the department approved such expenditures, it would provoke a negative public reaction and threaten the program's survivability, he said. Horne added he has a duty to responsibly manage taxpayer funds, which includes limiting ESA expenses to reasonable educational purposes.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Republican calls out rank politics and ‘performative outrage' amid split on animal welfare bill
Photo illustration by Jim Small. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror One GOP state lawmaker has had it with the 'performative outrage' of some of the far-right members of his own party. During a debate about a proposed bill that would strengthen consequences for people convicted of animal abuse, Rep. Walt Blackman engaged in a heated exchange on May 20 with fellow Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin on the floor of the Arizona House of Representatives. Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, criticized Senate Bill 1658 for what he described as putting the wellbeing of pets above that of their owners, especially owners who are homeless or living in poverty. Blackman, who comes from Snowflake and describes himself as a traditional Reagan Republican, had just days earlier made a lengthy post on the social media site X calling out his far-right GOP colleagues for 'spend(ing) more energy policing ideological purity than drafting legislation.' 'It's got nothing to do with the bill,' Blackman said on May 20, in response to Kolodin's criticisms. 'It's got to do with politics. I've been down here (at the Capitol) enough.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The proposed legislation at the center of the debate was originally introduced by Republican Sen. Shawnna Bolick via Senate Bill 1234, which passed through the Senate with near-unanimous support but never got a committee hearing in the House. Blackman revived the bill via a strike-everything amendment (an amendment that wholly replaces the text of the original bill) to Bolick's Senate Bill 1658. Numerous animal rights organizations supported the measure, including the Arizona Humane Society and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Blackman is a U.S. Army combat veteran who said that he considers his dogs to be family members and that he, like many other veterans, depends on them to help him through the mental and emotional impacts of his time in the military. 'It is making sure that people who have dogs, that they are being responsible, that they are making sure that they are giving them clean water, that they are giving them the proper amount of food to eat,' Blackman said. 'This is a no-brainer piece of legislation.' The proposed law that Blackman was advocating for would add failure to provide suitable and species-appropriate food, water and shelter to the definition of animal neglect in Arizona. It would also expand the definition of animal cruelty to include 'intentionally, knowingly or recklessly' failing to provide medical attention necessary to prevent unreasonable suffering. 'I don't know why this body would want to be so cruel as to make it a serious crime for poor people to own pets,' Kolodin said of the proposal. The bill includes carve-outs to the shelter requirement for working dogs, including livestock herding and guardian dogs, as well as for the pets of people who don't have a permanent residence themselves. A clearly frustrated Blackman reminded Kolodin of those exceptions, to which Kolodin countered that there was not an exception for the medical care requirement. 'If you can't afford to give (medical care) to yourself or your kids, you're not breaking the law. But if you can't afford to give it to the family dog, now you're a criminal,' Kolodin said. 'That is cruel.' Kolodin called the proposal 'inhumane.' Blackman responded by pointing out that 'some of his colleagues' might want to think back on some of the cruel and inhumane votes or comments they've previously made on the House floor. A lot of things that I did as a Republican, I am not proud of. – Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake Members of the Arizona Freedom Caucus were some of the only legislators who voted against the final version of an emergency funding bill last month to ensure that Arizonans with disabilities didn't lose access to vital caregiving and health services. 'We would love for every person in this state to get proper medical attention,' Kolodin said. 'We would love for every person in this state to have nourishing food and water. We would love that. And we would love for every dog in this state to have those things too. But guess what? That is not reality.' Blackman told the Arizona Mirror in a May 22 phone interview that he was surprised that Kolodin said that on the House floor — not because Blackman thinks it was disingenuous, but because it doesn't align with the Arizona Freedom Caucus agenda. Kolodin, along with other Freedom Caucus members, have voted in favor of strengthening rules and restrictions on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides assistance to low income people to purchase food. They've also supported cuts to Medicaid, and the services it provides, including when they voted against the emergency funding bill for the Division of Developmental Disabilities last month. They have also supported legislation to criminalize homelessness. Blackman said that, as he sees it, members of the Freedom Caucus seem to always be voting against bipartisan legislation not based on the merits of the proposals, but based on a political scorecard. And statements from the group's leader, Sen. Jake Hoffman, at the start of the 2025 legislative session seem to back that up. During a January press conference, Hoffman said that the Freedom Caucus' top priority over the next two years would be to make sure that the Democrats who head statewide offices, including Gov. Katie Hobbs, lose their 2026 reelection campaigns. Blackman clashed earlier this year with Arizona Freedom Caucus member Sen. Wendy Rogers, of Flagstaff, when she blocked a bill that he sponsored which criminalized acts of stolen valor at the state level. Stolen valor means lying about or embellishing one's military service. Rogers and Blackman represent the same legislative district, but are political opponents, and she endorsed Steve Slaton over Blackman in the 2024 GOP primary election. Slaton, who owns The Trumped Store in Show Low, is a Trump loyalist like Rogers. But during his campaign, Slaton was found to have falsely claimed that he saw combat in Vietnam during his time in the U.S. Army. Blackman and Kolodin engaged in another heated exchange in April, after Blackman reintroduced his stolen valor bill as a strike-everything amendment to another bill originally sponsored by Bolick, circumventing Rogers' power to block it. Kolodin supported the original version of the stolen valor bill when it passed through the House, but was the single dissenting vote when it was revived. Kolodin said that the new version of Blackman's proposal included a provision that greatly expanded its scope: It says that any person convicted of the offense outlined in the bill would be disqualified from public office. 'We cannot open the door to allowing our courts to judge political speech within the context of criminal law,' Kolodin said. Blackman, in a fiery response to Kolodin, said that the bill has nothing to do with politics or political speech. 'This has nothing to do with political speech. This has to do with blood, sweat and tears men and women left on the battlefield,' Blackman said, at times yelling. 'The next time we have a conflict, I'd like to see whoever says 'no' on this board or in the Senate to jump in a Humvee and get shot at and tell me the service didn't matter.' Blackman told the Mirror that the first person he was criticizing in his May 18 social media post was himself. It was during a two-year reprieve from the state Capitol after serving as a state representative from 2019-2023 that he said he realized that he had gotten away from the values he believed in when he first joined the Republican Party in the 1980s. 'A lot of things that I did as a Republican, I am not proud of,' he said, admitting to his adherence to the 'it's our way or the highway' approach to governing that the GOP employed during his first stint as a lawmaker, when Republicans controlled the state House by a single vote. Since he returned to the legislature in January, Blackman said he's committed to working across the aisle to make changes that help Arizonans instead of scoring political points simply by voting against legislation because Democrats support it. Blackman said that he continues to support closed borders, lower taxes and free enterprise, 'however, I am not for putting my foot on somebody's neck just because they happen to disagree with me,' he said. In the social media post, Blackman accused his party of moving away from what he described as the traditional Republican values of faith, freedom and force to 'focusing almost exclusively on grievance politics and cultural warfare.' Blackman was one of several Republicans who voted for or expressed support for SB1658 during the May 20 debate. Rep. Matt Gress, of Phoenix, described the legislation as 'morally right.' 'How we treat our animals matters a great deal to who we are as a society,' he said. Gress mentioned the impetus for the proposal, a 2023 animal cruelty case in Chandler when 55 special needs dogs were found to be in poor health and living in 'horrible, horrible' conditions. 'We didn't have appropriate laws in place to hold those owners accountable,' he said. Gress, who, like Blackman, has also been chastised by members of his party for voting alongside Democrats, praised bipartisan support for the proposal. The bill will still have to make it past a full vote on the House floor and Senate, as well as a signature from the governor before it becomes law. 'This is a good bill, OK?' Blackman said during the May 20 debate. 'Don't abuse your dog. That's all it's saying. Don't abuse your dog. It doesn't say if a person does not have a place to go — somebody who cannot take care of their dog — they're not going to go to jail.' Kolodin did not respond to a request for comment. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arizona GOP passes ‘impossible' voting bill requiring 4,000 new polling locations
Voters wait in a long line outside of the vote center at the Tolleson Civic Center on Nov. 5, 2024. Photo by Caitlin Sievers | Arizona Mirror Republican lawmakers passed legislation that would cost Arizona counties tens of millions of dollars every election year and would force them to attempt to find 4,000 new voting locations, something that county election officials described as impossible. House Bill 2017 passed through the Senate by a 17-12 party line vote on Tuesday. Sponsored by Rep. Rachel Keshel, a Tucson Republican and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, the proposal would ban in-person early voting and the use of vote centers where any registered voter within a county can cast a ballot. Instead, it would require the use of precincts capped at 1,000 registered voters apiece. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Most counties use voting centers, which allow any registered voter to show up and cast a ballot at any polling site in the county. Under the precinct model, only voters assigned to a precinct can vote there, and if they vote at the wrong location, their ballot won't be counted. During a March 5 Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee hearing, Keshel said that capping precincts at 1,000 voters would make the election process more manageable and trustworthy. 'I think some of us would agree that the voting centers haven't really caused more faith in our elections,' Keshel said. 'They haven't caused less chaos. They've done the opposite.' She cited issues at voting centers in Maricopa County during the 2022 general election, when printer problems caused long lines and frustration for voters. But her claims that long lines weren't a problem prior to that were untrue. Long lines and other Election Day problems occurred in Arizona long before Maricopa County started using voting centers in 2018. Keshel's proposal is all but guaranteed to get a veto from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, but the Senate could still vote on its mirror, House Concurrent Resolution 2002, which would bypass the governor's desk and head straight to the 2026 ballot to be decided by the voters. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee wrote in an April 11 fiscal note that HCR2002 would cost the counties a total of around $53 million in its first election year and more than $21 million each election year after that. House Bill 2017 would have the same impacts, including the requirement that counties open 3,957 additional voting locations for each election, and find more than 27,000 additional poll workers to staff them. 'HB 2017 would be impossible to implement and would add immeasurable burdens to our counties while hurting voters in the process,' Sen. Analise Ortiz, a Phoenix Democrat, said before voting against the bill. 'So, even if this would be able to be implemented, it would have devastating impacts and is just another attempt to suppress the vote.' Jen Marson, the executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, has repeatedly told legislators that the counties would be unable to find enough voting locations or workers to comply with Keshel's bill. Even Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, who spent two years on the House Elections Committee where he questioned Marson's claims that some bills were impossible to implement, changed his tune only days after he took office. During a January committee hearing, Heap conceded that he didn't think 1,000-voter caps would be realistic in the state's most populous county, home to more than half of the nearly 4.6 million registered voters in the state. But far-right Republican Sen. Mark Finchem, an election denier from Prescott who made wild and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud when he unsuccessfully challenged his loss in the race for the Secretary of State's Office in 2022, said he wasn't buying it. 'I find it interesting that, quite often when government officials say, 'We can't,' it actually means, 'We won't.'' Finchem said. 'It's a big difference between the two. One has to do with the will to perform for the people, the other has to do with ignoring the calls for what the people want.' Without further explanation, Finchem pointed out that Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador all use precinct-based voting. All three of those countries are under authoritarian rule and are often described as dictatorships, and elections in Venezuela and Nicaragua are widely considered not to be free and fair. The most recent presidential election in El Salvador was marred by corruption and bad practices. In 2016, the last time Maricopa County used only precinct-based polling places, it had 671 polling sites. In last year's election, it opened 246. Keshel's bill calls for 2,600 precinct locations in Maricopa County, more than 10 times the number it operated in 2024. The county began using the vote center model because it struggled to find enough precinct locations, and because it stopped the problem of provisional ballots being thrown out because they were cast at the wrong location. Keshel admitted during the March 5 meeting that she hadn't done the math to figure out how many precinct locations would be needed before drafting her proposal, and still hadn't done so as of that date. But she brushed off the idea that finding nearly 4,000 new polling locations and 27,000 workers would be a problem. 'We did this before,' Keshel said. 'I feel like those are excuses to not go back to the way that we did it for decades in Arizona. It was a much better system.' But the state has not, at least in recent history, had precincts with only 1,000 voters nor has it operated 4,000 voting locations. Keshel's proposal doesn't include a contingency plan for what the counties should do if they fail to find enough voting locations and workers. During the January committee meeting Republican Rep. John Gilette said he found Marson's claims hard to believe and suggested that the counties use jails, parks, fire stations and police stations. Marson explained that, because voting locations must be within the physical boundaries of each precinct, that wouldn't work for small communities where those locations were typically within a few blocks of one another. Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, of Scottsdale, suggested that counties could instead rent out private homes or Airbnbs. But Marson said the counties hadn't contemplated doing that since those locations likely wouldn't have the required number of parking spaces or be ADA-accessible. House Bill 2017 is a repeat of a bill that Keshel sponsored last year that failed to make it through the Senate when a single Republican, Sen. Ken Bennett, voted against it. Bennett, a former secretary of state, was often the lone member of his party to question GOP-backed proposals based on election conspiracy theories. He lost his reelection bid last year to Finchem in the Republican primary. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arizona Freedom Caucus member Kolodin running for secretary of state in 2026
Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, on Jan. 13, 2025. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror Republican state Rep. Alexander Kolodin on Monday announced his plans to run for Arizona secretary of state in 2026. Kolodin, who was first elected to represent Scottsdale in 2022, is an election denier and a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus. He's also an attorney who was sanctioned by the State Bar of Arizona in 2023 for taking on lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, including the infamous 'kraken' lawsuit that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud. 'I'm Alex Kolodin and I'm running for Secretary of State to restore transparency to our elections once and for all,' Kolodin wrote in a social media post on Monday. 'Arizona elections continue to be a laughing stock under (Democratic Secretary of State Adrian) Fontes. Voter confidence is at historic lows. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I'm running for Secretary of State to restore transparency, honesty, security, and lawfulness to our elections.' In a video announcing his bid for the state's top election official, Kolodin walks toward the camera with a slightly blurred Arizona Capitol building in the background. In the video, Kolodin claims that the head of the Arizona Republican Party, Gina Swoboda, asked him to run and endorsed him. But Swoboda issued a statement later on Monday saying that she hadn't endorsed Kolodin and wouldn't endorse any candidate in the Republican primary. She added that she would support Kolodin if he wins the primary, as she had previously said she would. In fact, Swoboda is strongly considering a run for the office herself, something she told multiple reporters on Monday. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Since he took office, Kolodin has been an outspoken member of the House Elections Committee, where he's advocated for significant changes to the state's election laws, many of them based on conspiracy theories that have fundamentally reshaped how Republicans view elections in Arizona and across the country. During some of those meetings, Kolodin chided those who don't believe claims that elections are marred by widespread fraud or have outcomes that are rigged by elections officials. 'These days, I feel like I'm living in the Orwellian world,' Kolodin said during a House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee meeting in February 2024. ''We trust our election officials. They would never put their thumb on the scale. They would never try to cheat.' Well, we know that's demonstrably false, and it's demonstrably false in the way a 6th grader could know that it's demonstrably false.' His evidence was that Donald Trump was not on GOP primary election ballots in two states — Colorado and Maine — after his candidacy was challenged on the grounds that he was ineligible to serve under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because he incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. In Maine, the secretary of state determined Trump couldn't appear on the ballot. But in Colorado, the Democratic secretary of state allowed him on the ballot only to have the state Supreme Court rule that he was barred by the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled that decision, and Trump appeared on the ballot in all 50 states. Kolodin supported legislative changes that would have made it easier for people like Kari Lake to challenge the results of an election, to get rid of no-excuse early voting and to return the state to all-precinct voting with precincts capped at 1,000 voters, an idea that experts at the county level said would be unworkable. For years, representatives of Arizona's rural counties begged Kolodin and the other Republicans on the Elections Committee to consider how difficult and costly it would be to implement some of the election changes that they supported. But Kolodin said during a January meeting that he only really believed the complaints from the rural counties after former Freedom Caucus member Justin Heap took office as Maricopa County Recorder and relayed the same concerns to him. 'To be honest, we've never really had somebody that we trusted on the other side to tell us these things in a way that we would believe them,' Kolodin said during a Jan. 15 House Ad Hoc Committee on Election Integrity and Florida-style Voting Systems meeting. Kolodin was the chairman of that panel, and he drafted legislation aimed at speeding up the state's election results, based on systems already being used in Florida. The proposal passed through the House and the Senate, both under Republican control, but was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. A similar resolution, which would bypass Hobbs to be sent straight to voters in 2026, passed through the House on a party line vote and is awaiting a vote in the Senate. Kolodin was the driving force behind an election timeline fix bill that passed with bipartisan support in February 2024, which will allow voters who drop off their ballot in person on Election Day to show identification and have their ballot tabulated immediately, instead of dropping it off for signature verification. The change, meant to speed up the reporting of election results, will take effect in 2026. This year, Kolodin sponsored legislation that would repeal the law banning Arizonans from owning machine guns, silencers, sawed-off shotguns and even pipe bombs. He was reelected in November. It is unclear if he will resign his legislative post to mount his statewide campaign. Fontes, who has passed on opportunities to run for governor and Congress, has not announced whether he's planning a reelection bid. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Alexander Kolodin seeks secretary of state post under Freedom Caucus banner
Republican Alexander Kolodin is running for Arizona secretary of state, promising to improve voter confidence in elections by being transparent and secure. In a March 31 announcement, Kolodin criticized Adrian Fontes, a Democrat and the current secretary of state, for being a hyper partisan. At his state Capitol announcement, he drew laughs from supporters when he mocked Fontes' stance that President Donald Trump is trying to cancel elections. "President Donald Trump is not going to cancel the 2026 election," Kolodin said. Kolodin is running under the banner of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, which is supporting Congressman Andy Biggs for governor in 2026. The caucus represents the farther right reaches of the state COP. Kolodin refused to comment on the legality of Trump's election executive order, issued March 26. Critics say it's unconstitutional, as the states, not the executive, are in charge of elections and have vowed to sue. But he praised the order's stipulation that people must provide documents proving U.S. citizenship in order to vote, a provision that's been in Arizona law for years. He also rebuffed numerous questions from reporters, dismissing some of the queries as partisan. Kolodin touted his success last year with legislation that required ballots be walked into the polls in the 2024 elections to be hand counted as a check on the automatic tabulation machines. It delayed the reporting of election returns, but Kolodin said it was done to boost confidence in voters who are wary of machine counts. He also said he helped craft strategy to challenge the Elections Procedures Manual, a guidebook produced by the secretary of state and the 15 county recorders that outlines the fine-grain details of how elections are run. It worked; a court earlier this year found issues with the manual. Fontes has said he is appealing the ruling. Kolodin is a second term lawmaker, representing Legislative District 3 in the northeast Valley. He's the vice-chairman of the Regulatory Oversight Committee in the Arizona House of Representatives and the sponsor of a wide range of bills, from a proposal to institute the firing squad as Arizona's method of capital punishment to numerous election-related bills. One of those proposals is to give the Legislature the final say on the Elections Procedures Manual. An attorney, he has represented clients in numerous election-related lawsuits. Most notably, he represented the state Republican Party in a lawsuit in the aftermath of the 2020 election that argued Arizona's early voting system was unconstitutional. He lost that case, and the state Supreme Court declined to take up the issue. Fontes has not announced his intentions for the 2026 election cycle. He has flirted with running for other offices, most recently for the Congressional District 7 seat in southwestern Arizona. But on March 26, he announced he would not run for that seat, citing the need to defend against what he sees as President Donald Trump's effort to cancel future elections. It was a reaction to the president's executive order that would change election procedures, a move that many view as outside his power because the U.S. Constitution gives the states the power to run elections. At the time, Fontes would not comment on whether he would seek a second term as secretary. Kolodin's announcement comes a year after then-state lawmaker Justin Heap announced his bid for Maricopa County recorder. A member of the Freedom Caucus, Heap defeated incumbent Steven Richer in the GOP primary and went on to win the seat. Thus far, Kolodin is the only Republican running for the secretary post. State Republican Party chair Gina Swoboda has been mentioned as a possible candidate but she has not committed to the race. Reach the reporter at or at 602-228-7566 and follow her on social media @maryjpitzl. . Subscribe to today. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Alexander Kolodin seeks secretary of state post under Freedom Caucus banner
