Journalists’ Roundtable: 3-12-21: Kirkpatrick announcement, Early voting Restrictions, Ducey op-ed

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable discusses Representative Kirkpatrick’s decision along with the latest adventures at the State Capitol. We spoke to Laurie Roberts from the Arizona Republic and Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services.

This weeks Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Kirkpatrick Won’t Seek Reelection
• Early Voting Restrictions
• Ducey Op-Ed Piece on California
• Lawmakers Target Citizen Initiatives
• State Senate vs. Maricopa County

Representative Ann Kirkpatrick Won’t Seek Reelection

Roberts: “Bit of a surprise to me. At least, I had not heard or seen this coming at all. She has rolled through election and reelection in Pima County, in this district in Southern Arizona. Of course, there’s no way of knowing of what would happen in 2022 because we have redistricting to get through and the district might look completely different. But yes, it took me by surprise. She’s in the majority, has a position of if not power, some influence and she’s hanging it up.”

Fischer: “Well, certainly, there were some personal issues that she talked about. She had a fall, there were some issues with alcoholism. I don’t know if that’s fatal. Given congress, that’s probably a badge of courage or something like that. But she also said ‘Look I’km 70, the kids are in Arizona, I’m spending way too much time in Washington,’ but I think it comes down to a lot of what Laurie was saying. We’ve got a district that could end up running from the east side of Tucson, up through Graham and Greenlee County, right up until the Navajo reservation. While she was at one point representing Northern Arizona, that’s a very district to run from.”

Ducey Attacks California in Op-Ed for The Orange County Register

Fischer: “Of course, he’s saying come on over. Orange County, you can’t throw a rock in the air and not get six Republicans and those are the kind of people he wants. This comes back to what we were talking about before, restoring the Republican majority. Arizona is moving more and more Democratic. Not just in terms of Trump and Kelly, but we can see it in some of the other elections. He sort of cherry picks the facts that he wants to pick. Yes, the fact is if you live in L.A., you’ll probably spend a couple of hours a day in traffic. There were issues in terms of whether schools were open. Somehow, there were a few things that got left out, in terms of our own pollution here. The fact that we love coal. The fact that we had one of the lowest per capita rates in student funding in the country. The fact that we’ve had one of the highest rates of COVID-19 deaths. But oh, never mind, that’s an inconvenient truth.”

Roberts: “Well, he went beyond that. He actually touted Arizona as a place he said he’s working to keep and maintain our position as the nation’s best place to get an education. I’m thinking is he talking about Arizona? Meanwhile, US News and World report ranks us number 46 in terms of what kind of state it is to get an education. Of course, I have to be fair, he did say the best place to get an education, not a public education. Given that he feels that way, I’m sure he will veto any of the bills coming through the legislature that public educators view as an attack on the system.”