Journalists’ Roundtable: Arizona Independent Party ruling and more

It’s Friday, which means it is time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable, where we discuss Arizona politics. This week, “Arizona Horizon” host Ted Simons was joined by Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services, as well as Camryn Sanchez and Wayne Schutsky of KJZZ Radio.

This week’s topics included:

• Arizona Independent Party ruling
• Teacher pay hike headed for ballot
• Push for 30 new House seats
• Bill bars migrants from banking services
• Cesar Chavez Day
• Bill freezes city, town taxes, and fees

Arizona Independent Party ruling:

Howie Fischer: “Does the Secretary of state have the power to simply say not only you get a new name, but all the people who registered as no labels are now automatically registered as American independent party, and the court said, ‘okay no…’ now we’re going to go to the court of appeals, and decide is the authority do this okay.”

Camryn Sanchez: “Fontes was arguing, or his attorneys were arguing, rather that it’s not the same thing, the name matters, but it’s not the same as the actual political party…if you want to change your party, you’re going to have to go back and ask the voters for their permission to do that. You can’t do it without their consent, just on a whim.”

Wayne Schutsky: “A bit of confusion added to this…you had people start out with no labels, then they’re switched over to the Arizona independent party. Now they’re back to no labels, but then you have all these candidates who got on the ballot as members of the Arizona independent party…you get a lot of confused people out there who have signed a bunch of ballots…that they wanted independent party candidates on there…and now they may be no party, or they may not be on the ballot…we don’t know.”