KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about a member of Arizona’s congressional delegation dipping his toe in the water for a gubernatorial run, Arizona’s AG joining a challenge to President Trump’s executive order looking to do away with birthright citizenship and more, The Show sat down with Marcus Dell’Artino of First Strategic and former state lawmaker Aaron Lieberman.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Aaron, let me start with you on Attorney General Kris Mayes. She joined a multi-state lawsuit. There are a few of these. Hers was, I think, Oregon and Illinois and maybe somebody else suing to block this executive order. The judge in that case, put a temporary restraining order on it. Basically stopped it for a couple of weeks.
This seems like something that we’re going to be talking about for quite some time. Is that fair to say?
AARON LIEBERMAN: Yeah, I think so. I remember when then-candidate Trump said, “Are we a nation of laws, or aren’t we?” basically was his position. And this is what we’re going to find out. He’s trying to change laws voted on by Congress and signed by whoever was president then with an executive order. And that’s not how our system works.
And it’s going to go all the way to the Supreme Court, and we’re going to find out if they’re really calling balls and strikes there or not when this thing ultimately gets decided.
BRODIE: Marcus, stipulating that none of the three of us in this room are actual attorneys, it would seem as though it would be a difficult argument to make to change the Constitution with an executive order.
MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Yeah, I honestly think that the Trump administration knows ahead of time that one, they knew that they were going to get sued. Two, they know it’s headed to the Supreme Court. But what that brings is a discussion about the issue.
Are people going to argue that if I'm an Italian citizen and I come over for vacation in Florida and my wife is pregnant and we have a baby, is that an American citizen? So it’s those type of things we’re going to end up fleshing out in this discussion.
But I will not literally not be surprised. One, the Supreme Court is going to rule this down, but two, I think it will start the discussion in Congress: Do we need a constitutional amendment?
BRODIE: Aaron, from a political perspective, Attorney General Mayes has been very upfront about — I’m going to paraphrase poorly her words — basically, she’s going to try to stand up to the Trump administration, especially when it comes to things on immigration.
This seems like a pretty easy one to get behind. We’ve seen a number of Democrats embrace some immigration stuff. Now this seems like, from an outsider, a pretty easy one for a Democrat to say, “This is not OK.”
LIEBERMAN: Yeah. Well, and just to focus on “Are we a nation of laws or not?” She’s the attorney general. Definitely has a perspective on that. The reality is on immigration, the Democratic Party has completely shifted to what was the Republican Party position a decade ago. There is a near consensus on that.
What will be interesting to see is if they can get anything done now that President Trump is the president, if they can get anything like the deal they had on the table just a short year ago, whenever it was, that actually would have done something to do what everyone kind of acknowledges.
We want stronger borders. We want safer borders. And we want a legal immigration system that allows us to have people to come here to work, to do the jobs that we need to get done. Let’s see if we can make something happen there and actually move forward.
BRODIE: Marcus, not to suggest that Attorney General Mayes is doing this for any reason other than this is what she thinks is right: Is this the kind of thing that helps her potentially in a campaign in two years?
DELL’ARTINO: Man, you’re getting to the question I wanted to answer. So this is great.
When you look at the states that sued immediately, what do they all have in common? They’re all Democrat controlled states. And so which one of these is not like the other? It’s us. It’s Kris Mayes, who is a Democrat in a Republican majority state.
LIEBERMAN: Former Republican. She’s a recovering Republican, we call them. She’s a Democrat now.
DELL’ARTINO: So how does that pan out in two years for her based on the information? If you look at the last election, you know, it looks like immigration was top of mind with the voters. And certainly that’s reflected in the proposition that passed.
And so I think that they’ve got to play a little long ball here. Yes, your Democratic base is content with that lawsuit. But where do the independents, where are they focused on? I mean, it’s going to get used in a campaign ad. There is absolutely no doubt about it. And so how do they respond to it? They got to start thinking ahead on those things.
BRODIE: Probably gets used in more than one campaign ad, right?
DELL’ARTINO: This election season, despite the fact that we don’t have a presidential election, will be just as much money pouring in here from special interests.
BRODIE: Don’t turn on your TVs. Aaron, let me ask you about the Gov. Hobbs budget, which she released last Friday afternoon. Republicans in the Legislature had a look at it earlier this week. Seems they don’t like it that much.
LIEBERMAN: I’m shocked that the Republicans in the Legislature aren’t happy with Gov. Hobbs. Look, I was thrilled to see that the governor really laid down a marker, particularly on the ESA program, which is a runaway train paying for wealthy people to send their kids to private school. Overwhelmingly. To me, it just doesn’t make any sense. We have some great private schools in Arizona, some great public schools. I went to both of you know, those. If you want to send your kid to a private school, pay for it. Get some donations or other things for scholarship.
What is the state interest in paying for — literally, I think her proposal was if you make under $200,000 a year, you’d still be eligible for the ESA — especially when we’re struggling to meet the basics as a state. And we know that from a budget perspective.
So I was thrilled to see that. That’s going to be a tough one. The governor’s very powerful. In a state like Arizona where it’s narrowly divided, I personally would love to see this thing go as long as it needs to take the argument to the people and saying, “Really? This is what we’re going to choose?” Well, we’ll see how it all plays out.
BRODIE: Says the guy no longer in the Legislature. Let’s take it as far as we can.
DELL’ARTINO: June 30? Are you crazy?
LIEBERMAN: July, August. They have a much better reimbursement program down there now.
BRODIE: Marcus, we’ve seen Gov. Hobbs, to Aaron’s point, has talked about scaling back in some way the ESA program every year. Clearly, the Republicans are not going to go for that. But given what she’s proposing on it this year, can she use that as leverage for anything else, any better than she’s been able to use that issue in past years?
DELL’ARTINO: Well, the good news is I do predict at some point we will get a budget. So that’s the good news.
Here’s the crux of what she set up: If you save money on the ESA program, we can spend that money on immigration enforcement. And the Republicans are probably not going to fall for it.
At some point, there are some things I think that they can agree on. Some money into the housing trust fund. I saw some block grants and go to the AG’s office for local jurisdictions to enforce these smoke shops that are selling illegal marijuana to kids. For a parent out there struggling with this stuff, we enjoy that kind of money being spent on law enforcement.
There are things that I think they’re going to find agreement on. I just don’t think at the end of the day, this Republican majority in the Senate and the House is going to go for anything changing on ESAs.
BRODIE: Do you think there can be enough agreement, either of you, that if we don’t have the kind of budget we had a couple of years ago — what’s been called the Oprah budget, where everybody gets a certain amount of money, some number of millions of dollars to spend.
LIEBERMAN: All the Republicans and a small number of Democrats got the car with the money.
BRODIE: Marcus, do you think there will be enough agreement so they don’t have to do that? Because we saw what happened after they did that. They had to make cuts the next year.
DELL’ARTINO: Yeah. I mean that was obviously an unusual circumstance, but right now it looks like the Senate’s following that model but the House is not following that model. And I think that’s fine for right now. Let’s just start the basic discussion.
But I think a lot of this money is going to be treated as one-time money, and that means capital projects. And that means more roads — we’re basically going to end up doing the same thing, which is everybody earmarks a little bit of money for a road that needs repair in your district.
BRODIE: Aaron, what do you think? I mean, can they do a “regular budget”?
LIEBERMAN: Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see. To this point, (Rep. David) Livingston (R-Peoria), the chairman of appropriations in the House, has said the leadership team in the House is united against not doing the earmarks and they actually want to do a good thing for the state.
It’s like the old Mike Tyson line: Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth. And until you’re going into Memorial Day and there’s still no budget, you have to start spreading stuff around. It’ll be interesting to see where this lands.
BRODIE: All right. Let me ask you guys quickly, before we go to break about Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. He gave his annual State of Education speech, called for the return of a high school graduation test, a high-stakes test where you cannot graduate unless you pass this.
All three of us have kids who would, in theory, need to pass this at some point. Lawmakers did away with this a number of years ago. Can you see it coming back?
DELL’ARTINO: Let me tell you my frustration on this as I’m sort of laughing in the mic. We have pulled this rabbit out of the hat I don’t know how many times. We literally do standardized tests, and we don’t want the standardized test, then we want it, then we don’t want it. And it’s like a carousel just going round and round. And at some point I’d just like a decision to be made, just be over it.
I’m doubtful. It could make it through the Legislature. There’s no doubt about that. I’m very doubtful the governor would sign it.
BRODIE: OK. Aaron, what do you think?
LIEBERMAN: This might be the first time since I’ve been doing this show that I’m going to agree with something that Tom Horne is saying. I think tests like this really put a focus on are all kids learning, and that’s a good idea. I’m happy my own son isn’t listening right now because he’s in school, because he would be groaning.
But the reality is, I was in favor of high-stakes tests. It puts the impetus on teachers to teach and on students to learn and everybody to get focused on what’s really going on. I don’t know what good we’re doing for a young person to say you’re a high school graduate if you actually haven’t really learned anything.
BRODIE: So how do we avoid what happened last time, to Marcus’s point, where we had a test, people weren’t passing it. We had a new test. Students still weren’t passing it. We kept sort of making it easier to pass until they eventually passed it.
LIEBERMAN: I have a whole list of things that I would do. I’d start with preschool for every kid in Arizona, which would dramatically eventually change the outcomes. I’d have way more certified and specialized teachers in the classrooms because we’d be paying them decently. And then ultimately we’d get to smaller class sizes, so every kid could learn.
The reality is, it’s not a mystery. And super conservative states like Florida have class size limits that are 30-40% lower than what we have in Arizona. But that’s what those things do. It’s the old Lucy moving the football. Like, the test is the test. Let’s figure out what it takes to actually help kids learn and make those investments as a state.
That’s why, by the way, that the ESA thing is so pernicious. Because instead of actually fixing class size for the vast majority, overwhelming number of our Arizona kids in our Arizona public schools, we’re helping millionaires literally pay for private school. Like that’s a values choice we have made as a state Legislature and a then-governor. And that’s what we need to re-trade to get focused on helping every kid learn.