Wednesday, June 27, 2018

McSally Only AZ GOP Rep. Voting For Failed Immigration Bill

(UPDATE, 2:05pm: Rep. McSally released a statement within the last hour: “I believe the legislation I have been working on since September of last year, the Securing America’s Future Act, took a stronger approach to addressing these problems, but I do not believe making the perfect the enemy of the good does anything to make our country safer either. However, like President Trump, I supported this bill because it represents a tangible solution for these important issues. I stand ready and look forward to continuing to work with the President to find a way to get the mission done.” Full news release.)

Four of Arizona's five Arizona Republicans in the U.S. House voted to kill today's immigration bill, hours after it received an endorsement from President Trump. The lone holdout was Rep. Martha McSally (R-CD2), who had been involved in pushing the more hard-line bill that was defeated last week.

Today's vote was 121-301, and all of the Democrats voted against the Republican compromise. 112 Republican members did not support it, either.

McSally has not made any public comments today about the bill. Earlier today, President Trump tweeted his endorsement, calling it "STRONG BUT FAIR". However, that nearly half of the GOP House Members could not go along with it may undercut the President's frequent argument that "open border" (and pro-crime) Democrats are responsible for the immigration stalemate.


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Thursday, June 7, 2018

LISTEN: New APS RoboCall - We're Still Hearing Media Reports Of Scary Circulators

Arizonans for Affordable Energy, a group bankrolled by APS to oppose the proposed Clean Energy initiative has begun a new round of robocalls "warning" people to beware the petition circulators.

Arizona's Politics received the call Thursday morning, and was able to record it.

Matthew Benson, the indefatigable spokesman for AAFE, told Arizona's Politics that asking for the reactions of people who received the call "fascinating....(Y)ou're fine w/ them using felons (in violation of state law) but have a real beef with us letting people know about it."

Here's the call:

Of course, both halves of that statement are incorrect assumptions

From the inevitable legal challenges to previous initiative petitions, we have learned that petition gathering firms screen the people they hire to circulate for criminal records. People who have not had their voting rights restored following a felony conviction are not hired because they are not eligible to vote or to circulate petitions. (They are not ineligible due to safety concerns or identity theft concerns.) We have also learned that a few people with felony convictions typically slip through the screening efforts due to incomplete databases and varying laws regarding restoration of rights .

But, pretending that AAFE is simply making the calls as an (Arizona) public service when the calls (and videos) are clearly trying to use over the top scare tactics is not typical.




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BREAKING (OR, IS THAT "FIXING"): Arizona's Politics RE-POSTS McSally's Missing DACA Video Plus Transcript

This afternoon, CNN broke the news that Arizona Rep. Martha McSally (R-CD2) has removed a year-old video in which she urges the White House to assure DACA recipients that they be "protected" until there is a legislative fix. The video was removed from her Congressional website (and from her official YouTube channel).

As a public service, Arizona's Politics is re-posting both the removed video and a transcript of McSally's comments - in which she also states that "uncertainty certainly brings fear to my constituents that are in this limbo."

CNN's KFile investigative unit published their article online*, explaining why it was the office of the Congresswoman-and-now-Senate-candidate who deleted the video. And, while the removal is certainly a newsworthy action - given McSally's drift to a hardline DACA position since Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced that he would not seek re-election - the continued presence of the video from other sources is also important to note.

McSally's comments came during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on President Trump's budget request for the Department of Homeland Security. McSally was questioning then-DHS Secretary (now Trump Chief of Staff) John Kelly.

The Committee still has the video from the hearing posted on its website. (Fortunately, there is no 2-minute gap.) The video below should start from the DACA discussion.


Here is the transcript (from Google, with light editing for clarity by Arizona's Politics) of their interaction about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals:

McSALLY: Thank you, and I want to
117:56
follow up on the DACA issue. You know,
117:58
while I don't agree with kind of how it
118:00
was done from roles and responsibilities
118:03
of the branches of government, the
118:04
reality is that we're dealing
118:05
with real people. These kids who were
118:07
brought here into the country at no
118:09
fault of their own as children as you
118:10
know. In Arizona there's 57,000 of them,
118:13
and because of the program they came
118:16
forward to the government. They gave
118:18
their personal information - where they
118:20
live, they their biometric data, their
118:22
fingerprints. They went through a
118:24
background check, they've graduated from
118:25
high school, they've served in the
118:26
military. And I agree with you that we
118:30
need to come up with a legislative
118:31
solution here to address this issue and
118:33
I'd urge our colleagues to do that. I
118:35
think Carlos Curbelo’s bill is a good
118:37
place to start and I really think we
118:39
need to move that forward. But in the
118:40
Meantime, uncertainty certainly brings
118:42
fear to my constituents that are in this
118:45
limbo. Can you assure my constituents who
118:49
are in this place - until we solve this
118:51
legislatively -  that they are going to be
118:53
protected and that they're not having to
118:56
worry about it.
KELLY: As I said many, many, many
119:00
times on this topic we are not targeting
119:02
DACA recipients. But that said and it's
119:08
I'm not gonna let you off the hook you
119:09
got to solve this problem. A different
119:11
man in this job, a woman, might have a
119:14
different view of it. I'm not going to
119:16
let the Congress off the hook. You've got
119:17
to solve it. A different person in this
119:19
job might have a different view.
McSALLY: And, and
119:22
I agree with you again I want to urge
119:23
our colleagues on both side of the aisle
119:24
to deal with reality. Forget about
119:26
ideology or how we got here, but now
119:29
we're dealing with reality and we got to
119:30
solve this problem based on what's
119:32
practical and what's compassionate and
119:34
also upholding the rule of law and in
119:36
the precedent. So I appreciate that, thank you.
119:38
you mr. secretary

McSally is in a much-publicized three-way primary contest against immigration hardliners Joe Arpaio and Kelli Ward. (The current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is Rep. Kyrsten Sinema.)

*CNN's headline indicates that McSally was "Praising DACA"; however, there are no real words of praise from either McSally or Kelly. Rather, she is acknowledging that the reality on the ground is that the DACA recipients came forward and gave the government lots of information.





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