Wednesday, March 29th, 2006...6:37 pm
Senator Ed Ableser
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has chosen Ed Ableser to be the new Senator in Tempe’s District 17.
Wactivist reports:
Ableser is NOT going to run for the Senate seat he is keeping warm for Meg Burton-Cahill. He absolutely is running for the House again.
Hmm…sounds strangely like something I heard too…
I like Ableser, but I wonder about why he got appointed over Cahill. I can’t imagine that the Republicans on the Board of Supervisors would have made a similar pick in a Republican seat.
Of course, some bozos are going to complain about his age; I know this because they already have been. Heck, they complained that he even put his name on the list, even though I think it was to bring his name out for the possible House opening. I did that back in January. It didn’t work for me either, but I much would have rather it didn’t work for me the way it didn’t work for Ed.
They complained about age when my brother got appointed too. It’s funny, no matter how old us “younger” activists get within the party, we are never old enough…and they just keep getting older.
5 Comments
March 29th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
they picked Ed for one reason. there are now no incumbents running for an open seat being vacated by a dem in a district the republicans are dying to get control of. if they picked Meg, then Ed would be the heir apparent tobe appointed that seat, hence two incumbents running to reclaim their seats.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
WhoinAz said it perfectly.
They picked Eddie because he’s moderate enough for them to stomach and he is not an incumbent. Why appoint somebody whose not running for re-election? They’d just take their orders from the leadership…
Picking Eddie allows some compromise on some of the less contentious issues. Also, the third person was someone from AEA, the AZGOP’s 2nd worst enemy. Why would they make an AEA person a Senator?
Eddie really does seem the logical choice from their point of view.
The AGE issue is complete crap. Eddie Ableser defeated a sitting Republican House incumbant last election. He has already proven his mettle.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Does anybody else think that the way we fill legislative vacancies is way too ripe for corruption and partisan inteference?
I wonder how other states do this – becuase I really think ours is very near completely ridiculous.
I mean seriously, our government picks the replacements based on who they can best beat?
In the words of JD Hayworth – that is FUCKED UP.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:25 am
Two things:
1) Doyle, the third recommendation, reportedly declined the appointment behind closed doors. Otherwise, I’m quite sure she would have been appointed (as she is not running for office).
If I were the County Attorney, I would have advised that the LD 17 party failed in it’s statutory duty to send three names to the Board. All a district party would have to do in the future would be to nominate two unwilling people to the Board to force them to choose their preference, thus cutting the BoS out of the Constitutional role.
2) Mr. T, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to that lately. I’m familiar with the replacement process of one other state, that being Illinois.
In Cook and DuPage counties (the two biggest counties by far), parties are organized by Township, not legislative district. Let’s say a Republican Senator resigns, and his district is within Lyons, Riverside, and Proviso Township. The three Republican party leaders from those townships get together and vote for a replacement; the vote is weighted by the number of Republicans who voted in the primary within that township in the last gubernatorial year.
It is not uncommon for one township to dominate a legislative district, and not uncommon for Township leaders to appoint themselves.
Since Senators and Representatives were once apportioned at the County level (before “One man, one vote” rendered that unconstitutional), it made sense to have the BoS choosing the replacements.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make sense anymore.
March 30th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Well as Jack Brown would say
“thats just the way we do things here. If you don’t like it, then California is awaiting ya”
This is the best scenario possible as now we have two incumbants in the D17 legislative elections. One is the 900 pound gorilla who has deftly defeated every Republican she has faced.
The other defeated a sitting incumbent simply by out working him and the lack of ethics the imcumbant had; they were so bad that many in the D17 GOP advocated single shotting Laura Knaperak.
“We’ve seen the end of Thompson. Soon we shall see the end of this insigniciant rebellion”