Wednesday, June 20th, 2007...6:38 am
“Lazy Politician Act” Gets Resurrected
One of Russell Pearce’s pet bills this session has been an act to allow candidates who are running for office circulate joint petitions with multiple names, so a voter signing one petition is signing for a list of candidates. If it were anyone but Pearce, I would chalk this up to concern about all the extra paper being used for petitions for the other candidates, but some just see this as a way for candidates to get signatures for themselves without the extra work. Even Pearce’s hard right fellow traveller Ron Gould refers to this as “The Lazy Politician Act.”
Pearce is apparently resurrecting the act as a strike all. Why do this so late in the session, when there might not even be time for both houses to take action on the bill?
One correspondent wanted to point out to me that Pearce’s language now includes a section on initiative and referendum petitions. Wait, wasn’t this about candidate petitions? The correspondent speculated that this was put in so that Jan Brewer could get a little more mileage from her exagerated claims of fraud on the part of folks circulating petitions to change the Arizona Redistricting Commission. Seems that that would be the one reason for doing it, since this bill doesn’t look like it is going anywhere.
9 Comments
June 20th, 2007 at 8:37 am
I think it is about more than merely being lazy.
It could also be a tool for a guy like Pierce to help get some unknown extremists on the ballot by ‘packaging’ them with some recognizable names (like his own.)
June 20th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Eli stole my thunder. The possibility of sneaking through some “unknown” radicals (of any stripe) under the heading of a slate was the first thing that came to my mind as well.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:16 am
The original bill, HB2565, wasn’t actually Pearce’s. It was Rep. Bob Robson’s. It initially passed the House in March and failed in the Senate Judiciary Committee later that month. Pearce is resurrecting the bill as a striker because his committee is the only one that can still meet to hear legislation.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Could this new initiative language be constructed such that signing a petition to Pearce’s employer sanctions petition would also construe a signature to his law enforcement petition, and vice-versa?
June 20th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
No, it’s only for candidates of the same party running for the same office, e.g. city councils, Legislature or Corp Comm.
That last one may reveal Robson’s intentions with this, by the way.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Am I the only Democrat who loves this idea? Maybe I’m lazy.
June 25th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Okay, the question for me is did Ron Gould coin the name “Lazy Politician” or did Theresa Ulmer. Ted, I think you should do some research and determine which chamber discussed this first. Let credit fall were it may.
So this is some of the important work of the State? Wow, I guess that would explain the large paycheck!
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Er, don’t know the answer as to who first coined the phrase “lazy politician”. But it would appear Representative Ulmer seems to think that all the legislators are lazy. Check out her comment in the story link: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0624freshmen0624.html
October 14th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I just found out that “T” is actually Representative Ulmer herself. One of her constituents shared that with me at the Yuma Democratic function I attended last night. Nice to know she acknowledges the “large paycheck” she so undeservedly receives for all her “hard work”.
Leave a Reply