Last Thursday a handful of Arizona Senate Republicans joined every Democrat to vote down five immigration bills that were brought before the full Senate. Most of the measures were sponsored or at least heartily endorsed by Senate President Russell Pearce, the author of SB 1070 and the loudest anti-immigrant elected official in the state, perhaps the nation.
Every one of the Republican "turncoats" who was in the Senate last year supported SB 1070, but nine or ten of them voted no on most of the five proposals last week. Republicans have a 21-9 majority in the Senate, so given that the vote margins weren't even close, it was a huge comeuppance to Pearce, who was berating and chastising his colleagues by the end of the night. It was sweet.
One bill challenged the birthright clause of the 14th Amendment, another would have required hospital staff to verify that patients are in the state legally before rendering care. The most sweeping bill, SB 1611, was a hodge-podge of more than a dozen pieces of failed legislation that Pearce had tried to pass in previous sessions. It covered everything from requiring schools to check the immigration status of students, to mandating jail sentences for people caught driving in Arizona without papers, to requiring landlords to verify the citizenship of tenants. Most of the bills easily passed a Senate Appropriations Committee vote last month, so Thursday's rebuke was a surprise to many.
And the wingers aren't happy.
Here's a video story from KPNX-TV, which describes some of the "downright nasty" emails Republican legislators are receiving. At a town hall, one outraged man shouts that an elected official should be "tarred and feathered and run out of town," while Senator Linda Gray says she has received a death threat. Stay classy there guys.
The KPNX news story also makes it clear that 90 percent of the thousands of emails Senators are receiving thank them for standing up to Pearce's overreach! Still, the state's Tea Party is mobilizing its members to send another message (sorry, no links to these websites).
The Tea Party Tribune headlines its story:
Legislators are not representing their constituents, instead they are representing illegal aliens.
The SonoranAlliance, another far-right website, shouts:
Turncoat Republican legislators defeat important immigration bills.
Finally, ArizonaTeaParty.com features pictures of the nine turncoats on its homepage with the message:
Republican Members of the Arizona Senate Voted Against Immigration Bills ... Take Action.
If you "Click Here" where it tells you, you'll find a letter from Rob Haney, Chair of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, who explains that these renegade Republicans "are joined in their efforts by the liberal media, the ACLU and the Democrat Party." Please, when you find that liberal media in Arizona, notify me. Several Tea Party bloggers take the very conservative Arizona Republic to the woodshed for daring to support the Senate's actions in their story "How dare those GOP 'turncoats' break rank?!"
All of the Tea Party websites list the bills and the Republicans who voted against them (in red!), with emails and phone numbers, encouraging readers to contact the traitors and encourage them to re-think their vote. Otherwise, a recall might be in order; at the very least, these Republicans can kiss their ass goodbye when the next election rolls around. However, as Laurie Robert's Republic story notes,
Many of these so-called turncoats are legislators who long ago earned their chops as business-friendly conservatives -- the sort not easily led over the cliff in the name of pandering to the Russell Pearces of the world. The sort who voted for Senate Bill 1070 but who don't want to see their state run into the ground in their zeal to run every last illegal immigrant out of town. The sort who believe that some things just go too far.
In other words, the sort who will likely garner support from the state's huge independent sector. Further, most of the districts these nine or ten Senators represent are not lunatic land, so I'm betting they're not too concerned.
In the rightwing blogosphere tonight, there's a ton of comments calling their former Republican friends communists, Marxists, illegal immigrant lovers, Obama loyalists -- you get the picture. Funny isn't it, that last year these same legislators were cheered by the right for supporting SB 1070; but today, because they believed Pearce's new bills went too far, you couldn't tell them from Che Guevara.
Those Communist Corporations
By far the most scorn in the comments is reserved for a group of about 70 Arizona CEOs who sent a joint letter to Senator Pearce just a day before Thursday's Senate hearing. I wrote about the letter here, which urged Pearce and other legislators to quit bringing up even more divisive immigration bills, and instead focus on the state's financial crisis and other looming problems -- like education and healthcare.
The state is running a huge deficit, we're ranked 49th or 50th in most important education measures, and Medicaid is in such a dreadful state it's possible more than a million people will be tossed out of the program. Amid all that, Pearce and his cohorts are concerned about undocumented aliens driving in Arizona.
Not only that, wrote the CEOs, but Arizona's economy has suffered precisely because of the national and international spotlight on the state's petty bigotry. Tourism, in particular, one of Arizona's largest industries, has suffered from SB 1070 and similar measures; so it's no surprise the leaders of the tourism sector are signatories to the letter. Others who are trying to recruit talent, who hope to create a 21-century knowledge economy, and who aim to build a strong university system, also encouraged the Senators to re-think the immigrant bashing. As economic guru Richard Florida argues (PDF), tolerant places exhibit the strongest economies. Arizona is proving the opposite.
The wingers are not pleased with their traditional business allies, calling them communists, overlords, and illegal immigrant sympathizers. Chairman Haney and others said the Senators were "intimidated" by the corporations. In one breath they'll call the CEOs Marxists, then the very next poster will write: "The Republican Party represents corporate interests!" Gee, ya think? You liked it, didn't you, when your "corporate interests" contributed unlimited money during last year's campaign to elect GOP members, giving the state a 2:1 majority in both chambers.
Suddenly, these "corporate interests" are aligned with Marx. Anything that drives a wedge between Republicans and the state's powerful business sector I'm all for. Oh, this should be interesting.