Play the video above to see these stories on AZ Illustrated Politics for Friday, Feb. 14 with guests Republican National Committeeman Bruce Ash, Pima County Democratic Party Latino Caucus Chairman Vince Rabago, and Mark Evans, editor of Inside Tucson Business:
IMMIGRATION REFORM: House Speaker John Boehner recently announced that the U.S. House of Representatives would not be taking up immigration reform before the midterm elections because Republicans didn’t trust President Barack Obama to enforce new immigration laws. Evans said the trust issue was a convenient excuse, but it was more likely that Republicans themselves could not agree on how to resolve the legal status of undocumented immigrants now in the United States. Ash said it was important for the nation to resolve the immigration issue, all political considerations aside. Rabago put the blame on Republicans for failing to make an effort to fix the broken immigration system and said that a wing of the Republican Party was xenophobic.
ARIZONA LEGISLATURE: The panelists agreed that a bill to limit the budgets of libraries and other special taxing jurisdictions was a bad idea and unlikely to go very far. They also agreed that a bill sponsored by Rep. Carl Seel to prohibit undocumented immigrants from using public facilities wasn’t likely to go anywhere this session. And they said that Sen. Gail Griffin made the right decision in withdrawing a bill that would have allowed Green Valley and Sahuarita to secede from Pima County and become part of Santa Cruz County.
ATTORNEY GENERAL’S LEGAL TROUBLES: Attorney General Tom Horne was in court this week, testifying in his own defense against charges that he colluded with an independent campaign committee during his 2010 campaign. Horne said he did nothing improper. Evans said that many people, including Republican prosecutors, were skeptical of Horne’s defense. Ash said that Horne had been a public servant as attorney general and superintendent of public instruction. Rabago, who is working on the 2014 campaign of likely Democratic AG candidate Felecia Rotellini, said that Horne had been a disgrace to the office.
AZ Illustrated Politics is produced by Jim Nintzel. Contact him at jnintzel@azpm.org.
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