For the better part of a year, people vilified Colleen Mathis.
In November 2011, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer ousted the Tucsonan from her position as chair of the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission, only to have the state’s Supreme Court quickly declare the ouster illegal.
The anger got so deep that one blog posted a picture of what it said was Mathis walking into a Tucson building that housed an office of U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, alleging the photo proved her Democratic leanings. The building had many other offices, of course — and it turned out it wasn’t even her in the picture.
Now Mathis is feeling vindicated. On April 20, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the legislative districts drawn by the commission under her controversial leadership should stand.
This was the second case involving the commission, though the first one simply upheld the existence of the independent commission as constitutional. Another case challenging congressional district lines is still to be heard.
“This last decision from the Supreme Court felt good,” Mathis told me recently at a Tucson coffee shop. “This one felt good because it was about our work product.”
Mathis enraged Republicans because they felt she favored Democrats, even though she was the five-member commission’s sole independent. Indeed, she voted with the two Democrats on the commission’s most important decisions.
The experience still riles up Scott Freeman, a former commission member who is a Republican.
“It really started with her application, which had material omissions in it,” said Freeman, a Phoenix-area attorney.
Here, he’s referring to the allegation that her application should have included that Mathis’ husband had served as treasurer to Democrat Nancy Young Wright’s legislative campaign. This was rather thin gruel, in that the other four commission members picked Mathis, and her own political involvement was miniscule compared to that of true partisan activists.
“When we got to the legal counsel and a rigged procurement process, the Republicans didn’t get the counsel of their choice,” Freeman said. “I felt bad and dirty in a way that we conducted these public interviews of the four finalists. They had to put on a dog and pony show.”
Republicans also disliked Mathis’ emphasis on creating competitive districts, which was one of six criteria Arizona’s constitution requires the commission to consider. The lawsuit over legislative districts, for example, alleged that those created by the commission were unlawfully unbalanced in population, packing Republicans together and spreading Democrats out.
“All the Republican-leaning districts were overpopulated,” Freeman said, adding that means, “If you’re a Republican, your vote counts a little bit less.”
Of course, that’s not how it’s played out in real life. Republicans have continued to dominate both chambers of the state Legislature. And Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the unanimous court, said the reasons for the deviations in population between districts were legitimate.
“The deviations predominantly reflected Commission efforts to achieve compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act, not to secure political advantage for one party,” Breyer wrote.
Although the upcoming case makes additional arguments against the commission’s congressional districts, the April court decision makes it look likely that Mathis will be vindicated again. If so, the histrionics that surrounded the commission’s map-drawing can be remembered largely as a partisan tantrum.
Despite the rocky experience as commission chair, Mathis has become a bit of an evangelist for independent redistricting. She’s working to get it passed in Illinois, where it is majority Democrats who control the drawing of the maps and want to keep it that way.
In Arizona, she would prefer, as some other commissioners do, that the board be expanded. She likes the idea of three Democrats, three Republicans and three independents, instead of the current two-two-one makeup.
“I wish all states had independent redistricting,” she said. “I think it levels the playing field for voters.”
Ducey vetoes Gowan
One of the main critiques of outgoing House Speaker David Gowan’s tenure has been that he too often used his power to benefit special interests rather than the common good. With three vetoes this week, Gov. Doug Ducey rejected those efforts and asserted the public’s interest.
Gowan, a Sierra Vista Republican whose district reaches easternmost Tucson, sponsored one law that would have made it easier for developers to force governments to sell tax-exempt bonds to pay for infrastructure. It would have benefited a proposed mega-development in Gowan’s district east of Benson.
Another pair of bills — sponsored by Republican Sen. Gail Griffin but pushed hard by Gowan — would have allowed cities to opt out of county requirements that new developments prove they have a 100-year water supply. They would have benefited a proposed development in Sierra Vista, which is also Griffin’s hometown.
Ducey’s vetoes, especially those of the water bills, amounted to the triumph of the common good over special interests. They also brought an ignominious end to Gowan’s speakership.
Tucson term limits?
A group of Tucsonans has pulled petitions and is collecting signatures to put term limits on council members and the mayor.
The initiative would set a lifetime limit of three terms for any one person, including no more than two terms as mayor or council member. In other words, a person could serve two terms as mayor and one as council member, or vice versa, but no more than three total.
Armando Rios Jr. and Alex Rodriguez are co-chairs of the effort, which is also being led by John Kromko and Natalie Fernandez Lee.
When I talked to Rios Tuesday, he said the idea is to limit the power of incumbency, giving more people chances at the seats, and to minimize the number of career politicians in those jobs. Rios himself once ran for City Council and lost, but he said that’s not the reason for the initiative, and he’s not planning to run again.
Rios has often been associated in his public efforts with auto dealer Jim Click, but he said nobody has committed to fund the effort yet, and Rios himself will cover the cost of gathering signatures if necessary. The committee must gather 9,200 valid signatures by July 2 to put the issue on the November ballot.
Supreme Court appeal
You know what they say about making a deal with the devil?
Well, Arizona’s chief justice, Scott Bales, is making a last-ditch effort to avoid getting burned.
In an April 17 column, I explained how Bales had struck a deal with legislative leaders to improve funding for the priorities of the state’s judiciary. In exchange, Bales would not object to a proposal to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from five to seven, although he didn’t support that idea on its own.
Well, the Legislature didn’t follow through on all its funding commitments, but it did pass the expansion proposal, sending it to Ducey for his signature. In a letter sent May 5, Bales is asking Ducey to veto the measure.
Yeah, he probably should have thought of this problem when he was cutting the deal.
