(upbeat music) - Coming up next on this special edition of "Arizona Horizon" highlights from our debates on some of the most important propositions on this year's ballot.

It's a one-hour ballot measure special, and it's next on "Arizona Horizon."

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Arizona Horizon" is made possible by contributions from the Friends of Arizona PBS, members of your public television station.

(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to this special hour-long ballot measure edition of "Arizona Horizon."

I'm Ted Simons.

Tonight, we focus on some of the most important propositions on the ballot this November.

We invited those who support and oppose this year's ballot measures to debate the issues here in our studios and what follows are some of the highlights of those debates.

And we start with Proposition 314, which would make it a state crime for non-US citizens to enter Arizona at any location other than the port of entry.

Republican State Senator John Kavanagh spoke in favor of the proposition.

Kimber Lanning, founder and CEO of Local First Arizona spoke against Prop 314.

Good to have you both here.

Good to see you.

Thanks for joining us.

It should be very interesting.

John, we're gonna start with you.

- Sure.

- Why is this a good idea for Arizona?

- Sure.

Well, President Trump had the border pretty much under control because he replaced President Obama's catch-and-release policy with Stay in Mexico, where people claiming asylum had to wait in Mexico while their case was adjudicated.

This pretty much took the incentive away for people to come and make phony claims.

But President Obama and Vice President Harris on the first day, when they took over, they canceled that policy and they also canceled 94 other Trump anti-illegal immigration measures.

The result has been a tsunami of people crossing the border either totally illegally or with very questionable asylum claims.

8 to 10 million people have crossed the border in the last three and a half years.

You have some people coming from terrorist states.

Almost 1,000 people on the terrorist watch list have been apprehended.

99 of them were allowed into the country.

Fentanyl is being brought across the border.

We got a quarter of a million fentanyl deaths in 2023.

So it is a disaster and the state has to step up and try to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, especially in the area between the ports.

- Right.

- Which is where the really dangerous people come in and which is what this bill addresses.

- All right, why not make it a crime to be in Arizona unlawfully?

- Well, we believe it's the wrong approach, Ted.

This bill does nothing to solve the fentanyl issue.

I believe that Arizonans deeply want a secure border.

We all deserve a secure border.

And what Senator Kavanagh outlined is not wholly incorrect.

However, this piece of legislation not only will not solve the drug issue, it will also cause severe reputational harm for the State of Arizona, which doesn't add to commerce.

It actually takes away from our commerce and our number one trade partner Mexico.

- How would it not solve the drug issue?

- Sure.

So study after study shows that the last recent number was 96% of the people smuggling fentanyl across the border are actually U.S. citizens.

So the study with the lowest number is 90%, the highest number is 96%.

So what's happening is we are taking rural law enforcement, which is already spread thin, and we're telling them to go after the people who do not have the fentanyl.

Meanwhile, U.S. citizens are crossing through legally and not being stopped.

- [Ted] How do you respond to that?

- Look, this is really about illegal immigration.

Fentanyl is a small part of the bill.

Let's talk about the 8 to 10 million illegal immigrants or phony asylum seekers who have flooded this country, overburdened our cities, straining our schools, straining hospitals, straining law enforcement, the threat from terrorists in this group.

That's what we're trying to stop because the people who don't have these criminal records, they go to the border crossing and they're vetted through, not too well because they're overworked, but the ones who are coming through between the ports, those are the terrorists, those are the people who have criminal records, those are the people who know if they went and had their RDS checked legally they would be rejected or arrested.

That's who were trying to stop.

Fentanyl is a side issue.

Let's get these terrorists outta here.

- Fentanyl was made a major part of this bill to play to the fear to get the base out to vote.

I'm glad to hear the senator recognized it won't solve the fentanyl issue.

However, it is playing to people's emotions in fear.

So in addition, I wanna point out that this is an unfunded mandate.

The nonpartisan Grand Canyon Institute estimates this is a $325 million bill attached to this mandate.

And where's that money gonna come from?

This is gonna fall on the backs of our rural law enforcement who are already stretched way too thin.

So either taxes are gonna go up or services are gonna go down.

- Department of Corrections also says that this could cost a boatload of money and they don't know where it's gonna come from.

- Very quickly, I didn't say this would not solve the fentanyl issue.

It will help, it will not solve it completely, but it will be a deterrent.

- [Ted] Let's talk about cost.

- Sure, the study was the Grand Canyon Institute study.

Exorbitantly, overestimates the course of this program.

First, it assumes that all of the people that will be picked up are going to go to prison.

That's not true.

This bill clearly states that if it's a first time crosser that's apprehended, when they go to a judge immediately, they have the option of leaving on their own.

They'll be escorted back to the border and said, "Goodbye, don't let the door hit you in the ass."

Now, given a choice between going to an Arizona prison and going back across the border, do you think they're gonna go to prison and cause these costs?

- Let's go back to the idea of law enforcement.

Apparently, I believe this measure says you gotta see this, there has to be some sort of evidence that these folks cross.

You can't just stop someone and say, "I think you may have crossed."

You have to have evidence to cross.

Is that not a good thing?

- Well, it is a good thing, but it's an unrealistic and unfunded thing.

So we don't have extra rural law enforcement waiting around for things to do.

You may remember, Ted, we are the Arizona Rural Development Council, it's federally designated council here in Arizona.

And we are already receiving letters from mayors and other elected officials saying, "Who's gonna pay for this?"

And I know Senator Kavanagh said that was grossly overestimated.

But the Joint Budget Legislative Committee also weighed in and you just cited another source saying, this is incredibly expensive.

Totally unfunded.

Our state hasn't even passed a budget yet.

- Okay, first of all, the Arizona Sheriff's Association supports this proposition.

They're behind it because they see firsthand all the problems that these illegal border crosses cause.

So there may be some democrat mayors and people around saying no to this, but law enforcement who are boots on the ground, they are for this bill - Critics say that this drags the state back to the days of SB 1070.

They got a point?

- No, they don't.

First of all, SB 1070 was a wildly popular law.

If you look at the polls, the majority of people supported 1070.

- But was it- - And if you look at the polls about this immigration crisis we now have, a majority of Democrats, Independents and Republicans totally support border enforcement.

The state needs to come in and do our part.

And I don't care if this costs a half a million dollars.

It's worth it to protect our citizens in our country.

- SB 1070 apparently wasn't such a bad thing.

- No, we suffered years and years of reputational harm with a show-me-your-papers bill.

So I have several final points - Please.

- One is, this is a copycat bill modeled after a Texas bill that has still not been adjudicated.

They added a clause in this bill that simply says, in case this is unconstitutional, this will never take effect.

So that is just reckless legislation at its worst.

In addition, I wanna acknowledge that Arizonans are hurting.

We have a problem.

The border is in crisis.

Let me be clear, it's a federal issue.

- John Kavanagh, Kimber Lanning, good discussion.

Good debate.

Good to have you here.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Proposition 135 is a proposed constitutional amendment that would give the state legislature power over any state of emergency declared by the governor.

Prop 135 was referred to the ballot by the legislature and we spoke with Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, which opposes the proposition.

And Greg Blackie, deputy director of policy at the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which is in favor of Prop 135.

Gentlemen, good to have you both here.

Thank you so much.

Greg, we'll start with you.

It's on the ballot.

It says it wants to do a number of things regarding putting limits on the governor during a state of... Why is this a good thing for Arizona?

- Well, we think it's important that we have limits on the powers of the governor during states of emergency.

Emergencies do exist and they require swift response, but emergencies by definition are temporary and so the response should also be temporary, especially the powers delegated to the governor.

So this measure just simply provides reasonable limits by automatically terminating emergencies after 30 days unless the legislature chooses to extend those powers further.

- And you will think that voters should vote no on this.

Why?

- Right.

Well, my beef with what he just said is the definition of the word reasonable.

So if you remember, Governor Ducey had more than 500 days of public health emergency authority during COVID-19 and the legislature didn't like that.

And I understand the need for checks and balances.

And so they passed a law in 2022 that limits public health emergencies, which is what we're talking about here, basically to 120 days.

And he signed it.

So we have limits now of 120 days and to extend that, if we had another public health emergency, the governor would need to go to the legislature to get 30-day extensions.

So to me, 120 days is reasonable.

Well, I'd like to have it more, but 120 days is reasonable, but 30 days and potentially 1 day, and we can get into that if you want to, is unreasonable.

- Okay.

The argument, could it be that the expediency of an emergency, shouldn't it be known and taken care of in a 30 day?

Is 30 days enough to figure this thing out?

- Well, no.

Well, it depends on the emergency.

So if you take, for example, somebody finds medical waste and makes a bomb and sets it off in Tucson and there's radiological waste, maybe that's something that could be handled in a short period of time.

But let's say you had a biological agent that was released and you'd have a much longer period than 30 days that you'd need to implement some of these measures to help control.

And by the way, a lot of these measures are deregulatory in nature.

So for example, a public health emergency would provide for emergency credentialing of out-of-state workers who might need to come in and help, tort liability protection for those workers, clinic guidelines that might need to be temporarily waived.

- Okay.

Again, 30 day.

Why 30 days?

- Yeah.

I think that explanation was precisely why this measure is so good and reasonable is that different emergencies require different responses.

And so the idea is that within 30 days, the governor should have a general idea of what's going on and what the problem is.

And that allows the legislature then to come in and evaluate the circumstances and then extend the emergency as long as necessary to respond, but also allows the legislature to come in and narrow the scope of those powers.

So instead of broadly assuming all the powers that statute gives the governor right now, they can narrowly tailor it to the emergency.

And let's say there's a bridge that collapsed, they could say, okay, you have this amount of time to respond to this bridge collapse.

You can spend X dollars and you can continue to receive federal funds.

But we're not going to continue to give you the broad swath of the police powers of the state indefinitely.

- The legislature could do that provided they get a quorum, provided they can get everyone in there and and on time.

And it's in the middle of the summer, you never know what's gonna... Is that a wild card there that you're comfortable with?

- I don't think it's a wild card.

And I think other states have done this.

Pennsylvania voters passed a very similar measure in 2021, South Carolina, their state emergencies expire 15 days unless extended by their legislature.

And at the national level, bipartisan support from 20 organizations from the left Brennan Center, to the right, the Cato Institute and Freedom Works have supported an identical measure of limiting federal declarations of emergencies automatically terminating them at 30 days unless Congress acts.

And I think it typically takes Congress a little bit longer to act than it does our state legislature.

- Well, I just think 120 days is a reasonable amount of time to have that kind of authority.

I just disagree that 30 is enough.

And there's also a measure in 135 that says if a third of the Senate and a third of the house at the legislature decide that they want to terminate the emergency right away, they can have a resolution if they have the majority and just end it after one or two days.

And if we were back in the day, decades ago when partisanship wasn't as bad as it is today, I think a measure like this, 135, what we're talking about might be okay.

But with the hyper-partisanship that we have these days, I mean I've just seen it over and over again.

You could see it all the time where you can't really trust people to do the right thing all the time.

- How do you respond to that?

- Yeah, I think that's exactly the case for supporting Prop 135 is that in a time of partisanship, you don't want to consolidate power into the hands of one partisan politician to rule by executive decree.

You want to include the people's representatives, including the legislature, to act as a check on that power.

- And I also don't like that this is a constitutional amendment, it's really, really hard to change a constitutional amendment.

- Let's wrap it up with that.

- If we figure this isn't the right thing, - Right.

- it's really hard to change.

- Why take that big leap on this?

- But this is the issue of what should be in the Constitution.

This is a question about how our government operates and separation of powers and that belongs in the Constitution, the framework of government.

When can the governor take large sums of legislative power?

And then what is the legislative check on that, it belongs in the Constitution because it fundamentally answers questions about how our government is to operate.

- Greg Blackie and Will Humble.

Gentlemen, good debate.

Good conversation.

Good to have you both here.

Thank you.

- Thanks.

- Thank you.

- Next, we have a debate on Proposition 313, a proposed constitutional amendment that would establish a mandatory life sentence without parole for anyone convicted of child sex trafficking.

Prop 313 was referred to the ballot by the state legislature.

Speaking in favor of the measure is Kayleigh Kozak, founder and president of Because You Still Matter and speaking in opposition of Prop 313 is Jenna Panas, CEO of the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Kayleigh, we'll start with you.

Let's get the parameters figured out here.

Define sex trafficking in this case.

- So sex trafficking is buying or selling a child or something of value.

It's not always monetarily, it has to do with exchanging them for something of value.

- Okay, so- - In order to have sex with them.

- And so using a minor for prostitution, this proposal would also target those who provide transportation and those sorts of things as well?

- Yes, it could.

That could also fall under this.

- Okay.

Life in prison, no parole, why does this need to be in the constitution?

- Sex trafficking is very serious.

It's a multi-billion dollar industry.

In 2021 to 2022, sex trafficking cases increased by over 78% just in the State of Arizona alone.

This is a huge problem and it's time that we start being proactive with these laws and less reactive.

- Why not harsher punishment for these kinds of crimes?

- So it isn't really a measure of punishment versus non-punishment.

It's the unintended consequences of the bill.

And so this bill could harm victims, victims themselves of sex trafficking.

If I may, Hollywood presents a very black-and-white picture of what sex trafficking is.

But I had an opportunity to work with a trafficking victim who had to leave her home as a teenager at 17, moved in with a boyfriend and was trafficked.

Her boyfriend essentially encouraged her to engage in commercial sex, but her sister was still at home.

When she was 18, her sister moved in with her and they engaged in trafficking together.

So engaged in commercial sex work together.

They drove together 'cause they shared a car, they kept each other safe and eventually left the life together.

That sister, a victim of trafficking herself, would be subject to lifetime imprisonment under this bill.

- I guess that's kind of the question about something like this.

If it's a blanket policy, everything is covered.

Does that make sense?

Especially in the scenario we just heard.

- They may be subject under this bill.

Anyone under Prop 313 is minor child, 17 and under.

Also, if we're talking about a sister who is recruiting, who was trafficked, they were recruited, coerced, forced, those are mitigating circumstances.

A judge would be very unlikely to sentence a victim who is sex trafficking to natural life in prison under this law.

That's not who we're going after.

We are going after people who put children out and sell them and buy them for sex.

- Your scenario that you just gave though, would that sister be under this proposition?

- Absolutely.

And so what this bill does is it makes it mandatory.

So right now we have the flexibility within the system for prosecutors, for judges to be able to determine mitigating circumstances.

Lifetime imprisonment is still an option on the table.

We have cases, dangerous crimes against children that allow lifetime imprisonment.

So it isn't as if in Arizona we aren't punishing people for sex trafficking, that they're getting off, but rather there's an unintended consequence here to potential victims.

- Is there an unintended consequence though, to not have something like this on the books to get these rates that are increasing to get them to decrease?

- I think what needs to happen there is prevention.

So the laws on the books right now are up to lifetime imprisonment with no clemency or parole.

So the option is there, but it isn't showing a deterrent effect, prevention would and so sinking funds into prevention is the better way to do this without harming survivors.

- The idea... You wanna comment on that?

- Yes, please.

There is no money to be made in protecting children and victims.

There is, however, money to be made in selling children for sex and providing interventions and programs to those who sell children for sex.

This is a very small audience or a percentage that she is talking about and referring to.

And it does happen.

But we are overlooking the more common predators that are selling children for sex.

- Is there a way to fine tune the proposition to make sure those common predators are targeted and others are not?

- We can always do better with laws, but again, we need to be proactive and less reactive.

Also, a judge once said, "It's not the severity that serves as a deterrent, "it's the certainty of it."

And in this proposition, it will be certain that if you buy or sell a child for sex, that you are going to prison forever in the State of Arizona, - Does it not... Oh, please.

- And unfortunately, it's that certainty that creates harm.

Most children who are trafficked are trafficked by a friend or family.

And so the situation that I'm describing is common.

It isn't uncommon.

And so when we already have the punishment on the books, we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist and unfortunately harming folks who have been victims with a lifetime in prison of a certainty.

And it's that certainty that we wanna avoid.

We wanna keep our system of justice, justice-oriented and not vengeance-oriented.

- But does that certainty not send a message?

- To?

- To those who might think about perpetrating these crimes?

- Unfortunately...

I mean Kayleigh is right.

The certainty of punishment is what needs to happen.

We already have the punishments on the books.

So the certainty needs to exist around implementing what we already have.

There isn't certainty in a lifetime of imprisonment.

It already exists.

- The punishment on the books are very lacking.

With the punishments that are currently on the books, we are giving opportunity for these traffickers to further victimize.

We're giving them multiple chances.

Right now, if you traffic a 15, 16 or 17-year-old, you're looking at a 10 to 14-year sentence.

So why would we give them a second chance to come out and re-victimize or further victimize other innocent children?

- Jenna Panas and Kayleigh Kozak.

Thank you both.

Good debate.

Good conversation.

Thank you for both being here.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Our next debate is on Proposition 134, a ballot measure that calls for each of the state's legislative districts to be represented when signatures are collected for citizen initiatives.

In favor of the proposition is Danny Seiden, president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and an opposition of Prop 134, is State Senator Anna Hernandez from Arizona District 24.

Good to have you both here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thanks for having us.

- Danny, we'll start with you.

You are in support here.

Why is this a good idea for Arizona?

- First of all, thanks for having me, Ted.

Great topic, great question.

Looking forward to the debate today.

This is a no-brainer.

You know, this is an initiative that will seek to improve, you know, really access to the ballot process.

So this is an initiative process for our rural counties.

They're often overlooked.

Rural voters in Arizona when the initiatives come in, 'cause for far too long we have out-of-state special interest groups that come in, they spend millions of dollars in Maricopa County.

They campaign in just Maricopa County and then we're all left with the consequences of it.

What this initiative seeks to do is force people to get out and talk to those rural people, force to get out and talk to the farmers, the tribes, everyone, get out there and understand how their viewpoint is on these ideas.

That, again, it's high stakes, Ted, if you pass this citizen initiative, it's very hard to change.

So the process, if we can make it more inclusive, we can make it more transparent.

I think that's a good thing.

- More inclusive and including all parts of the state, why is that not a good idea?

- Well, I would not say that that's not a good idea.

The manner of how we're going about this is not a good idea.

This is a bad deal for the voters.

We're talking about trying to eliminate their access to direct democracy here in Arizona.

If we're really talking about fairness and making the process more inclusive, as Danny has mentioned, why not work on extending signatures electronically to all the rural voters so they can sign initiative petitions electronically, like we do for Canada races.

I believe that that would be a way to make it more inclusive and more fair.

- But with that not being in case, that's not the case right now, it's not an effect right now.

Is this a way to answer that?

- [Anna] The?

- The idea of representation in counties and in areas in legislative districts that would otherwise be- - Well, we're not... No, we're talking about signatures and getting something on the ballot.

Rural voters, all of the voters across Arizona still have an opportunity to voice their opinion with a vote.

So a petition initiative makes it on the ballot, all the voters across Arizona will still have the opportunity to vote.

What I think the chambers in favor is still removing a direct access to direct democracy from the voters.

- The idea that regardless of who signs the signatures, everyone around the state will be able to vote on this.

How do you respond?

- Well, first off, let's talk about how it really happens.

I mean, we can point to time and time again, where out-of-state special interests come into Arizona, they go right to Maricopa County, that's all the population they need to get something on the ballot because this doesn't have anything to do with a limiting access, it's meant to broaden access.

It's meant to in encourage more participation from our rural counties and from our counties.

And everyone should want that, no one should be against that.

And so, no, the chamber's in support of anything we can do to improve the overall process.

Just like at the legislative level, when a law is introduced it has to go through the stakeholder processes, go through committee process, people can debate.

That's not how it works with our citizen initiative process.

Right now, all you need to do is come to Maricopa County, spend a couple million dollars and you just campaign right here 'cause it's right here.

So these rural members, these farmers, these hardworking Arizonans, Yuma, they never have the chance to really participate.

They never get involved.

- How do you respond to that?

- Again, I would say why not make it to where rural voters, farmers, all the voters in rural Arizona, on tribal land can sign initiative petitions online.

It would be another path to make that more equitable.

At the end of the day, right?

We're talking about, this process is not easy.

If it was so easy for an outside group to just come and campaign in Maricopa County, we would see a number of ballot initiatives on the ballots.

And that's not the case.

There is two this year, I believe, right?

- Yeah.

But we've spent millions of dollars, you know, removing ones were fraudulently attempted to put on the ballot, including the tip credit, which would've ended the ability for bartenders and servers to get tips.

We work to keep the removal of right to work.

Something that's been in our constitution since 1947.

We worked hard to keep that off the ballot.

So it might not look easy, but someone has to fight these things.

And what we wanna do is involve everyone in the process.

If this is a good idea, if it's a good idea in Maricopa, it should be a good idea in Yuma 'cause this is going in our Constitution and it's not gonna be changed.

Let's just be honest about how this happens.

Special interests will come in, they'll hire signatures, they'll rush to get something on the ballot.

They'll say, "This is about education."

And people will just sign their name unwillingly.

I'll tell you what happens in rural Arizona.

When you go to a rural small business, you go to a rural grocery store, they take the time, they read it, they take a lot of care and concern when they sign their name to something.

And that's a good thing.

And again, we just want more participation, not less.

- Wait, so are we saying that voters in Maricopa County don't read what they're signing?

- I think we've proven time and time again through the court process that oftentimes they don't, that oftentimes the signature gatherers who come into our state are not being honest with the voters in Maricopa County.

They're in a heavy population center.

It's a safe way.

They're getting people come out of Gammage.

There's no time.

"Oh, this is about education.

"Here's four other things "I want you to sign while you're doing it."

That's how this really works.

We can be honest, we can talk about how it really works.

- Senator, more than half of states with citizen measures have these kinds of requirements.

It's a time for Arizona to seriously consider this.

- Again, we disagree on the form that we're gonna be more inclusive and representative rural voters.

I still think that the idea would be more beneficial to expanding access to how residents sign on to ballot measures.

What is the problem with making electronic signatures for ballot initiatives?

You address the inclusivity that I think Danny's referring to, making it more inclusive, making it more reachable to tribal voters, to rural voters, to the farmers.

Let's talk about that path - Is what's on the ballot right now with Prop 134 here.

Is that basically a defacto elimination of citizen initiatives?

- Oh gosh, no.

Ted, absolutely not.

As you pointed out, it's not a novel concept.

The majority of states that have the citizens initiative process, they have this requirement.

They have it that you have to get out to the legislative districts.

- The process to get something on the ballot is already difficult.

For example, one of the two propositions, citizens initiative, it's on the ballot, is Prop 139 for the AAA, they had to collect over 800,000 signatures just to make it on the ballot.

Historically, we have seen, those are one of the two this year, there was two in 2022 and two in 2020.

I feel like this process is already working if we're only seeing minimal citizens initiatives on the ballot.

- Real quickly, last question.

Do you think this is what the framers had in mind when they set up a citizen initiative process?

- I'll go one step further.

I think it's what the framers had in mind when they set up the electoral college, Ted.

Because as much as we agree on some things, we do disagree on this, I think that the point that the other side, the opposition side is making, which is that we're a kingdom of Maricopa and everything that happens in Maricopa should rule the state.

I disagree with that.

But what it's saying is when you vote for president, you should only have to go to New York, Los Angeles, Miami.

That's what this is.

That's exactly what this is.

It forces representation for our more rural members, our farmers, our ag people.

- [Ted] Last word on this.

- I mean it sounds like the chamber would support abolishing the electoral college to make it more fair across the board.

- All right, well, we finally got something here.

Thank you both for joining.

Good debate.

Good to have you both here.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much, Ted.

Thank you so much, Senator.

I appreciate it.

- Time now for a debate on Proposition 137, a ballot measure that would eliminate most judicial retention elections for state supreme court justices and superior court judges in Arizona's larger counties.

On this issue, we heard from Republican state representative Alexander Kolodin, who is for the measure and speaking against Prop 137 was Cathy Sigmon, co-founder of Civics Engagement Beyond Voting.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- We'll start with the proponents.

We'll start with why you think this is a good idea for Arizona.

- Well, it's just like you said, Ted, we have to get politics out of our judiciary.

You know, judges are not politicians.

In fact, they can't even campaign on their own behalf.

So what happens with these judges?

Well, dark money groups launch campaigns for and against them.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't really want my judge, if I have a case in front of 'em that's significant to my life thinking about, "Well, how is the decision I make "going to impact whether money is spent "for or against me in my election?"

What I'd much rather have is a judge who sticks to the facts and to the law.

And these initiatives, these retention measures, they're confusing to people.

There's almost 50 judicial retention elections on your ballot, and that's way too many to research.

What we propose to do is give voters a smaller and more curated list of judges that you're actually gonna have time to do your background on and cast an informed vote.

What's wrong with that idea?

- Well, Prop 137 is actually a partisan political move to wrap our current judiciary in bubble wrap and freeze it against the transparency and accountability to the people.

Not only that, but it would throw out our votes in the November election, so it would completely cancel our votes and it would make sure that we do not have any accountability over the judges in the future.

Actually, my representative Kolodin here introduced an amendment that brought partisanship directly into the judicial performance review process by requiring the two partisan legislators sit on the performance review commission and also allowing any legislator at any time to bring a complaint about a judge that they don't like.

- [Ted] You wanna respond to that?

- Absolutely.

So the amendment that I offered and was accepted is a way of preserving checks and balances.

You know, in our federal constitution, there's an advise-and-consent process where the president appoints and the Senate confirms.

And so whenever you are adjusting the way the checks and balances are working, you've gotta make sure that you're gonna substitute something for it.

And what we did is look at the federal model and decide to adjust it in a way that closely matched the federal model.

And I don't know, you know, what she's saying about a partisan legislator being required in fact, the amendment allows the legislature to appoint whoever they want to the judicial commission.

So if there's somebody who's a respected jurist, somebody who's a respected professor, they can be appointed as well.

- We already know what an unaccountable judiciary looks like because we have the federal model, we have the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has been embroiled in concerns about their ethical responsibility, their yacht vacations, their loan forgiveness, and ditching decades of precedent.

If that isn't political, I don't know what is.

- But in terms of accountability, is there not a difference between judicial accountability and political accountability?

And should jurists, judges, should they fear political repercussions on a decision that they think might go against the tide?

- I would present that judges are highly political.

And by political I don't mean necessarily partisan.

They make decisions about so many things in our daily lives, plus they don't just read the law, they interpret the law.

I don't know about you, but my reading of laws is not necessarily clear and precise and so the judges have to read into those laws.

If the laws were straightforward, every judicial decision would be unanimous.

And even in the decision that returned Arizonans to the 1864 abortion ban, there were two very passionate dissents.

- Okay.

But again, in terms of accountability, if this goes away, how are these judges held accountable by those that they are judging over?

- Well, that was what the amendment was about, is making sure that that accountability mechanism stayed in place.

There is a body called the Judicial Performance Commission, and that Judicial Performance Commission gets surveys from people who actually appear in front of the judges and the attorneys and figures out that this judge acted in an ethical fashion.

Were they fair to all concerned?

Did they hear everybody out?

And then they make an evaluation before every election cycle.

Did this judge meet judicial performance standards or not?

Well, if they decide that they did not, that judge still goes on the ballot.

But here you have professionals making that first-cut evaluation so your ballot doesn't get flooded with 50 judges, that the only judges you're gonna see on there are the judges for whom that this professional body says this person may not be up to snuff.

- Is it time to tweak it because two Supreme Court justices who agreed that the 1864 abortion ban in Arizona should be the rule, the law of the land, they are up for retention, A, and B, the retroactive nature of this measure?

I mean, how much is that decision and those two justices a part of this measure?

- So the funny thing about that is I happen to know one of those judges and the way he decided that case was very much to the contrary of his own personal viewpoint.

But that's what judges do.

They're not policy makers.

So he as a good honorable judge was bound by what the law actually is.

And the other side of that case, basically based the entire case on this idea that Nancy Barto, who I believe your organization called pro forced birth, somehow sponsored a law that would've legalized abortion up till birth to 15 weeks.

It was an absurd argument.

It would've made a mockery of the law for the court to accept it.

And then guess what?

They turned around and let the AAA initiative, the Arizonans for Abortion Access Initiative on the ballot.

These are decisions that are explained by people who are not substituting their policy preferences for the will of the voters.

- [Ted] The 1864, again, the abortion ban, how much is at play here?

And again, these are justices who, we would think, made decisions that they thought were correct.

How much should they pay a penalty for that judicial decision?

- Judges bring their ideology onto the bench, their ideologies.

Ideally they will set those ideologies aside when they make their judicial decisions, but as I said, they do interpret the laws according to their experiences, their studies and their perspective.

- Good discussion.

Good to have you both here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- We turn now to Proposition 136, which would allow courts to hear constitutional challenges to citizens initiatives before they appear on the ballot.

Now currently, those challenges can only happen if and when an initiative is passed by the voters.

We spoke to Scot Mussi, president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which supports the measure and Pinny Sheoran, president of the League of Women Voters of Arizona, which is against Prop 136.

Good to have you both here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- Scot, we'll start with you.

You're for this, you think this is a good idea?

Why?

- Yeah, no, I think this is a good reform to the initiative process, to ensure, simply put, that unconstitutional measures aren't moving forward to the ballot.

As you mentioned, the only process now in place that if a ballot measure is put forth to voters is to challenge the constitutionality after it passes, which ends up resulting in years of uncertainty because you have something to go into effect, the law goes into effect and it could be months if not years of litigation to determine its unconstitutionality.

And if it's determined it's unconstitutional, well, then you just went through years of uncertainty having that law in place.

If Prop 136 passes, it ensures that litigation, if it's perceived, that if the proposed initiative contains unconstitutional language, that can go before the supreme court and the supreme court can make a determination if the language is constitutional or if it isn't, - Why do you think this is not such a great idea?

- This is absolutely not a great idea because it is silencing the citizens even before they can bring a proposition to the voters.

And so if in fact the Arizona legislature, which referred this particular proposition, cared this much about making sure there's no unconstitutional propositions on the ballot, it would be nice to see how they would have passed a similar ruling for their own laws that they passed advised to be unconstitutional and still passed it anyway, okay?

So frankly the way we see it as the League is this is ensuring that the citizens don't speak before and the voters don't get to hear from them.

- And again, the purpose of this, since you can file suit after the election, if it doesn't pass, then it's all water under the bridge.

If you can do it afterwards, what's the point here?

- Well, the point is, is that if something goes into effect and if it does become a law, it could be years before there's any sort of determination on its constitutionality, which can create just years of uncertainty related to that law.

And we saw this happen a couple years ago.

There was a proposition passed in 2020, it barely passed.

A statutory change dealing with a tax increase.

And after two years of litigation, it was determined in fact by the state supreme court that it was unconstitutional.

And the result of that though was years of uncertainty related to this new tax law, how to comply.

It would've made a lot more sense, if beforehand that litigation could have occurred to allow the supreme court to make a determination.

- Would it have made a lot more sense and saved a lot of money just to go ahead and find out beforehand, whether or not this thing is constitutional?

- There are already checks and balances in place when citizens initiatives are brought forward.

There is the Joint Legislative Council review, campaigns have their own legal council review.

There is a budget review, the legislature has an opportunity to weigh in.

So it isn't that there aren't many checks and balances already in place to determine if something is going to be constitutional or not.

And one important thing that Scot brought up that I want to respond to is that when we tell citizens group that, you know, something is unconstitutional, that the unconstitutionality is not a clear-cut decision.

There isn't the amount of faith we ought to have with the judicial system that it is unbiased.

There is nothing to say that the supreme court would rule in a fair and an unbiased manner.

Second is the cost issue that Scot brought up.

Why waste all that money upfront?

This only saves money for those who are opposing ballot initiatives because they can silence it before it even gets to the voters.

- And I wanted to bring up cost and money as well.

If I've got, you know, Prop Ted out there and all of a sudden everyone's filing suit against Prop Ted, it's gonna be difficult for me to gather money and get funding for my particular campaign because here come a lawsuit.

Here it comes... You know what I'm saying?

I mean, is it not a chilling factor, a chilling effect?

- No, because these lawsuits wouldn't occur until after they've already filed their signatures and they have to be concluded as required by the initiative 100 days before the vote occurs.

And so the period in which you had the litigation would play out, would be long before even ballots would be printed for that particular measure.

So if somebody deemed it to be or potentially could be unconstitutional, that challenge would happen long before even the ballots would be printed.

- But would there not be a concern regarding nuisance suits or anything to slow the process?

It's one thing to get it on the ballot, but once you get it on the ballot, all of a sudden you got a campaign to get it passed and it's gonna be hard to find folks who wanna fund up for something that could be unconstitutional.

- Yeah, well, if something is unconstitutional, that is a serious question.

The debate over whether or not you're trying to file frivolous lawsuits, you can't do that, if you're trying to go in and file frivolous lawsuits, the courts have, in the past, demonstrated a willingness to reprimand attorneys and groups for filing frivolous lawsuits like awarding returning fees and others against groups that try to file frivolous suits.

- You mentioned bias, possible bias in the courts that possible bias could occur before, during, after this process, could it not?

- I think it's much harder to do to...

It's easier for the courts to infuse that bias before even the voters have heard about it.

I think it's harder to do it because it's much more costly for those who oppose it.

This is definitely, let's silence them because once it's spoken, once the voters have spoken, much harder to silence the will of the voters.

- Pinny Sheoran and Scot Mussi, good conversation.

Good to have you both here.

Thank you so much for joining.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much, Ted.

- Next, we hear both sides on Proposition 140, which would create open primaries, allowing all eligible voters to choose any primary election candidate regardless of political party.

In support of the measure is former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard and speaking against Prop 140, former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andy Gould.

It's good to see you both again.

Terry, we're gonna start with you.

- Thank you.

- Because you're in support of this, why is this a good thing for Arizona?

- I think it's a wonderful thing for Arizona.

I've been a victim or a veteran, I guess you could say, of both systems, open primaries and closed partisan primaries.

And so I've had a chance to see 'em from the inside and occasionally, you know, even a blind squirrel can find a nut.

There are good results from both.

But I think the overwhelming logic says that an open primary, one that's open to all voters, open to all candidates makes so much sense because then anybody running to get nominated to get past the primary is gonna have to appeal to a general audience, not just the very small group of very partisan people who control the primaries today.

And that frankly has to stop of, A, they're very tend to be extreme on both sides, on the left and the right and they end up electing legislators and congress people who don't want to compromise, don't want to govern.

And so it would end that system, it would end the taxpayer subsidy of these little closed parties that frankly only allow a few people to come in.

So, hey, I think Arizona is in a mess right now and I think a very important way to get out of it is to open the primary system.

- Okay, not such a good reason, I mean, not such a good thing for Arizona and your reason is?

- Well, what Terry fails to mention is that it involves ranked-choice voting.

This is a bad idea that's been imported from California along with a lot of bad ideas.

And embedded within this entire prop is a ranked-choice voting system.

So what you have in a ranked-choice voting is bizarre ballot that is very confusing to voters.

It lists 7, 8, 10 candidates at a time.

The voters have to rank each one of those.

And what you have is lack of transparency as each round goes through on ranked-choice voting, candidates drop out, but nobody gets to see that, it's all inside the tabulator.

And then if you don't rank all of the candidates votes drop out, they call them exhausted ballots.

And the New York City mayoral primary in 2021, they had 140,000 so-called exhausted ballots.

What that means is because some of those people didn't rank every candidate, they threw out those votes.

So at a time where people want transparency, they wanna see elections they can trust, this is a black box type of system that reduces accountability and disenfranchises voters.

- Yeah, the problem is that's not what it does.

I mean, a 140 does one thing and one thing only.

It opens the primary process.

It allows voters to be a part of a process just the way they are in cities across Arizona.

All but two cities have open primaries now and that is frankly a really elegant system because you don't have to...

Voters can can vote for, in a primary, they could vote for Republican or a Democrat, or an Independent or a green.

Ranked-choice voting is a possibility under this, the legislature would have the option of choosing either top two or ranked choice.

But all this 140 does is to open the primaries.

- Ted, if I may, let me respond to that because I thought Terry might say that.

I have the actual- - [Terry] It happens to be the proposition- - Hold on, hold on, Terry.

- I'll let you speak, Terry.

- Hold on, hold on.

- In section four, "This section does not prohibit the use of voter rankings "to determine which person "or persons receive the highest number of legal votes."

Section six, "If three or more candidates may advance "from the primary election "to the general election for an office "to which one candidate will be elected, "voter rankings shall be used "to determine which candidate is elected.

- Amen.

- Now look- - But there's an important step that happens before that.

- Let me finish.

- Hold on, let him finish.

- Let me finish.

You are amending the Arizona Constitution and you are putting ranked-choice voting into the Arizona Constitution.

This isn't a statute and you say you want open primaries.

Why?

Why have you put all these provisions about ranked-choice voting - Okay, let him respond.

- in the constitution?

- Because it's an option and it should be.

To be responsible, right now, I think many voters feel that ranked-choice voting is the fairest way to get to a majority.

- There you have it.

- To get to the point where you- - [Andy] This is ranked-choice voting.

- Now you're interrupting me.

- That's what you want.

- [Ted] Hold on, let him finish please.

- The bottom line here is this 140, if it's approved by the voters in November, would open the primaries.

It would stop the state subsidy, the taxpayer subsidy of primaries that are partisan and are closed to anybody else who's not part of that club.

It would allow the final candidate, instead of being elected in a tiny turnout primary would have to go through and get a majority of the election.

It gives the option to have ranked-choice voting, but that's not what it requires.

- Let me address that, Ted, because I hear how these open primaries are gonna have all this turnout.

Take a look, for example, at the Tucson primaries for the city elections, the model is supposed to be, look at what cities do with their open primaries.

The turnout is 8%, 10%, 15%.

It is abysmal.

It is so bad that we had a case in front of us on the supreme court to move the primaries in Tucson because it was so bad.

A second thing I must say here, the assumption that every Independent is a moderate is a false assumption.

There are some that are moderates, there are some that are even more radical than people in the parties.

So this is not only based on false assumptions, but it doesn't even look at the language of the prop itself, which is ranked-choice vote.

- I don't understand what the importance of whether Independents or radicals or moderates is.

What this does do, what 140 does do is it opens the door to stop treating Independents as some kind of a lower life form.

I mean, right now in Arizona, if you're an Independent, you've gotta take a Republican or a Democratic primary ballot.

You don't have one of your own.

You have six times as many signatures to get on the ballot.

And so Independents are effectively disenfranchised by the current primary system.

- That is nonsense, Ted.

Independents can vote in Republican or Democratic primaries right now.

And if the goal was to allow Independents to get ballots, why not propose a statute to let Independents get ballots instead of 18 amendments to the Arizona Constitution and dozens of laws that are affecting- - Because all these years the legislature could have done that and they've done nothing.

They don't want Independents to be part of their party.

And I think one third of the Arizona voters are Independents.

They ought to be recognized, they ought to be part of a fair elections process.

And that's just not true today.

- Good to have you both here.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Ted.

- We end our one-hour proposition special with a debate on Prop 138.

A ballot measure that would allow an employer to pay an employee 25% less than the minimum wage if a worker's pay with tips stays above the minimum wage.

We heard from Steve Chucri, president and CEO of the Arizona Restaurant Association, which supports the measure.

And Jeanne Woodbury, an associate lobbyist at Creosote Partners, which is against Prop 138.

Good to have you both here, Steve, Jeanne, good to have you here.

Steve, we'll start with you.

Try to always start - Sure.

- with the folks that are pushing these propositions and this is something that you are really pushing hard for.

Why?

- We are, you know, Arizona's restaurant industry continues to go on the incline, which is a good news for Arizona and for our industry.

However, earlier this year, and not only in Arizona, Ted, but also in Massachusetts as well as Ohio, some out-of-state interest unions in particular One Fair Wage have tried to come in and disrupt the current tipping model.

And this is a direct response to that to preserve our tipping model.

And what it does is two things, you lead with this, it modernizes our tip credit to put it to a percentage instead of a flat $3.

But it also guarantees that tipped workers with tips will make $2 more than the minimum wage.

And that's what Prop 138 does in a nutshell, puts it in our state constitution as well.

But it preserves the tipping structure as we know it in Arizona, which is critical to our industry.

- [Ted] And Jeanne, why is this not such a good idea?

- Well, I think there is a bigger conversation to be had about tipping and the restaurant industry.

We can look at other states that do have One-Fair-Wage laws and see that in general, employment is growing at the same or better rates.

The industry is growing at the same or better rates, but none of that is what's actually on the ballot.

Prop 138 is a really simple yes-or-no question, which is asking should we take the tipped credit that we have now and change it to this new idea?

And what we have now is a $3 credit, moving it to a 25% of minimum wage standard is $3.59 this year.

That 59 cents an hour that people are going to be losing from their paycheck adds up to $100 a month.

That's $1,200 a year.

That's what I pay in rent, you know, for a month rent.

So I'm looking at Prop 138 and I'm saying, do I want a tipped worker to lose an entire month's rent because of how I vote?

- How do you respond?

- Well, I respond with, I don't know how Jeanne got those numbers, but first and foremost, what I think is very critical, he's mentioned One Fair Wage in California, that's not what's happening.

And what's happening is we're seeing restaurants close left and right.

It's no stranger that in California right now you've got quick-service restaurants closing, casual restaurants closing and people moving outside of the state.

And so anywhere where we've seen One Fair Wage come in and try to take away the tip credit, we've seen the opposite happen.

We've seen restaurants close and the most recent example, Ted, is in the District of Columbia where they removed the tip credit.

You saw restaurants moving to Maryland and Virginia or close outright.

You saw tips go down, you saw employees get laid off.

And now the District of Columbia is looking at reversing it, it's gotten so bad.

So we're guaranteeing $2 more than the minimum wage and that's what you have to focus on.

And 90% of tipped workers, 90% of tipped workers support what we're doing.

- Let's start with the idea of keeping restaurants in business.

Does this change, help restaurants stay in business to pay those employees?

- Well, again, and I didn't mention California, I know California's a bad word, but this is quite a lot of states around the country in different regions, in the Pacific Northwest, California, in the Midwest, that have these One-Fair-Wage laws.

And on the aggregate, we do see over a period of multiple years that the industry does just as well or better with a One-Fair-Wage law and that consumers adapt to different scenarios.

Yeah, I think that there's no evidence that this is going to save the restaurant industry.

- The idea that, and I've seen this argued in a variety of ways when it comes to minimum wage in general, the idea that if a restaurant can't make it with the current tipped logistics, if you will, maybe that business isn't strong enough to make it anyway.

- Well, it's very seldom, Ted, that you see a restaurant worker, a tipped worker not make the minimum wage with tips, especially here in Arizona 'cause we're flourishing, we're growing so much, we've got over 12,000 restaurants, over 300,000 employees.

Our daily payroll's $21 million, not including tips.

So it's a robust industry in that way.

And Jeanne and I are gonna just disagree on what this means to the tipped worker.

However, that being said, what we've seen happen in some of these other states is surcharges go through the roof on tickets.

And 87% of tipped workers know and have admitted that when they see a surcharge go on a check at the end of your meal, that tips go down.

There's a direct correlation and that's why we have so much support by tipped workers.

- Okay.

The idea of no one wants to see those service charges and surcharges on their bills.

Is that a good argument that something like this would take those things away?

- No, I mean, we can talk a lot about like the bigger industry dynamics and I think we're just gonna disagree on what the numbers say.

But when we look at what this does for tipped workers, the numbers are really, really clear.

Because again, we're making a simple change from $3 an hour less, if your tips add up to minimum wage with that $3 cut to 25% less, if your tips add up to $2 over, but $2 over minimum wage isn't anywhere close to a living wage.

- I think he can come up... You know, Jeanne can come up with the math, I can come up with my math.

The reality is this, that if this was so bad, where's the hue and cry from all the servers, right?

90% of servers support this.

There's a Carnegie Mellon study, Ted, that shows and demonstrates that they do support it.

And the One Fair Wage folks wanted to eliminate the tip credit, wanna eliminate that $3 per hour that goes to the restaurateur.

And that would be an added cost of over $250,000 a year to a restaurant, a mom-and-pop or a big chain, doesn't matter.

And that would've put restaurants out of business.

So this is a direct response to that.

It's again, modernizing our tipping system to where consumers aren't gonna feel it, tip workers aren't gonna feel it and Arizona's restaurant economy will continue to grow.

- Good to have you both here.

Good discussion.

Good debate.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

And that is it for now.

I'm Ted Simons, thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of "Arizona Horizon."

You have a great evening.

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