Late Friday, the justices shot down that request in a two-sentence court order, but did not give any explanation for the rejection.
In their argument for why the Civil War-era ban should be Arizona’s chief abortion law, the justices relied heavily on a legislative intent clause added to the 2022 law’s underlying bill that explicitly stated it doesn’t repeal any other laws that came before it — specifically the 1864 law.
In her motion to reconsider, Mayes argued that the justices had undermined decades of legal precedent and their own judicial record by using sources other than the plain text of the laws to build their argument. The legislative intent clause isn’t a part of state law. Deviating from standard interpretation practices, Mayes warned, would have devastating consequences for future court cases.
“It is not about ‘a cosmic search for legislative intent’ because ‘the words of a statute are the only thing to which the legislature agreed,’” Solicitor General Joshua Bendor wrote on behalf of Mayes. “A faithful application of this Court’s long-standing principles of statutory interpretation requires that the pursuit to understand the meaning of (the 15-week ban) begin — and end — with its plain language.”
While the justices in the majority defended their search for legislative intent elsewhere by asserting that the 15-week law is vague because it didn’t explain how it fit with the 1864 near-total ban that came before it, Mayes argued that its meaning is perfectly clear. Based on a plain reading of its text, according to Mayes, the law was crafted to regulate abortions, not virtually ban all of them.
Mayes’ arguments appeared to be compatible with the criticism of the court’s ruling in the dissenting opinion. In it, Vice Chief Justice Ann Timmer, joined by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, disagreed with the majority’s premise that the 15-week law is vague, saying that the text is unambiguous.
“The statute says what it means and means what it says… There is no room for misunderstanding,” Timmer wrote.
But the rejection of Mayes’ motion to reconsider was issued with the approval of all six judges.
In an emailed statement, Mayes’ spokesman Richie Taylor said the attorney general disagrees with the court’s decision and that her office will continue looking into every legal avenue to prevent the 1864 law from taking effect. He added that, because the court has yet to issue a final mandate in the case, in part due to the delay caused by Mayes’ motion, the reimplementation of the 1864 law has been pushed back two more weeks to June 27.
The case is likely to see future litigation, as the state Supreme Court charged a lower court with considering constitutional arguments made by reproductive rights advocates.
● UT-Gov: State Rep. Phil Lyman announced Monday evening that he would ask the Utah Supreme Court to prevent election officials
from booting his running mate, former Trump administration official Layne Bangerter, from the June 25 GOP primary ballot after an outside adviser to Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson concluded that Bangerter did not meet
the state’s residency requirements. The Lyman-Bangerter ticket is waging an uphill battle to deny renomination to Gov. Spencer Cox and Henderson.
The state constitution
says that candidates for both governor and lieutenant governor must have been Utah residents “for five years next preceding the election.” Bangerter grew up in Utah but moved away in 1990
and says he did not return until 2021
. During the intervening time, Bangerter led Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign in Idaho and mulled a bid for the U.S. House
there the following year.
Bangerter dismissed concerns
about his eligibility after Lyman announced him as his running mate on Saturday. (Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run together as a ticket in both the primary and general elections.)
“I was raised here,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune, adding that he’d spent “30 years of my life” in the state. “If I don’t meet the requirements to hold office, then Mitt Romney didn’t, either.”
Bangerter, though, didn’t seem to know or care that the rules that allowed the former Massachusetts governor to claim a Utah Senate seat in 2018 four years after changing his voter registration
are different from the ones he’s subject to. Utah, according to Ballotpedia, is one of 44 states that imposes a residency requirement
on candidates for governor, which range from one year to 10 years (the six that don’t are Connecticut, Kansas, Ohio, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin).
The Tribune notes that this law hurt Beehive State Democrats in 2000
when their favored candidate for governor, Gregg Lassen, had to end his campaign because he’d only moved to Utah in 1997
. (Their eventual nominee, Bill Orton, ultimately lost to GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt 56-42
.)
Requirements for lieutenant governors are similar, since, after all, the number two might have to step into the number-one position at any time—including on Inauguration Day. The only state residency requirements set in the U.S. Constitution, by contrast, simply mandate that members of Congress must be “an Inhabitant”
of their state when they’re selected.
Henderson, who as lieutenant governor is charged with overseeing state elections, previously tapped former Lt. Gov. Greg Bell to serve as an independent adviser
so that she could “sequester[] herself from questions” concerning her own race. Bell determined in his report that Bangerter’s previous decades of Utah residency can’t help him overcome
the five-year requirement.
Bell noted that Bangerter voted in Idaho as recently as 2020 and cited a clause in Utah law saying that “if an individual leaves the state … and votes or registers in another state, the individual is no longer a resident of the state the individual left.” Lyman and Bangerter disagreed, unsurprisingly, and filed a suit in state court arguing that Bangerter’s many prior years as a Utah resident do in fact make him eligible for Henderson’s job
, despite Bell’s conclusions.
Lyman, a far-right election conspiracy theorist
, was already in for a difficult battle against Cox even before these new struggles. A mid-April survey conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, a firm that sometimes polls for conservative clients, showed Cox at 51%
while Lyman took a mere 4%.
That survey was finished about a week and a half before Lyman walloped Cox 68-32
at Saturday’s state GOP convention, but observers were quick to note that far-right delegates tend to be far more hostile to establishment candidates than primary voters.
Henderson’s certainly hoping
that convention attendees aren’t representative of the primary electorate.
“I’m mortified by the vulgarity and viciousness my young nieces were exposed to by another gubernatorial campaign’s supporters,” she posted over the weekend. One local news editor had a similar reaction.
“[T]he anger and the animosity and I think just flat-out contempt that has shown itself was really disturbing,” Holly Richardson of the news site Utah Policy told KSL NewsRadio
. “So not only did the lieutenant governor’s family have a very unfortunate incident, there were fists thrown.”
Election Recaps
● NY-26: Democratic state Sen. Tim Kennedy defeated his Republican opponent, West Seneca Supervisor Gary Dickson, 68-32
in Tuesday’s special election to replace former Rep. Brian Higgins, a Democrat who resigned in February to lead a local performing arts center. New York’s 26th District, which is based around Buffalo, favored Joe Biden 61-37 in 2020
, and there was no major outside spending
for either candidate.
Kennedy got some further welcome news earlier that day when election officials announced that former Grand Island Town Supervisor Nate McMurray had failed to submit enough valid petitions
to appear on the June 25 Democratic primary ballot.
McMurray, who twice came unexpectedly close to flipping the now-defunct 27th District, acknowledged he wouldn’t
be able to continue his bid against Kennedy, who is now unopposed for renomination. McMurray may not have been much of a threat to the new congressman even if he had qualified, though, as his campaign was almost penniless
at the end of March.
● AZ-08: American Principles Project, a conservative group that’s aired transphobic ads
in multiple races, has publicized an internal poll from Spry Strategies that shows venture capitalist Blake Masters outpacing Trump-backed attorney Abe Hamadeh 26-16
in the July 30 Republican primary. A 37% plurality are undecided, while none of the other candidates take more than 9%.
The sponsor group made it clear where its rooting interest lies, with an APP official tweeting that its survey
has Masters, who lost a bid for Senate in 2022, “up ten in his congressional race against some random grifter… LFG!” Hamadeh, the “random grifter” in question, lost a tight race for attorney general last cycle to Democrat Kris Mayes, a defeat he’s refused to accept
.
● CO-03, CO-04: State election officials have released their official list of candidates
competing in Colorado’s June 25 primaries, and it confirms that Republicans are in for busy primaries in both the 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts.
The 3rd in the western part of the state is an open seat because far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert is campaigning for the more conservative 4th District to the east, and six fellow Republicans are on the ballot to replace her. Attorney Jeff Hurd, who was Boebert’s leading foe before she made her switch, ended March with $528,000 in the bank
, which was far more than any other Republican had available.
The person with the second-largest war chest is a self-funder we hadn’t previously mentioned, businessman Lew Webb. Webb had $130,000 banked
at the end of the first quarter, which was comparable to the $128,000 that another self-funder, financial adviser Russ Andrews, had available.
Two other Republicans, state Board of Education member Stephen Varela and former state Rep. Ron Hanks, made the ballot in April by competing at the party convention
rather than by submitting the requisite 1,500 voter signatures as their three intra-party rivals did. Neither Varela nor Hanks had much money, though, as they respectively ended March with only $23,000 and $6,000 on hand
.
The GOP’s pick will take on 2022 Democratic nominee Adam Frisch, who came shockingly close to beating Boebert last time. Frisch, with a mammoth $5.8 million banked, remains one of the best-funded House candidates in the country even though he no longer has his former opponent as a foil. However, his still-impressive fundraising took a hit in the first quarter following Boebert’s late December decision to switch districts.
While almost anyone else would be thrilled to raise the $1.4 million Frisch brought in, that was his smallest quarterly total this cycle; by contrast, he collected almost $3.3 million in the third quarter of last year and nearly $3 million during the final three months of the year. Frisch, the only Democrat running, is hoping to flip a constituency Donald Trump carried 53-45 in 2020
. No other Democrats are running here.
Boebert, meanwhile, is going up against five fellow Republicans in the primary for the 4th, a constituency that favored Trump by a much wider 58-39 spread
. While Boebert has weak ties to the eastern part of the state, she may still be favored to win the nomination because of her support from Trump, her wide financial edge, and the failure of a main rival to emerge.
Boebert finished the first quarter with $980,000 banked
, while wealthy perennial candidate Peter Yu was a distant second with $276,000
. Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg had $224,000 at his disposal, compared to $167,000 for conservative talk radio host Deborah Flora. State Rep. Richard Holtorf only had $98,000 in his coffers, though that was a gigantic sum compared to the $3,000 that his House colleague Mike Lynch had to work with.
Former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez is the GOP’s nominee
in the June 25 special election to replace former Rep. Ken Buck, who resigned in March, but he’s not competing in the GOP primary for a full term that will take place the same day.
● KS-02: Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson announced he won’t run
for the open 2nd District and will instead support former state Attorney General Derek Schmidt for the Republican nomination.
● LA Redistricting: A three-judge federal district court panel barred the use
of Louisiana’s new congressional map in a ruling
on Tuesday evening, concluding that the redrawn 6th District violated the Constitution because map-makers impermissibly relied on race when crafting the district. The court said it would hold a status conference with the parties on Monday to begin discussing a remedy.
It’s not yet clear how this ruling will interact with a separate federal case pending in Baton Rouge. In that lawsuit, a different judge ruled two years ago
that Louisiana could not use its previous map because it likely violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to create a second district where Black voters could elect their preferred candidates. We will have more in the next Digest.
● MI-08: 5th District Rep. Tim Walberg has endorsed fellow Republican Paul Junge
, making him the first GOP member of Michigan’s congressional delegation to back his party’s 2022 nominee for this competitive open district.
● MD-03: Retired Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn has launched
what appears to be the first negative TV ad ahead of the crowded May 14 Democratic primary for Maryland’s open 3rd District, targeting state Sen. Sarah Elfreth.
Dunn’s new commercial blasts Elfreth for benefiting from millions of dollars in ad spending by an unnamed “right-wing SuperPAC funded by Trump donors”—a reference to AIPAC, the hawkish pro-Israel group that has spent at least $3.5 million
on TV ads supporting her.
The spot further criticizes Elfreth by reference to a very unusual topic for attack ads: redistricting. Specifically, the narrator accuses Elfreth of helping to “protect an insurrectionist-supporting Republican’s seat” as a photo of Republican Rep. Andy Harris, who represents Maryland’s 1st District, is shown.
While the ad doesn’t get into the specifics, on-screen text references a 2021 story
on Maryland’s recent round of redistricting by Slate’s Jim Newell. That piece cited several unnamed sources claiming that Elfreth, who represents the Annapolis area, didn’t want the heavily Democratic state capital redistricted into Harris’ safely red seat to try to make it blue-leaning, a claim her staff denied.
● NJ-10: Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s office told NJ Spotlight News last week that he’ll announce his plans
for a special election to succeed the late Democratic Rep. Donald Payne sometime after the congressman’s May 2 funeral
. Murphy’s team says he’s required to call a special election, but it remains to be seen whether he’ll consolidate it with the Nov. 5 general election for a new term or set it for an earlier date.
● OR-05: Oregon Capital Chronicle reports that a Brilliant Corners internal poll for state Rep. Janelle Bynum finds her ahead 37-34
against 2022 nominee Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the May 21 Democratic primary. A previously unreleased February poll from the same firm had shown McLeod-Skinner ahead 38-15, but Bynum began airing TV ads following that survey, including hybrid spots with the DCCC
.
AdImpact relays that Bynum has reserved another $530,000
for more ads with the DCCC while McLeod-Skinner just began an initial $63,000 buy on Monday. McLeod-Skinner’s ad
features the candidate vowing to fight for reproductive rights, protect the environment, and invest in education. She furthermore claims that, “unlike my opponent,” she isn’t taking corporate PAC money for her campaign.
● WA-06: Democratic state Sen. Emily Randall has publicized an internal poll
from Upswing Research that finds her in close contention for the second general election spot in the Aug. 6 top-two primary for Washington’s open 6th District. The survey finds Republican state Sen. Drew MacEwen in first with 34% while Democratic Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz edges out Randall just 21-19.
The sample for the horserace question was 300 respondents, which is the minimum
we require for inclusion in the Digest.
Poll Pile
PA-Sen: YouGov
for CBS: Bob Casey (D-inc): 46, Dave McCormick (R): 39 (50-49 Trump)
WI-Sen: YouGov
for CBS: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 48, Eric Hovde (R): 41 (50-49 Trump)
CO-08: The Tarrance Group
(R) for Congressional Leadership Fund: Gabe Evans (R): 42, Yadira Caraveo (D-inc): 41 (45-44 Biden)
Only a few weeks ago, the world was aghast at Israel’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in three separate vehicles, and an investigation revealed the IDF’s AI targeting system that led to enormous numbers of civilian casualties. It’s no mystery why students are protesting. By all accounts, the tent encampment at Columbia University was peaceful, yet cops were called in to break it up and the students were suspended. (Since I finished this cartoon, people occupied a building and were arrested — it’s hard to keep up with the news cycle.)
