Box Turtle Bulletin

More On Kolbe and Bee’s Parting of Ways

Former US Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) still isn’t directly saying why he has withdrawn his support for Arizona State Senate President Tim Bee’s run for Kolbe’s old Congressional seat. But what he’s not saying is leaving little doubt about the reasons.

Last week, Kolbe announced that he would no longer serve as Bee’s honorary chairman. That announcement came just a few days after Bee’s crucial sixteenth vote to place the anti-marriage amendment again on the ballot. A similar effort was rejected by Arizona voters in 2006.

While Kolbe isn’t talking about his decision, that’s not keeping others from talking. Mark Kimble, writing for today’s Tucson Citizen, describes Kolbe’s reversal as “a stunning six-month turnaround”:

On Jan. 19, Kolbe stood at Bee’s side as Bee announced he would run against Democratic incumbent Gabrielle Giffords for the U.S. House in District 8 – a seat that Kolbe held until he retired in 2006. When Bee stressed his commitment to bipartisanship, Kolbe told reporters, “That’s what we need in Washington.”

Kolbe’s support went beyond that. Just last month, Kolbe opened his Washington, D.C., townhome to host a fundraiser for Bee. And now Kolbe is out, with neither man saying why.

Kimble reports that Kolbe remained circumspect in a telephone interview. When asked why he withdrew, Kolbe said he would “not have a long, protracted discussion” about it. But when asked directly whether he still supported Bee, Kolbe demurred, saying, “I’m not going to get into playing that game.”

You know, if Kolbe still supported Bee in the general, non-endorsing, “I hope we can change the seat to a Republican seat” kind of way, that would not be difficult to say. But Kolbe didn’t even offer that minimal support.

But if that’s not clear enough, there’s this: When Bee was asked why Kolbe withdrew his support, Bee said, “Jim has some personal things going on now that he needs to focus on.” What are those “personal things”? Illness? Death in the family? Catching up on All My Children episodes? He wouldn’t say. But whatever they are, they aren’t keeping Kolbe from hosting a fundraiser tomorrow for state Rep, Pete Hershberger (R-Tucson), who is running for the state Senate.

Why Hershberger and not Bee? Maybe it’s because Hershberger was one of only two state House Republicans who voted against the anti-marriage amendment last May.

Kolbe Ends Support For Bee

Last week, after Arizona Senate President Tim Bee (right) buckled under the threats and pressure from Cathi Herrod’s Center for Arizona Policy and cast the cowardly deciding vote to place the anti-marriage amendment on the ballot, we asked where former Rep. Jim Kolbe stood in all this. Kolbe (left) was Tim Bee’s honorary chairman for Bee’s campaign for Congress in Arizona’s eighth district, which was the the seat that Kolbe once held as an out gay Congressman for ten years.

Today, we may have something of an answer:

“I will not be actively campaigning for Bee,” the former Republican congressman said during a telephone interview with the Herald/Review on Thursday.

… Tom Dunn, a spokesman for the Bee campaign, also confirmed Kolbe’s decision. “For personal reasons, Mr. Kolbe is no longer associated with our campaign,” Dunn said. Neither Kolbe nor Dunn provided specific reasons for the former congressman dropping out of campaigning for Bee.

I don’t understand why Kolbe needs to be so coy about this, but I’m glad that he’s distancing himself from Bee nevertheless.

In 2006, the eighth Congressional district defeated Prop 107, that year’s proposed anti-marriage amendment, by more than ten percentage points: 45.4% to 54.6%. That was a significantly wider margin than the statewide tally of 48.2% to 51.8%.

Update: While Kolbe is silent on why he broke with Bee, Daniel Scarpinato is setting the obvious conclusions to print in this morning’s Arizona Daily Star (registration required):

According to Dunn, the switch came within the last week. Also in the last week: Bee, president of the state Senate, was the decisive vote on sending a measure to the ballot asking voters to define marriage in the Arizona Constitution as solely between one man and one woman.

And Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress before his retirement in 2006, had expressed disagreement with Bee on the issue shortly after it was announced in January that Kolbe would be the honorary chairman for Bee’s campaign. For his part, Bee dodged questions about the measure all year — and avoided bringing it up for a vote until the final hours of a 166-day legislative session. Up to that point, Kolbe had been active in the campaign throughout the spring and summer, hosting a fundraiser for Bee in Washington just last month.

… The support of Kolbe — a highly popular moderate during his 22-year tenure representing Southern Arizona — was a major highlight of Bee’s long-awaited campaign kickoff in January. Kolbe had refused to endorse the GOP nominee for his seat in 2006, Randy Graf. And we all remember how that ended.

For those outside of Arizona who don’t know, Graf lost badly what had been a reasonably reliable Republican seat to Democrat Gabrielle Giffords.

Meanwhile, Bee and Cochise County Republicans are trying to pretend that all is well.

Anti-Gay Politics, Arizona Style

The Tucson Observer has published a first person account of the final hours of the Arizona Senate’s passage of the anti-marriage amendment. In this Legislative Update by Representative Steve Farley (D-Tucson) you really get a sense of the boorish, contemptible behavior of a Republican majority with no regard for their own rules. And you also get a sense of how spineless Senate President Timothy Bee was throughout all of this.

After the budget was finished Thursday night, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Mesa) made an attempt to adjourn sine die and end the session right away. Unfortunately, he got the wording wrong, so Majority Leader Tom Boone (R-Peoria)–who had other plans in mind for a number of unfinished bills–made a substitute motion to recess which canceled out Biggs’ motion when the vast majority of the body, unsure what to do, stood in support of Boone.

That paved the way for us to come back the next day for a horrible day of legislating where a whole lot of bad things happened, none worse than the resurrection of the anti-marriage amendment.

You may recall that we have spent much of the session fighting Republican efforts to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to outlaw Gay marriage, which is already illegal. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Phoenix) carried out an ingenious strategy to derail the House version of the bill several months ago.

As a referendum, it is not subject to veto by the Governor — it goes directly to the voters if approved by both houses of the Legislature. Right-wingers in the House have been conspiring with the Center for Arizona Policy ever since to find a way to bring another version to the floor.

On May 12, that new version, SCR1042, passed out of the House by one vote when Rep. Marian McClure (R-Green Valley) changed her vote to Yes, under pressure from her partners running for the Corporation Commission–Bob Robson (R-Chandler) and Bob Stump (R-Peoria). They all have been led to believe that the anti-marriage amendment will bring more hard-right voters to the polls in November, and they will benefit from it. It would appear it doesn’t matter to them how many LGBT people get hurt on their way to higher office.

Despite withering pressure from the hard right lobbyists, the bill never made it to the floor. Senate President Tim Bee (R-Tucson) apparently came to understand that a yes vote on the amendment would compromise the image of moderation and bipartisanship he has built up over the years, so he refused to bring it forth while at the same time saying to members of his own caucus that he would bring it forth in time.

His caucus members brought it forth for him on Wednesday when they voted to force it to the floor, but it did not receive the votes to carry at that time because the 16th vote was in a cabin in northern Arizona — Senator Karen Johnson (R-Mesa). She is not running for re-election, and had declared early in the session that her last day would be June 21. She left and planned not to return.

What she didn’t plan on was members of her church–including her bishop for Arizona–surrounding her cabin at all hours of the day and night praying for her that she be moved into returning to Phoenix to vote for the amendment.

The pressure worked, and she arrived at the Capitol on Friday, when the bill would be brought back up for reconsideration. Senator Tom O’Halleran (R-Sedona) was rumored to be gone as well, but he stayed to vote Yes. Sixteen votes in favor, including Tim Bee, were present, but we found out that two of them, Senator Pam Gorman (R-Anthem) and Karen Johnson, had plane flights out of town that evening and would be gone by 7pm.

So we forces of reason had our mission — drag things out until those two were gone, then adjourn sine die. For reasons way too complicated to explain in this already voluminous missive, we had to filibuster in the House and in the Senate, without making it appear we were actually filibustering. Rep. Sinema served as field general, and she picked four of us to do the talking, based on the fact that we always did a lot of talking and we didn’t want others to catch on to what we were doing.

The four were Reps. Prezelski (D-South Tucson), Ableser (D-Tempe), Ulmer (D-Yuma), and me. We asked a whole lot of questions in caucus (at one point we stretched out discussion of two of the bills to 40 minutes), in Committee of the Whole, and in explaining our votes in third read and final passage. We were so convincing that certain other members of our own caucus who were not in on the plan began to openly mock us for talking too long and told us to sit down and shut up. In the end we were able to extend debate past 7pm.

Our colleagues in the Senate were doing the same thing on the floor, but things were not going so well. Republicans began suspending Senate rules left and right to deprive the Democrats of talking time, and in one case suspended an entire calendar of bills that had already been passed, a move that had the effect of killing them. People called each other names and nearly got into shoving matches. Senators cried, while other senators openly laughed at those who cried.

Decorum broke down almost completely as the torchbearers for the “moral majority” followed a scorched-earth policy in their single-minded quest to take away rights from LGBT people. After 7pm, it became clear that Gorman and Johnson had no intention to leave to make their planes, and by 7:20, the filibuster could hold out no longer.

The vote was called for through a series of rule suspensions, and voting finally proceeded. Senator Carolyn Allen (R-Scottsdale) left in disgust before the vote. Senator Paula Aboud (D-Tucson), the only open lesbian in the Senate, talked about the power of the love between her and her partner, and asked the other senators, “Why are you afraid of our love? Are you afraid of me? Do I scare you?” Every Republican (besides Carolyn Allen) voted yes, then turned their backs and left the floor in the middle of Aboud’s speech.

After all had voted except President Bee, the tally stood at 15 in favor. Weighing in last, Bee explained his vote. He hammered the Center for Arizona Policy and its tactics, calling the issue divisive and saying that the lobbyists in favor of the amendment had “confronted members in hostile ways and coerced them.”

Many of us watching held our breath, wondering if Bee would step up courageously to do the right thing–not the easy thing. Would he vote No, and show that he puts policy above politics? Would he reject the Republican strategists who were convinced the anti-marriage amendment would help spur conservative voters to vote for him in his congressional race against Gabrielle Giffords?

His voice moved swiftly lower–almost to a whisper–as he concluded, “But my constituents want to vote on this, so I will vote Aye.”

With that, Tim Bee cast the deciding 16th vote, and in effect personally placed the anti-marriage amendment on the ballot once again, ensuring that the divisiveness will continue into the electorate at large.

This concluded the session like a punch to the gut. Exhausted and dispirited, we adjourned sine die shortly thereafter without doing much else. Bills that were in process died, including a vital bill to enact new tax credits for attracting huge solar energy plants to Arizona–plants and factories we are currently losing to California and Oregon in increasing numbers. But apparently, outlawing Gay marriage again was much more important than rebuilding our economy through renewable energy.

After lambasting CAP’s political tactics, Bee turned around and blamed his constituents for his cowardly vote. His constituents don’t deserve being scapegoated like this. They already voted on this in 2006 and gave a resounding “no” — 47.5% to 52.5%. That was wider than the statewide margin of 48.2% to 51.8%. And the Congressional district that he wants to represent come November also said “no” by a wider margin still: 45.4% to 54.6%. What part of “no” does Bee not understand?

More Reactions to AZ Anti-Marriage Amendment Fiasco

I like the way “Tedski” at the Arizona political blog Rum Romanism and Rebellion thinks, probably because I myself in almost perfect agreement with his reaction to Arizona Senate President Tim Bee’s disgraceful performance in the closing hours of the legislative session:

On the other hand, there was the leadership that he applied to the gay marriage referendum. He went back and forth on this one. For example, he was one of the main sponsors of the legislation, but delayed the vote in the hopes that time would run out and it would never actually be presented. This back and forth was so public that it didn’t fool anyone. He even pulled a Marion McClure on this, giving an impassioned speech that seemed to be against the bill then casting the deciding vote for the darned thing.

Apparently, he then disappeared into his office to “compose” himself for about an hour.

Now, that’s leadership.

My take on Bee’s performance is here. Is this the man we’re supposed to send to Congress? If he can’t stand up to Cathi Herrod at the Center for Arizona Policy, how can we expect him to stand up to lobbyists in Washington?

By now it should be obvious to anyone paying attention that his political career is toast. Good thing he has his brother’s Bee Line school bus service to go back to.

Tedski closes with this:

Say, what does Bee’s campaign chair, Jim Kolbe, think of all this?

Yeah! That what I want to know!

Wingspan Statement on Arizona Senate Debacle

Jason Cianciotto, Wingspan’s Executive Director, reacted to yesterday’s shameful Senate vote with this statement:

In 2006, Arizona voters became the first in the nation to defeat an anti-marriage ballot measure. Today, our State Senate, led by President Tim Bee, rejected that democratic process in an attempt to distract voters from issues that truly have an impact on families, including the rising costs of food, gas, and healthcare.

Senator Bee is grossly mistaken if he thinks he can ride an anti-family agenda to victory in his campaign to unseat Gabrielle Giffords in Congressional District 8 — analysis of voting data from 2006 revealed that voters there rejected the first anti-marriage amendment by a 10 point margin, with 54.6% voting against Prop 107 and only 45.4% voting for it. This was an even wider margin than statewide results (51.8% vs. 48.2%).

The time has come for elected representatives and the anti-gay industry in Arizona to be held accountable for harming Arizona families. I came back home to Arizona two months ago ready for this fight. A political sea change is approaching this November, and our legislature is in store for a rude awakening. Just as we did in 2006, a broad coalition of Arizonans — young and old, men and women, gay and straight — will come together and defeat this ballot measure, again.

Arizona Senate Breaks Own Rules To Pass Anti-Marriage Amendment

The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate late yesterday broke its own rules to shut down debate and force a vote to place a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot.

According to Equality Arizona and the Arizona Daily Star, Sen Paula Aboud (D-Tucson) was engaged in a debate with Sen. Ken Cheuvront (D-Phoenix) on another tax bill in a move similar to a filibuster according to the Senate rules. During the debate, Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) and Majority Whip John Huppenthal (R-Chandler), among others, devised a scheme with committee chairman Jack Harper (R- rural district 4) to violate the rules of the Senate and the rights of Senators Aboud and Cheuvront.

Barbara McCullough-Jones and Sam Holdren of Arizona Equality describe what happened next:

In the middle of their discussion, Senator Harper turned off the microphones of Senators Paula Aboud (D-28) and Ken Cheuvront (D-15) and called on the Majority Leader to make a motion. Then, when Senators Aboud and Cheuvront loudly called for a Point of Order several times, even walking to the front desk where Senator Harper sat, he deliberately ignored their calls. To add insult to injury, these people attempted to justify their actions, even after the Senate President and other Senators admonished them for deliberately breaking the rules. Tonight’s actions of these and other Senators have forever tainted that body, and it’s important that we all let the people of Arizona know how these individuals acted so unethically.

The chamber broke down into chaos for the next twenty minutes when]the matter was finally brought before Senate President Tim Bee (R-Tucson) for resolution. Bee, who had been trying to keep the proposed amendment off the calendar, lambasted the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), the right-wing lobbying group behind the marriage amendment, for what he described as their divisive tactics, hostility, coercion and threats. He then publicly buckled under the pressure and became the constitutionally-mandated sixteenth vote to placed the measure on the ballot.

Sens. Aboud and Cheuvront are the only two openly gay members of the Arizona Senate. After the shouting was over, Sen. Aboud spoke again to the Senate:

“I just don’t understand how my personal, private relationship between two people affects anyone else in this room?

“Get your love off my back,” Aboud said. “Is your relationship with your family so fragile that you’re threatened by me?”

Today was a shameful day in the Senate’s history under Bee’s weak leadership. Bee is running for Congress to try to replace Gabrielle Giffords (D-Tucson) in a congressional district which voted against the 2006 attempt to write discrimination into the constitution by a wider margin than did voters statewide (45.4% to 54.6% in CD8, versus 48.2% to 51.8% statewide). During his term in the Senate, Bee represented a district which also defeated Prop 107 a margin wider than the statewide tally (47.5% to 52.5%).

Yesterday may well have marked the end of Bee’s political career. And with his shameful display of cowardice under pressure, it is an end well deserved.

Kolbe and Bee

“Tim Bee has demonstrated his toughness and his compassion, his ability to lead while at the same time listening to others. These are skills few people in public life have. We need Tim Bee working for us in Congress.” — Jim Kolbe (left), the gay former U.S. Congressman for the district Tim Bee is running in and the campaign’s “Honorary Chairman.”

Tim Bee was the sixteenth vote in the Arizona Senate’s shameless vote to put the anti-marriage amendment on the ballot yet again. Bee is running for the congressional seat that Kolbe once held. Kolbe voted for DOMA in 1996, a vote that led to his outing. I have heard him speak passionately against Prop 107 in 2006.

So what does Kolbe have to say about this? Is he ducking back into the closet again?

[Hat tip: Tucson Observer]

Arizona Senate Passes Anti-Marriage Amendment

We just received word that late this evening that the Arizona Senate was able to scare up the sixteen votes needed to put a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage onto the ballot.

Tucson’s District 30 Senator and Senate President Tim Bee was the sixteenth vote. He will be running against incumbent Gabrielle Giffords in November for the Congressional District 8 house seat. Voters in CD8 voted against the 2006 Arizona amendment, with 52.5%54.6% voting against Prop 107 and only 47.5%45.4% voting for it. That was a wider margin than the state-wide result of 51.8% against and 48.2% in favor.

Update: I had my figures crossed. I originally posted the results for Sen. Bee’s Senate district, not the Congressional district he is currently running for. As you can see, voters in the Congressional district defeated Prop 107 by a wider margin still. I apologize for the error.

McCain Supports CA Anti-Marriage Amendment

We’re still not sure what McCain might have told the Log Cabin Republicans during his still-unacknowledged meeting with them, the LCRs are sure to be disappointed by this news. “Protect Marriage,” the California group that is sponsoring the Californian anti-marriage amendment, has announced that John McCain is supporting their efforts to abolish more than 2,000 legal marriages in California. According to McCain’s statement:

“I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions.”

Actually, Arizona defeated an attempt to write a ban on same-sex marriage into the constitution in 2006. Nevertheless, same-sex marriage is explicitly banned in Arizona by state law, and that law has been consistently upheld by the courts.

A vote to put another proposed amendment on the ballot may come up for a vote in the Arizona Senate as early as today. It’s still not too late to contact your Senator. And thanks to Equality Arizona, it only takes about three minutes of your time.

Arizona Anti-Marriage Amendment Re-Vote Likely for Friday

Yesterday’s vote by the Arizona Senate to advance an anti-marriage amendment to the voters fell short. But amendment supporters today vow to bring the measure back for another vote on Friday.

The thirty-member chamber voted 14-11 to place a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage onto the ballot. But since the Arizona constitution requires that a majority of the members elected must approve the measure, sixteen votes are needed for passage.

When supporters of the ban realized that they didn’t have enough votes — Sen. Karen Johnson (R-Mesa) had gone on vacation — Sen. Linda Gray (R-Phoenix) switched her vote in a procedural move to allow her to bring the measure back again for another vote. Another vote will likely be called on Friday when Johnson is expected to interrupt her vacation to support the measure.

Which means that come Friday, we may see an anti-marriage amendment placed on the ballot. Arizona residents are encouraged to contact their Senator and voice their opinions. Equality Arizona makes this easy. Just enter your zip code, and their web page will automatically provide you with contact information and talking points. It takes all of three minutes.

BREAKING: Arizona Senate Rejects Anti-Marriage Amendment

This just in:

The Arizona Senate has rejected a proposal that would have asked voters to amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. The 14-11 vote fell two votes shy of what was required to send the proposal to the November ballot. Senators later voted to reconsider the measure at another unspecified date.

The Arizona legislature is just about to end its legislative session. And since this proposal has been rejected, I don’t know what’s meant by the line saying that they voted to reconsider the measure “at another unspecified date.” When I know, you’ll know. But for now, it looks like it might be dead for 2008.

Update: What that last line means is that they can still bring the amendment up for a vote at any time between now and the official end (“sine die”) of the session. In a just-released statement, Equality Arizona characterized the move as a “desparete maneuver” by Senate Republicans to force a vote. Sixteen votes (a simple majority of the Senate) was needed to pass the resolution. Five Senators did note vote.

Four Arrested in Flagstaff Pride Attack

Flagstaff, Arizona police arrested four suspects following an assault on two people leaving a Flagstaff, Arizona Pride event early Sunday morning. The victims were in a crowd waiting for taxis along with staff and volunteers from Equality Arizona, when a group of men shouting anti-gay slurs attacked about 2:45 a.m. The most severely injured man, Michael Brown, was left unconscious and bleeding after being punched by an assailant. He was hospitalized overnight for observation and released on Monday morning.

Sam Holdren, Equality Arizona’s Public Affairs Director, was there with Michael (who is a good friend of his) and helped police identify the four assailants. The suspects are Travis Reiner, 24, of Flagstaff; Christopher Rose, 26, of Englewood, Colorado; Michael Van Roteyn, 24, of Flagstaff; and Mark Greinke, 25, of Sun City, Arizona. They are being charged with assault, aggravated assault and disorderly conduct. They may also be charged with hate crimes.

Flagstaff’s “Pride In the Pines” is one of the few Pride events held in Arizona during the traditional Pride month of June. With Arizona’s unbearably brutal summertime temperatures, Phoenix opts to hold their Pride celebration in April and Tucson has their’s in October. Flagstaff’s higher altitude and much milder climate makes Pride In the Pines a very popular destination for LGBT people from across the state. And since Flagstaff has a reputation for being a very friendly, laid back, live-and-let-live sort of a town, this attack is all the more troubling.

Boos and Cheers for a Homecoming King

Eighteen-year-old Kyle Hutchinson accomplished something that no one at Red Mountain High School in Mesa, Arizona, has ever done before. He was crowned king of the high school prom as an openly gay man.

Kyle’s parents were present when he was crowned king Saturday night amid cheers and boos:

“He kept telling me he was going to win, and he had convinced me,” said his mother, Doreen Hutchinson. “When they called his name, we heard the cheering, but then we immediately heard the boos,” she said. “My heart went into my stomach. It was so awful. My husband said he was expecting it, but I wasn’t prepared. It was so sad.”

Hutchinson said he felt bad that his parents had to hear his classmates who weren’t supporting him. But he also said their reaction is something he has known his whole life, and he wasn’t about to let it ruin his moment.

Kyle said he had always been picked on for not fitting in with the other boys in school. He came out to his parents on his sixteenth birthday, and he moved from his former high school to Red Mountain the following year, he started his first day of class being open about his sexuality. And while Mesa is known for having a large conservative Christian population, Kyle found that he had very few problems until his prom night.

Kyle was crowned king after winning the contest in a landslide, which is perhaps indicative of the changing attitudes among the younger generation — even among young conservative Christians, 80% of whom thought the church was “too anti-homosexual” in one recent survey.

Arizona Lawmakers At A Crossroads

On Monday, the Arizona House of Representatives voted 33-25 to approve SCR1042, a proposed anti-marriage constitutional amendment, sending it on to the Senate for its approval to place the measure on the November ballot.

Half a continent away on Tuesday, voters in northern Mississippi’s first congressional district chose Travis Childers (D) over Greg Davis (R) by a margin of 54% to 46% in a special election to fill a vacant seat. Just to give you a sense of how bit this was, this was a district which President Bush carried by 59% in 2000 and 62% in 2004. Roger Wicker (R), the previous incumbent whose appointment to Trent Lott’s Senate seat created the vacancy, had won every election since 1994 by at least 63% of the vote.

One certainly has to wonder what was going through Rep. Marian McClure’s (R-Tucson) mind as she picked up Wednesday morning’s paper. She was among those who voted to put SCR1042 on the ballot in November.

That wasn’t always her position though. Just last April, Rep. McClure had been one of four Republicans who joined a procedural maneuver to kill an earlier identical anti-marriage amendment. In doing so, she followed not only her conscience, but the will of the voters in her district who sent her to the state house. In 2006, those voters soundly rejected Proposition 107 (that year’s anti-marriage amendment) with 52.5% voting against it and only 47.5% voting in favor. That margin was even wider than the statewide result. The statewide tally had 51.8% voting “no” and 48.2% “yes” (PDF: 220KB/18 pages).

But since that April House vote, the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), Focus On the Family’s official state policy council for Arizona, has been pulling out all the stops. They’ve exerted extraordinary pressure on state lawmakers to bring the measure back for another vote. That pressure included both threats and promises, and for some lawmakers it seemed to have worked. Rep. McClure was among those who caved to CAP’s pressure and switched her vote on Monday. Instead of following the voice of her constituents, she chose to dance to CAP’s tune instead.

So now she can count on CAP’s support in the general elections in November. And with yesterday’s California Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality, CAP’s political pressure has grown even stronger to get the bill scheduled for a vote in the Senate.

But does CAP really have the clout that they claim they have, when voters across the country have made it known that they’ tired of the same old politics that CAP represents?

Let’s go back to that vote in Mississippi on Tuesday. The national Republican Party had poured millions of dollars into that race. They even enlisted Vice President Dick Cheney to make an appearance. And yet Childers’ convincing win in what was supposed to be a solidly safe Republican seat sent shockwaves throughout the GOP. This loss follows earlier humiliating defeats in special elections to fill Rep. Dennis Hastert’s Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker’s Louisiana seat. These were also considered to be “safe” GOP seats.

A recent poll shows that 81% of Americans believe the US is on the wrong track. The divisive politics of the past have become an anathema. U.S. Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) describes this year’s political atmosphere as “the worst since Watergate and far more toxic than the fall of 2006.”

So all of this makes reviving a failed amendment from 2006 an odd choice for Arizona lawmakers. It certainly doesn’t represent the kind of change that voters say they’re looking for. It looks instead like the same old style of politics that voters in Mississippi, Illinois and Louisiana have rejected. And if the massive resources of the GOP financial and political machine couldn’t pull out a win in a solid-red district in Mississippi, what can CAP possibly offer to Arizona legislators like Rep. McClure?

Arizona voters have already indicated that they have rejected the kind of politics that CAP stands for. This rebellion first took shape in 2006 when Arizona voters said no to CAP and defeated Prop 107. That was also when voters sent Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) to Congress to represent Rep. Jim Kolbe’s (R) district. Jim Kolbe, you may remember, was the openly gay Republican Congressman who voters returned to Washington five times since his coming out in 1996.

Why do I bring this up? Well many of those voters who sent Rep. Giffords to Congress — and who re-elected Kolbe five times until he retired in 2006 — these are the same voters who will be asked to vote for Rep. McClure in November. Rep. McClure’s state district lies almost entirely inside Rep. Gifford’s Congressional district. (Gifford’s district, but the way, voted down Prop 107 by an even larger margin: 54.6% to 45.4%.)

CAP may be able to mobilize emails and phone calls to state legislators, but they can’t mobilize voters to turn out and support their causes in November. If anything, there’s a backlash building.

What must Rep. McClure be thinking right now?

It used to be a rare thing to see a politician stand up to powerful special interest groups. Those groups are looking much more like paper tigers these days. Our congratulations go to two state GOP lawmakers who were wise enough to see through CAP’s lobbying efforts and vote with their constituents. They are Reps. Pete Hershberger and Jennifer Burns. You might want to drop them a line and thank them for their support. After the pressure they’ve endured from CAP, they could probably use it right now.

Update: More GOP strategists see divisive marriage politics as a losing proposition this year:

“At best, it doesn’t move voters, and at worst for Republicans, it moves them against them,” said Matthew Dowd, President Bush’s 2004 chief strategist. “Why are we having a discussion on this issue when we should be talking about things that matter, like the economy, health care, or the war?”

AZ House Approves Anti-Marriage Amendment Proposal

We’ve just learned that thirty-three members of the Arizona House of Representatives approved SCR1042, the proposed anti-marriage amendment. The resolution passed 33-25, with two representatives not voting. You can see how each representative voted here. The battle now moves to the Senate. If SCR1042 passes the Senate, the proposed anti-marriage amendment goes onto the ballot for November’s general election.

Now it’s time for Arizona residents to shift their attention to their state Senator.If you don’t know who your Senator is, the Equality Arizona web site can find him or her for you and provide you with phone numbers and contact information. You can call directly, or you can even send a message via Equality Arizona. They’ve made it extremely easy to do this.