By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission unanimously selected separate Democratic and Republican law firms to serve as its legal counsel, avoiding a key pitfall that opened an irreparable rift on the commission a decade ago and set the stage for months of partisan acrimony.
After several hours of interviews, the commissioners took less than a half hour to reach an agreement on which of four firms to select. Ballard Spahr will serve as the commission’s Democratic co-counsel and Snell & Wilmer will be the Republican co-counsel.
Going into Tuesday’s meeting, the commission hadn’t made a final decision on whether to pick one firm to represent it or two firms who would be Democratic and Republican co-counsel, though the commissioners had been openly leaning toward the latter, following the precedent set by the first two AIRCs. After hearing presentations from the four firms and interviewing the attorneys who would constitute the commission’s legal team, they opted for the two-firm approach.
It became quickly apparent that the unanimous consensus was for the AIRC to select partisan co-counsels, an approach that the previous two commissions took to ensure that both the Democratic and Republican commissioners had attorneys they’d be comfortable with.
