By Emily Sacia | Cronkite News
Arizona Democratic Party Chair Raquel Terán concedes that Democrats don’t have the numbers on their own to rebuff Republican election reform bills so she turned Thursday to an unlikely source for help: Republicans.
Terán, speaking on a panel of Democratic leaders from swing states, said it will likely take help from across the aisle to stop the most-extreme bills from passing in Arizona.
That may have happened already, with House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Tuesday referring the most-controversial election reform bill to 12 different House committees for review, a move seen by many as a way to bleed the bill to death.
“That bill is as dead as it can get at this moment,” said Rep. Jennifer Longdon, D-Phoenix. “And generally we don’t say that.”
But that does not mean Democrats are out of the woods: The National Conference of State Legislatures said that of 994 election-related bills filed in state capitals this year, 99 are in Arizona, or 10% of all such bills in the U.S. currently.
“Republicans in our state legislature have been active in putting forward bills that will make it harder for people to vote,” Terán said during the discussion Thursday with Democratic leaders from Wisconsin and Michigan. The call was organized for Democrats to discuss ways they can combat GOP efforts to restrict voting rights in their battleground states.
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Terán said that Democrats in Arizona face the trifecta of GOP control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature. That has forced them to go on “complete defense.”
“We are two seats away from majorities in the House, two seats away from majorities in the Senate,” said Terán, who is also a state senator from Glendale. “So we always just need one Republican to block legislation.”
