Thursday, October 27, 2011

AZ Governor Threatens Impeachment of Redistricting Comm. After it Refuses to Gerrymander

Shocking news out of Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is threatening impeachment proceedings against the state's non-partisan redistricting commission because it failed to sufficiently gerrymander the maps for Republicans. The map it released has 4 safe GOP seats, 2 safe Democratic seats, and three competitive ones -- hardly something Republicans should be bawling over.

But Arizona politics have of late taken a decided step towards the lawless, with Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio leading the charge by issuing indictments of his political opponents (where "political" here includes judges trying to curb his reckless abuses of power). So far, it hasn't seemed to dampen Sheriff Joe's political popularity amongst Arizona Republicans; so why not take a page from his book by threatening to impeachment independent commissioners as a suasion mechanism?

3 comments:

PG said...

because it failed to sufficiently gerrymander the maps for Republicans.

Not exactly what the linked article says...

David Schraub said...

Well sure, but let's be adults here. The AZ GOP has been crying bloody murder about this commission for its entire process, because they want to ram through a hyper-partisan map (not that a 4-2-3 map is that bad for them!). Of course, Brewer isn't going to say that in her letter (just as Sheriff Joe indicted those judges for "bribery"). But everyone knows what's actually going on.

Barry Deutsch said...

The second link is an appalling story, but it also seems to be from late 2009. Lately Sheriff Joe has been going all birther.