The Political Notebook 1.12.2024
Hobbs throws Biden under the bus over immigration. Caution about swing state polls. Reform the sunset review reform. Restore the old recount threshold.
Hobbs throws Biden under bus
After having time to digest Gov. Katie Hobbs’s proposed budget, I plan a column on her substantive plans and proposals for the state. Politically, however, what struck me about her State of the State speech was how speedily and thoroughly she threw President Joe Biden under the bus regarding immigration.
Hobbs made several pointed references to the failures of the federal government regarding immigration and their adverse consequences for Arizona. Biden, of course, heads up that federal government, and immigration is, at present, the most potent issue Republicans are deploying against him.
Winning Arizona was a vital building block in Biden’s successful Electoral College collage in 2020. The state is presumed to be a key battleground in 2024 as well. Biden won in 2020 by an eyelash.
In such a situation, there would be an expectation that a Democratic governor would be doing some blocking and tackling for Biden, not amplifying the GOP’s most potent criticism. Hobbs did try to soften the blow by saying the problem has festered under both Republican and Democratic administrations. But Biden has the job and responsibility now. And a border state Democratic governor is saying he ain’t hacking it. Politically, that’s noteworthy.
Is Biden really losing to Trump?
Hobbs’s immigration indictment may be additional evidence of how weak a hand Biden currently holds. And it is certainly weak. However, I think too much is being read into polls showing him running behind Donald Trump in key battleground states, including Arizona.
That he is running a few percentage points behind Trump in these states is certainly evidence of dissatisfaction with his presidency. And if it spooks Democrats sufficiently to somehow come up with a different nominee, that would be good for the country. However, I question how predictive these results are.
Right now, the polls are more a referendum on Biden’s performance than a serious pondering of what another Trump term would mean for and do to the country. In simpler terms, the polls are currently more about Biden than about Trump.
As people are contemplating actually casting a vote, that will probably change. When Trump is involved, things seem inevitably to be mostly about him. He always wants it to be that way, even when it is not in his best interests.
In 2020, independents and disaffected Republicans decided they couldn’t stomach another Trump term. Trump was also a turnout machine for Democrats. This time, Biden cannot credibly appeal to independents and disaffected Republicans as a modest, centrist alternative. But Trump will still be Trump. In fact, Trump is steadily becoming more Trump – or at least the Trump who alienates swing voters and motivates Democratic ones – all the time.
I advance this observation very tentatively. But, when it comes time for these swing and marginal voters to cast a vote, my instinct is that their antipathy for Trump and Trumpism overrides their disappointment and lack of confidence in Biden.
Time to reform the sunset reform
Decades ago, a favorite conservative reform was sunset review. Government agencies shouldn’t have eternal life, went the thought. Give each of them an expiration date and require them to be reauthorized, was the proposed reform. Arizona adopted the reform, and most state agencies have to be reviewed and reauthorized at least every ten years.
I was never a big fan of the sunset review reform. And in terms of reducing the size of government, it has been a failure. Government agencies still have what amounts to eternal life. They are rarely not reauthorized.
Lately, sunset reviews have become a source of unproductive instability, as legislators increasingly are shortening the reauthorization period. Recently, legislative committees have recommended reauthorizing the Department of Child Safety for just four years and the Department of Transportation for four to six years.
Now, the state is going to have an agency to deal with abused and neglected children. And it is going to have an agency that manages transportation projects. The short-term reauthorization is a meaningless mirage. But it does chill productive long-term planning and thinking within the agencies put on a shorter sunset review track.
The shorter reauthorizations have become a way for legislators to express that they don’t like how the agencies are operating. However, legislators can press for reforms at any time. It doesn’t have to occur during the sunset review process or under the hammer of a short reauthorization deadline.
There is utility in the Auditor General’s in-depth review of state agencies that occurs as part of the sunset review process. That should be retained. But the reauthorization element should be repealed. Legislative reforms can be enacted, and even agencies abolished, outside of it. The current meaningless mirage does more harm than good.
Repeal recount threshold increase
County election officials throughout the state are in a panic, waving their arms wildly and warning loudly of an impending disaster. A legislatively created disaster.
The problem is the virtual inevitability of recounts since the Legislature increased the threshold for them from a margin of a tenth of a percent to half a percent. According to the officials, if there are recounts of primary election results, now highly likely, there won’t be time to complete them before the general election ballot needs to be finalized.
There’s less of a time constraint for general election results, except potentially the most important race, that for president. Federal law sets a deadline for finalizing state election results before the Electoral College votes are cast, which the officials are saying may not be met if there is a recount in that race. Under the old threshold, there wasn’t a recount in the presidential race in 2020. Under the new threshold, there would have been.
Various remedies are being cast about, in search of some political support in the Legislature. They include moving the primary election earlier into July and giving less time for various steps in the mandated process for tabulating and certifying results.
Interestingly, and revealingly, there’s virtually no discussion of an obvious remedy: return to the old threshold, under which there were very few triggered recounts. The time crunches would still exist, but would be very rare events, rather than a potential election ritual.
There was no objective need for the trigger to be increased. In a recount, after a post-election hand check of a sample of ballots to confirm the accuracy of the machines, the same ballots are basically sent through the same or similar machines. Large variations in results aren’t going to occur. A small variation might make a difference in an election decided by less than a tenth of a percentage point, although an outcome reversal has never happened in the modern era of machine counting. It’s implausible in an election decided by half a percentage point.
In a sane political world, this objective reality would be obvious to all. Implausible recounts wouldn’t be required, nor contortions to accommodate them.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.