By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — When Jan Brewer announced in March that she wouldn’t seek a third consecutive term as governor of Arizona, she said in an interview that she could be spending time on the campaign trail promoting and raising funds for other candidates instead.
But before eager conservatives in other states start sending her speaking invitations with the confident expectation that she’s pretty much like Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), they should weigh the evidence that she’s got some strong streaks in her more like Northeastern “moderate” Gov. Chris Christie (R., N.J.).
The Grand Canyon State’s and Garden State’s governors are both pretty much pro-life Republicans, but certainly not the sort of conservative GOP hero that the Lone Star State’s Cruz has proven to be.
Either governor probably would be considered easily superior to lawless liberal Democrats, but that doesn’t necessarily make Brewer or Christie even the second or third choices of conservatives.
Saying that she “could probably be on the stump every week someplace in this country,”
Brewer gave an interview to locally well-known Arizona political reporter Howard Fischer as she stepped out of the gubernatorial race on March 12.
But will she actually be kept that busy when conservative activists elsewhere take her measure?
Fischer reported that Brewer said she’s strongly hoping to help “pragmatic” candidates, not “ideologues,” in the GOP.
“Brewer can do that,” Fischer wrote, “because she has the financial reserves in two political action committees to ensure she plays a role in Arizona — and national — politics for years to come. . . .
“Armed with her war chest,” Fischer continued, “Brewer said she wants . . . to elect more pragmatic Republicans. She said that reflects what has been her philosophy her entire life, and not just in politics.”
This hardly came as a surprise to Arizonans aware that she’s, at best, a moderate conservative from the John McCain wing of the state GOP and often turns to McCain partisans for advice.
In her state of the state address this January, Brewer bragged that in her five years as governor, she transformed Arizona into being business-friendly: “We steered Arizona out of a debilitating recession and implemented historic reforms and long-term structural improvements that secure Arizona’s prosperity for generations to come.”
Although headed toward the end of a second term as governor, she was elected as the state’s chief executive only once. As secretary of state, Brewer had become governor ex-officio under Arizona law in early 2009 when open-borders Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano created a vacancy by leaving the post to become Barack Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security.
The following year, 2010, Brewer was running poorly in the polls, behind more conservative gubernatorial candidates for the GOP primary election, until she soared ahead in public opinion after signing SB 1070, to try to restrict massive illegal immigration into Arizona.
The issue of improving border security deeply moves the Arizona electorate, despite the efforts of the national elite and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to dismiss the dangers.
With nine other Arizona Republicans already announced for the party’s gubernatorial primary election this year, plus the constitutional question of whether Brewer is even entitled to a third consecutive term, she stopped tantalizing the state in March by announcing she wouldn’t make the try.
Her announcement came two weeks after she dismayed conservatives around the nation by vetoing SB 1062, Arizona’s bill to protect religious conscience, on February 26.
Like many politicians of various persuasions, Brewer certainly hasn’t pursued an undeviating path. For instance, when she could have thrown her backing to one of the conservative GOP candidates in the 2012 presidential primary here, she instead endorsed establishment choice Mitt Romney.
When public opposition grew to Barack Obama’s “Common Core” schooling standards, Brewer retained the standards but renamed them “Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards.”
As Fischer reported in his March 12 story for Capitol Media Services, Brewer acknowledges she has cost herself some popularity. He wrote:
“ ‘I have hung in with the party despite a lot of people encouraging me to leave,’ the governor mused, including when she backed a temporary one-cent hike in sales taxes in 2010 as an alternative to cutting $1 billion a year from the budget and, more recently, in deciding the state should use federal money from the Affordable Care Act to expand its Medicaid program.”
The way national news editors have played up some of Brewer’s actions, and played down others, would explain why she inaccurately may be regarded beyond Arizona’s borders as a strong conservative.
When Brewer signed SB 1070 in April 2010 against massive illegal immigration, she became an instant headline. Seemed that many liberal editors thought the new law confirmed that Arizona was overflowing with American racists and xenophobes, not being submerged by lawbreaking armed aliens.
However, when many hundreds of threatening, ominous protesters massed in downtown Phoenix a few months later, in July 2010, to assemble street blockades and proclaim “war” against border enforcement, that didn’t get as much significant coverage.
Seemed that editors didn’t want to illustrate why Arizonans felt under siege by the border crossers’ invasion.
A group of the protesters waved two large flags — the flag of Mexico and a banner with the face of Latino Communist revolutionary Che Guevara — and beat on steel doors leading to the jail of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Police blanketed the area.
In April that year, protesters had thrown frozen water bottles, as hard as hefty rocks, at the state capitol and decorated it with defacing graffiti. It’s not just along the international borderline itself that Arizonans have reason to worry what may erupt.
Brewer again was an international headline in late February this year, when she buckled to an intense, shrill campaign against Arizona’s bill to protect religious conscience, SB 1062.
Seemed the liberal news editors liked pumping up the idea of the “conservative” Brewer being stampeded into surrender by radical homosexual activists and big-business interests.
The governor could have explained the facts about SB 1062, showing it protected individuals instead of discriminating against them, but Brewer threw in the towel as cowering establishment Republicans like Arizona’s U.S. senators, McCain and Jeff Flake, demanded a veto.
Inspecting Abortion Facilities
Cathi Herrod, president of the morally traditionalist Center for Arizona Policy, lamented Brewer’s surrender. In a February 26 statement, Herrod said in part:
“Today’s veto of SB 1062 marks a sad day for Arizonans who cherish and understand religious liberty. SB 1062 passed the legislature for one reason only: to guarantee that all Arizonans would be free to live and work according to their faith. . . .
“When the force of government compels one to speak or act contrary to their conscience, the government injures not only the dignity of the afflicted, but the dignity of our society as a whole,” Herrod said. “. . . The religious beliefs of all Arizonans must be respected, and this bill did nothing more than affirm that. It is truly a disappointing day in our state and nation when lies and personal attacks can overshadow the truth.”
However, Herrod soon was celebrating when Brewer signed a bill on April 15 to allow health inspectors to visit abortion clinics without having to obtain a warrant first.
“This law ensures abortion clinics are subject to the same inspection standards as all other medical facilities in the state,” Herrod said. “Abortion-clinic inspections matter, and it is unconscionable that they would be exempt from commonsense health and safety standards. . . .
“Gov. Jan Brewer is also owed a debt of gratitude for standing up to the attacks and distortions from Planned Parenthood to carry on her tremendous legacy as the nation’s most pro-life governor,” she added.
Planned Parenthood reportedly raised the specter that the new law would be challenged in court.
Perhaps Brewer’s most damaging act was to push for Barack Obama’s Medicaid expansion last year after she was pressured by big-business and hospital interests.
When she hadn’t won what she wanted as the legislative season progressed, she called a surprise overnight session and rammed the costly expansion through over the objections of GOP legislative leaders, but with the support of Democrats and some “moderate” Republicans.
That night, she ripped conservatives apart at the legislature as they expressed shock at her administration’s thug-like political tactics.
Two Different Viewpoints
Asked by The Wanderer to assess Brewer’s record, two Arizona conservative Republican activists expressed different views.
Rob Haney, immediate past chairman of Phoenix’s Maricopa County Republican Party, said:
“Because of Gov. Brewer’s opposition to key conservative legislation, her backing of rogue Republicans, and her statement that her political efforts will now be devoted to helping ‘pragmatists, not ideologues,’ her core beliefs are now being questioned.
“The question is easily answered when you realize that Brewer’s core beliefs are consistent with the Republican Party’s establishment officeholders. These officeholders take their lead from Arizona Senators McCain and Flake, Senate Minority Leader [Mitch] McConnell and House [Speaker John] Boehner. Their core values consist of maintaining power and maintaining the money streams,” Haney said.
“To these establishment Republicans, liberals are pragmatists and conservatives are ideologues,” he said. “They will make accommodations and sponsor bipartisan legislation with liberals while they attack and destroy conservatives as they maintain power and keep the money streams flowing.
“Our Founders never dreamed that we would be ruled by career politicians and judges, or they would have established term limits in the Constitution for both of these offices. Without effective term limits for these offices, I do not believe we will be able to work our way out of this ruling-class morass,” Haney concluded.
On the other hand, conservative GOP campaign strategist Constantin Querard told The Wanderer in a statement:
“Brewer is more conservative than not. She has been lucky to a certain degree in her career, but you can’t hold that against her. Signing SB 1070 saved her, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t love that bill. But to her credit she has not stopped banging the war drums on illegal immigration, even after her last campaign for office, so she has been consistent on that issue.
“She has been solid on life issues,” Querard said, and added:
“I suspect the PAC she’ll help will largely defend those who supported her bills. I’m not offended by that. If it attacks those that disagreed with her on those bills, you won’t have to ask me for a quote, I’ll be shouting from the rooftops!
“She remains popular and her legacy is such that she’ll largely remain well-liked and respected by folks who think she is a strong, independent woman, who did well by Arizona through a tough time,” he said. “Her detractors will attack her as a simpleton, led by the nose by consultants and staff. . . .
“[George W.] Bush was supposed to be an idiot who was led around by Karl Rove, Sarah Palin was supposed to be an idiot, etc. At the end of the day, while conservatives are going to strongly disagree with some of the decisions [Brewer] made, Arizona is better off today than it was when she took over, so you have to give her some of the credit for that,” Querard said.
If a person wanted to have fun with a “what if” story, Querard said, how about asking what if current Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, basically a conservative Republican, had beaten Brewer for the secretary of state post, presumably leading to DiCiccio, not Brewer, succeeding Napolitano.
Anyway, Querard said, Brewer “beats the heck out of Napolitano” as governor.
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