By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — With a weakness for asking the wrong questions, those who devise media narratives mislead themselves as well as the unwary among news consumers. A current example is hoping to demonstrate national disapproval of Donald Trump through the fate of other Republicans in elections.
Trump himself isn’t on the ballot right now, so pundits taking pulses designate GOP candidates as his surrogates. Examining the entrails of hopefuls’ fates with the voters is to serve as the gut check of Trump.
However, from the beginning of his presidential candidacy, Trump was the image of rejection of the familiar-ways GOP establishment. On topics like trade, Republican talking points might well be think-tank abstractions, but Trump could see actually suffering U.S. workers being left behind by bad deals.
With Trump’s favorability polling well above that of Congress, might many voters be sending a negative message instead to self-hobbled Republican congressional honchos like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell?
And with Speaker Ryan having announced he’s leaving Congress only when his current term ends, is his face of failure the example that the GOP wants on voters’ minds this November?
It’s the legislative labyrinths on Capitol Hill that failed to tear out Obamacare by the roots, continued shoveling mountains of tax money to dominant abortionist Planned Parenthood, and tied Trump’s hands on border security.
Which conservatives want to endorse a Republican majority like that? But are they ready to commit suicide by staying home and letting Democrats re-take one or both congressional chambers?
Under threats of government collapse, the president signs into law the messy money sausages the GOP-majority Congress has ground out, but the ingredients may not be what he’d have cooked.
The latest special-election result coming out of the kitchen was in Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District on April 24, on the west side of the Phoenix metropolitan area. This was to fill a vacancy created when veteran GOP Cong. Trent Franks resigned in December following accusations that some female staffers felt pressured by his search for a surrogate mother to bear a child for him and his wife.
The Eighth is a strongly conservative district, so winning the GOP nomination there might well be considered a foregone victory against whomever the Democrats run. Twelve Republicans saw their opportunity, jumping into the special-election primary jungle. Touting one’s credentials as a pro-lifer was a standard candidate brag.
Conservative Debbie Lesko, a former member of both the Arizona House and Senate, emerged the winner with a little over one-third of the vote, then headed toward the general election against Democrat leftist Hiral Tipirneni.
Phoenix-based radio talk host James T. Harris on KFYI (550 AM) told listeners on April 24 that the eyes of the nation were watching the Arizona election. But Harris’ guest Constantin Querard, a GOP political consultant, recalled that the party’s primary had been a rough one.
Still, the well-known “Seeing Red AZ” conservative blog forecast on voting day that Lesko would win “by at least 10 points.” She didn’t.
Lesko was the easily projected winner after polls closed, but it was no sweep. The following evening the Arizona Secretary of State’s office showed Lesko victorious with 52.4 percent of the vote, and Tipirneni with 47.6 percent — the Dem losing by just under five percent.
It was a comfortable win for Lesko, but far from a landslide. On the other hand, media cross-eyed wishful thinking was more than obvious when a local radio news report in mid-morning on April 25 said Lesko won by only a “razor-thin” margin.
Some prominent members of the conservative U.S. House Freedom Caucus had endorsed Lesko in the primary, and Lesko returned the favor after winning the general by saying she’d join that caucus upon entering Congress.
When The Wanderer recalled political consultant Querard’s radio comment about the rough primary election, Querard told this newspaper on April 25: “Rough primaries can cost you some votes in the general, but this was largely the result of the current national environment. CD8 didn’t really want to elect a pro-Pelosi, pro-open borders, pro-abortion, pro-Obamacare candidate. They’re just fed up and wanted to send a message.”
Meanwhile, Rob Haney, a retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer that Lesko didn’t come across as a strong Trump supporter.
Lesko “minimized Trump discussions as if she feared it would hurt her,” Haney said. “Republican Party leadership throughout the country are appeasers as opposed to fighters. Lesko followed the establishment campaign example. She was fortunate she had such an overwhelming Republican-majority voting district to drag her across the finish line.”
Jan Brewer’s Record
There’s every reason to expect Lesko will be a conservative pro-lifer on Capitol Hill, but she didn’t help her campaign with some local conservatives by publicly tying herself with former GOP Gov. Jan Brewer as a prominent supporter.
Brewer was a moderate conservative Arizona secretary of state who’d moved into the governor’s office ex-officio in 2009 after Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano resigned in order to become Barack Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security.
Brainy GOP conservative Dean Martin, the state treasurer, looked to be on track to defeat Brewer in the primary when the governor’s office next went on the ballot in 2010. However, that April Brewer signed into law SB 1070, the popular bill against illegal immigration, after she hadn’t revealed her intentions before the measure hit her desk.
Her popularity soared, Martin dropped his plans to oppose the governor, and she easily defeated Democrat Terry Goddard that November.
Approving SB 1070 vaulted Brewer to national attention and gave her the image of a strong conservative. But Brewer seriously undercut that reputation in at least a couple of disastrous incidents.
In 2013 Brewer rammed through Medicaid expansion in a shocking overnight legislative session, with the support of Democrats and against determined Republican opposition. There were memorable videos of GOP House members in their chamber late at night denouncing her surprise tactics. The hospital lobby wanted the expansion.
The following year, 2014, Brewer shocked conservatives when she vetoed a religious-liberty bill after big-business organs lobbied her on behalf of gender confusion. The bill had no trouble passing through the legislature, then the LGBT lobby and its media supporters staged a controversy over potential “denial of service.”
The UK Guardian’s story about Lesko’s April 24 victory forgot all this, or wasn’t even aware, as reporter Lauren Gambino referred to Brewer as “the former Arizona hardline Republican governor.” That story also misspelled Tipirneni’s name as “Tiperneni.”
However, in 2012 Brewer had helped out Lesko, then Arizona House majority whip, by signing Lesko’s conscience bill for religious employers even though Sen. John McCain told a national television audience that Brewer should veto it.
Lesko sponsored the bill to allow employers to decline to fund abortifacients and contraception in employee health-insurance coverage. Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union pounced with a withering national attack against Arizona, making such false charges as that women could be fired from their jobs for using contraception.
When NBC television interviewer David Gregory asked McCain about the bill on March 18, 2012, the senator didn’t bother to explain the situation but dashed away in fear from the notion that he favored a “war on women.”
McCain said, “I am confident that that legislation will not reach the governor’s desk. And if it did, it would be vetoed.”
The senator hadn’t made Lesko’s task any easier, but the bill reached Brewer’s desk after it was amended to allow conscience protections only for religious employers.
Brewer’s office issued a May 11, 2012, news release affirming the bill was limited in scope.
“HB 2625 moderately expands the definition of a ‘religiously affiliated employer’ to include any employer whose articles of incorporation explicitly state a religiously motivated purpose, and whose religious beliefs play a fundamental role in its function,” the news release said. “It is anticipated that there are few employers who will qualify for this exemption under the bill.”
The Wanderer reported on this controversy in its 2012 issues dated for April 5, April 12, and May 24.
As for the question of whether Paul Ryan should step aside as House speaker now so a fresh GOP face could take his place, political consultant Querard recalled for The Wanderer that Democrats in the 1990s had made conservative GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich a regular target of their hostility.
“House speakers are always fodder for attacks when their party is unpopular,” Querard said. “Now it’s tough to use (Ryan) because he’s leaving. . . . But there was a time when the GOP was unpopular and Gingrich was the star of most Dem commercials. It’s a speaker thing.”
Speaker Jordan?
Last week’s hardcopy issue of The Wanderer, dated for April 26, raised the possibility that Ohio GOP Cong. Jim Jordan could be a principled replacement for Ryan during this election year. (See page one article, “With Paul Ryan Stepping Down, What’s Best Time to Step into His Shoes and Sock GOP Foes?”)
However, when this newspaper contacted Jordan’s office on April 23 to raise that possibility, his communications director, Melika Willoughby, responded with a video of Jordan being interviewed earlier that same day by liberal Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day program.
Jordan told Cuomo that he thinks it’s “a good thing” for Ryan to remain speaker this year, but he’d consider the speakership later. The important issue now, Jordan added, is what the GOP can get done in Congress, or it might not maintain its majority.
Unlike the stereotypical Republican who’s afraid of dominant media, Jordan sparred amiably with Cuomo and commented forthrightly, including attacking the recent omnibus spending bill negotiated by Ryan and McConnell along with Democrat congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer.
“I opposed that bill. That bill was terrible. . . . And the process was terrible as well,” Jordan said.
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