The 2 key issues that could decide the Arizona attorney general race
The 2020 presidential election and abortion are outsize issues that animate many races across Arizona and the country – perhaps none as consequential as in the one for Arizona attorney general.
There, Arizonans have a clear, if severe, choice between Republican Abe Hamadeh and Democrat Kris Mayes.
There are no similarities between the two.
Hamadeh, for instance, persists on the proven lie that the 2020 election was rigged; Mayes asserts the election was fair and secure. Hamadeh vows to enforce the state’s abortion restrictions, whether the territorial-era law essentially banning all abortions or a 15-week ban the Legislature approved this year; Mayes pledges to challenge them in court on day one of taking office.
Those issues overshadow the chief role of the elected office, made up largely of administrative duties. There, too, the two candidates differ substantially, including their experience (Hamadeh has little to speak of; Mayes, an established record).
Here’s what voters should bear in mind.
No guarantee either would always follow the law
Neither Hamadeh nor Mayes pledges to follow the law without question – although in Hamadeh’s case, he embellishes the facts or ignores them entirely in justifying why.
For him, upholding the law stops with the handling of the 2020 election. He told The Arizona Republic that the election was “rotten, rigged, and corrupt” and said he would prosecute those behind it – in spite of the numerous times and ways the conspiracy has been debunked.
As recently as last weekend at a Trump rally, Hamadeh said he intends to “lock up some people and put handcuffs on them,” prompting the crowd to chant, “Lock them up.”
Yet when pressed during an earlier debate on PBS on who he’d go after, Hamadeh was silent. He nonetheless maintained that the election was rigged and said he wouldn’t have signed as a witness on the election certification as the current attorney general had done.
At the AG forum: Debate gets heated over abortion, elections and experience
Asked to offer proof, Hamadeh said elected officials changed the rules but then cited only scant evidence, including a federal judge who had extended voter registration in Arizona amid heightened concerns about COVID-19.
The judge’s decision was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and, in fact, lengthened registration by 10 days, during which 35,000 new voters registered. But GOP registrations outnumbered Democratic ones by more than 2,600.
Hamadeh also pointed to prosecution of a former mayor in Yuma County for illegally turning in ballots other than her own. The violation, however, took place in the 2020 primary election, not the general election in November.
Hamadeh said he would increase the size of the AG’s Election Integrity Unit. Disturbingly, he said he would “secure the 2024 election so when Donald Trump runs and wins again in 2024, everyone will know it’s legitimate.”
Mayes would defy Arizona's abortion bans
Mayes expressed her own defiance for the rule of law, and said she wouldn’t prosecute any doctor, nurse, pharmacist or other individual for providing abortion services or helping someone to secure them, regardless of whether the 1864 law is in place or the 15-week ban on abortion that the Legislature passed last year.
She said she bases that position on the belief that the Arizona Constitution’s right to privacy allows a woman to make her own health care decisions, thereby making the laws unconstitutional.
Mayes contends that she would merely be exercising prosecutorial discretion until the Arizona Supreme Court rules on the legal challenge her office will bring. Her belief of the laws’ unconstitutionality, she adds, is a legal interpretation she would provide to the state’s 15 county attorney’s offices.
Hamadeh's priorities are broad, puzzling
It is difficult to fully know Hamadeh’s stances. He has spoken mostly in generalities on policies and declined our invitation to appear with Mayes to answer questions.
In interviews with conservative-friendly outlets, Hamadeh, an intelligence officer for the U.S. Army Reserve, railed against progressive prosecutors’ lenient policies and spikes in crimes that have angered residents in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. He said he would ask the state Legislature to grant the Attorney General’s Office the power to prosecute cases that liberal county attorneys would not pursue.
Hamadeh said he would expand the office’s organized retail theft task force, which the Legislature created to target the selling of stolen goods.
He blamed the Biden administration’s border policies for exacerbating the fentanyl crisis but didn’t provide specifics on what his office would do other than to declare drug cartels a terrorist organization. It’s a puzzling proposal given that he can’t – only the federal government can classify a group to be a Foreign Terrorist Organization and prosecution of such cases generally occur in federal court.
The unusual role of environment as priority
Mayes said she would offer assistance and collaborate with local agencies to go after traffickers and dealers, as well as offer help to offenders with addiction problems.
Her other priorities include beefing up efforts to prosecute those who abuse and defraud seniors, especially those in residential or skilled nursing facilities. They also include a detailed plan on environmental concerns.
Mayes said she would direct the AG’s office to review leases authorized by the State Land Department following a Republic series that details how a Saudi Arabian company is pumping Phoenix’s backup water supply in western Arizona while leasing the land at below-market costs.
Mayes also would investigate any unlawful environmental damage by those who lease state lands and would go so far as to push the state Department of Environmental Quality to complete rulemaking regarding potable reuse of effluent water.
Trading barbs on experience, fitness for office
Hamadeh and Mayes have gone after each other beyond policy stances, including on who has better experience for the job of attorney general. Hamadeh touts himself as the only candidate with trial experience (he served in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for four years).
Mayes bristles at Hamadeh’s lack of legal knowledge, pointing out she’s been an attorney for 15 years and served two terms on the quasi-judicial Arizona Corporation Commission, which oversees securities fraud and determines rate cases for utilities.
More visceral have been attacks on each other’s distant past and fitness for office.
Mayes assailed Hamadeh for hypocrisy for his hard stance on illegal immigration without acknowledging that his father overstayed his visa by seven years and was not legally in the U.S. when Abe was born. The elder Hamadeh faced a deportation order in 1996.
She also seized on media reports about Hamadeh’s online posts as a teenager, including one in which he bragged of committing voter fraud by filling out his mother’s absentee ballot and casting a vote for a candidate – Barack Obama – that she didn’t choose.
Hamadeh, in turn, ripped Mayes over insider-trading accusations when she was a political reporter for The Republic more than two decades ago for buying company stock after hearing rumors Central Newspapers Inc. was being bought. He also suggested that the media is biased for her and against him.
So odious Mayes is, Hamadeh has repeated, that the late Sen. John McCain kicked the reporter off his campaign bus when he was running the first time for president. (For the record, it was part of a long-running feud McCain had with The Republic over unfavorable coverage.)
Those broadsides play to the base of the two parties.
Undecided voters, including independents, may be best served for gauging what the candidates would do once in office, on immediate and pressing issues.
Their fundamental differences on abortion and elections point the way.
This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic's editorial board.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona attorney general race pivots on abortion, 2020 election
