7 ways Republicans and Democrats proved they could work together on big issues

It’s June and – with apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein – bipartisanship is busting out all over. With Arizona at the forefront.

What planet am I on, you ask? Consider this past week:

• The GOP-led Arizona Legislature passed a bipartisan budget with a majority of both caucuses in support. It required significant compromise. And they did so leaving the most ideological and partisan critics from the right and left powerless and grumbling from the sidelines.

• Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly led the crafting of the first major gun safety bill to pass Congress in three decades. And it did so with bipartisan votes in both the House and Senate. The compromise required politically difficult “gives” on both sides.

• Thoughtful patriots of both parties testified to Congress regarding the events leading up to the Jan. 6 capital riots and how the Constitution held. A star witness was our own Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, which was a powerful and necessary antidote to Arizona’s outsized profile in the Jan. 6 matter.

• The Phoenix City Council passed – on a bipartisan vote – the largest increase in police pay in memory at a time when too many law enforcement officers are leaving the profession in frustration or being lured elsewhere by better salaries. Credit to Mayor Kate Gallego and the council who heeded the lessons from other cities that foolishly have genuflected to the “defund” nonsense.

• The governor and a bipartisan state Legislature took meaningful steps on the looming water crisis caused by an increasingly arid Colorado River basin and deplenishment of groundwater by appropriating one billion dollars to pursue a water sufficiency plan.

• The composition of the new water authority assures that the leadership of that plan is bipartisan. Hard decisions lie ahead for a new governor and state leaders, but the last century of water policy in Arizona has taught us that solutions must be bipartisan to work. The platform to do so now exists.

• The Center for the Future of Arizona also released comprehensive public opinion research that shows that Arizona Democrats and Republicans largely agree on policies to address the economy, education, election reform, the environment and other key issues.

Build on these efforts to save democracy

Last week gave me hope.

But I’m not naive. The poison and vitriol in our politics is the worst I have seen in my 50 years of active engagement. We are in a time when both sides believe – for dramatically different reasons – that our democracy is in grave peril.

And they are right.

Democracy itself is being tested globally by the lure of autocracy and domestically by the threats of political dysfunction. Democracy works when people feel represented and when problems get solved.

This week, democracy worked.

American history is filled with other chapters of existential peril, most notably the Civil War, World War II, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, and our democratic reflexes and muscle memory have saved us each time.

With so much reason for discouragement, these rays of hope are worth celebrating. And worth building upon as we elect new state leaders who will push us either closer to, or pull us back from, the brink.

Fred DuVal is an Arizona businessman and civic leader. He is chairman of Excelsior Mining and a member of the Arizona Board of Regents. On Twitter: @FredDuVal.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona proves bipartisanship is possible, even on big issues