Janet Wants Her Veto Back

By Michael Bryan

The voters specifically took away the Arizona Governor’s veto over redistricting maps when they passed Prop 106 in 2000, establishing the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC). The voters didn’t want the redistricting process to be held hostage by the political powers-that-be; Arizonans want an open and bi-partisan process governed by the public interest.

Governor Brewer (and the GOP caucus) won't stand for that. She wants enough control over redistricting to ensure that the end result helps preserve the GOP’s super-majority status, even though Republicans are only a narrow plurality in Arizona, where Independents and Democrats constitute almost 2/3rds of registered voters.

So Brewer wants her veto back.

If she can’t have it de jure, she’ll take it de facto by summarily removing IRC members for failing to deliver what she considers a “constitutional” district map: read “constitutional” as “sufficiently protecting GOP incumbents”.

The “constitutionality” or suitability of any map created by the IRC is protected by our Constitution's grant of authority over redistricting to the IRC, and can only be challenged in court. The Governor can no more remove an IRC member over a map the IRC created than a legislative fuck-wit like State Senator Al Melvin can be impeached because legislation he has introduced is possibly unconstitutional (or, as is more frequently the case, bat-shit crazy). This is called Legislative Immunity: it protects a member of a legislative body from legal liability for their official acts. Arizona’s courts have already recognized that the IRC has Legislative Immunity for the district maps they produce.

Thus Brewer’s allegation that the maps created by the IRC are not “constitutional” cannot possibly be the legal basis for an IRC member’s removal. Brewer's action against the IRC is merely an attempt to reestablish the Governor’s lost veto over district maps by extra-legal means.