Scorpions for Breakfast

by Jan Brewer

  Not, however, without making some enemies in the process. While the legislation was pending, a writer from a small weekly publication in Phoenix began calling me, posing as Doug MacEachern, who was then a reporter from the Arizona Republic and today is one of their editorial writers. Under the pretext of talking about the bill, this “reporter” encouraged me to recite some of the offensive lyrics we were complaining about. I should have known better, I guess. But I was not then, and am not now, a distrustful person, and I believed in the cause of safeguarding our kids from this garbage. So I recited the lyrics—including the four-letter words and all of the awful, misogynist things that were polluting our children’s minds. The deceitful reporter had secretly recorded our phone conversations, and a couple of days later he showed up at the State Capitol with an 800-watt sound system on a flatbed truck with signs proclaiming, HEAR JAN BREWER TALK DIRTY! He then blared over the loudspeakers all the four-letter words and horrible lyrics I had read to him. Everyone at the Capitol heard me repeating these lyrics over and over again. It was embarrassing for me, but it was even more embarrassing to the profession of journalism. Classes on journalism ethics started using it as an example of bad, unethical journalism—a wonderful example of why journalists rank below members of Congress in American public opinion surveys.

  In 1996, after fourteen years in the legislature, I ran for the Board of Supervisors of Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, where Phoenix is located. Maricopa County was facing bankruptcy and many of my supporters encouraged me to run against the Republican incumbent to get the county turned around. Despite its boring, bureaucratic name, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors exercises tremendous power and oversight. Maricopa County is bigger than seven states and has a population greater than those of twenty-two states. And when I was elected, the county was in very bad shape. Spending was out of control, and accountability was nonexistent. I’ll never forget what Governing magazine wrote just before I was elected to the board: “If Phoenix represents the best in local government, Maricopa comes very close to being the worst.”

  Ouch. So we got to work. I was elected chairman of the board, and under the direction of a very talented county manager, David Smith, we began to make the hard decisions and make changes. We reined in spending. We made elected officials more accountable. We began the process of privatizing the administration of the failing county hospital. By the time I’d ended my tenure on the board, in 2002, Maricopa County’s turnaround was so complete that Governing came back to take a look. What they saw caused them to do a complete 180. They proclaimed it “one of the two best managed large counties in the nation.” Even the Arizona Republic, not exactly a cheerleader of mine, called it “one of the most stunning reversals in history [sic] of American governance.”

  For much of America, Arizona’s tough immigration law seemed to come out of the blue in 2010. In truth, Arizona has been going it alone for more than a decade, since the fortification of the California and Texas borders pushed the majority of the illegal traffic our way.

  By the time I became secretary of state, in 2003, Arizona was fast approaching the crisis point. After easing off a bit following the crackdown after 9/11, illegal entries surged in the middle of the decade. People started to notice the increasingly large groups of men hanging around the post offices and Home Depot stores looking for work. We started to see more and more traffic accidents involving uninsured drivers. Our hospitals began to be overwhelmed with immigrants who lacked insurance but needed medical care. The number of non-English-speaking children in the schools soared. But with the increasing numbers of illegal aliens looking for work there came another type of immigrant. And with these men came the crime, the kidnappings, the drop houses, and the steady loss of Arizonans’ basic freedom to live their lives in safety and security.

  The federal government wasn’t doing its job to secure the border. But while Washington did little to ease the crisis, Arizonans didn’t sit still. And it is one of the reasons I love this state so much. We are compassionate, welcoming people. But we knew that if we couldn’t count on Washington to enforce the laws, we would.

  In 2004, a ballot initiative called Proposition 200 was put before the voters. Prop 200 required individuals to provide proof of citizenship before registering to vote, required voters to provide proper identification at the polls, and required proof of eligibility to receive certain welfare benefits. In other words, only citizens should be voting, and only eligible people who are in our country legally should be receiving welfare benefits. Most of the business community, along with elected officials like Governor Napolitano, Democratic congressman Raúl Grijalva, and Republican senators John McCain and Jon Kyl, opposed the ballot measure. Nonetheless, Arizonans said yes to Proposition 200 by a significant margin. It passed with 56 percent of the vote—including 47 percent of the Latino vote.

  I personally supported Prop 200, and as secretary of state I fought legal battles to see it implemented. In doing so, I had to fight not only Democrats like the governor and Attorney General Terry Goddard but some Republicans as well.

  For me, the question was simple: As secretary of state, I had dealt with reports of voter fraud involving liberal groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) paying or fooling illegal aliens to register and vote. And the federal law was crystal clear: Voting is reserved for citizens, either native-born or naturalized. Who else had the right to determine the destiny of Arizona? Of America?

  It was my job as secretary of state to implement the voting-eligibility requirements of Prop 200, and I took it very seriously. I knew that the right thing to do was to make sure that no one was denied the right to vote and that no legitimate vote was canceled out by an illegitimate one. So I threw my energies into creating rules to implement the new law. The Department of Justice cleared my new rules, and I moved ahead with implementation. I traveled up and down the state, speaking to civil rights and civic groups, educating people about the new law. Arizona voters had clearly signaled that requiring someone to provide identification to vote—just as we do to board an airplane or purchase liquor—was a legal and reasonable standard.

  However, in typical fashion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals intervened just a few weeks before the 2006 election and suspended the requirement to provide proof of identification at the polls. I immediately filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed with me and overruled the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court said that Arizona had a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of our election process. It was now crystal clear: When you show up to the polls to vote in Arizona, bring your ID. And in the end, through our hard work, we were able to avoid most of the name calling and acrimony that has marked other citizenship initiatives. Just this past June, however, the Ninth Circuit decided to review whether Arizona can require residents to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. And guess who showed up to oppose us? You guessed it: the Obama administration. They filed a brief opposing our proof-of-citizenship requirement to register to vote, arguing that federal law preempts our state law.

  As to Prop 200’s final requirement, prohibiting Arizona taxpayer dollars from going toward welfare benefits for illegal aliens, the issue was equally clear. My belief is that, with limited funds available to provide social services, those services should go first and foremost to citizens. Like other states, we have limited resources. And unlike most other states, we are being asked to support a huge, largely poor immigrant population whose presence in our state is due to federal failure. Arizonans made the perfectly reasonable, perfectly moral choice to prioritize their limited resources for their fellow citizens.

  In 2007, Arizona followed Prop 200 with the Legal Arizona Workers Act, a law requiring that employers use the verification system E-Verify to ensure that their employees are in the country legally. If they fail to do so, they can lose their business licenses. Here again, Arizona was simply creating new tool
s to enforce existing federal law. It’s a federal crime for employers to employ unauthorized aliens. We all know how poorly this law is honored—and enforced—in most parts of America. Government winks and looks the other way while businesses exploit desperate people and power the magnet that drives illegal immigration.

  Arizona could no longer afford to wink at employers who broke the law. So once again, we took matters into our own hands. The legislature passed the Legal Arizona Workers Act, and Democratic governor Janet Napolitano signed it into law. She took some heat for that (I feel your pain!), but, to her credit, she did what she thought was best for Arizona. The usual suspects filed the usual legal challenges, of course. But in the end, the people of Arizona had their voices heard. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law does not preempt Arizona’s law against hiring illegal immigrants. Arizona can require businesses to use E-Verify and suspend the business licenses of those who hire illegal aliens. By recognizing that states have a right to protect themselves from the effects of the federal government’s uncontrolled borders, the Supreme Court’s ruling is, I hope, a sign of future rulings to come.

  It was a warm Arizona evening in late October 2008 when I received the call that would dramatically change my life.

  By then I had given twenty-six years to the service of the people of Arizona. I had changed a lot since I was that shy housewife discovering her inner pit bull in the parking lots of local grocery stores like Bashas’, Smitty’s, and AJ Bayless back in the early 1980s. I had had some hard knocks, learned some valuable lessons, and had some significant legislative and executive accomplishments. I had run for office eleven times and never lost.

  The reason I’d never lost, I think, had to do with the ways I hadn’t changed in all these years. I still felt very strong ties to the issues and the people who had motivated me back when all I wanted to do was make a difference in my children’s education. I felt in many ways just like the citizens I had represented all these years, good people like Ralph Baskett Jr., the farmer who had given me my first campaign contribution. I had always made a point of listening to them to be sure. But I was able to really hear them because I had always been one of them. I was that girl in a dress shop, that lady in front of the grocery store. I understood the wants of the people who had put their trust in me and confided in me their desires, their needs, their hardships. God knows I’d had my own.

  By the time the phone rang that evening in 2008, I knew the Arizonans I represented, and they knew me. I also knew that my state was in dire fiscal straits. Six years of overspending during the Napolitano administration had had its effect. As a percentage of our general fund, Arizona had the worst budget deficit of any state in the union. To get our state back on track, there was no question that doing the right thing would mean doing the hard things. Tough, unpopular choices would have to be made.

  The voice on the end of the phone told me that Governor Napolitano was planning to resign after the coming election to join what was all but certain to be the administration of President Barack Obama. I was temporarily (and uncharacteristically!) speechless. Arizona has an unconventional line of succession in which the secretary of state (that being me at the time) is first in line when the governor can’t finish his or her term.

  As I grasped the implications of what I was hearing, I almost laughed out loud. As a state senator in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had fought for a ballot measure to create the position of lieutenant governor to succeed the governor in the case of a vacancy. When our Republican governor, Evan Mecham, was removed from office in 1988, it was our Democratic secretary of state, Rose Mofford, who succeeded him. I felt that the person first in line to succeed the governor should be from the same political party. For six straight years, I fought to create the office of lieutenant governor. It finally made it to the ballot in 1994 for the people to decide. The voters, in their wisdom, rejected the measure.

  It was a surreal, bittersweet moment. The Republican nominee for president, John McCain, was my friend. We had started our political careers together back in 1982, when he was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and I was elected to the Arizona State House. Now all the indications were that John was going to lose his bid for the White House. But his loss would be my gain. I was going to become the twenty-second governor of the state of Arizona.

  Chapter Three

  Senate Bill 1070

  Janet Napolitano wouldn’t leave.

  For months there had been speculation that President-elect Barack Obama would appoint her to his cabinet. It only seemed right. She had spent so much time campaigning for him, I barely saw her in the office building we shared at the Capitol. And sure enough, by November the press was reporting that she was Obama’s top pick for secretary of Homeland Security. Then, on December 1, President-elect Obama made it official in a televised press conference from Chicago. Governor Napolitano was going to Washington. I was next in line for the governorship. The problem was . . . Janet wouldn’t leave.

  I was eager to get to work. And there was a lot of work to do. Years of overspending and overpromising by politicians in Phoenix had brought Arizona to the brink of fiscal Armageddon. State government was overspending its revenues by $1.6 billion. I was inheriting the largest budget deficit, on a percentage basis, of any state in the union. Our deficit was even worse than California’s!

  Governor Napolitano had accepted her post in Washington but insisted she wouldn’t resign the governorship until she’d been confirmed by the Senate. So everyone in Arizona sat and waited with frustration. It made no sense that she wouldn’t leave. Arizona was in a fiscal mess, but the Republican legislature obviously preferred to wait for their new Republican governor. Signs started to pop up around town that read, JAN BREWER: GOVERNOR-IN-WAITING. Once January arrived, our soon to be ex-governor stuck around to give a lame-duck State of the State speech. She also submitted a budget that would take effect six months after she left. It was a fiscal nightmare, but we had to live with it.

  For at least a couple of years, we had known we were heading for a budget disaster. I once told the press that the state simply couldn’t afford Governor Napolitano and we’d end up going into bankruptcy if we continued along our current road. I’ll admit that the comment was a bit cavalier when I made it. But Governor Napolitano did her level best to make my prediction come true. In four years, she had increased the budget by an unsustainable 56 percent by negotiating large tax cuts in exchange for large increases in spending. Under her watch, the disaster loomed larger and larger, but she took no action to cut spending. By the fall of 2008 the budget had crashed, together with the national economy. Little did I know I’d be the one dealing with the fallout.

  As of November 2008, Arizona had an official projected $1.2 billion shortfall in our bloated $9.9 billion budget. Governor Napolitano’s last budget was unbalanced and did little to address the looming crisis. She told the press that Arizona was going to be bailed out by the federal government to the tune of $1 billion. “It could be more,” she said. And, as she had always done, she doubled down on her fiscal strategy: Her 2009 proposed budget plan had absurd revenue projections and was heavy on borrowing, fund sweeps, and other numbers manipulation. It was light on spending cuts. She suggested Arizona cut just $975 million over 2009 and 2010, even though the combined projected deficit for those years amounted to nearly $4 billion. “[A]s always,” she said in her last official address, “there is more to do.” More to spend, she meant.

  Governor (and she was still governor) Napolitano’s confirmation hearings started in mid-January. She left Arizona right after her lame-duck State of the State speech to go to D.C. for the hearings. Although nothing was certain, it looked as though the Senate was going to confirm her immediately after President Obama’s inauguration on January 20. That afternoon I had C-SPAN turned on in my office and watched as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced her confirmation. And then I waited. And
waited some more. Hours passed, and I finally called Napolitano’s staff. “Do you know if she’s still resigning today?” I asked. “She was confirmed, you know.” Nobody on her staff knew what the game plan was. So we continued sitting around waiting. Finally, at 4:56 P.M., Napolitano’s general counsel hand-delivered to me her resignation letter. After weeks of waiting, Arizona now officially had its next governor.

  I had to jump right into the fray. I didn’t waste time. The next day was my formal inauguration ceremony. In my inaugural address I reminded all Arizonans of the seriousness of the problem we faced:

  We find ourselves weighed down with obligation—overdue obligation. We are gathered amid uncertain times, with a difficult work before us. In some ways this feels like you’ve just shown up for a party—but the guests have all gone, only the caterer is left and she immediately hands you the bill. . . . For decades, the abundance generated by free, hardworking Americans has allowed government to remain in the habit of growing, and in recent years to grow even more rapidly. But today, neither prudence nor our Constitution will allow this to continue in our state. We have all been seated to preside over that rarest of political happenings: our government is going to get smaller. We know this, and so do the people we serve.