Scorpions for Breakfast

by Jan Brewer

  By that point, the crowd was openly hostile. This is pointless, I thought, and counterproductive. As I got up to leave, things got truly out of control. Shouting and screaming broke out. My security detail had to surround me to get me out through the back door. Fearing that I was physically under threat, they had to slam the door on the crowd. Outside, there was a huge group with signs of me dressed in Nazi attire alongside Joe Arpaio, our famously tough sheriff—and a supporter of the bill—sporting a Hitler mustache. A reporter from a free weekly paper chased after me and asked how it felt to be “America’s number-one racist.” He was from the same paper that had pulled the record-labeling stunt on me twenty years earlier. I had learned my lesson about dealing with this paper a long time ago. I just kept walking.

  I learned later that even after I had left the room, the shots kept coming. One particularly cheap one came from a familiar source, Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon. “I have to believe in your heart that you don’t want to be a puppet governor whose strings are being pulled by the likes of Russell Pearce and Joe Arpaio,” said Gordon.

  “I understand your plight,” Mayor Gordon said condescendingly, as though I were still in the room. “It’s an election year. You’re facing a tough Republican primary and you love your job. I ask you to love your state even more.”

  I left thinking the whole evening had been a wasted opportunity. There had been no dialogue, only grandstanding and demagoguery. No one had seemed interested in solving Arizona’s actual problems, only in scoring political points. One such group was the SEIU. They cut a video of the chanting protestors, exhorting their members to sign a petition on their Web site to veto the bill.

  Later that night, the police estimated that 1,200 people—many, like the protesters at the dinner, bused in from other states—had amassed to protest at the Capitol. Several hundred stayed into the night and held a candlelight vigil. Apparently the cheap shots and grandstanding designed to inflame an already combustible situation had paid off. I hoped they were pleased with their night’s destructive work.

  The morning of Friday, April 23, dawned overcast. Over the course of the day, it would get warm but still pleasant; by afternoon it would be in the seventies—a perfect day for a demonstration at the Arizona Capitol. As we made our last-minute preparations inside, the police estimated that 1,500 protesters—some for the bill, most against—had gathered outside. It was the most intense and violent day of protests yet. About eighty officers were called in to control the crowds. One supporter of the bill was surrounded by angry opponents, and police had to escort him away. Fights broke out and water bottles were thrown. Officers had to separate the two sides with police tape and, at one point, a human chain along West Jefferson Street, to the south. Supporters were corralled into the courtyard between the House and Senate buildings. Opponents, it seemed, were everywhere else.

  Watching uneasily from inside, I knew what I was going to do. I knew what I had to do. We had taken a lot of time to sign the bill. That was because we wanted to vet it down to the ground. During that time, friends I had known for years had called me, some begging me not to sign the bill, some equally adamant that I support it. These were people I respected, people whose counsel I had sought in the past. As a leader and a citizen, I owed the public the opportunity to have as much input in the process as possible. And between the letters, the phone calls, and the e-mails, I was listening to the people and giving them the chance to convince me that I was wrong. Nobody did.

  It’s always tough when people who are close to you passionately disagree with you. A couple of friends got personal, implying that I was a racist. It really hurt to hear that. Of course, I realize now that I was probably naive. I had wanted so much for this to work, and I was no doubt foolish to think that I could convince my opponents of my serious and honorable intentions. But after all, I thought, they knew me. They had elected and reelected me for decades. I had never been called a racist before. The signs and catcalls were very uncivil. You think you can ignore it or hide it away in a dark corner of your brain, but when you get ready for bed at night and say your prayers, that’s what’s in your mind.

  Truly, only my faith helped get me through that trying time. I prayed for God’s guidance and support. “Please, dear God,” I prayed, “give me the strength to do what’s right.” I believe in the power of prayer, and there were people in my office who prayed with me. For that I couldn’t be more grateful.

  I remember one particularly emotional phone call during this period. Someone called me, nearly weeping on the phone. “Governor, have you considered what Jesus would do?” he asked. That one I could answer emphatically. “I can assure you that that is at the forefront of my thoughts,” I said. “That is one of the first things I considered.”

  At 11:42 A.M., I announced that we would hold a press conference at 1:30 P.M. to make public my decision. Because of security concerns, we decided to move the press conference to an Arizona Department of Transportation building, a couple of blocks from the Capitol. It was the only place where my team could create a controlled environment. It was also the only location where we could accommodate all the media. Students immediately walked out of their classes and gathered at the Capitol to protest—hundreds of them, skipping school with the tacit or active approval of their teachers.

  The hours passed slowly. The atmosphere in the office was very emotional. At around noon, one of my staffers visited the Capitol and took pictures of the crowd hanging me in effigy. I was very tense. The whole situation was eerie. We could hear all the chaos going on outside.

  At about the same time, my son Michael came into my office. He had been out watching the protesters. Michael hadn’t seen me in a while, and he knew this was one of the most difficult days of my life, so he came bounding into my office with a big grin on his face, just to try to buck me up.

  But I was in no mood. “Wipe that smile off your face,” I snarled. “Today is not a good day.”

  I look back on that now with horror. Here was someone coming to give me support—and not just someone, but my son! And I said that to him. I instantly felt terrible for it. But thankfully, Michael stayed by my side throughout the fight. He understood why I was cranky with everything that was happening. All I wanted to do was the right thing for the people of Arizona. That was all I’d set out to do; that was all I wanted. But trying to solve a crisis that my state hadn’t created and wasn’t responsible for had led to this.

  When we finally left the building to drive to the press conference, we saw just how ugly everything had turned. What really infuriated me was the defacing of the American flags. People were stomping on them and writing things on them. Meanwhile, Mexican flags were being waved in the air. Protesters were waving these foreign flags, chanting, “This is our country—it belongs to us!” I heard later that Mexican television was carrying spoofs depicting me as a racist. On their version of the Today show, they had a male actor dressed up like me. He asked people for their “papers” and Tasered people who couldn’t produce them.

  Finally, it was time.

  It was a major media event. Stations across Arizona interrupted their programs. Channel 9 in Tucson broke into One Life to Live to cover the press conference. CNN carried it live to the nation. They were calling it the “moment of truth.” At 1:30, I strode to the podium. Behind me stood rows of police officers. Some were in uniforms but most were in civilian clothes, because their political superiors wouldn’t be seen supporting the bill. But I wanted them there, because I wanted people in Arizona and across the United States to see the officers who would be enforcing the law—not some nameless, shapeless, militaristic arm of the state government but the brave and decent men and women tasked with implementing SB 1070.

  After I thanked everyone for being there, I moved over from the lectern to a small desk to sign the bill. As I sat down, however, I realized that I had forgotten my glasses on the lectern. Even at the most consequential moments, rea
lity intrudes. I stood up again, laughing at myself on the inside, held up a finger to ask the press to wait just a second, grabbed the glasses, and sat back down. Then I signed the bill.

  As I returned to the lectern, I took time to thank the members of Arizona law enforcement who had joined me that day. They were the heroes who were going to have to implement the law, and also the ones who were going to meet with the closest scrutiny—as they should. I sighed deeply, collected myself, and addressed my fellow citizens—and the country.

  “We must acknowledge the truth: People across America are watching Arizona, seeing how we implement this law, ready to jump on even the slightest misstep,” I said. “Some of those people from outside our state have an interest in seeing us fail. They will wait for a single slip-up, one mistake, and then they will work day and night to create headlines and get the face time they so desperately covet. We cannot give them that chance.”

  I promised to prove the alarmists and the cynics wrong by enforcing the new law evenly and without regard to skin color, accent, or social status. I promised to make all Arizonans proud. I finished by quoting Teddy Roosevelt: “No man is above the law, and no man is below it.” I promised to make good on my heartfelt conviction that Arizona, like America, must be governed by its laws.

  It didn’t take five minutes for my idealistic hope that I could avoid being called a racist for endorsing the rule of law in Arizona to be proved wrong. After a few substantive questions from the press, one reporter asked, “What does an illegal immigrant look like?” I couldn’t help laughing ruefully. They wanted me to profile, I guess. “I do not know,” I answered truthfully. “I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like.”

  A few minutes later, after I had left the press conference, I found out that earlier that day, at a ceremony in the Rose Garden, President Obama himself had attacked Arizona and SB 1070. “Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others,” he said. While acknowledging the culpability of the federal government, he issued no call to correct this failure in an appropriate way and simply poured fuel on the fire, asserting that our law “threaten[ed] basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.”

  President Obama’s administration had done nothing—nothing—to work with us to secure the border. In fact, his administration had ignored our requests for help again and again. Now he was acting as though none of that had ever happened, and that the real problem wasn’t federal inaction but state action to protect the people.

  I’d never heard of a president weighing in on whether a governor should sign or veto a state bill, let alone one that neither he nor (as it turned out) his attorney general had bothered to read, and I had no idea he’d made those comments when I signed the bill. If I had, I would have responded publicly by telling the president that all he had to do was start enforcing federal law, as we’d pleaded with him to do over and over again.

  I was exhausted and triumphant, but I was also filled with foreboding. For good reason, as I was soon to find out.

  Chapter Four

  Nazis in the Desert

  Declaring that “the states will take the lead, and Arizona will take the lead among states,” an Arizona governor signs sweeping legislation enforcing federal law regarding illegal aliens. She calls it “the most aggressive action in the country,” explaining that “it is now abundantly clear that Congress finds itself incapable of coping with the comprehensive immigration reforms our country needs.”

  “Because of Congress’s failure to act,” the governor says, “states like Arizona have no choice but to take strong action to discourage the further flow of illegal immigration through our borders.” Her critics erupt. They file lawsuits, one of which ends up with the Supreme Court. Protests spring up throughout Arizona. Work stoppages and strikes break out.

  Before I go further, let me note that the governor in question isn’t me. It was Janet Napolitano, who in 2007 gave the go-ahead to the Arizona Legal Workers Act, designed to crack down on illegal immigration by imposing sanctions on businesses that violate federal law by hiring illegal aliens.

  The reason you’re reading about SB 1070 right now and not about the Arizona Legal Workers Act is simple: With his reaction to the law, President Obama made SB 1070 a national issue. When Governor Napolitano signed the Arizona Legal Workers Act, President George W. Bush never mentioned it. He didn’t stir the pot. President Obama did.

  Before I signed SB 1070, President Obama had already condemned it as irresponsible and unfair. In the days that followed, he upped the ante. Eric Holder, his attorney general, stated immediately that the Department of Justice would look into whether it should sue Arizona to stop implementation of the law. Janet Napolitano, ensconced in her new role at Homeland Security, hypocritically remarked that she had “some deep concerns with the law . . . it will detract from and siphon resources that we need to concentrate on those in the country illegally, those who have committed the most serious crimes.”

  If the president and his cabinet officers couldn’t stop themselves from encouraging mass hysteria over the law, you can imagine the situation on the ground in Arizona. While President Obama was claiming, with virtually no evidence, that Hispanics were going to have their privacy systematically invaded, his political allies, without a trace of irony, were gathering around my home to protest.

  Huge buses from Texas and California began driving up to my front yard; we had reports that the SEIU was sponsoring the tactic. The first time the protesters showed up, I didn’t have any security. I had to call them in, but I did so only after one of my advisers told me I couldn’t go outside. Soon the radical antiwar group Code Pink showed up too. They set up their lawn chairs on the sidewalk of my ordinary suburban neighborhood, sang, and burned candles. They were relatively respectful—at least, as respectful as people staking out your house to pressure you can be. They never crossed into my yard, but they did cross into my neighbors’ yard—they’re Puerto Rican and Mexican American, by the way—and, boy, were the neighbors ticked off!

  It had gotten to the point that people thought my house—my personal home—was fair game. We had to station the Department of Public Safety, our state police, there. It seemed unnatural to have guards outside my home. As a legislator, I was used to having Arizonans come up to my house and knock on the door and come on in with their comments and concerns. But that era was clearly over. In the community, many of my friends were concerned about my safety. “Be careful,” they said. “We’ve got your back.” I brushed those kinds of comments off—how bad could things get? But I wasn’t really grasping the volatility of the situation. I started getting death threats. One kid with an intellectual disability in the Midwest—who thought he was helping me out—even tried to put a bounty on my head.

  I’d say the tone for all this hysteria was set not just by the president—although he could have done a lot to tamp it down—but by the tragically misinformed and hyperbolic response of Cardinal Roger Mahoney, archbishop of Los Angeles. The cardinal was the first high-profile figure to play the Hitler card. Unfortunately, he would not be the last. The day before the legislature sent the bill to me—before I had announced whether I would sign it or not—Cardinal Mahoney wrote, “I can’t imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation.” Are you kidding me? I thought. There was no provision in the bill for anything like that. Where did he get this crazy idea? He continued, “Are children supposed to call 911 because one parent does not have proper papers? Are family members and neighbors now supposed to spy on one another, create total distrust across neighborhoods and communities, and report people because of suspicions based upon appearance?”

  These comments poured gas on the flames. It was grossly irresponsible. But I understood why he’d done what he had done. As archbishop of one of the
largest Hispanic populations in the country, he probably felt that he had to rap Arizona on the knuckles for defending herself, especially because of the way SB 1070 had been misrepresented by the president and in the press. But comparing Arizona to Nazi Germany, or Russia under Stalin? Who writes this stuff? Do liberals really believe these insane comparisons?

  Unfortunately, instead of being laughed at in the press or appropriately shamed by more responsible public figures into toning down their rhetoric, opponents of the bill kept on playing the Hitler card. Eventually, it became a common sight. It was as if there were an underground printing press somewhere, churning out Nazi-themed placards and slogans. One night after the bill was passed, I was leaving the Capitol when I saw a large banner spread out on the grass in front of the building. I asked my security detail to stop so I could take a look. The banner showed me in a Nazi uniform. HITLER’S DAUGHTER? it blared. SHE CLASSIFIES PEOPLE BY WHERE THEY WERE BORN. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF. IF ARE [sic] NOT BLONDE AND HAVE BLUE EYES . . . BE AWARE! Later I heard reports of the same banner showing up at a protest in Dallas.

  And on it went. The rap group Public Enemy’s Chuck D recorded a song called “Tear Down That Wall” and told Billboard magazine that he had done so because “the governor is a Hitler.” I wondered whether Chuck D knew that Communists, not Nazis, had built the Berlin Wall. But never mind. Colorado representative Jared Polis said the situation was “reminiscent of second-class status of Jews in Germany prior to World War II, when they had to have their papers with them at all times and were subject to routine inspections.”

  California Democratic congresswoman Linda Sánchez actually said that white supremacist groups had been the motivating force behind SB 1070. “It’s been documented,” she claimed, without offering a shred of proof to back up her ridiculous assertion. “It’s not mainstream politics. . . . It creates a Jim Crow system where based on the color of your skin you could be treated as a second-class citizen or harassed based on how you look.” Not to be outdone, a New Jersey newspaper published an editorial cartoon showing Hitler with an Arizona-shaped mustache. You had to give them points for creativity.