Scorpions for Breakfast

by Jan Brewer

  It’s difficult to describe how painful it was to have to endure this kind of rhetoric—which accused me and my state of responsibility for the murders—while at the same time praying for the injured and mourning the lost. Gabby Giffords was fighting for her life. Arizona had lost Judge Roll. The Green family had lost their nine-year-old girl, Christina. The families of Dot Morris, Phyllis Schneck, Dorwan Stoddard, and Gabe Zimmerman no longer had their loved ones. That was where our hearts and our minds were. To play political games with our grief was unforgivable. But these people who posed as sober and responsible journalists saw the tragedy as an opportunity to be exploited. They were obscenely excited and thrilled by it.

  Three days after the shooting, I traveled to the hospital in Tucson to meet with some of the wounded and their families. I couldn’t see Gabby, but I met with Gabby’s mother and her husband, Mark. I visited with Ron Barber and Pamela Simon, two congressional staff members who had been shot. And I met with Mavanelle Stoddard, whose husband, Dorwan, had given his life shielding her from the bullet fire.

  I also had the opportunity to meet with the amazing men and women of the University of Arizona Medical Center, including Dr. Peter Rhee and Dr. Michael Lemole. I actually met with the entire team that was on duty during the crisis, including the staffers who were cleaning the rooms between caring for the victims. Dr. Rhee described the setting to me as “a war scene . . . the closet to battle that we could get.” I was so proud of everyone at the University Medical Center. They showed remarkable skill and poise at a chaotic time. I thought how, if I or any of my family ever had a life-threatening emergency, God forbid, I want it to be in Tucson.

  The tragedy was weighing heavily on my heart before I visited the hospital. The shock and grief had taken their toll. But I left feeling surprisingly better. There was such hope there, and such resilience. It was humbling and energizing at the same time. I had gone to Tucson thinking I would try to comfort the wounded and their families. In the end, they had comforted me.

  On the day after my visit to the hospital, there was a memorial for the victims at the McKale Memorial Center on the University of Arizona campus. It pains me to say it, but I was more uplifted by the first event than the second. My experience at the University Medical Center in Tucson comforted and inspired me. My experience at the memorial shocked and disappointed me.

  Jan Lesher, Janet Napolitano’s former chief of staff and the campaign manager of my Democratic challenger for governor, Terry Goddard, coordinated a lot of the logistics for the service. From the start, it took on the air of a pep rally more than a memorial service. The choice of venue, I thought, was a particularly bad one. The McKale Center is the home of the Arizona Wildcats. It seats more than 14,000 spectators, and it was so full that night that an overflow of another 13,000 spectators were at the adjacent football stadium. The sheer number of people, as well as the large number of students, made it all but inevitable that the event would come off as more celebratory than somber. University officials seemed to encourage that by doing things like handing out more than $60,000 worth of T-shirts to people entering the arena. I know the audience’s heart was in the right place. I know everyone was there to show love and respect for the victims. But it was too soon for the kind of raucous event the memorial turned into. In a few weeks or months, we could have had a cheering, boisterous tribute to both the heroes and the victims of the shooting. But not four days after the tragedy.

  I had the honor of traveling to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to meet President and Mrs. Obama when they arrived for the event. Mrs. Obama couldn’t have been more gracious and friendly. I was sick that we had to meet again under such circumstances.

  After the President and First Lady walked down the steps of Air Force One, a steady stream of other dignitaries from Washington followed. The entire Arizona congressional delegation was there, as well as other members of Congress and members of the cabinet. Before the memorial began in the McKale Center, we waited in the lobby of the Wildcat offices. I talked with FBI Director Mueller and again thanked him for his help. Retired Supreme Court justice and Arizona native Sandra Day O’Connor introduced me to Justice Anthony Kennedy. Representative Nancy Pelosi was very gracious and introduced me to her daughter, who lives in Scottsdale. I spoke as well with Senators McCain and Kyl, and Florida representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz introduced herself.

  We walked into the memorial expecting a serious, respectful scene. From the get-go, the event was something different. As I sat in the audience, next to the man who was even then engaged in suing me—Attorney General Eric Holder—I listened with tears in my eyes to the tributes to the Arizonans who had made themselves heroes that day. I respectfully watched as Daniel Hernández, who likely saved Representative Gifford’s life at the scene of the shooting, rejected the title “hero” and insisted it be reserved for “those who deserve it.”

  Still, the loud cheers from the audience bothered me. They struck the wrong note for a memorial.

  When it was my turn to speak, I thanked the president and Mrs. Obama, Secretary Napolitano, Attorney General Holder, and the other Washington officials who were there. “Your presence today reminds us that we are not alone with our sorrow,” I said. “America grieves with us.” I made a point of mentioning every one of the shooting victims by name. But when I mentioned the youngest victim, Christina-Taylor Green, the stadium oddly erupted in cheers and applause. It caught me off guard. I remember looking out at the audience in confusion. What were they applauding? Looking back, I know how the cheers and applause were intended—as a tribute to Christina—but at the time it seemed profoundly out of place. I guess that’s just what happens when you hold a memorial service in an arena full of boisterous students instead of in a smaller, more intimate setting.

  Much was said and written about President Obama’s speech that evening. He has been praised for offering a healing message that night, and rightly so. We were mourning six dead Arizonans and praying for more than a dozen wounded. We were hailing the heroes of that morning. It was only right that we put politics aside, that we not point fingers of blame, that we be civil and respectful of one another. We were all moved when he exhorted us to discuss our differences “with a good dose of humility.”

  “Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame,” President Obama said, “let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully.”

  The president’s words stayed with me. They were the basis of what became known as the “Tucson truce”—a supposed end to the name calling and bitterness that had marked the tragedy so far. I liked the idea. But I wondered how long it would last.

  In the weeks and months that followed the tragedy, Arizona healed as Gabby made her inspiring recovery. Things seemed to settle down for a while. The truce seemed to be holding.

  In February, I took the bold step of filing a countersuit against the federal government for failing to uphold its constitutional and statutory obligations to secure the national border. Ever since the Obama administration had sued us over SB 1070, Arizonans had been coming up to me and suggesting that we sue the federal government right back. I weighed that option, and my legal advisers began preparing a countersuit. They thought it was important that if the administration’s lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court, our claims would go with it. A countersuit ensured that would happen, and when we finally got a decision, it would settle once and for all the matter of the federal government’s responsibility to secure the border.

  So on February 11, 2011, I filed the suit. “Because the federal government has failed to protect the citizens of Arizona,” I announced to catcalls and jeers from protesters at a press conference outside the federal courthouse in Phoenix, “I am left with no other choice.”

  In April, almost a year after I had signed the controversial bill and more than eight months since Judge Bolton had issued the injunction against parts of SB 1070, the
Ninth Circuit issued its ruling on our appeal. A three-judge panel of the court upheld Judge Bolton’s injunction, and our appeal failed. No surprises here. This was the same court that had ruled the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional in 2002. So rather than get the same result by having the full Ninth Circuit rule on the injunction, we decided to take our case directly to the Supreme Court.

  Since the high court had already heard arguments for the term that would end in June 2011, we knew our best shot to have our case heard would be in the fall term, which began in October. There was always the possibility, of course, that the court would decline to hear our case, but we figured we had a couple of things going in our favor. First was the weakness of the Obama administration’s case against us. It was based on faulty hypotheticals and a deliberate misreading of the law. Second was the fact that the principle behind SB 1070—states enforcing federal immigration law when the federal government won’t—was spreading like wildfire across the country.

  In the year following the passage of SB 1070, similar laws were introduced in California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming. Indiana and Oklahoma also had similar bills advance through their legislatures. And in Georgia, South Carolina, Utah, and Alabama, SB 1070–like laws were passed and signed into law.

  What the proliferation of such copycat laws in states across the country said to us was that we weren’t alone in being fed up with the failure of the federal government to control illegal immigration. Of course, in many of these states, as in Arizona, these laws are being held up by legal challenges. This makes it time—past time, really—for the Supreme Court to rule and hopefully put an end to the anti-democratic strategy of using the courts to overrule the duly enacted wishes of the people.

  In May, I got some good news when the Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s 2007 law enforcing federal law concerning employment of illegal aliens. The court ruled that our employer-sanctions law does not conflict with federal law and is therefore constitutional. SB 1070 and our employer-sanctions law are obviously different, but the court has acknowledged that there is a legitimate role for the states to play in combating illegal immigration. I took it as a hopeful sign that the court would take the same position when it comes to laws like SB 1070.

  While I am very hopeful that the high court will take up our appeal of the injunction against parts of SB 1070, I also understand that the Court considers relatively few cases each year. Up to now, all we have been in court about is whether all the provisions of SB 1070 can be enforced while the law is litigated. If the Supreme Court does not review the injunction, the fight is far from over. We will simply go back to the U.S. District Court and start the trial on the merits for the disputed portions of SB 1070. Lost in all the media confusion is the fact that the many important provisions of SB 1070 have not been blocked by the courts—such as the prohibitions against hiring day laborers, “sanctuary” cities, and the transportation of illegal aliens. Even more important than SB 1070, we can elect a president next year that will work with the states, rather than sue them and stand with foreign nations against them in federal courts, to enforce federal immigration laws and at last truly secure our border. Our law was born out of frustration with a federal government that won’t do its job. The fight will not end until the federal government does that job.

  During the first few months of 2011, the federal government seemed to revert to its typical indifference to the issue of illegal immigration. Then, in April, the Obama White House convened an unusual group of participants to talk about the issue. A strange cast of characters—everyone from the Reverend Al Sharpton to Hollywood actress Eva Longoria to former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka—was invited, but not one sitting governor and not one current member of Congress. I told the press that I considered it a “snub” that I wasn’t invited. Not that I was so eager to return to the Obama White House and be lectured again—been there, done that. But I could have added a perspective that is sorely missing when the likes of Al Sharpton and Richard Trumka gather around the policy table. For me and the people I represent, immigration policy affects our daily lives. For them, such real-world concerns take a backseat to politics. But maybe that was the point of the meeting.

  The media was full of speculation that President Obama was making a play for Hispanic voters. When he ran for president, he had promised those voters that he would aggressively push for comprehensive immigration reform during the first year of his presidency. But like so much else that he promised to do, such as closing Gitmo and healing the planet, it didn’t happen. Even while Obama’s party controlled the Senate and the House by historic margins, he did nothing about immigration. Latino voters were upset, the theory went, and the president was attempting to, if not make good on his promise, then at least look as if he really, really wanted to do so, if only it weren’t for those racist Republicans.

  Buzz began to build about a trip to the Southwest that Obama planned for May—his first official visit to the southwestern border as president. The word was that he would deliver a major speech on immigration in El Paso and then head off to a series of fund-raisers in Texas for his 2012 campaign. Beyond that, no one really knew what he was planning. The Republican leadership in the House complained that there’d been no outreach from the White House on the immigration issue. All they would say was that he was “trying to lead a constructive and civil debate on America’s broken immigration system.”

  I watched the president’s El Paso speech while sitting at my desk at the State Capitol. At first he spoke movingly about America—in words that I couldn’t agree with more. “In embracing America, you can become American,” he said. “That is what makes this country great. That enriches all of us.”

  With his next words, though, as he so often does, the president took a demagogic turn. He talked about how it’s easier for politicians to defer fixing our immigration system until the next election. “And there’s always a next election.” True that! But did he realize he was talking about himself? Not only that, but we in Arizona had done something about illegal immigration. We didn’t wait for an election. And what did he do? He sued us for having the courage of our convictions!

  President Obama next tried to make the case that immigration reform was good for the economy—I guess he thought he would kill two election issues with one stone. Immigration fuels innovation and job creation, he said. Intel, Google, eBay—all had been founded by immigrants. That’s great, I thought, but what does this have to do with the drug cartels on the border? The shoot-outs on our freeways? The invasion of our suburbs? The skyrocketing health, education, and incarceration costs? How does this rhetoric help us?

  In a section of the speech that would prove to be great fodder for fact-checkers, the president tried to highlight everything his administration had done to secure the border. They’d doubled the number of Border Patrol agents, he said. (Actually, the Bush administration had done most of that.) They’d “basically complete[d]” the border fence. (Actually, the GAO had just reported that less than half the border was under “operational control”—of the government, that is.) I noticed that when the president mentioned the fence, his audience in El Paso booed. “Tear it down!” someone yelled.

  Then the president seemed to get a little angry. “We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement,” he said. “All the stuff they asked for, we’ve done. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I’ve got to say I suspect that there are still going to be some who are going to try to move the goalposts on us one more time.” Some in the crowd shouted, “They’re racist!”

  Then the president’s tone became mocking. “They’re going to say we need to quadruple the Border Patrol. Or they’ll need a higher
fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied, and I understand. That’s politics.”

  Moats? Alligators? Politics?? With these calculated remarks, Obama was dismissing our concerns as essentially groundless—mere political grandstanding. He was making clear that in his view, the entire controversy about the border had been ginned up to polarize the electorate and win votes for the Republicans. If anything, this was a case of classic Freudian projection, since that’s precisely what he and his allies in Congress and the press had been doing, even cynically exploiting the shootings in Tucson. Was this what Obama considered a “constructive and civil debate”? I’d hate to see him when he decides to be uncivil, I thought.

  Not even the mainstream media outlets could bring themselves to defend the speech on policy grounds. NBC political director Chuck Todd tweeted after the speech, “Of all the O’s appearances on the road that were NOT fundraisers, this #immigration speech has most campaign feel to it yet.” It was the most disappointing conceivable outcome to the truce we’d embarked on four months earlier. The president hadn’t just been uncivil; he had been unconstructively so. He hadn’t done anything to secure the border. He hadn’t advanced the cause of immigration reform. All he had done was condescend to American Hispanics by assuming that they could be bought off by an empty, cynically polarizing speech. All he had done was mock people who know—because we live it every day—that he’d not done nearly enough to secure the border. All he’d done was further divide Congress and the American people by blaming his political opponents for his own undeniable inaction. I called it his “promise something, do nothing, blame someone” political spin from Washington, D.C.

  It was one of the most cynical political acts I had seen in almost thirty years of public life.