Leading the Latino Caucus

A bylaws blunder … From smear campaigns to staff meetings … And DEI on the moon.

What does it mean to be a Latino politician or represent Latino values in today’s political environment?

That question is at the heart of an upcoming do-over of the election to determine who gets to lead the state Legislature’s Latino Caucus at the Capitol.

The Latino Caucus is basically a working group of members who sponsor legislation on issues directly affecting Latino Arizonans, hold press conferences and meet for lunch to discuss their priorities.

The Latino population isn’t a monolith, but the caucus has traditionally promoted Democratic causes and used its bully pulpit to push back against Republican, anti-immigrant policies at the Capitol.

But as the ranks of Latino Republicans have grown at the Capitol in recent years, it’s calling into question what the Latino Caucus stands for, and who should lead it.

Democratic Rep. Lydia Hernandez won last month’s election to spend another two years co-chairing the Legislature’s Latino Caucus. She’s a moderate Democrat who hasn’t always made friends on her side of the aisle — last year, for example, she accused several of her fellow Democrats of harassment, intimidation and “false imprisonment” and tried to lodge a criminal complaint against them, saying they wouldn’t let her leave her office unless she supported their legislation.

But the caucus now plans to re-do its election after Latino Republicans backed Hernandez and a Black member of the caucus was barred from voting.

Republican Sen. TJ Shope, who supported Hernandez for the position, found that suspicious.

“I’ve already voted and won’t be there for this strangely called re-vote (perhaps there were too many Latino Republicans there at the first vote),” he wrote in an emailed reply to the announcement.

But Democratic leaders in the caucus say it’s not about who was allowed to vote, rather it’s about who was disenfranchised from voting.

All Arizona lawmakers “of Latino descent” can become members of the Latino caucus, even if they don’t actively participate.

But Progressive Democrat and new lawmaker Rep. Quantá Crews, the only Black woman in the state Legislature, wasn’t allowed to vote on who would lead the caucus.

Crews told us when she was handed a slip of paper to cast her vote for the House chair, Hernandez told her she wasn’t allowed to vote.

The new lawmaker has a full-time job and joined the vote-casting meeting late without the chance to read the committee’s bylaws first.

Those bylaws don’t limit caucus membership to Latino heritage. They also say members whose constituency is more than 50% Latino can join as active, voting members. Crews’ Legislative District 26 in central west Phoenix is 61% Latino, per the state’s redistricting commission.

“I should have been allowed to vote and represent my constituency, and that part is my concern,” Crews told us. “No one asked anyone else (about) their Latin heritage or whether they should vote. No one questioned anyone else in that room. I was the only one questioned.”

Hernandez didn’t respond to our requests for comment.

Democratic Sen. Catherine Miranda, who was voted in as caucus chair on the Senate side, sent out an email alerting caucus members to the mistake on Monday and said a new vote would be taken Thursday.

To be fair, the optics aren’t great. Hernandez beat Democratic Rep. Mariana Sandoval by one vote.¹ A do-over of that vote with another progressive voting member and fewer Republicans, since Shope won’t be there, would put Hernandez’s position in jeopardy.

But Miranda told us redoing the vote is strictly a matter of principle.

“One of the members was disenfranchised, basically,” she said. “So as the current co-chair for the Latino Caucus, yeah, I'm taking that serious and validating her concern and acknowledging that we did break the bylaw.”

Hernandez isn’t the ideal candidate for progressive values. She has worked in politics for more than a decade and has racked up a long history of making enemies of fellow Democrats. In 2019, she was barred from attending the Mexican American School Boards Association’s conferences for two years after making a scene there.

"Hernandez has apparently allowed mental health issues to cloud her judgment, and her lack of character, empathy, decency and prudence makes it extremely difficult to fathom the possibility of respect for her as Chair of our National Hispanic Council," MASBA executive director Jayme Mathias wrote at the time.

Both Crews and Miranda said ousting Hernandez isn’t the purpose behind a second vote. It may be a consequence, however.

“If we hold the elections and (Hernandez) wins again, I am perfectly fine with that, as long as I get to cast my vote,” Crews said.

It’s always easier to pay the fine: Republican Sen. Mark Finchem is trying to get out of a speeding ticket by invoking his “legislative privilege” from arrest, AZFamily’s Dennis Welch reports. After getting a ticket for driving 48 in a 30 MPH zone, Finchem used Senate letterhead to pen a plea to Prescott Police Chief Amy Bonney. Prescott police later asked the court to dismiss Finchem’s ticket “without prejudice,” meaning they could refile the citation after the Legislature adjourns for the year. Finchem follows a long line of lawmakers attempting to get out of tickets, including fellow former Freedom Caucus Republican Sen. Justine Wadsack, who finally went to driving school last month after claiming the police were involved in a political conspiracy against her.

“It’s a civil citation. Grow up, be a man,” local attorney Tom Ryan advised Finchem via Welch.

Sign of the times: The teenager who put up signs with Jeffrey Epstein’s face on them in an attempt to smear a Democratic lawmaker last year is now an intern working for Rep. Abe Hamadeh in Congress, the Phoenix New Times TJ L’Heureux reports. Nico Delgado will work in Hamadeh’s district office then start at the Washington, D.C., office after the summer.

Firing back: The U.S. Department of Justice says Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes doesn’t have standing to challenge Trump’s executive order undoing birthright citizenship, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Not only that, the DOJ says a Supreme Court decision from 1898, which Mayes and other attorneys general cited in their own arguments, says children “born of alien enemies in hostile occupation” don’t qualify for birthright citizenship. Since President Donald Trump says there’s an “invasion” at the border, that means the children of the “invaders” don’t qualify, according to the DOJ.

Saying adios: After decades of service at the Arizona Capitol, the chief of staff for the House of Representatives is resigning this month, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reports. Michael Hunter said he wanted to take care of his family, and he’s taking a job as COO of Christian Family Care.

Making ends meet: The state law banning cities from imposing taxes on rent payments is expected to cost the City of Phoenix $120 million in lost revenue, KTAR’s Kevin Stone reports. Vice Mayor Ann O’Brien said city officials are mulling a sales tax increase or cutting services to make up for their budget troubles, which they also blamed on the flat tax cutting into their state-shared revenue.

If we lost out on $120 million, we’d be pulling our hair out, too. But it’d be a great problem to have! Smash that button and help us have millions of dollars to worry about.

Breaking records: More than 52 million passengers came through Sky Harbor last year, breaking the airport’s record by about 3 million, KJZZ’s Kirsten Dorman reports. The airport had seen record years in 2018 and 2019, but their momentum was derailed by the pandemic.

It’s complicated: Now that Mexican and U.S. officials have struck a deal to delay 25% tariffs on Mexican goods for one month, policymakers in Mexico have tough choices ahead, the New York Times reports. They agreed to send 10,000 more National Guard troops to the border, but that means those troops won’t be going after the fentanyl production chain in the country’s interior. On top of that, most of the people arrested for smuggling fentanyl are U.S. citizens. And what happens when criminal groups adapt to the new state of play? On immigration, Mexican officials could keep their current strategy and wear down migrants by busing them to different parts of the country.

If at first you don’t succeed: A Cochise County supervisor accused of interfering with the 2022 election is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to dismiss the criminal charges against him, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports. An appeals court already threw out Supervisor Tom Crosby’s request to dismiss the charges, where he argued he had legislative immunity to delay the certification of election results.

Media literacy. We talked about it the other day, and noted that everybody needs a refresher now and again.

That applies to Republican Sen. Vince Leach.

In the convoluted world of social media, this is how false information circulates:

• A parody account with the handle “@iamnot_elon” posted about the Pentagon spending $600 million on sushi every year and other claims of outrageous government waste.

• A “DOGE News” account that frequently posts actual news reposted the claim — either unaware or indifferent to the fact that @iamnot_elon had previously claimed that “DOGE just canceled a contract with Boeing to build a DEI office on the moon for $22.7 billion.”

• Then Leach reposted the DOGE News account.

Et voila! Misinformation spreads.

To be fair, even we had to Google around a bit to ensure the stats were, in fact, bullshit.

Who knows? We hear sushi in DC is crazy expensive!

1. Adding intrigue to that drama, Sandoval was one of the lawmakers whom Hernandez accused of falsely imprisoning her.