The leaders of the pack
From sexting to speaker ... Lake drinks alone ... And no, it's the other "Sting."
Republicans in the state Senate unanimously reelected MAGA conservative Warren Petersen as their Arizona Senate president yesterday — an easy win after Petersen helped his caucus gain a seat in the election.1
But the real Cinderella story of the day was Steve Montenegro’s victory as the next speaker of the House.
Montenegro was a rising star in Arizona Republican politics from his first election in 2008 until he went supernova in a 2018 scandal involving topless photos of a Senate staffer. He lost a GOP primary for Congress that year and a bid for his old seat in the state House in the next election.
The scandal and string of losses could have easily ended his political career.
Instead, it fueled an era of growth for the 43-year-old Montenegro, those who know him say, and it knocked some wisdom and humility into the man who was first elected at 27 years old and elevated to speaker pro tem and Majority leader by his mid-thirties.
Now, after just one term back at the Capitol, Montenegro has applied his brand of servant leadership to gain the trust of his divided caucus and climb the ranks to become speaker of the House.
He’s no longer a rising or falling star. He’s the star of the show.
But who is Steve Montenegro?
Let’s take a trip through the archives…
Who is he?: Montenegro is a first-generation immigrant from El Salvador whose family fled the bloody civil war there for the U.S. in 1986. He’s also the first Latino speaker of the House.2
What’s he known for?: Montenegro is best known for his hardline stance on immigration, having been the only Latino to vote for Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, SB1070, in 2010. He also sponsored legislation to end Tucson Unified School District’s “Mexican American studies” program after accusing the school of promoting “racial warfare.”3 Those votes, and his alliance with other Tea Party Republicans of the era, including former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, helped propel him into the speaker pro tem position in 2011, essentially making him the right-hand-man to the speaker. Four years later, he was elected as House majority leader.
Who did he beat to become speaker?: Montenegro got 18 votes from his 33-member caucus to become the next speaker, beating out Freedom Caucus champion Joseph Chaplik and current Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci for the job.
What’s his day job?: He worked as a youth pastor and as a district director for former Congressman Trent Franks. (He also won Franks’ endorsement to take his seat in Congress after Franks was forced to resign for offering a staffer $5 million to carry his surrogate baby.) Montenegro wanted to be a lawyer and got accepted to law school, but decided to run for office instead. These days, he has his own consulting firm and he’s working as the national political director for election conspiracist Patrick Byrne’s America Project.
So he’s a pastor?: He was, and his father still is. Montenegro’s religious beliefs permeate much of his politics, including his hard stance against abortion, which has included passing legislation to ban abortions based on sex or race or fetal abnormalities and opposing last year’s attempt to repeal the state’s territorial-era abortion ban. He also led a re-do of the daily prayer in the state House in 2016 after an atheist Democratic lawmaker didn’t invoke God in his prayer.
Is he super MAGA?: Nobody could call him a moderate, but he’s not really MAGA either, and that means the MAGAs call him a RINO. He was an early supporter of Ted Cruz for president in 2016, but has since moved into the Trump camp. Also, in 2015, he was part of a group of Republicans who supported moving Arizona into a compact to accept the results of the national popular vote instead of the electoral college, but that idea lost steam among conservatives after Donald Trump’s election while losing the popular vote the next year.
You mentioned a sexting scandal?: Yeah, that was a pretty wild one. In 2017, while he was running for Congress, he and a staffer got into an inappropriate texting relationship and she sent him nudes on Snapchat. Montenegro initially denied the story, calling it “tabloid trash,” but eventually came clean and said he cut off contact with her shortly after.
How does he handle the press?: Good question! In 2016, he was part of the leadership team that kicked reporters out of the state House in an attempt to get rid of Hank, who had been busting on Speaker David Gowan pretty heavily that year. More recently, however, he has been a big proponent of our legislation to put a Don Bolles monument on the Capitol lawn, saying he values the First Amendment and the press corps because in his home country of El Salvador, a reporter who exposes the truth ”ends up dead the next morning.”
Who else won leadership positions?:
House Republicans choose Michael Carbone to be their majority leader and Julie Willoughby as their whip.
House Democrats elected Oscar De Los Santos to lead their caucus, Nancy Gutierrez as the assistant leader and Quantá Crews and Stacey Travers as their co-whips.
Senate Republicans picked Janae Shamp as their majority leader and Frank Carroll as the whip.
And Senate Democrats backed Priya Sundareshan as minority leader, Flavio Bravo as assistant minority leader and Rosanna Gabaldon and Lela Alston as co-whips.
SNAFUs, not conspiracies: Cochise and Pima counties both had minor election flubs that only became public after people complained. In Pima County, election officials briefly reported the wrong number of ballots left to count, sparking outrage and questions from Kari Lake’s campaign. The error, which officials said related to the two-page ballot, was caught and corrected within two hours, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. In Cochise County, election officials tabulated a batch of 16,000 ballots ahead of election day but were worried they potentially hadn’t followed procedure, so they voided the batch and recounted those ballots. But they didn’t bother to tell anyone, including the board of supervisors until the Herald/Review’s Terri Jo Neff started asking questions.
Maybe you’re not popular: Election-loser Cory McGarr, an outgoing state representative from a competitive Southern Arizona district, claims his election was rigged. He told talk show host Garrett Lewis that, based on his own math, the only way McGarr could have lost was if independents went for his Democratic opponent by 91%.
New podcast dropping?: What does the future hold for Kari Lake after her back-to-back losses? Well, among other rumors, she’s allegedly looking to take over as chair of the Arizona Republican Party, the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L’Heureux reports. Last time she appeared before the state party loyalists, they booed her.
“She lacked the ‘I want to have a beer with candidate’ quality with enough voters to make a difference in the election,” GOP consultant Marcus Dell’Artino said of her loss.
If you’d like to buy a beer for our reporters after this long election season, there’s a button for that.
A chair who wins: AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda joined KJZZ’s Lauren Gilger on “The Show” to discuss Republicans’ massive victories under her watch — with the big exception of Lake’s race against Democrat Ruben Gallego.
The post-Roe era: Anti-abortion activists unveiled their plan to diminish abortion rights federally and in states like Arizona that have new, voter-approved protections, Politico reports. The plan is basically to push the courts through lawsuits and legislation designed to circumvent protections and spark legal challenges.
Long wait: Even though voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 314, the Secure the Border Act, it can’t go into effect until/unless a similar Texas law is enforced, and that probably won’t happen for a while. Axios Phoenix’s Jeremy Duda explains that the Texas law is on hold as lawsuits continue and it could be years before it makes it to the U.S. Supreme Court. House Speaker Ben Toma, who sponsored the referral, told reporters today that it may not even need to be enforced now that Donald Trump is president.
Outgoing House Speaker Ben Toma popped out of the House GOP leadership election yesterday to chat with reporters for a bit.
The obvious question was: “What’s up with the sword?”
It’s a replica of “Sting,” which is Bilbo Baggins’ sword, Toma explained.
He’s apparently a big “Lord of the Rings” fan and it was a departing gift from his caucus.
Assuming Vince Leach maintains his lead in Southern Arizona’s LD17.
Though he’s not the first naturalized citizen to hold the title. As far as we know, that would be outgoing Speaker Ben Toma, a Romanian immigrant.
That law was later struck down after a judge found that lawmakers had enacted it with “racial animus.”