Most of the legislation that passed carried out the agendas of—and was actually written by—various special interest groups such as the NRA; Grover Norquist’s tax-abolishing group; and the anti-immigrant group with ties to white supremacists (they call their group “FAIR”!), who wrote our infamous immigration bill.

Without a Democratic governor to veto the worst excesses, some really harmful budget and other bills passed and were signed into law. These actions will kill jobs, discourage tourism, and harm the State’s economy—hardly what we need!

*For our State parks—which are profitable—the legislature took all their money, cut many jobs, and walked away.

*We’ve all heard about teacher and health worker layoffs.

*The immigration bill, SB1070, was featured on Keith Olberman’s MSNBC show on 6/2, and Jan Brewer made runner-up for “Worst Persons in the World.” The information presented on the show considered the impact of removing Arizona’s 400,000 undocumented workers from the State’s economy:

140,000 lost jobs, affecting people who sell things or provide services to the above workers;

A drop of $11.7 billion in Arizona’s Gross State Product; and

A $26 billion drop in Arizona’s total economic activity. (1)

These would be long-term effects. An immediate effect has been the loss of approximately $12 million in cancelled convention revenues.

It’s pretty clear, we can’t afford another legislative session like this past one.

We really need to elect Terry Goddard as Governor, and back him up with strong Democrats at the statewide level, at the legislature, and at every local level. We need strong leadership to solve our State’s problems and turn Arizona around. So let’s do everything we can to spread the work about our good candidates, and get them elected!

Ginny Dotson

(1) additional sources: The Arizona Republic, June 1, 2010 Statistics from perrymangroup.com