The American Conservative Union rates members of Congress and state legislators every year, and this past year State Rep. Jake Hoffman (R-Mesa) was the only member of the Arizona Legislature to receive a perfect 100% rating. Other high scorers included State Sen. Warren Petersen (R-Mesa), State Rep. Judy Burges (R-Prescott), and State Rep. Travis Grantham (R-Gilbert), who scored 98%.
Hoffman told the Arizona Sun Times, “I’m proud to be counted as one of Arizona’s limited government, constitutional conservatives. It is an honor to be recognized for voting to secure Arizona’s elections, cut Arizonans’ taxes, and protect our state’s families and children. In the spirit of President Coolidge’s axiom that it’s better to kill bad bills than to pass new ones, I am especially grateful for the Center for Legislative Accountability’s efforts to score the bad, crony, and counterproductive policies that me and my colleagues fought against.”
He went on, “The Biden administration, and Democrats both in Arizona and across the country, have given us all undeniable evidence of just how toxic and harmful big government policies really are to hardworking Americans. Their policies have given us skyrocketing prices on everything from groceries to gas, hundreds of thousands out of a job due to anti-science lockdowns and vaccine mandates, open borders, racial division, law-abiding parents being targeted as ‘domestic terrorists,’ and repeated attempts to defund our police. In 2022 and beyond, Arizona conservatives must continue to lead the charge to present a stark contrast to the pure dumb assery of Democrats’ failed ideas.”
The lowest scoring Republicans were State Sen. T.J. Shope (R-Florence) with 78%, State Rep. John Joel (R-Buckeye) with 71%, State Rep. Joanne Osborne (R-Goodyear) with 73%, State Rep. David Cook (R-Globe) with 76%, the late State Rep. Frank Pratt (R-Casa Grande) with 77%, and State Rep. Tim Dunn (R-Yuma) with 78%.
The highest-rated Democrats weren’t even close to the lowest scoring Republicans. State Sen. Juan Mendez (D-Tempe) scored 22% and State Rep. Melody Hernandez (D-Phoenix) scored 25%.
Petersen had the highest lifetime rating in the Senate with 97%. Hoffman has only been in office one term, so has the highest lifetime rating in the House, with Grantham coming in second with 96%.
A bill that tripped up Republicans in the Senate was HB 2649. The ACU said about it, “This bill extends a crony program which provides a special tax carveout to select data centers.”
Another bill the ACU opposed which a handful of Republicans supported was SB 1451. ACU described the bill as “Placing taxpayers at risk by eliminating safeguards against workers compensation abuse.” It would have eliminated “language which allowed a firefighter’s cancer claim to be ‘rebutted by a preponderance of evidence.’”
A bill that foiled Republicans in the House was HB 1296, which allows college athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness. The ACU supported it, because “the NCAA has effectively become a quasi-government agency whose members are the highest paid government employees in the country who use their governmental power to harm private citizens.”
Another House bill that the ACU dinged Republicans for voting yes on was HB 2153. According to the ACU, “This bill expands cronyism by providing state and municipal tax exemptions for renewable energy storage systems as well as related equipment and machinery.”
Hoffman has not just voted in support of conservative principles while in the legislature, but he has led and championed several. He is a key legislator assisting with getting the Arizonans for Voter ID Act on the ballot. That four-pronged plan would end the practice of voting without an ID — even for mail-in or dropped-off ballots. Hoffman helped lead an effort by state legislators to demand that Gov. Doug Ducey declare a state of emergency on the border crisis.
He refused to vote for the education budget bill unless it included a ban on mask mandates. Hoffman was the first official to call for the resignation and prosecution of former Scottsdale Unified School District’s board president Jann-Michael Greenburg over his dossier of personal information about parents he’d conflicted with.
This upcoming 2022 legislative session, Hoffman intends to introduce over a dozen election integrity bills. Another bill will create a whistleblower bounty system for students who expose violations of state law occurring in publicly funded classrooms. He intends to introduce one to ban products made with forced labor from being sold in Arizona. And finally, he’s planning on sponsoring a bill to ban the investment of state funds in organizations that promote or advocate for abortions by minors or the inclusion of sexually explicit material (written, visual, audible or otherwise) in K-12 schools.
State Reps. Hoffman, Petersen, Grantham, Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix), Joseph Chaplik (R-Scottsdale), Jacqueline Parker (R-Mesa) and John Fillmore (R-Apache Junction) received a perfect score this year from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club.
Petersen and Bolick were the only two legislators to receive perfect scores from the Republican Liberty Caucus of Arizona this year. That scorecard was slightly different from the ACU’s due to its libertarian leanings.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at the Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Arizona Capitol” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
