And welcome back to Sunday Square off on to our second bombshell story of the week, the Republican controlled House of Representatives passed a repeal of the near total ban on abortion first enacted in 1864 before Arizona was a state. The vote came on the house's third try in two weeks since the State Supreme Court ruled the ban is enforceable. The debate was angry, heartfelt intense and came at a personal cost for some lawmakers joining us to explain why the third time was a success and what the political fallout could be. Our Capitol reporters, Mary Joe Pitzl of the Arizona Republic and Cameron Sanchez of Kjzz radio. Welcome back to you Mary Jo and welcome Cameron. Uh Mary Joe. You've seen a lot of debates uh in the House and Senate. Uh This one was just intense. I was listening and my ear was burning. Uh Where do you rate this? How, how intense was this? I mean, yeah, it was quite intense but it was also very one sided. Um All the very impassioned comments came from Republicans who very much, you know, uh resisted this idea of repealing this law or at least resisted repealing it so quickly. Um and made their arguments, you know, very strong pro-life arguments, some with very graphic details about what happens during an abortion. It clearly was an attempt to try to shame some of their fellow republicans into. Um stepping down from the vote. References to the GOP was founded to protect life. You know, we, our roots go back to fighting slavery and abortion is a form of slavery and we just can't do this. Um So very strongly held and, and um articulated arguments and it appears the party is clearly fractured over this, clearly, clearly because you had um you had three lawmakers, three republicans who then um voted to for the repeal two who voted to even bring the matter up for, for consideration. So, Cameron, what was different this time versus the last two attempts to get it done. So the last few times, Matt Grass who's a Republican had uh gone over to work with Dems, but it was Tim Dunn and Justin Willman who ultimately also came over and gave them that extra boost that they needed. And Tim Dunn, we have video of Tim Dunn being worked over by Senator Anthony Kern who was next to him. There is done in a pensive mood knowing what's to come and you'll see Anthony Kern, uh who's a very strong anti aortic. Uh Senator came over to lobby him. It appears do we thought Don was gonna vote two weeks ago, didn't, did this time? Do you have any idea what was his explanation for his vote? Well, he said basically this is what needs to happen and that if we have the 15 week law in place, it'll be better. Um, Republicans, you know, have elections coming up and this is something that they know is popular to have some level of abortion. And of course, there's this ballot measure that has a lot of support from Plan Parenthood and Abortion Advocates, which is going to be most likely on the ballot, almost certainly on the ballot. Um And just ultimately, it's gonna be dangerous for Republicans, especially those in competitive districts. Right. So the competition argument, the political argument. Yeah. And I, I heard but have not been able to confirm that. Um Representative Dunn got some pushback from members of his family, female members for not moving ahead on this. Yeah, I had heard the same thing too because he was supposed to be the deciding vote again a few weeks ago. But this time he did and then Justin Wilmouth followed. Are they safe, Mac Grass, Tim Dunn and Justin Wilmoth. Are they safe with this vote politically? I don't know that I would say that wout kind of told me he did it for the same reason as Dunn. I think Wilmouth and Grass are sort of a different question because they're in super competitive districts probably the most uh grass and Wil and they are. But don, I think generally is considered to be in a much safer district, but there's also the consequences that come from the GOP leadership. And we saw that at the very end, that's when things really got intense and very emotional. Um, the, um, speaker stripped mattress of his seat on the Appropriations Committee. Um, and Gress is a former state budget director or uh, advisor for then Governor Duy. So, I mean, appropriations is like his thing. So he's off and then they took off, uh, representative Oscar de Los Santos as well from the pros because I mean, you gotta have balance right, you get rid of one Republican, you get rid of one Democrat. Um, but they also removed De Los Santos from the Rules Committee and different reasons for that. I mean, um, Speaker Tomo was on KZ yesterday on Friday and explained that well, for grass, he, he defied his caucus and he went too far because after the vote to repeal was passed, grass then stood up and said, I've got a motion, we need to send this over to the Senate immediately. It's got to come back without any amendments and immediately so we can send it up to the governor. And that was just, that was just way too far. It was really perceived as, um, rubbing salt into the wound and very angry. You thought the speeches were angry before the vote. These were much angrier that was a very raw moment. So what's next in the house? It looks like they want to move forward with the, the strategy of putting a whole bunch of counter initiatives on the ballot to counter the abortion access initiative. And, and I heard uh folks on the Republican side saying I'm not even sure these will come to a vote in, in the house. All right. Well, now everything's up in the air because of grass and Dunn and Wem and no one's sure exactly what they can get through anymore. And I'm sure there's talk of further punishments for some of those Republicans and maybe even Democrats being stripped from committees. There's talk of, I mean, there's an ethics complaint that's been filed against some Democrats as well, which Mary Joe reported on and next, with the, with the ballot measures is it's a plan that was sort of leaked to the public in an unfortunate way. That was a presentation that was created by the Republican staff on how they're going to put up ballot measures to sort of pull votes away from the Plan Parenthood proposal that will also be on the ballot. Um, but since that's going out to the public, I wonder if they'll try to alter their strategy because, you know, it would look maybe a little bit bad for them when they talk about confusing people. Not a, not a good look. All right, when we come back. Well, let's
