Gov. Doug Ducey and his wealthy special interest pals were absolutely gleeful last week when the voter-approved education initiative known as the Invest in Education Act was overturned.

Ducey & Co. worked overtime to ensure that nearly $900 million in additional education dollars will never reach our classrooms and that our tragic underfunding of special education programs, our bottom-of-the-barrel per-pupil funding, and our teacher shortage crisis continue.

But it’s important for Arizonans to understand that schoolchildren and teachers are not the only ones adversely affected by this decision.

Our state constitution and the right of all Arizona citizens to create policy via the ballot has been greatly diminished, as well.

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When Karrin Taylor Robson, a Republican candidate for governor, launched her first campaign ad last week, I did a double-take.

Was this the same woman who Republican consultants pitched as the anti-Kari Lake, the “moderate” in the race who wouldn’t peddle Q-Anon conspiracies and Trump fantasies?

If so, we’re in trouble.

In Robson’s first ad, she stands near the border at night, her white face gleaming, her voice a whisper as she speaks of the so-called failures of the Biden administration. The ad cuts to footage of brown people walking behind her during the middle of the day, people she identifies as “illegal immigrants,” (though I highly doubt she or her team questioned any of those individuals) as she promises to “finish the wall.”

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For those who doubted whether Gov. Doug Ducey was silently working to undermine public education, doubt no more.

As a lame duck governor, his war on district schools is no longer being waged in the shadows. He put his disdain for public education on full display during his State of the State speech on Monday.

Arizonans know the past two years have been a nightmare for students, teachers and parents. Conflicting guidelines from health and government leaders, coupled with remote learning and children and teens dealing with isolation and family illnesses and death have created a tsunami of loss in our schools.

Test scores have plummeted, and the surgeon general has reported huge upticks in anxiety and depression as well as suicide attempts, creating an unprecedented crisis among our youth.

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Raise your hand if you’re excited for the 2022 election!

Anyone?

That’s what I thought.

Arizonans, including political nerds such as me, have little reason for excitement, even though the results of next year’s election could mean the difference between saving or undoing our nation’s democracy.

The reason for the malaise is simple: far too many weak, conspiracy-addled and scandal-laden candidates are running for the state’s top job.

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Arizona Democrats are worried. And for good reason.

Katie Hobbs — their frontrunner in the race for governor — has a credibility issue, and it seems to be getting worse with each passing day.

The onus for this problem lies squarely with Hobbs.

She had an opportunity to show real leadership after Talonya Adams won her second, historic jury decision for sex and race discrimination and retaliation by taking responsibility for her role in Adams’ firing, showing genuine remorse, and offering a plan to ensure discrimination and retaliation would never again happen on her watch.

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Donald Trump, cancel culture, fake news, critical race theory, border wall.

Those are the soundbite issues Arizona Republicans are focused on for 2022 because they believe those are the issues that will motivate their base.

Meanwhile, Democrats are focused on…well, I’m not so sure what they’re focused on. Unfortunately, the party has never been great at creating a unified messaging strategy around soundbite policy.

But if you look at what happened in the most recent legislative session as well as what’s happening in Congress, you’ll see an obvious dividing line between the two sides that can be summed up with this question: Do voters want more tax cuts for the wealthy or investments in people?

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Plenty of APS ratepayers — myself included — have been complaining about our electricity bills for the past four years.

We watched our bills skyrocket after the 2017 rate increase while also having to navigate novel and complex rate plans — plans that few consumers understood and that APS’ own customer service reps had difficulty explaining.

During this same period, ratepayers found out the utility’s parent company spent tens of millions of dollars on political campaigns and lobbying that, among other things, discouraged investment in public education and clean energy and helped elect the very commissioners who are supposed to regulate them.

But now it seems the tide has finally shifted, and APS no longer has carte blanche at the Corporation Commission.

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Americans value independent thinking. Competition. Healthy debate. A marketplace of ideas.

Or do we?

If social media is a gauge of what we cherish, I’d say the opposite is true.

These past few years, I’ve watched friends cut ties with family members because they subscribe to different political beliefs.

I’ve seen candidates and elected officials block constituents on Twitter and Facebook for the crime of expressing a different viewpoint.

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Move over Tiger King. There’s a new reality show in town that’s even more outrageous than an exotic cat owner’s murder-for-hire scheme.

I call this “show” the Real Politicians of Arizona because, just like the “Housewives” series, there’s plenty of back-biting, sensationalized drama and questionable fashion choices.

Taking center-stage in this made-for-TV reality are Republican gubernatorial candidates Kari Lake and Matt Salmon. Their real-life bickering over who’s the Trumpiest in all the land makes the fist-fight between the Kardashian sisters look tame.

Who’s most likely to imprison their political opponents or spend millions more on another partisan recount?

With Lake securing Trump’s endorsement, she’s the current fan fave.

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There is likely no other Democrat that has taken more fire from her party this last year than Arizona Sen. Krysten Sinema.

Sinema won the ire of progressives because of her insistence on preserving an archaic Senate rule that has historically been used to hamper civil rights: the filibuster. Democrats fear the filibuster will prevent any hope of passing major election reforms. Reforms needed because of the continued assault on voting rights in conservative states across the country, including Arizona.

I’ve taken a swing at Sinema, as well, commenting on more than one occasion that real mavericks don’t simply say “no” to their party, they get stuff done.

Sinema has the potential to put a huge feather in her cap and show naysayers like myself and other progressives that Congress isn’t broken, and bipartisanship is possible on some issues, such as the infrastructure bill she helped craft and shepherd through the first stages of congressional approval.

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In the not-so-distant-past, adults were expected to set the example for children. Be role models. Demonstrate respectful behavior. Follow the Golden Rule.

But today, we are unquestionably failing our kids in this regard, especially as it relates to adult behavior toward school officials.

Recently, an Arizona father, armed with “law enforcement-grade” zip ties, threatened to arrest an assistant principal after his son was told to quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure.

Anti-maskers forced a school board to cancel its meeting for safety reasons, then stormed the building and held a mock election to declare themselves the district’s new board members.

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The Arizona Supreme Court seems determined to find ways to undermine voter initiatives, particularly ones focused on education funding.

In 2018, they kicked the Invest in Education initiative off of the ballot because the 100-word statement, which is supposed to be a simple summary of the main provisions of the bill, wasn’t specific enough and used the word “percent” instead of “percentage-point.”

As someone who signed that petition and passed it around to others, I know those minor details wouldn’t have meant squat to the folks who signed on. What they wanted to know was how much money the initiative would raise and where the money would be spent.

Those questions were answered.

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My friend Kathy has always been a proud patriot. A passionate supporter of veterans and first responders. Someone who volunteered countless hours in her community and teared up when the National Anthem played.

Kathy’s never considered herself a partisan. She’s a registered independent.

But she recently confided she’s not feeling so patriotic anymore and is angry that extremists have stolen part of what made her proud to be an American, turning patriotic symbols and phrases into dog whistles for white nationalism.

I’ve heard similar stories from other friends who no longer fly the American flag or use the word “patriot,” fearing people will assume they’re members of the MAGA crowd or QAnon cult — radicals who want to overturn the results of a free and fair election.

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If I had to wager a guess right now on who will win the Republican nomination for Arizona governor, I’d place all my chips on Kari Lake, the former television anchor and MAGA enthusiast.

Lake exudes all the qualities important in today’s Republican party.

Like Donald Trump in 2016, Lake has no experience in public service. No previous campaigns. No policy record.

Instead, she’s running on something much more intoxicating: celebrity status.

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This legislative session will go down in history as one gigantic missed opportunity.

Thanks in part to record federal spending and the passage of a skinny budget last year, legislators faced a more than billion-dollar revenue surplus.

Our Republican-led legislature could have done what they, Gov. Doug Ducey and our so-called business leaders promised for years that they would do, if only there was enough money in the budget: restore the cuts to classrooms and make our schools whole.

But they said NO.

Over and over and over again, Republicans — with the blessing of Ducey and his chamber of commerce cronies — said NO.

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In the not-so-distant past (two years ago), Gov. Doug Ducey praised a budget that paid down the state’s debt, claiming “it’s the responsible thing to do.”

He also promised debt reduction would free up monies that could be used for “things that matter most” to Arizonans, “like K-12 education, enhancing public safety and updating our state’s infrastructure.”

But an unexpected budget surplus seems to have shifted the governor’s priorities. He’s currently working with Republican legislators on a budget focused on massive tax cuts for the state’s wealthiest households instead of one that pays down debt or invests in the “things that matter most” to Arizonans.

In a previous column, I detailed how Ducey’s flat tax proposal would decimate the budgets of cities and towns, effectively defunding public safety. It seems two Republican legislators agree and are withholding their votes on the budget until it lessens the harm to local governments.

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Remember when Republicans were up in arms over the “defund the police” movement?

During the last election, Republicans did all they could to pin the “defund” label on Democrats of every stripe, even though the leader of the Democratic party, Joe Biden, said he wanted increases in police budgets, not reductions.

But that was so…2020. And it seems Republicans in Arizona have had a change of heart.

Gov. Doug Ducey and Republican legislators are eyeing a massive income tax cut for wealthy Arizonans, one that will shrink revenues for both state and local governments. The flat tax, as it’s known, will upend our current tax code, replacing progressive brackets with a single, flat tax.

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Gov. Doug Ducey and Republican legislators want you to believe they’re defenders of the preborn. They recently bestowed civil rights to fetuses, while criminalizing doctors who terminate pregnancies based on “genetic abnormalities.”

But what about the millions of preborn babies men toss into the trash or flush down the toilet after masturbating? Don’t those potential lives count, too?

Some of you will think this is a ridiculous line of thinking. Sperm is not human. They cannot continue to grow or develop without a woman’s egg or outside the female body. But the same can be said for fetuses.

Without a woman’s body, a fetus in early stages of development cannot survive. And millions of Americans view this fact as reason enough to classify fetuses as “potential humans” much the same way we classify sperm and eggs.

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Gov. Ducey has a rare opportunity to help pass comprehensive immigration reform.

As chair of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), Ducey sets the tone for Republicans running for state offices across the country. He could choose one that embraces the benefits of immigration and the modernization of a broken system or one focused on scare tactics and discord, dooming any effort to reform the system.

To date, he’s chosen the latter.

From a purely political calculation, Ducey’s choice makes sense. Immigration scare tactics helped him win his last election.

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In our hyper-partisan world, we’ve become accustomed to the biting criticisms lobbed at opponents from both sides of the aisle.

In the heat of the moment — and when the stakes are high (i.e. life and death decisions about how to tackle a deadly virus) — it’s easy to say things we might later regret.

We all make mistakes, but that doesn’t give us, or our leaders, immunity from using racist or sexist dog whistles or undertones. And when it happens, it’s important to call it out and demand better.

A couple weeks ago, Gov. Doug Ducey crossed the line with his attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, who he called “the worst possible choice” to lead the Biden administration’s efforts to curb migration at our southern border.

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