'Bully' or 'fair': Andy Biggs pressed on Senate leadership style

Congressional candidate Andy Biggs is touting his conservative record in the Arizona Legislature while fending off accusations from fellow Republican lawmakers that his tight rule of the Senate was mixed with pettiness and bullying.

Biggs is locked in a tight race with three others to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., but is also at the center of a rare, public intra-party rupture with some of his GOP colleagues.

Two members of the state House of Representatives say some of their bills floundered in the Senate Biggs presided over after they voiced support for taking action on law enforcement in insular Colorado City, home of a polygamous sect. Two others in the Senate said they, too, were needlessly marginalized because of political spats with Biggs.

In response, Biggs points to his broad popularity among Republicans in the Legislature, and his campaign suggested his detractors are trying to torpedo his congressional ambitions. The 5th District is a safely conservative seat, likely making the Aug. 30 primary decisive in that race.

“Andy Biggs’ record in the legislature is accomplished and speaks for itself," said Adam Deguire, a consultant to Biggs' congressional campaign. "Those around the State Capitol know that Biggs was a central figure in balancing our state’s budget, cutting spending, lowering taxes and regulations and expanding school choice. Biggs was always steadfast in defending conservative principles no matter how bad the scorn from the liberal media, or from those in the legislature who wanted to grow government."

Beyond the bounds?

At the heart of the pushback from some of his fellow Republicans is a sense that Biggs went beyond the expected bounds of political power.

Sen. Steve Pierce, R-Prescott, said the man who unseated him as head of the chamber engineered legislative outcomes he liked using the usual tools, such as deferring hearings or assigning bills to enough committees to ensure their defeat.

"That’s the way politics works, but you don’t have to bully people and treat them like dirt," said Pierce, who briefly headed the Senate before Biggs won the support of his colleagues.

The increasingly public feud erupted into full view when state Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Gilbert, made known on social media that she regretted her critical 2015 vote to limit lifetime welfare eligibility in Arizona to one year, the shortest time frame in the country. She said Biggs strong-armed that measure through the Legislature and she supported it, in part to try to make peace with Biggs.

Townsend said Biggs had kept her bills bottled up in the Senate after he disapproved of comments she made about the need for police reforms in Colorado City in 2013.

“I considered it protecting pedophiles, and what did I earn for speaking out and not turning a blind eye in Colorado City? I got stonewalled. …  I don’t think that’s the kind of person I want in Congress,” she said.

The feud has intensified with Townsend writing on Twitter that she would not be silent any longer, and Biggs condemning her at a public meeting.

Meanwhile, a handful of other lawmakers noted their own troubles with Biggs.

Colorado City origins

Townsend, who has endorsed state Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, in the 5th District race, said her troubles with Biggs began after she discussed on a radio program her disappointment at the end of the 2013 legislative session that a bill failed that would have allowed a takeover of local policing in Colorado City.

Colorado City has garnered national attention for decades as a stronghold for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The 2013 bill, sponsored by Rep. Michelle Ugenti Rita, R-Scottsdale, would have allowed the department takeover if too many local police officers had their certification revoked by the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board. About 30 percent of the officers who patrol Colorado City and neighboring Hildale, Utah, have been decertified over the past 15 years.

Ugenti’s bill passed the House on a 52-7 vote. The bill was shipped off to three committees in the Senate and never got a final vote in that chamber.

Ugenti also gave interviews noting the need to do something about Colorado City.

"After I came up with a viable solution to deal with the systemic corruption in Colorado City, (Biggs) treated me so bad I couldn't represent my constituents the way I wanted to," Ugenti said.

Earlier this year, a federal jury found police in Colorado City and Hildale had discriminated against non-members of the sect, and a judge is weighing ordering local sheriffs to handle law enforcement for the towns.

Ugenti, who has not endorsed a candidate in Biggs' congressional race, points to the federal case as a sign that the state should have acted sooner.

"Women and children suffered three years longer than they should have because he protected the bad guys," she said. "That's what bothers me."

‘I might have been neutered a bit’

Sen. Bob Worsley, R-Mesa, said he ran into legislative dead-ends, too.

In 2012, Worsley abruptly ended an attempted political comeback by Russell Pearce, a friend and political ally of Biggs’ who the year before had been recalled by voters as Senate president, the position Biggs has held for four years. Pearce gained national attention for spearheading Senate Bill 1070, the state’s controversial 2010 immigration-enforcement law, but it also cost him support among some in his district.

“I was probably not his favorite senator,” Worsley said of Biggs. “When I made requests, often they didn’t go anywhere. I kind of felt like for the four years that I might have been neutered a bit in terms of what I was trying to do.”

In his first year, for example, Worsley was a prime sponsor of 14 bills. None of them went to a final vote.

Beyond defeating Pearce, however, Worsley sees himself as a different kind of Republican from Biggs.

Worsley, who has endorsed Don Stapley for Congress, supports local control by cities, counties and public school boards. Biggs, however, was inclined to back state control of its political subdivisions and school choice.

Worsley, a successful businessman, was appalled the Legislature didn’t have a long-term strategy developed between legislative sessions on issues such as education and infrastructure.

“What are we trying to accomplish? What is the plan, or do we just come here every year and approve a budget and run a bunch of bills for lobbyists and call it a day?” Worsley said, adding that he volunteered to head such a committee. “Everyone I talked to thought it was a great idea. … I don’t think anyone would disagree with it except Andy Biggs.

“He refused that for the full four years I was there. He did not want any planning. He said he had an all-but-dissertation Ph.D. in government, and all governments that plan fail. He would not be part of any plan.”

Despite their differences, Worsley praised Biggs for maintaining decorum in the Senate and described him as otherwise professional.

Odd man out

Perhaps no one is more aware of Biggs’ influence in the Senate than Pierce. The term-limited Republican from Prescott leaves the Senate at the end of the year. In 2013, he lost his title as Senate president to Biggs by a single surprising vote.

After that, he said his bills largely languished and he had few dealings with Biggs. Pierce said he later learned that after taking over the chamber Biggs told staffers not to help Pierce or Worsley.

“The first two years were miserable. Even the staff didn’t treat me well,” Pierce said. “The second two years, it got better. Andy would speak to me. I was Natural Resources (and Rural Affairs Committee) chairman. … I would consider water as a natural resource, but I didn’t get it. All the water bills went to" Sen. Gail Griffin, who headed the Government and Environment Committee. … "I was the odd man out.”

Pierce, who has endorsed Christine Jones in the fifth district race, said he still managed some legislative victories, such as an agriculture bill that passed with great help from lobbyists.

Pierce joined a rebellious faction of Republicans who voted with Democrats to narrowly pass Medicaid expansion in 2013, something then-Gov. Jan Brewer wanted and Biggs detested.

“That was critical for rural hospitals,” Pierce said. “In Prescott, the uncompensated care was killing them. It was killing Flagstaff, Cottonwood and Mohave.”

Biggs viewed it as a wasteful reach for federal dollars — to be paid in future taxes.

“This is the most important policy decision that we’ve encountered in a generation,” Biggs said on the night it passed over his objections. He groused about the vote on the Senate floor years later, showing a long memory when it comes to rare losses.

Biggs’ desk in the Senate was in the back row, not far from Pierce’s.

“One time he was walking up to the chair,” Pierce recalled. “He walked around the corner of my desk and he hit my nameplate with his finger and goes, ‘You spell your name wrong,’ meaning Pearce. I never said anything. That was pretty small of him to go do crap like that. He leads with fear and intimidation.”

'He's always straightforward'

Biggs maintains allies in the Legislature who say their experience was far different from that of his critics.

"I don't understand these things being said about him. If he's against something, he tells you he's against it," said Sen. Debbie Lesko, R-Peoria. "What I have seen is he's always straightforward. He's always calm and rational."

Lesko said she has had good relations with three of the four lawmakers who have noted their problems with Biggs and said she would not speak against any of them.

Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, was not as charitable.

"These are opportunistic legislators. They're upset because they didn't get their way," he said. "I can get you 60 people who think Andy Biggs is very fair."

In fact, the Biggs campaign notes 19 current state lawmakers who have endorsed him.

Farnsworth said Biggs did hold bills because that's what the legislative process involves. "There are tough decisions that need to be made and Andy Biggs is going to make the tough decisions," Farnsworth said.

The Colorado City bill, for example, unconstitutionally singled out that town's department, he said. The legislative process is difficult by design to ensure whatever survives it is appropriate, Farnsworth said.

Even critics noted Biggs sometimes stood against fellow Republicans or the entire Legislature. “He’ll be the only red light on the entire board. He never thought anything about it,” Pierce said.

It occasionally left Biggs on the short side of otherwise popular votes. This year, he stymied efforts to restart KidsCare, the federally funded health-insurance program for children of the poor, by not assigning the bill to a committee. Under intense pressure, the Senate eventually passed the measure, though Biggs remained opposed to what he saw as more governmental dependence.

Biggs' supporters — including Salmon — see him as reflecting the conservative values in the 5th District. Some see Biggs' critics as out of sync with the GOP.

Farnsworth dismissed them variously as vitriolic, spiteful and liberal. "They have no credibility in this discussion," he said.