Arizona Capitol Times’ Yellow Sheet tears apart Republican congressional candidate’s desperate attempts to blame Obamacare, business community for offensive bill

FLAGSTAFF – During a debate Tuesday night, congressional candidate Andy Tobin defended his support of the offensive SB1062 — a bill that almost cost Arizona the Super Bowl — by offering his most baffling explanation to date, blaming everyone from the business community to the Affordable Care Act while trying to hide his own role in its passage.

The Arizona Capitol Times’ Yellow Sheet looked into Tobin’s claims and asked his campaign to explain the candidate’s “bizarre statement,” but found nothing to back up his assertions.

Read the full piece below to see how Tobin misled about the business community’s role in crafting the legislation and how he rammed it through the Legislature.

### 

Wait, what?

At a debate in Tucson last night, Tobin blamed Obamacare for S1062. “The bill wouldn’t have been necessary if it wasn’t for Obamacare, because it looked for protections in the First Amendment,” he said. Asked to clarify the statement, Tobin’s campaign manager Bill Cortese didn’t say how the federal health care law could force Arizona businesses to violate their religious convictions – the stated purpose of the legislation – but said that Tobin “was glad to see the governor ultimately veto the bill given the concerns raised by opponents.”

The bizarre statement, which drew laughs from some debate attendees, came after Kirkpatrick accused Tobin of ramming S1062 through the Legislature without consulting the business community, which “almost cost us the Super Bowl.” Tobin claimed that, despite being Speaker and the ultimate authority over what legislation gets a vote in the House, he was not at the negotiating table for the bill – but that the business community was. “First off, the business community was at the table, I wasn’t,” Tobin said, noting that this was the second year in a row that GOP lawmakers approved the bill, and it had gone through “all kinds of hearings and testimony.” (Note: Backers of S1062 have often claimed that the bill was victim of a furor that was artificial, evidence of which is the lack of outcry over 2024’s S1178 [exercise of religion; protection], which they say did the same thing. However, as we noted in February, S1062 includes a major provision not present in the 2024 bill: expanding the groups that could claim religious protection to include any individual, association, partnership, corporation and other business organization instead of only to religious assemblies or institutions: YS, 2/28.)

Arizona Chamber of Commerce lobbyist Garrick Taylor said the business community was not at the table on the bill, and the Center for Arizona Policy never asked the Chamber’s opinion. “We have some lobbyists at the Capitol who raised some concerns with proponents of the bill, but would I characterize that as sitting around the table and trying to hash out changes to the legislation? No, I wouldn’t. It never reached that point,” he said.

Arizona Democratic Party Executive Director DJ Quinlan said called Tobin’s statement about the bill being necessary because of Obamacare “ludicrous,” and said that Tobin threw the business community under the bus with his comments. “He was clearly the ringleader and major cheerleader of the bill... More than any other legislator, Tobin is the guy responsible for passing S1062, and it will be his legacy,” Quinlan said.
 

Video of Tobin’s comment can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/ncfzXeFwx-Q?t=58m20s

 For news and updates from the campaign trail, please follow @Ann_Kirkpatrick on Twitter and “like” us on Facebook.