By nearly all accounts Arizona State Senator Debbie Lesko is an impressive public servant. She takes on tough issues like pension reform. And she gets results. That’s why her peers are rightfully considering her along with Steve Yarbrough and John Kavanagh to succeed Andy Biggs as the next State Senate President.
She’s conservative without being crazy. All this being said her philosophical inconsistency on one matter is loco, though impressively supple.
Amidst the current legislative session we are glad to see her sponsoring legislation preventing cities from curtailing Airbnb rentals. After all, she argues, people should have the right to choose where they stay and homeowner’s likewise should be able to enjoy sharing economy property rights. Her mooring on the subject is surely related to her affinity for school and health care choice.
Yet, Lesko’s impressive fidelity to conservatively rooted choice breaks down when it comes to energy matters. There she untethers herself from consistency. On this subject she strangely travels to the likes of TEP and Arizona Public Service who have somehow convinced her to pay no attention to the ideological droids she would mostly look for when it comes to solar choice.
How does one argue for all the matters above yet sponsor a strangulation of Arizona solar via new legislation SB1417 as one of her measures does, at the same time she touts Airbnb or a statewide voucher plan?
Republicans quietly whisper they know the bill is nonsense. Yet, they don’t want to cross profligate campaign spenders like APS. Isn’t that enlightened?
But talent and leadership like Lesko’s don’t need political subsidy via the likes of APS. It is they who need her, not the other way around. And it is Arizona that needs a Senate President to stand tall not, stand as “A” “P”resident of the “S”enate.