The case against Charles McCall

And as for McCall, we must always remember: He was the House Speaker who brought the era of corporate welfare on steroids to the House of Representatives.

So if the reader believes that McCall, had he been in the Speaker's Chair instead of Kyle Hilbert in 2025, would have stopped the UAE giveaway bill then the reader also knows the old saying: There is a bridge in Arizona just waiting for your check to clear....

Yes, it's the one person whose endorsement could make all of the difference in swinging that 1 to 2 percent of the vote that could very well determine the second-place finisher in the June 16 primary and put either Drummond or McCall into the runoff with Mazzei.

Of course, it's the leader whose never-wavering commitment to constitutional principle made him such a target of the imperial speakership of Charles McCall; who continued to provide that small voice of opposition, as best he could, which was a challenge, as demonstrated when McCall's team snuck through a rule change that allowed them to ignore any member rising to make a motion, or when McCall and his appropriations chairman endeavored to give away millions to the Volkswagen corporation, and that appropriations chairman "advanced the question," cutting off Gann's very ability to debate and to speak to the underlying constitutional principles.

I would make the case that, had McCall done the wise thing -- had he put Gann in the leadership room, allowed his voice to be heard, and permitted constitutional principle to slow down, restrain, or even stop some of those massive corporate welfare giveaways -- perhaps Gann would now be in a position to give McCall what he needs most.

There's much more I could quote from Murphey on McCall's imperial speakership. McCall's immediate move as Speaker-elect to remove the two-term limit on the Speaker created a consolidation of power that was the "foremost reason why the culture of the House has so dramatically devolved." In another essay, Murphey explains how that rules change created a culture of conformity in the House:

With concentrated power, McCall ensured that he would never have to give up the corner office and never need to fear the day when he would return to the House floor with the mostly powerless, peasant legislators.

This created a powerful disincentive for the legislators to ever step out of line. Many legislators had seniority over McCall; they would term out of office before, or even long before, McCall did. This meant McCall would hold incredible power over them for the entirety of their tenures.

Now facing limited opportunities for future advancement and knowing that the pendulum would probably never swing back in their direction, these members were disincentivized from having strong opinions or taking any action to inform the new emperor when he, in fact, had no clothes. Throughout the eight years, this eventually rendered the House into little more than an echo chamber, a void in which dissent and strong opinions risked placing the legislator on ice, unable to wield any significant influence for years into the future.

And that, my reader, is exactly what, in my view, happened. McCall's decision to accept power for himself, for such a long period of time, in conjunction with the 2018 purge of the chamber's conservative members, more on that upcoming, caused the House to lose its magic--the ability to be a debating society where disparate views and even dissenting voices could be expressed, even slightly, without fear of retribution. If there was no hope that the pendulum would swing again, that a new Speaker would take office and restore dissident legislators' ability to have a voice and make a difference, then why should a legislator take the risk of providing a dissenting voice?

In 2019, McCall pushed another rule change to silence and marginalize individual House members, and Attorney General Candidate Jon Echols was one of McCall's enforcers:

With this one small change, McCall had just taken away the right of a state representative to, on their own authority, lodge a motion--instead requiring that representative to first get permission from McCall's designee, the Majority Floor Leader, who at that time was Jon Echols. Previously, Echols was required to allow the motion to be lodged, only empowered with scheduling the time of day in which the motion would be entered--but in no way, shape, or form could Echols deny that right of the member to make that motion.

That same article mentions a May 2025 move by Rep. John Pfeiffer, currently a candidate for Commissioner of Labor, to suspend the rule requiring the text of a bill to be available the day before the bill is voted on. When Tom Gann attempted a motion to restore the rule, the presiding officer would not recognize the motion because the Floor Leader Josh West had not granted his permission.

Murphey has his older articles paywalled, but it's well worth the expense of a Substack subscription to get an understanding of why the Reddest State in the Nation hasn't become an exemplar of conservative small-government efficiency. There's much, much more. This item about McCall's genuflection to the woke mob over the term "cross-dresser" is a doozy.

No conservative voter who knows how McCall wielded power as Speaker could want him to reside in the Governor's Mansion.