Arizona attorney general refuses to resign despite pressure over her comments on ICE

By Zachery Schmidt
The Center Square

Editor’s note: This story has been updated since its original publication.

Attorney General Kris Mayes will not resign from office after the state House and state Senate both passed resolutions condemning her and calling for her resignation, according to Richie Taylor, her communications director.

“She will not stop defending the Constitution she swore an oath to uphold,” Taylor told The Center Square, answering questions by email this week.

Last week, the Republican-controlled state House passed House Resolution 2004, 33 to 25, censuring Mayes and calling for her resignation after the Democratic attorney general’s comments about people legally being able to shoot masked federal law enforcement including immigration officers. Mayes cited Arizona’s Stand Your Ground law, but later denied she was encouraging people to shoot the officers.

The state House’s action follows the Republican-controlled state Senate’s passage of a resolution condemning Mayes and urging her to resign.

“An attorney general who speaks carelessly about deadly force against police officers has no business holding that office,” Rep. Joseph Chaplik, R-Fountain Hills, said.

He added that Mayes’ remarks were not a “slip of the tongue.”

“These reckless statements, which she has refused to retract, put officers in danger. When the top law enforcement official in the state fuels confusion, criminals listen and peace officers pay the price,” Chaplik stated.

Taylor told The Center Square that “Republicans in the legislature are attacking Attorney General Mayes because she is one of the most effective attorneys general in the nation.”

“For weeks, they have twisted her words to deflect from what we can all see — that Donald Trump’s lawless immigration enforcement is trampling our Constitution and making everyone, including law enforcement, less safe,” Taylor said.

The communications director said Republicans “know Arizonans don’t support this administration’s shredding of our Constitution, so they’ve resorted to passing meaningless resolutions to avoid talking about ICE’s abuses of power.”

“They know Attorney General Mayes speaks for the people of this state in rejecting the tactics used by the Trump administration,” Taylor said.

Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, told The Center Square this week that he supports the state House’s action to pass a resolution censuring Mayes.

Kavanagh, who sponsored Senate Resolution 1036, said the “misstatements the attorney general made endangered law enforcement and misled the public.”

“Her refusal to retract and correct compounded that problem, so she needed to be condemned and urged to resign,” he noted.

The senator told The Center Square that Taylor’s comment “does not address any of the legal criticisms directed at her.”

“She [Mayes] can’t defend her erroneous statements,” he noted.

Kavanagh said the Arizona Legislature has the option of impeaching Mayes, but it requires a two-thirds majority vote, which is something the Republicans “could never get.”

He added that impeaching Mayes is a “useless endeavor.”

The Arizona Constitution authorizes the state House to bring impeachment charges against an elected official. The state House would only need a simple majority vote to have an elected official tried for impeachment in the state Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required to convict.

In the state Senate, Republicans hold 17 seats and Democrats 13. If Mayes were impeached, it would require 20 state senators to convict her and remove her from office. That means Republicans would need three Democrats to vote with them, which Kavanagh said wouldn’t happen.

Mayes didn’t answer any questions about the call for her resignation during a news conference Tuesday morning in Phoenix on an unrelated matter.