Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Conservative leader Michael Johns says state ballot initiatives may make Arizona national model of conservative reform

With a critical July 3 deadline approaching for the presentation of hundreds of thousands of signatures from Arizona residents that could potentially place several groundbreaking immigration, health care and civil rights-related initiatives on Arizona ballots this November, conservative leader Michael Johns on Sunday stated that Arizona was on the cusp of potentially emerging as a national model for conservative state-based policy reform on some of the most important issues currently confronting the state and nation.

Johns said that he felt that two important immigration ballot initiatives--one that will empower Arizona law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration statutes and another that will make criminal trespass laws applicable to illegal immigrants in Arizona--would represent groundbreaking state initiatives to tighten and enforce illegal immigration statutes, making Arizona a national model of state-based immigration law and law enforcement.

Speaking publicly for the first time as newly elected President of the Phoenix-area Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM), Johns told the Sonoran Alliance blog, the most widely-read political blog in the state, that he was actively supporting two additional ballot initiatives, one that would permit Arizona residents to choose their own health insurance (including from out-of-state insurers), and the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (ACRI), which would prohibit the consideration of race or gender in state hiring and state university admission considerations.

Johns, a health care industry executive, is a former Heritage Foundation policy analyst and White House speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush.

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