Group to nominate 3 for House seat

Committeemen and women to meet after Shooter’s expulsion

The Republican precinct committeemen and women of Legislative District 13 will meet tonight to nominate three people to fill the state House seat emptied last week, when members voted to expel Rep. Don Shooter for violations of its sexual harassment policy.

A large field of contenders had been expected to emerge for the job, but as of Wednesday afternoon only two people had gone public (on Facebook) with their intent to seek the appointment, both from the county’s powerful agricultural sector: grain and vegetable farmer Tim Dunn and Paul Brierley, executive director of the Yuma Center for Excellence in Desert Agriculture.

But Russ Jones, chairman of the Yuma County Republican Party, said the full slate won’t be known until about 6:30 p.m. today, after all the precinct committeemembers have checked in and people begin submitting their names for consideration.

“I assume there are people who will get nominated or nominate themselves from the floor, and if they can establish their credentials we can vote on them,” he said.

Any Republican voter who lives in the Yuma County portion of the district can be nominated or nominate themselves for the job. This includes the precinct committeemen, county chairman, or theoretically Shooter himself. Jones said there’s been no indication that might happen, and he seriously doubts Shooter would be re-appointed if it did.

The meeting will be held at the Goodwill Career Center, 3097 S. 8th Ave., Yuma. Another event is being held there today as well, “so we expect the parking lot to be full,” Jones said. The statue requires this meeting to be led by the state party chairman, so Arizona GOP Chair Jonathan Lines of Yuma, who chaired the county party until he began a two-year term at the state helm in January 2017, will be back to officiate.

LD13’s western border begins at Avenue D and 24th Street, then moves up to Interstate 8 at Pacific Avenue to cover the eastern side of the city of Yuma (including Marine Corps Air Station-Yuma), the Foothills, Wellton and the other east county communities along I-8, plus areas to the north including Martinez Lake and Yuma Proving Ground.

The district also includes parts of western Maricopa County, but because Shooter had a Yuma County address his successor is required to come from there as well, under state law.

There are 73 GOP precinct committeemen (around half of which are women) from that part of the county, but state statute requires those making the nominations to be elected PCs, which slices the number who get

a vote to 36. Those unable to attend can give their proxy vote to someone who will be at the meeting.

As a party function, the gathering will be open to Yuma County Republicans only, Jones said. “It’s a Republican meeting, it’s not for Democrats, and only those individuals who have been vetted as eligible electors” will get ballots, and sit at the front of the room.

The voting will begin after all candidates have come forward, continuing until three nominees have gotten at least 50 percent plus one of all votes cast. The names and background information for those three will then go to the Yuma County Board of Supervisors, which has scheduled a 9 a.m. special meeting Monday for selecting the ultimate appointee.

Both of the known candidates for the appointment have spent years advocating for rural interests through the Arizona Farm Bureau. Brierley moved to Yuma when the Center for Excellence opened three and a half years ago, after working for the bureau in Safford and then Gilbert, where he was the organization’s director.

“We absolutely love it here,” he said. “We were very happy to get away from Phoenix.”

He heads a research center at the forefront of making desert agriculture more efficient, working on drone and satellite technology and GPS-driven field leveling, among other areas. And Brierley said has worked on behalf of issues affecting all of rural Arizona, as well as been an active Republican who was an Arizona delegate to the 2016 national convention.

“I had been planning to serve in office, and preparing to do that in the future, and when this door opened I decided I’d better walk through that door,” he said.

Brierley said aside from his Yuma network, he also has support from the Maricopa County portion of LD13 where the majority of its voters live. “This person needs to get re-elected in the fall, so we can continue to have a representative from Yuma in the Legislature, and I have support in that part of the district as well.”

The consensus choice for the most important issue is Yuma County’s senior rights to use of Colorado River water, which powers a vegetable industry providing up to 90 percent of the U.S.’ lettuce supply in the winter, could potentially be on the line during the current session or in future years as the state continues to grapple with the effects of long-term drought.

Dunn is a Yuma native. and said he is also prepared to run for a two-year term in the House later this year. “It’s paramount that we need to get a Yuma citizen, someone from Yuma who knows the Yuma issues, to get re-elected next fall, basically in the primary,” he said. “When you start going down the list of who’s there, and who’s eligible, and who’s willing and is capable of getting elected, we kept having support saying I’m one of those candidates,” he said.

Dunn is the former fresh vegetable chairman for the Arizona Farm Bureau, so “I was traveling a lot and always in meetings with politicians, and up at the Capitol testifying and doing those kinds of things, and have been involved from that side of the table,” he said.

He and the bureau have been active on issues including water, transportation, and particularly immigration and border security. “It’s behind the scenes, it’s a big federal issue but the way to get things done is to work on them locally and keep chipping away at the solutions,” he said.

Dunn and his wife Eileen were also named the farm bureau’s “Farmer of the Year” at the end of last year, and is very active on the growing end of the industry, with two companies which sell his traditional and specialty crops, Dunn Grain Co. and Tim Dunn Farms.

His clients include Subway, which featured him in a 2015 educational video about the role Yuma plays in supplying the fast-food chain, and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York which needs kosher wheat grown according to strict requirements.

Jones said many local voters are anxious to keep at least one Yuma voice in the delegation from the predominantly Republican district, since the party’s dominance at the Legislature as well as the governor’s office means it calls most of the shots when it comes to making policy.

Jones represented Yuma in the state Legislature from 2009-13, and has also been encouraged to seek the appointment as someone capable of dropping into the game mid-session, but “of the two names that have publicly said they were interested in or would do it, I’m comfortable with those names, and so there’s no compelling reason for me to put my name in,” he said.

But the law does require the party to give the county supervisors three names to choose from, “so we have to keep going until we get three,” he said.