As the brilliant Jon Stewart demonstrated during Wednesday’s edition of The Daily Show, Arizona Senate Bill 1026 ultimately was destined to fail not because it was deemed to be morally repugnant, but because it was regarded to be bad for business.
Politico explains in detail how business leaders pushed Brewer hard to strike down the bill before it became law.
“We were talking about losing the Super Bowl. Can you imagine the economic impact?” Senator John McCain told Poltico. “We saw that movie before with S.B. 1070. It took us a long time to recover from that.” McCain was referring to the NFL’s decision to remove Super Bowl XXVII from Arizona because the state refused to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
It wasn’t just the NFL that squeezed Arizona to abandon a law that could have created all sorts of problems and issues and lawsuits. A quartet of influential business groups urged Brewer to veto the bill. And the Arizona Cardinals have a key role with three of the organizations: Cardinals president Michael Bidwill is a member of the Greater Phoenix Leadership board of directors; Cardinals general counsel David Koeninger is a member of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee; and Cardinals executive V.P. and COO Ron Minegar is a member of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Board of Directors.
So while the NFL deserves credit for firing a shot across the bow, the Cardinals merit some recognition for their involvement in what was a more direct plea aimed at preventing the controversial bill from becoming law.
