****
State Rep. Matt Gress wants Gov. Katie Hobbs to #EmbraceTheChaos and extend bar hours as the D-backs make their World Series run. The first-term lawmaker knows a little something about creating chaos.
Gress’ request is pretty simple: Push the end of liquor sales from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. using a measure state lawmakers quietly passed in 2022. It allows the governor to extend alcohol sales hours “in connection with a professional or collegiate national sporting championship in this state.”
Hobbs’ didn’t do it for the Super Bowl in February. But Gress argued there’s still time to make it happen for the Diamondbacks, who play Games 3, 4 and 5 at Chase Field beginning on Monday.
“By extending service hours, we’re giving fans an extra hour to celebrate and support our local businesses,” Gress said Wednesday in announcing his request. “Let’s come together, have fun and show the world why Arizona is the place to be.”
Who can blame Gress for trying to soften his image by cheering for the home team, right? Even people who aren’t barflies can back an extra hour of late-night revelry. After all, it’s been 22 years since the D-backs played for a World Series ring.
Yet, here’s the rub. Gress — a Republican and one-time teacher and staffer for former Gov. Doug Ducey — spent much of September orchestrating outrage over a successful Scottsdale program designed to help homeless people. He convened his House Appropriations Subcommittee on Budgetary Funding Formulas to grill city officials about whether the effort, which is receiving state funds for the first time, would assist migrants and people from the Zone, the homeless encampment in downtown Phoenix.
“I will not allow the disastrous policies of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and even Phoenix (to) seep its way into our community,” Gress said at the hearing, according to KJZZ.
Gress represents Legislative District 4, which includes North Phoenix, Arcadia, Paradise Valley, the Biltmore area and portions of Scottsdale.
More than 400 people rallied at the State Capitol on Jan. 22 to protest against legislation targeting LGBTQ people, drag shows and pronouns.
Matt Hennie
‘A positively enviable bar and foodie scene’
During the legislative session this year, Gress — who is gay — voted for six notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ bills that criminalized drag queens and the bars that host them, and targeted transgender students. Hobbs, a Democrat, vetoed all of them.And that hints at the political speed bump for Gress’ Word Series proposal. On its face, it appears benign and something we can all support as we root, root, root for the home team. Yet, there’s political turbulence between Gress and Hobbs.
Gress sponsored or co-sponsored 76 bills during the 2023 legislative session. The Republican-controlled legislature passed 21 and sent them to Hobbs. The governor signed nine and vetoed 12. And she called out Gress in her veto message for House Bill 2502, which retroactively awarded child support dating back to the date that a pregnancy was positively confirmed by a licensed health care provider.
“HB2502 is yet another attempt by Representative Gress to strip Arizonans of the freedom to control their own body. This bill, guised as an effort to support families, directly threatens the reproductive rights of Arizonans,” Hobbs said in her veto letter.
In his letter to Hobbs about the bar hours, the lawmaker gets downright warm and cuddly in his Norman Rockwell-esque take on the state.
“Arizona is a tourism magnet providing nearly 365 days of sunshine, a positively enviable bar and foodie scene, all coupled with a neighborly small-town atmosphere,” Gress wrote.
It’s likely that Gress’ vision of the Valley — one without drag shows — doesn’t match with that of Hobbs, who spent Oct. 21 making history as the first Arizona governor to appear at the Phoenix Pride Festival.
A spokesperson for Hobbs declined a Phoenix New Times request to comment on Gress’ World Series proposal.
