Find more Claytoonz here.

Kirk Adams, Governor Doug Ducey’s chief of staff, announced this morning that after four years he would be stepping down.

“Some personal news: After 4 yrs as chief of staff for @dougducey, the time has come for me to depart from this role,” he tweeted. “I couldn’t be more grateful and more honored to have had this opportunity.”

Prior to his role as chief of staff, Adams served in the Arizona House of Representatives from 2006-2011, becoming Speaker of the House in 2009. During his tenure, Adams championed one of the largest tax reform and economic development packages in state history.

According to the Arizona Republic, Adams submitted his letter of resignation on Nov. 12, just six days after the election, writing “four years ago next Wednesday you asked me to serve as your chief of staff…I have exhausted myself in a good cause and a work worth doing. I take great satisfaction in the record of accomplishment over the last four years and even greater satisfaction in the validating victory you enjoyed last Tuesday night.”

“Kirk Adams has been a critical member of my team and key to our successes,” Ducey said in a statement. “I am grateful to Kirk for his service and for his work to build an exceptionally talented team that will help continue Arizona’s success as a national leader for opportunity, jobs and economic growth.”

From helping to develop #Prop123, to championing #20x2020 and the #ArizonaOpioidEpidemicAct last session, Kirk has made invaluable contributions to improve our state. 3/4

— Doug Ducey (@dougducey) November 26, 2018

Ducey added that Adams helped lead the Governor’s Office through a number of events including: tackling the billion-dollar budget deficit, negotiating Proposition 123 which increased K-12 education funding by $3.5 billion over ten years, working with the 2018 Legislature to pass the 20×2020 teacher pay increase, and the Arizona Opioid Epidemic Act. He also helped oversee the Capitol’s memorial service for the late Senator John McCain in August.

According to the National Governors Association, his four-year tenure exceeds the average length of a gubernatorial chief of staff, which is less than three-years.

“I hope you will allow me to remain at your side as a source of counsel and assistance, both in the near term and long term, and for whatever you do next. I have plenty of gas left in the tank,” Adams wrote. “Thank you again Governor, for your mentoring, your trust in me, and most of all your friendship. It means the world to me.”

Adams will remain on staff until Dec. 14.

Find more Claytoonz here.

Find more Claytoonz here.

Find more Claytoonz here.

Find more Claytoonz here.

Less than a day after Sen. Jeff Flake vowed to use whatever remaining leverage he has to push a bill protecting the Mueller investigation, he saw that leverage pulled away from him Thursday, at least for now.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley delayed action on 15 judicial nominees – including Bridget Bade from Arizona – who were scheduled to have their nominations voted on Thursday.

Grassley said the nominees were withheld to settle a scheduling conflict with committee Democrats, who complained that nomination hearings were held during the Senate’s October recess. He did not indicate when they might come up for a vote.

The delay temporarily scuttles Flake’s plan to oppose all judicial nominees until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agrees to allow a vote on the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act.

That bill, approved by the Judiciary Committee in April but stalled in the full Senate since, would prohibit the White House from interfering in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump has often referred to the probe as a witch-hunt.

Flake, an Arizona Republican, and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, said Wednesday that Trump’s decision to force out former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replace him with a critic of the Mueller investigation makes it more important than ever to pass the bill protecting the probe.

They are also concerned that the acting attorney general, Sessions’ former Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker, has not been approved by the Senate, which they said is required.

“When you have the attorney general fired and when you have the oversight for the investigation moved to someone who has not received Senate confirmation, who has expressed open hostility to the Mueller investigation, there’s a problem, and I think most of our colleagues feel the same way,” Flake said Wednesday.

But Grassley challenged the claim that Whitaker needs Senate approval to work in an acting capacity, and called it “incredibly ironic that members are now distraught over Attorney General Sessions’ resignation last week” when they so vigorously challenged his appointment in 2017.

“President Trump acted in strict conformance with the law, and Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s appointment is perfectly legal,” said Grassley, adding the he is confident Whitaker “will carry out the functions of the Justice Department to the best of his abilities.”

Grassley vowed that the Senate will “properly vet” whomever Trump nominates to be the next attorney general, saying the Senate is “never a rubber stamp for any president.”

Flake remained firm Thursday in his criticism of Whitaker’s appointment.

“To have the president go and elevate someone who would then stop the probe, that has to provoke a constitutional crisis,” Flake said. “I think all of us on my side of the aisle have said that at one point or another.”

He said he stands by his original plan to withhold his vote on judicial nominees – a threat that has to be taken seriously with Republicans holding only a one-vote majority on the Judiciary Committee.

Flake conceded that McConnell could simply wait until January, when Flake will be out of office, or call in the vice president as tie-breaker, so that nominations could “theoretically … still pass” without his vote. But that hasn’t changed his plan.

“All I can do is say, ‘I’m not going to vote to advance anybody who is before the committee, and I won’t vote for any of these nominees until we have a vote on the Mueller probe,'” Flake said.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

Find more Claytoonz here. 

Arizona Sen.-elect Kyrsten Sinema was already in Washington Tuesday, just one day after Republican Martha McSally conceded in the one of the narrowest, most closely watched races in the country.

With more than 2.2 million ballots counted as of Tuesday evening, Sinema had a 38,295-vote lead, a 1.72 percentage point margin that made her not only the first woman elected to the Senate from Arizona, but also the first Democrat to hold the seat since Dennis DeConcini in 1994.

“I think she did it by positioning herself as a centrist, as somebody that would work on both sides, and that’s what I’d like to think I was able to do for my 18 years,” said DeConcini, echoing most experts on the race to replace Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.

While Sinema could claim the middle ground early, experts noted that McSally was forced to tack right to survive a bitter primary against two conservative challengers – a move that cost her in the general.

“McSally’s embracing of Trump sealed her GOP victory while it alienated key swing voters, for women and moderate independents, and it ultimately cost her the general election,” said Mike Noble, chief pollster at OH Predictive Insights.

Sinema, he said, “planted her flag right in the middle and she never deviated.”

Leah Askarinam, an analyst for Inside Elections, said McSally’s “strategy was riling up the base and playing to the right, rather than moderates … and it seems like there wasn’t enough of that Trump base to win an election for a Republican statewide.”