A bill allowing a memorial to Don Bolles, the Arizona Republic reporter killed by a car bomb that went off under his car on June 2, 1976, be placed on the mall at the Arizona state Capitol has again legislatively died in the state Senate.
Although the bill enjoyed wide and bipartisan support in the Arizona House of Representatives, it never received as much as a committee hearing when it was sent to the Senate.
The bill was assigned to the Senate Government Committee, chaired by Sen. Jake Hoffman. It was never heard.
Hoffman, of Queen Creek, was one among a group of Republicans indicted on state charges for sending fraudulent documents to Congress in a bid to overturn then-President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
The bill suffered the same fate in 2023. It sailed through the state House only to be bottled up in the state Senate without a hearing. Hoffman also held up the bill last year.
Hoffman didn’t explain his reasoning last session. On May 22, on his way into the state Senate floor session, Hoffman offered only this when asked why he didn’t give the Bolles bill a hearing: “Lots of important business.”
The proposed bill would have allowed space on the Wesley Bolin Plaza, the mall near the Capitol that hosts memorials to several causes and entities. Passage through the legislature would be the statutorily mandated first step to designing and creating the monument. Per state law, no taxpayer monies would be spent on it. All the money would be raised privately.
Don Bolles was familiar with the Arizona Senate
It is perhaps fitting that a bill honoring Bolles would be stalled in the state Senate.
Bolles’s final morning as a reporter was spent covering a state Senate session. He left the Capitol in frustration that day, complaining to someone who stopped by the press room about the ineffectiveness of the body.
He then went to the Hotel Clarendon to meet a source who had lured him there as part of the bombing plot. After Bolles parked and walked to the lobby, someone placed a remote-controlled bomb under his Datsun. It was detonated after Bolles returned to his car and backed out of the parking lot.
Bolles died in the hospital 11 days later, after doctors amputated two legs and one arm in an effort to stave off infections. He was able to verify with police investigators details of his meetings, setting them on track to secure arrests of three men charged with involvement in the bombing.
The bill to honor Bolles was originally the idea of a reporter, Hank Stephenson, who covers the goings-on at the Capitol for the Arizona Agenda, a newsletter distributed through Substack.
Stephenson originally thought it could be an immersive journalism project: He would work on lobbying the bill and do a story on the backroom deals cut to ensure its passage.
But, Stephenson said, he was told during the 2023 session that it would be best if he kept his involvement with the bill quiet, especially because of his publication’s critical coverage of Hoffman.
“People strongly suggested that if we stopped writing mean things about Hoffman, maybe he would consider taking this bill up,” Stephenson said in a May interview with the Republic. Stephenson didn’t heed that advice.
This session, Stephenson said, he was not involved with lobbying for the bill at all, saying the bill “took on a life of its own.”
Bill gained momentum in House but met familiar roadblock
The bill attracted more support in the Arizona House this session than it had during the go-round in 2023.
That included the yes vote of a Republican who, during the floor vote, called himself a seemingly unlikely supporter.
Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, said Bolles was a newsman who stood in contrast to the “current hacks that we have in the liberal media.”
The memorial, Kolodin said, would allow modern-day reporters to “see what it actually means to do real reporting, to take real risk, to uncover things that go against the powerful … instead of just spouting the (Democratic National Committee) narrative and pretending that is objective journalism.”
Kolodin, an attorney, filed unsuccessful legal challenges related to the 2020 election. He agreed to a public admonishment by the State Bar and admitted to filing frivolous lawsuits.
The bill passed the House on Feb. 6. It did so with six fewer “no” votes than when it passed during the 2023 session.
It was assigned to the Senate Government Committee on Feb. 19, 2024, but was never given a hearing.
Stephenson said the reason the bill stalled was simple: Hoffman. As a committee chair, House rules dictate that he set the agenda for the committee.
“It comes down to one man,” he said, “one obstinate committee chairman.”
There are workarounds. The House rules say two-thirds of committee members could have petitioned to place the bill on an agenda. And there still is the option of someone introducing what’s known as a “strike everything” amendment. That would substitute the language of an existing bill with the language of the Bolles bill.
But Stephenson said no lawmaker appears willing to “use their political weight to get around him on this issue.”
Who is Arizona Sen. Jake Hoffman?
Hoffman’s career has kept current political and investigative reporters busy.
Hoffman was one of the Republicans who gathered at state party headquarters and falsely proclaimed themselves on a document to be Arizona’s chosen representatives to the Electoral College, casting votes for former President Donald Trump.
It was a gambit, prosecutors said, that would allow Vice President Mike Pence to toss the certified results and officially put the outcome of the 2020 election in question.
Even as the indictment against him loomed, his party nominated Hoffman to be its national committeeman at the 2024 Republican National Convention. The party selected as its national committeewoman a lawmaker who had been expelled from the House.
Hoffman has repeatedly refused to answer Republic reporters’ questions about how he came to sign the false attestation on a document. He told one reporter to ask the state Republican Party about how he learned where to sign the false document. He ducked another Republic reporter by dashing into a staircase.
Hoffman, a former spokesperson for the influential conservative organization Turning Point USA, faced scrutiny in 2016 for employing teenagers to post misinformation on social media websites. He was banned from the website then known as Twitter.
At the Capitol, Hoffman started the Arizona Freedom Caucus, a group of lawmakers he said would vote in lockstep to preserve conservative causes. Hoffman, in announcing the group, said its membership would be secret.
An adage at the Capitol says that no bill is actually dead until the Legislature adjourns for the year. There is a chance, Stephenson said, that it could be revived in the late days of the session, as lawmakers haggle over the state budget.
If not, he said, he joked he may try a different type of journalism experiment next session: offer to pay lawmakers for their votes as part of a sting operation.
“If this stops being a legitimate attempt,” he said, “we’re going to have to take it to its logical extreme and start bribing people.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Bill to allow memorial for slain journalist Don Bolles stalls again
Amanda Smith is a dedicated U.S. correspondent with a passion for uncovering the stories that shape the nation. With a background in political science, she provides in-depth analysis and insightful commentary on domestic affairs, ensuring readers are well-informed about the latest developments across the United States.
