Gov. Jan Brewer is out raising money to make good on her promise to protect the Republicans who supported her controversial Medicaid expansion plan. Arizona Public Radio’s Howard Fischer reports.
Brewer put together a coalition of all the Democratic lawmakers and a handful of Republicans to approve the plan. It taps the Affordable Care Act to enroll more people and levies what amounts to a tax on hospitals to pay the state’s share. Now many of those Republicans are facing primary challenges from some who contend that vote shows they are not conservative enough. So Brewer went out and has raised nearly $620,000 so far to help them beat back those challengers.
“Whatever I can do to help them, I will help them because they came together and they delivered the goods. And they were threatened. I mean, there were awful things that were said and done to those people,” Brewer said.
Brewer also bristled at the suggestion that she — and those who supported her Medicaid expansion — are not true Republicans.
“I think what we are is — we are the real Republicans. I mean, I’ve been a Republican, a conservative Republican, long before some of those people have been born,” she said.
In forming an independent expenditure committee Brewer can spend as much as she wants to get anyone elected as long as there is no coordination with the candidate.
