2024 Legislative Calendar from Arizona Agenda
This article and the predictions come from the Arizona Agenda. The Arizona Agenda is reported and written by two Arizona political junkies who explain politics and government to non-junkies. From their website: “The Agenda is a journalist-owned, nonpartisan, independent news and information company that is not beholden to corporate overlords, capitalist monsters or bureaucratic boards.”
Break out your brand-new 2024 planner! A lot is coming at you quick in the first few months of the year, and we’ve got a few election and Capitol calendar dates you might want to jot down, along with some predictions for you to throw in our faces if they’re wrong.
Monday, January 8: The legislative session begins and Gov. Katie Hobbs will deliver her second State of the State address.
Prediction: She’ll call for a moratorium on school voucher growth as the state wrestles with budget cuts.
Friday, January 12: Hobbs delivers her budget proposal.
Prediction: It’ll propose balancing the budget by cutting things Republican lawmakers like.
Tuesday, January 16: Deadline for candidates and PACs to file campaign finance reports, the first time in a year that candidates have had to file anything.
Prediction: Some lawmakers, including Rep. Alma Hernandez, will be late.
Wednesday, January 31: Deadline for politicians to file their financial disclosure statements showing junkets and other gifts from lobbyists, and lobbyists to file their expenditure reports showing junkets and other gifts to lawmakers.
Prediction: The reports won’t match.
Monday, February 12: Last day to register to vote for the March 19 Presidential Preference Election.
Prediction: Lots of independent voters won’t realize they need to re-register with a political party to vote in the presidential primary. The Republic will run an op-ed about it.
Monday, February 19: “Crossover week” begins at the state Capitol — meaning any House bill that isn’t approved by the full House or Senate bill that isn’t approved by the full Senate, before Friday is “dead.”
Prediction: Most bills will die at this point, but the worst ones will come back as “strike-everything” amendments.
Wednesday, February 21: Early voting officially begins for the March 19 presidential primary.
Prediction: We’ll see the kind of long lines that plagued the presidential primary in 2016, the last time both parties had a presidential primary choice — except they’ll be in Pinal County this time.
Saturday, March 9: Candidates can begin filing nomination petitions for their races.
Prediction: We still won’t know if Kyrsten Sinema is running for re-election.
Tuesday, March 19: Arizona will hold its presidential primaries.
Prediction: Nobody will cry fraud when Trump and Biden win.
Monday, April 8: Deadline for candidates to file nominating petitions for their races.
Prediction: Sinema announces she’s running and already has all her signatures.
Tuesday, April 16: The 100th day of the legislative session, by which lawmakers are supposed to be finished for the year.
Prediction: They won’t be finished for the year.