Meet Rep. Bob Thorpe, and the Student-led Movement Against Him
Rep. Thorpe’s recent HB2120 bill drew great criticism and the need of a deeper look into his past
With Donald Trump’s inauguration impending, an empowered GOP is gearing up to enact their policy goals at every level of the government. While all eyes are on the Republicans in Congress and their rapid-fire repeal of crucial components of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans on a local level are taking the first steps towards removing long-standing policy and injecting their own, ideologically-driven laws without much resistance. One such policymaker is Arizona Rep. Bob Thorpe.
Bob Thorpe, a Republican representing Arizona’s 6th Legislative District in Flagstaff and rural Northern Arizona, has been a representative in the Arizona State House of Reps since 2013. Thorpe has recently made national news for the introduction of HB2120, a bill that sought to bar primary, secondary, and university curriculum from including anything that “advocates solidarity…based on ethnicity, race, religion, gender or social class”, among other conditions which effectively ban social justice, ethnic studies, or gender studies at all educational levels at Arizona public schools.
The bill immediately received scorn from Arizona students on Twitter and other social media accounts, and late from national news outlets, including an article penned by Shaun King for the New York Daily Caller. Despite this, the bill received its first read from Speaker J.D. Mesnard and was assigned to the House Education committee, only to be shut down by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Paul Boyer.
Despite HB2120 being dead for the moment, Thorpe’s agenda is representative of the empowered Tea Party and Trumpist wing of the Republican Party. Thorpe also recently introduced HB2260, which seeks to ban college students from voting from their university residential addresses. This move is in-line with national GOP policy, which has sought to systematically curtail the right to vote across all local and state boundaries under their legislative control.
Looking further back at his legislative history, Thorpe has consistently towed the extremist right-wing line in the party, calling for an end to the Endangered Species Act in 2014. Thorpe also introduced a bill to stop Arizona’s participation in new EPA standards that same year. Looking at the Representative’s campaign website, he lists “State’s Rights”, “Sovereignty”, and “Limited Government” as three of his top concerns as a legislator. These “issues”, however, are just thinly-coded language to expand his party’s neoliberal agenda at the expense of the people of Arizona. Thorpe received an F from the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon chapter for environmental policy, and voted yes on SB1318 last year, limiting a woman’s right to choose and earning him scorn from local Planned Parenthood chapters.
However, Thorpe’s anti-student and anti-Arizonan antics may serve as a boon to local resistance against the wave of extremist conservative politics in the state. At Arizona State University, political and student power organizations like Rebuild the Hope, Students for a Democratic Society, and United Students Against Sweatshops immediately responded to Thorpe’s new bills, organizing protests, call-in’s to Thorpe’s office, and a vast social media campaign. These actions served to catalyze the opposition to Thorpe, and were instrumental towards Rep. Boyer’s rejection of the bill.
The fight against Thorpe serves as a model for anti-GOP activism across the country, showing the power of quick local organizing against extreme conservative propositions. Attention must be paid to the GOP’s goals at every level of government, and responses must be swift in order to protect the people who would be harmed under their policies.
