Arizona Supreme Court opens inquiry into whether Invest in Ed vote was leaked (read: to Gov. Ducey)

The Arizona Supreme Court has launched an informal inquiry into whether somebody leaked details about the controversial vote that landed Invest in Ed in the trash heap.

Put another way, the justices want to know whether Gov. Doug Ducey has a pipeline into the inner workings of the court, which includes three of his appointees thanks to 2016 legislation allowing him to expand the court from five to seven.

Court spokesman Jerry Landau says he has no idea whether the vote to throw Invest in Ed off the ballot was really 5-2, as the governor’s campaign told 12 News reporter Brahm Resnik the morning after the ruling.

But Landau confirmed that the court is asking questions as a result of stories speculating that people outside the court got inside information on the still-confidential breakdown of the vote.

“We certainly are concerned when there is a statement made that this was the vote (5-2) and these are the people that voted no,” he told me. "We are concerned about that so you do what you can to check it out."

It was just gossip, spokesman says

The court lobbed a grenade into the middle of the election in late August, when Chief Justice Scott Bales announced that the proposed income tax on the wealthy was off the ballot.

The public was told only that a majority of the court voted to toss out the initiative petitions that had been signed by 270,000 Arizonans because the description of the proposition "creates a significant danger of confusion or unfairness."

We won’t know the actual vote tally – or who voted how – until the formal opinion comes out, presumably in a few weeks.

But Resnik revealed on Sunday Squareoff earlier this month that Ducey’s campaign staff texted him the actual vote the morning after Bales’ announcement. This, presumably, to blunt talk that Ducey’s court expansion was responsible for the Invest in Education Act landing in a dumpster.

“They said it was a 5-2 vote,” Resnik said, in a Squareoff segment with Arizona Capitol Times’ Carmen Forman. “We both got texts from Ducey campaign people saying it was a 5-2 vote. We don’t know that. There’s no independent way to verify that.”

If the vote wasn't 5-2, who cares?

Ducey campaign spokesman Daniel Scarpinato confirmed to me that he told Resnik that the vote was 5-2 but says he was just passing along scuttlebutt and that he didn’t have any real inside information.

"He (Ducey) did not know. I do not know. We still don't know," Scarpinato told me via email. "I heard a rumor, shared with Brahm Resnik on background, not for attribution, as I often do with reporters I know (including you), and he chose to share it on television. I have no idea if it's true or not."

Now, the Supreme Court is asking questions, as first reported by Capitol Media Services' Howard Fischer.

Chief Justice Bales wouldn’t talk to me about it, dispatching Landau – who isn’t privy to the vote breakdown – to answer my questions.

If Bales had been willing to talk, I’d have asked him why he’d launch an inquiry into talk of a 5-2 vote if the vote wasn’t, in fact, 5-2, just as Scarpinato told Resnik.

And if the vote was 5-2, I’d ask him how Team Ducey could have known that -- along apparently with who voted how -- less than 24 hours later.

Was it just a lucky guess?

But alas, I got Landau, who works on the court’s administrative side and knows only that questions are being asked on the judicial side.

“It (the Invest in Ed vote) is confidential until it’s out,” Landau told me. “We take it seriously. That’s all I can say.”

Then again, maybe Team Ducey just made a lucky guess?

Disclosure: My sister serves on the Supreme Court. She stiff-armed me when I asked her about the Invest in Ed vote. If she leaked it to somebody else, hey, I know where she lives.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.

MORE FROM ROBERTS:

• How did Team Ducey get inside information on Invest in Ed vote?
• Invest in Ed ruling could blow up the election
• Invest in Ed, Outlaw Dirty Money losses should rile voters in November