Article V Movement - Unite or Die
Some might have noticed a degree of territoriality among Article V efforts. Most recently, a handful of state legislators heading to the historic planning convention in Arizona have come under the belief that they cannot support both a traditional Article V approach and the Compact for America approach.
Arizona Speaker JD Mesnard rejects this posited binary choice.
Speaker Mesnard urges each movement to "recognize the synergies between the various efforts lest they all be ended before they have really begun."
And Speaker Mesnard walks this talk. He firmly adopted a policy of uniting all of the major Article V approaches to pass them all in Arizona.
Likewise, Compact for America Educational Foundation rejects the view that there should only be one approach to Article V.
And we walk the talk too.
Meritless attacks by a certain advocate of a different approach have forced us on many occasions to defend ourselves with powerful policy publications showing the solid footing and relative advantages of our approach.
But we've always argued simultaneously that the various movements are synergistic because each offers unique rewards and compensates for the other's disadvantages.
Naturally, we think the balance of advantages and disadvantages of the Compact approach to Article V is optimal, but that judgment involves predictions of future events and, obviously, we could be wrong. It would be foolish for anyone to pretend otherwise about any Article V approach.
For that reason, we've attempted to develop legislative vehicles to allow for a single vote to pass all major efforts at one time. We've adopted a policy of comity and civility among the various efforts. We've never testified in opposition to any other effort; and, when asked, our team always indicates we support all serious Article V efforts.
Today, we say to the wider Article V movement: Let's heed Speaker Mesnard's words and work even harder to unite the movement while recognizing and respecting the unique risk/reward profile of each approach as a basis for synergies among them all.
