Oscar De Los Santos did not show up.
In mid-May 2024, the Arizona House Ethics Committee convened to hear complaints about his conduct on the House floor. De Los Santos, then the Democrats' assistant minority leader, stayed away. So did Rep. Analise Ortiz of Phoenix, who had joined him in the outburst. They sent a lawyer. Committee chairman Rep. Joseph Chaplik of Scottsdale called the absence "completely disrespectful."
On June 4, a bipartisan panel — three Republicans and two Democrats — found him guilty anyway. Unanimously. Three separate House rules. Ortiz was found on one. De Los Santos on three.
That is the file: he skipped the hearing, and a bipartisan committee still ruled against him.
The conduct was not subtle. On April 10, 2024, after Republicans recessed the chamber rather than allow a vote to repeal Arizona's 1864 near-total abortion ban, De Los Santos left his assigned desk. He and Ortiz led chants of "Shame," "Hold the vote," "Save women's lives," and "Blood on your hands," pointing across the aisle as they walked. They interrupted Rep. Matt Gress of Phoenix at a press gaggle on the floor and called him a liar. The Center Square recorded it. The committee noted the scene was filmed from many angles, including Ortiz's own.
A day earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court had made the territorial ban enforceable again. Tempers were high. The bipartisan panel did not treat that as an excuse.
Its report on De Los Santos is blunt. He began shouting before the House had recessed and without recognition from the chair. He used language "personally offensive to members of the House." He walked the aisle "while pointing his finger toward the members and continuing to shout loudly." The findings: Rule 1 (institutional integrity), Rule 18 (decorum and debate), and Rule 19 (impermissible debate). The committee said the conclusions were necessary "to protect the integrity of the House," and that calling the behavior anything other than disorderly would "render the rules meaningless." It said both members used "inappropriate and insulting language to impugn" colleagues' character and that the episode undermined "the dignity and integrity of the House" on a national stage.
Neither member disputed the underlying facts. In written responses, they conceded the protest was loud and "formally out of order." After the bipartisan guilty finding landed, their public line flipped: the process was "nothing more than another Republican attempt to suppress speech that they disagree with."
Concede the conduct. Skip the hearing. Call the verdict a speech crackdown — even with Democrats on the panel voting against you.
Republicans who filed the complaints overreached with words like "insurrection" and "riot." Nobody was assaulted. That hyperbole does not erase the rules De Los Santos broke, the hearing he skipped, or the bipartisan vote that followed.
