An optical illusion

The campaign mailer is “a little strange” … He’s reaching higher than the stars … And UnotArizona.

Voters could be forgiven for thinking congressional candidate Andrew Horne is running with the endorsement of Ruben Gallego. 

After all, Horne’s campaign has been pummeling mailboxes across the district with a mailer boldly including his headshot right next to Gallego and many other prominent Democrats seeking state-level offices in Arizona. 

“Let’s vote for Democrats who will fight for our reproductive freedom!” it says. 

Based on the mail and texts he has sent out, it would appear the 10 Democrats are all running on a slate together, or at least that they had endorsed each other. 

But Gallego hasn’t endorsed Horne or any other candidate in the race for Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. 

In fact, it doesn’t appear that any of the candidates whose names and photos Horne has been using have endorsed him or even agreed to let him use their photo in his mail. We spoke to five out of nine Democrats on the flier, all of whom said they didn’t seek his endorsement. 

And they didn’t offer Horne their endorsement either.

But being associated with big names like Gallego, the presumed Democrat nominee for one of Arizona’s U.S. Senate seats, could be a big boost to Horne, a first-time candidate with little name ID. 

And if Democratic voters believe Horne is “on the ticket” with other popular Democrats, it might give him a chance to break out of the pack in the crowded six-way primary to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert in this battleground district. 

And that seems to be the point. 

When we asked Horne why he sent out the mailer, which looks a lot like the mailers that candidates running on a slate together send out, he didn’t have a good answer. 

“That’s a good question. I’m not gonna comment on that right now,” he told us. 

The mailer is not a lone incident. 

Horne also sent out a text endorsing Gallego, some of the same legislative candidates on the flier, as well as corporation commissioner and county-level candidates, starting the message with “Your personalized Voter Guide is here!” 

Prominent progressive groups like Planned Parenthood and Save our Schools Arizona often put together similar “voter guides” to help identify candidates who share their pro-choice or pro-education values. 

But Horne, who’s never held or even run for political office before, sent out a voter guide with names he thinks you should vote for – including him. 

If Horne had coordinated the ads with the other candidates, they would have had to pay their fair share of the cost, per campaign finance laws. But by not telling the candidates ahead of time, Horne circumvented the convoluted Federal Election Commission rules that require the endorsed candidate to report the mailed endorsement. 

Rep. Judy Schwiebert, who’s fighting for a Senate seat in the competitive Legislative District 2, has made a point not to hand out endorsements in Horne’s race, which is largely a toss-up. 

“It feels a little strange since I didn't really know about it. In general, it's nice to have endorsements, although I generally know about the endorsements before somebody puts that out,” Schweibert said. 

While most candidates we talked to were surprised they were featured on the flier — and adamant they haven’t endorsed Horne — some of them appreciated the free advertising. 

“I think he's just being a nice guy. Honestly, that's how he is,” LD8 House candidate Janeen Connolly told us. 

Most of them, however, would have appreciated a heads-up. Stephanie Simacek is also running a competitive race to take one of LD2’s House seats. 

“I would have appreciated being asked because I think that sometimes it leads to assumptions,” she said.

Gaining steam: Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly outperformed President Joe Biden by five points in battleground states, according to a memo from Democratic polling group BlueLabs, Politico reported. Kelly was one of four politicians who performed the strongest, and the only one who wasn’t a governor. The others were Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The memo came out just a few days after the New York Times reported big-time Democratic donors were pointing to Kelly as a possible replacement for Biden as the party’s nominee.

Gloves coming off: A long-running feud between two Phoenix-area lawyers became a whole lot more public this summer, the Phoenix New Times’ Zach Buchanan writes in a thorough account of Brandon Rafi and Gil Negrete’s “real lawyer beef.” The well-known Rafi filed a defamation lawsuit and accused Negrete of calling in a fake bomb threat to his law offices (it was actually a local sixth-grader), while Negrete lambasted Rafi on the “Call Gil Show” podcast, calling him a “punk ass bitch” with no trial experience. 

Taking center stage: Kari Lake was the belle of the ball at the Republican National Convention this week. After years of hearing her talk about Arizona’s elections, delegates from across the country now seek her out to take a photo with her, KTAR’s Danny Shapiro reports. Even those who didn’t get to meet her in person got a full dose of Lake’s bombast when she spoke on Tuesday and led the crowd in a “build the wall” chant, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports. That chant probably landed well with the Arizona delegates in the audience, who generally support the Republican Party’s plan to deport millions of people, Cronkite News’ Grey Gartin reports. It didn’t land so well with the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L'Heureux, who said Lake leaned on the “same tired MAGA hits,” including bashing the news media. All of which broadened Lake’s appeal among Arizona’s Republican voters by “zero,” the Republic’s Laurie Roberts writes. 

Men behaving badly: A meeting of the LD14 Republican Party in Gilbert nearly came to blows, the Daily Independent’s Tom Blodgett reports. State Rep. Laurin Hendrix said he had a photo purportedly showing rival candidate Lalani Hunsaker’s son hanging out with the Gilbert Goons. Chaos ensued. Hunsaker’s husband cursed at GOP Chair Andrew Adams and headbutted him, although it’s not clear whether he actually connected with that headbutt. Hunsaker later said the photo wasn’t even of her son and she didn’t want Hendrix to “character assassinate” him.

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A bad mix: Every summer, health officials in Maricopa County are seeing more deaths that aren’t just heat-related. They’re caused by a mix of heat and drugs, KJZZ’s Katherine Davis-Young reports. Roughly two-thirds of all heat deaths in Maricopa County last year involved substances. Far and away the most common was methamphetamine, which was involved in half of all heat deaths.

Trouble in paradise: Former President Donald Trump and his recent vice presidential pick J.D. Vance are backing two different candidates in the race for the seat in Arizona’s Congressional District 8, the Republic’s Laura Gersony reports. Trump endorsed Abe Hamadeh, while Vance backed fellow Peter Thiel acolyte Blake Masters. An added twist is Trump endorsed Masters back in 2022, when Masters ran for Senate, and Masters has been recycling that endorsement to make it look like the former president still backs him.

Five years after the University of Arizona trumpeted its rebranding as “UArizona,” the school undid that rebranding in just about the meekest way possible. UA officials added a note in the school’s written style guide for employees that said, as of July 1, “‘UArizona’ is officially retired and should no longer be used except in pre-existing instances or social media handles.” 

While ASU fans crowed in delight to FOX 10 Phoenix, a UA spokesman claimed they never actually rebranded, the Arizona Daily Star’s Ellie Wolfe reports. That’s a little hard to swallow, given that the 2019 “UArizona” campaign was so big Saturday Night Live made fun of it.