Setting our agenda

Stealing from our sister ... Some races changed hands ... And some things never change.

Hey subscribers!

It has been a wild election week.

But now that the remaining election results are slowing to a steady drip, we’re starting to look ahead to 2025 and what a second Donald Trump presidency means for us and for you.

And we’re hoping you can help.

Yesterday, our Southern Arizona sister ‘sletter, the Tucson Agenda, sent out a survey to its readers asking how they’re feeling and what they want from their local press corps during these unique times.

The responses were awesome.

So we’re ripping off the idea.

It’s just five questions (plus a bonus question) and your response will help set the Agenda’s agenda for the next year and help determine how we use our limited resources.

No matter who the president is, some things won’t change.

We’re always going to keep our focus on the people and policies that affect us most here in Arizona, not the shiny objects in DC.

There’s a lot Trump can do to help or screw us Arizonans. But the policies that most directly touch our lives usually come from closer to home — your city council members, county officials and state legislators.

That’s where us local reporters are most useful anyway.

Unfortunately, we can’t pretend that a second Trump presidency doesn’t affect us.

Trump will likely pick several new Supreme Court justices. He’ll sign and veto big pieces of federal legislation. He’ll decide what to do with federal funds that our state and cities rely on. And set the tone of the national political conversation.

That’s immensely important stuff, and it trickles down to all of us.

But we don’t want to get sucked into the reality TV show aspect of his presidency any more than we have to. How many Scaramuccis he goes through in his first month will be a fun stat. But in the end, it’s really not that important.

Finally, we’ve always been up-front about our perspective that Trump is a demagogue with dangerous authoritarian tendencies, racist and sexist views, a broken moral compass, a loose grip on reality and zero regard for the truth.

We know some of you begrudgingly supported him and others are stoked he’s coming back to power.

Personally, we are not thrilled.

But the voters have spoken. He is the president-elect.

Now, it’s up to all of us to decide how we meet this moment.

We’ve asked you to fill out reader surveys in the past, and we take your responses seriously. There are a lot of things we’ve decided to start doing — and stop doing — after we heard from you.

So please, take a minute to share how you’re feeling and what you want from us in 2025.

Republicans mostly picked up ground as vote-counting continued yesterday, with Kari Lake creeping closer to Ruben Gallego in the U.S. Senate race, though she’s still trailing by about 2 percentage points.

The big exception was down in Southern Arizona, where Democrat Kirsten Engel narrowly pulled back ahead of Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Congressional District 6. As of our bedtime, she was leading by 209 votes.

Two other notable races flipped hands yesterday.

• Republican Kate Brophy McGee overtook Democrat Daniel Valenzuela in the Maricopa County supervisor’s race, meaning if results hold, the board will keep its current 5-1 Republican partisan makeup.

• And Republican Pamela Carter overtook Democrat Kelli Butler for the second House seat in Legislative District 4, covering Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. If the results hold, Republicans will sweep that previously purple district.

So, to recap, after tens of millions spent fighting over seats in the Legislature, 16 Republicans won or are leading their state Senate races, compared to 14 Democrats. That’s the exact same partisan breakdown as before the election.

In the state House, Republicans won or are leading in 33 of the 60 seats, meaning if the results hold, they will have flipped two seats.

Election officials still have around 780,000 ballots to count statewide.

We’re unsure which of these tweets is the shot and which is the chaser.