The Daily Agenda: A lesson learned?

What happened in Cochise County may stay in Cochise County ... It's deadbeat ad season! ... And who's a bigger John McCain fan than her?

Caving to threats from Attorney General Kris Mayes and ignoring the advice of volunteer and soon-to-be-disbarred attorney Bryan Blehm in favor of their own attorney, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors yesterday once again shot down the idea of counting all ballots by hand instead of using machine tabulators. 

Even though Mayes and basically every other lawyer had warned that they could face a lawsuit and personal criminal prosecution for the move, the supervisors’ 3-2 vote to back off was still something of a surprise. It came amid a cascade of public comments from constituents who mostly wanted them to throw out the vote-counting machines to save America. 

Mohave County is perhaps Arizona’s most conservative and conspiracy-prone county. 

If supervisors there aren’t willing to destroy the machines, roll up their sleeves and illegally count ballots on their fingers, who will? 

For a quick mash-up, this really gives you a sense of Mohave County!

Imagine the fun moments we could show you
if we had an actual budget for this kind of thing.

Across Arizona, conservative county supervisors are facing intense pressure from lawmakers to be the test case for a plan to finger-count ballots.¹ They’re weighing whether to take up the fight that Cochise County started in 2022 by attempting to finger-count ballots and not certify their county’s election — or if they’ll learn a lesson from that fight.

“Let’s just settle it once and for all,” Supervisor Hildy Angius declared.

This isn’t the first time Mohave County supervisors have rejected a plan to finger-count ballots.

But the push to finger-count ballots is getting renewed life from Republican Sen. Sonny Borrelli — the Senate majority leader and the county’s senator — who has been pushing to get counties to finger-count just the March 2024 Presidential Preference Election as a little toe in the water towards doing a full finger-count of the November presidential election. 

The county’s lawyers warned that the law is pretty clear that supervisors can’t hand-count either election, per Arizona law. But Borrelli promised he had a private donor lined up to hire Blehm to defend the county, considering having the county attorney do it wasn’t really an option. 

Borrelli wouldn’t say who the donor was, but he promised that supervisors could “pretty much” count on their support. The local Republican Party has promised to provide 300 volunteers to do the finger-count, and Borrelli even has a company lined up to train them. 

Considering how well it went when Borrelli and his friends went out shopping for a qualified election auditor, we can’t wait to see who he has lined up for the job! 

The thing is, finger-counting the Presidential Preference Election would be easy enough, as local elections director and natural-born entertainer Allen Tempert noted. It’s a very simple one-question ballot with a lot fewer voters than the real presidential election. But it’s just as illegal to not use machines to count the ballots. 

And it’s clear that finger-counting the March presidential primary is just the beginning of Borrelli’s plan to finger-count all of Arizona’s elections.

The only question is which county, if any, is willing to be his guinea pig. 

Easy on the Independent: The National Republican Senatorial Committee launched a new digital ad calling U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego a “deadbeat dad” and taking milder shots at Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for aligning with Biden’s agenda (but it fails to mention her role in preserving the Senate’s filibuster and scaling down the Inflation Reduction Act). The ad reveals a new tactic by GOP operatives to prop up the independent among Democrats in attempts to split the Democratic vote, Politico’s Rachael Bade reports. Also, a new Blake Masters ad dropped yesterday, and it’s just as weird as the last round of ads.

I would have been great, though: Former Tucson-area state Rep. Morgan Abraham is no longer running for the state House in Tucson’s LD17 against Republican Reps. Rachel Jones and Cory McGarr. Some of you asked in yesterday’s comments section why Democrats named Kevin Volk as their single-shot candidate in the district. Abraham, who was appointed to take over for Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton in 2021 but lost his bid for state Senate the next year, told us he’s resigning from the race for family health reasons. 

“I really wanted to run, and I think I'm the type of person that would have thrived in a swing district, but, it's just not the right time or right place,” Abraham said. 

Unacceptably uninvestigated: Arizona has a fragmented system for protecting older adults in care homes, causing many sexual abuse cases to go uninvestigated, a Republic investigation by Sahana Jayaraman found. The state departments tasked with overseeing adult abuse cases are months to years behind, while adult care facilities are understaffed and hinder police investigations. Between October 2021 and 2023, Adult Protective Services opened 1,600 investigations into allegations of sexual abuse and assault.

“They are trying to protect themselves at all costs,” Kevin Stock, a former caregiver, said. “Regardless of what’s going on with the people that are under the roof.”  

What’s a little gift between friends?: Glendale residents are suing the city over allegations it violated the gift clause by giving tax breaks to the VAI Resort without proving the public benefit, AZFamily reports.

 ‘Tis the season: Post-pandemic holiday travel could hit near-record levels with about 1.12 million people in Arizona expected to travel for Thanksgiving, per Sky Harbor Airport officials, Cronkite News’ Lux Butler reports. For those staying in state, the Arizona Farm Bureau estimates the average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 is about $52, a 28% decrease from last year, per 12News’ Jade Cunningham. And St. Mary’s Food Bank needs more turkeys to meet its holiday meal distribution goal, KTAR reports. You can drop a frozen turkey off at a St. Mary’s distribution location on Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Medical malpractice: A jury awarded more than $31 million to a mother who sued Banner Health alleging her newborn son developed cerebral palsy after medical staff administered an oxygen-depriving drug after birth, per KJZZ’s Ignacio Ventura

Party parity: The Arizona Republican Party said Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ filing of the No Labels party in March was handled much differently than the recent establishment of the Patriot Party of Arizona, the Republic’s Ray Stern reports. GOP leaders said they weren’t allowed to review key parts of the process, and Fontes’ office contends they followed the law but have changed procedures to include observers from other political parties. Meanwhile, the new No Labels party, which has Democrats worried about a third-party presidential candidate, has considered asking supporters for $100 donations to cast ballots at its nominating convention, per the Associated Press’ Jonathan Cooper. 

We’ve got bills!: Sen. Priya Sundareshan filed the state Senate’s first bill of the upcoming legislative session last week, and the state House already has 10 bills filed.

The latest stop on Kari Lake’s “Forget My Last Race” tour was a sit-down interview with AZFamily’s Dennis Welch, where — with a totally straight face — she quoted John McCain in an attempt to explain that primaries are brutal and that’s why she said all those mean things about non-MAGA Republicans, like McCain. 

“As John McCain said, ‘politics is not a game of bean bag,’” she said, technically quoting McCain quoting a turn-of-the-century political satirist.

Lake maintained that the idea that Biden won the White House is “impossible” and a “fantasy” and wouldn’t commit to accepting the result of her next election, either. 

1. From here on out, hand-counting ballots will be referred to as finger-counting.