The Daily Agenda: Follow us down the rabbit hole
There have to be better ways to spend taxpayer money ... Leave Mesa out of this ... And a guy chasing some Sinema mean tweet clout.
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As Republican states prepare to follow Arizona’s lead by beefing up law enforcement agencies with variations on Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s “election integrity unit,” the Washington Post has a deep dive into what, exactly, that unit has accomplished.
In concrete terms, the unit has accomplished nothing. The AG’s Office has prosecuted a “slight increase” of voting fraud cases since its inception in 2019 as it had in past years — and they’re all standard, low-level fraud cases like the occasional person voting in two states or voting for their dead mother, the Post’s Beth Reinhard and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez report.
But that’s not for lack of trying. The office has fielded thousands of complaints, tips and allegations, and has worked closely with conspiracy-peddling organizations to investigate every fantasy that comes its way. The AG’s election integrity unit is run by a former chair of True the Vote, an organization that has made all sorts of debunked claims about the election. And, of course, it has motivation to ferret out malfeasance: A major fraud finding might have been enough to salvage Brnovich’s campaign for U.S. Senate.
The Post story also provides insightful testimonials from two people convicted of voting fraud — one seemed genuinely confused to learn they couldn’t vote because of a prior felony after they registered at a voter registration event at a Pima County jail, where he was being held. The other admits to forging her dead mother’s name to cast her dying-wish vote.
“I didn’t even hire an attorney because I was so ashamed and wanted to accept responsibility for the mistake I made,” she said.
Brnovich’s election unit was born in the aftermath of the 2018 election, when Republican activists were incredulous over the idea the voters would elect both Gov. Doug Ducey and Democratic U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at the same time, declaring the election must have been rigged. The atmosphere was, in many ways, a preview of the 2020 election.
Lawmakers, of course, indulged the conspiracies with more than $500,000 of taxpayer money annually. Brnovich said at the time not to expect any blockbuster findings, as the money would go to disproving the off-the-wall allegations the AG’s office received.
“The notion that there is fraud, pervasive fraud, in our elections is damaging to the collective confidence of the public in our elections and in our public institutions,” Brnovich spokesman Ryan Anderson said at the time.
And, for the most part, debunking wild conspiracies is what the office did.
But as Brnovich’s Republican primary campaign for U.S. Senate kicked into high gear, that started to change. The lowlight came when Brnovich delivered his openly hostile and largely discredited “interim report” of his investigation into the Cyber Ninjas’ audit findings. Or maybe the lowlight was the next day, when he went on Steve Bannon’s podcast to promote that report and claim that was just the beginning.
Now that he lost the U.S. Senate race, Brnovich seems to be finished indulging the crackpots. The day before the August primary, but after it was apparent he would lose, he announced that the “dead voters” singled out by Cyber Ninjas and other groups were, in fact, very much alive.
The next attorney general may be a true believer in election fraud, though. Giving a politician an “election integrity unit” with a mandate to find and prosecute election fraud sets them up to fail — and it incentivizes them to find someone, anyone, to make an example of before the next election.
There are two schools of thought on what the unit has actually accomplished in its three years of existence: that it has emboldened conspiracy theorists by giving them a government advocate, or that it helped quell them by listening to and answering their questions.
But what’s not in question is that, for all its work, the unit couldn’t find any evidence of widespread fraud in our elections.
Abortion ruling fallout: Planned Parenthood is asking the judge in the Pima County court case that lifted an injunction on a statewide abortion ban to stay that ruling, saying it creates confusion for patients and providers. Constitutional law expert Paul Bender, for his part, tells 12News’ Brahm Resnik that the ruling was not clear because there are effectively two abortion bans, an outright one and a 15-week one, on the books. GOP candidate for attorney general Abe Hamadeh finally released a statement on the ruling, saying he will “always interpret the law as written.” Most GOP candidates and officials still haven’t said anything about the ruling. And former Maricopa County Superior Court judge Barbara Rodriguez Mundell writes about the endless implications banning abortion will have on reproductive health care in a Republic op-ed.
The estimation was very rough: The signatures submitted to the state to refer a universal expansion of vouchers to the ballot likely will not be enough to make it through, the group’s leader told the Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small. Save Our Schools Arizona had previously estimated it submitted nearly 142,000 signatures, but that was an overestimate of what was submitted, which executive director Beth Lewis told Small was a good faith estimate made in a hectic, short campaign. Lewis’ comments came after the Goldwater Institute sent out a press release saying the signatures fell far short.
“This is not us being hacks, this is us being volunteers with our hair on fire,” Lewis said. “It was sheer chaos.”
Stark is an understatement: GOP candidate for secretary of state Mark Finchem, who would be in charge of oversight for financial disclosures, did not disclose a monthly pension from his work in public safety in Kalamazoo, Michigan, among other missing disclosures, the Republic’s Robert Anglen reports. The Republic’s editorial board outlined the well-known, deep differences in how Finchem and his Democratic opponent, Adrian Fontes, would administer elections, though the board did not endorse either candidate, instead concluding that “the choice for voters cannot be more stark.” (As of 2020, the Republic doesn’t endorse candidates anymore.)
We’ve always wanted to be on a jury: A little-noticed part of the state budget this year will increase pay for jurors for the first time in 50 years, the Arizona Supreme Court announced yesterday. Instead of a paltry $12 per day, jurors could get up to $300 per day to make up for their lost wages. The courts even made a new video explaining how juror compensation works now.
Always an Arizona tie: Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers who is facing charges of seditious conspiracy from the Jan. 6 insurrection, was once an Arizona Supreme Court clerk who “alienated his moderate Republican boss” before leaving the job and starting the anti-government group, the Associated Press’ Jacques Billeaud and Lindsay Whitehurst report in a profile of Rhodes.
A super scenic place to puke: A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms the outbreak earlier this year in the Grand Canyon backcountry was likely norovirus, a stomach bug, KUNC’s Luke Runyon reports. These kinds of outbreaks have increased as more people go to the park, and norovirus in particular can survive in the river’s water and on beach sand, but can’t be killed with hand sanitizer, leading to new protocols for illness on backcountry backpacking and rafting trips.
“Don't vomit in the river. Vomit in a garbage bag. Isolate people. Hand-washing has gotten more and more strict. Making sure the water was always purified,” Sharon Hester of Arizona Raft Adventures told Runyon.
One piece of many to Griner’s release: A criminal defense attorney in Queens named Steve Zissou (who didn’t inspire the Steve Zissou in “The Life Aquatic”) represents the Russian arms dealer who the U.S. could release in exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner’s release from a Russian prison and believes he knows how the potential prisoner swap will go down, New York Magazine’s Amos Barshad writes in a profile of Zissou.
Too young for DACA: As a federal appeals court wrangles over the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick reports on young Arizonans who never qualified for the program in the first place because of its guidelines.
One of many new book bans in the country: Another law that went into effect this weekend will ban books with sexual content in Arizona schools, but advocates and teachers worry that the ban is broad, unclear and could lead to enforcement problems, Cronkite News’ Scianna Garcia reports.
A great place to start: For a primer on how education funding in Arizona works and how much schools get from various sources, check out this guide from the AZ Luminaria’s Becky Pallack.
Speaking of funding, we could really use some. If you read this newsletter daily, please consider paying for it so we can keep writing it.
Mooo-ve over, California: As dairy farming is becoming more expensive and difficult in California for various reasons, dairy cows are leaving for other states, including Arizona, the Los Angeles Times’ Summer Lin reports.
“Don’t ___ my ____” has gone too far: A few residents opposed to a development in Gilbert got booted from a Gilbert Town Council meeting, one of which was holding a sign saying “Don’t Mesa my Gilbert,” the Gilbert Sun News’ Cecilia Chan reports.
We can’t afford any part of Arcadia: There’s nothing people in Arcadia love more than fighting about what’s considered Arcadia, so have some fun playing around with this Axios tool that lets you figure out if you know Phoenix-area neighborhoods.
After Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Democratic U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in a talk where she again defended the filibuster, former MSNBC host and commentator Keith Olbermann tweeted another criticism of Sinema with an eyebrow-raising start: “When we dated, in 2010-11, Kyrsten was a legit progressive, far to my left.”
Scores of people responded with, “When you what?” Several pointed out that he once also said he dated Laura Ingraham.
We like Gawker’s headline about this best: “OK? Keith Olbermann claims he dated Kyrsten Sinema”
