The Daily Agenda: Hank's long solo summer ends
He's been in the lab ... Kris has also been busy ... And Katie is on the case.
Y’all subscribed to the Agenda because we bring you a daily unfiltered injection of the nationally acclaimed freakshow that is Arizona politics.
But lately, there’s been something missing.
You’ve noticed. And we can feel it too.
This month was the first time in more than two years of business that the number of you paying for the Agenda didn’t grow1 — it dropped slightly.
That’s in large part because it just didn’t feel right to ask for your money when the newsletter hasn’t been as good as it should be. (You free readers may have noticed that missing daily drumbeat asking you to upgrade to paid subscriptions in the email header.)
Keeping the Agenda fresh is a two-person job.
When Rachel went on maternity leave in May before moving on to an exciting new job, state2 and phase of her life, Hank3 knew he would have to hold down the shop alone for a while. He just didn’t know it would last this long…
But today we’ve got some good news.
Hank’s long solo summer is about to end!
Next Monday, we’ll introduce you to your new Agenda host! They’re going to be amazing. For the first time in months, Hank is actually excited about writing the newsletter again.
We’ve got big plans, wild hijinks and more scoops on the horizon. We’ve been building up a big pile of dirty laundry to air about Arizona’s politicos, and we’re going to hit the campaign trail harder than ever in 2024.
Season three of the Agenda is going to be the best one yet.
Choosing the Agenda’s first actual “hire” was a big decision. Hank was terrified he’d screw it up.
So he spent a lot of time on it — talking to applicants, readers, other reporters, editors and advisors to identify the right type of person before zeroing in on the right individual.
The Agenda needs someone with a solid background in breaking news and scooping the competition. Someone who can adapt to a newsletter style quickly. Someone whose general tone and outlook would compliment Hank’s rather than repeat it. Someone with a fresh vision for innovation and the future of journalism. Someone more organized than Hank.
We found them. You’re gonna love them.
We’re thrilled to introduce you to them next Monday. But first, upgrade your subscription.
And for the record, Hank could hold down the Agenda alone4 — if that was all he was doing.
Sure, it’s a two-person job. But Hank has worked two jobs to make ends meet for most of his career in local journalism.
But lately, he’s had a lot more than the newsletter on his plate.
Since the spring, Hank has poured most of his energy into building cool stuff that will help the Agenda sustainably grow.
That started with launching the Tucson Agenda, which is already well on its way to sustainable from reader subscriptions. (Subscribe to the Tucson Agenda to make sure we get there!) But that’s just the first step.
We’re also looking at smart ways to expand the Agenda’s reach, build new revenue streams and capitalize on the world’s fascination with Arizona in the upcoming election cycle. You’ll see some of that starting next week.
And we’ve got one more major announcement coming your way before the New Year. It will be a game changer, both for the Agenda and for the Arizona political community. But it’s still a secret…
Stay tuned!
On the bright side, this long solo summer has allowed us to bank enough cash that if the Arizona Agenda and Tucson Agenda continue to hit all their goals, we could bring in a fifth reporter soon.
That would make us one of the biggest political reporting operations in the entire state — all in two years built solely on your subscription dollars. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to buy golden parachutes for corporate overlords.
That’s a hell of a contrast from two years ago when Hank was considering quitting journalism altogether.
As you may have heard, it’s not a great business to work in — and it has gotten a lot worse since the former president convinced half of the country that journalists are the enemy of the people.
But the real thing that drives people out of the business isn’t the harassment, low pay or shitty work conditions. It’s watching the only journalistic outlets in most communities, the corporate-owned daily newspapers, continue to pocket huge profits while slashing the staff and the product.
It’s being unable to imagine a future where it gets any better.
Your support has allowed us to dream of a sustainable future in journalism. More than that, it has allowed us to dream big.
Thanks for sticking with us through the slow summer.
Now, strap yourself in for 2024. It’s gonna get weird up in here.
The first 48 hours are crucial: Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office has been interviewing Maricopa County supervisors about threats and intimidation they faced after the 2020 election, and they have a lot of questions about former AZGOP chair and fake elector Kelli Ward, per the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez. The interviews could signal Mayes is expanding the scope of her fake electors investigation, which has been a very slow burn.
“We’re bordering on a cold case here,” one person familiar with the developments told Sanchez.
Is there extra credit?: The Arizona Department of Education released preliminary school letter grades. More than 20 schools in the state failed. Schools still have two weeks to appeal their grades.
Guns and airports: Flagstaff City Council is reconsidering its ban on a local shooting range owner’s ads at the city’s airport. He ran them for years until the city said the 10-second clip showing someone shooting an assault rifle depicted “violence or anti-social behavior” which is against its advertising policy, the Associated Press reports. The Goldwater Institute sued the city on behalf of the shooting range owner.
On booze and smokes: Gov. Katie Hobbs won’t extend alcohol sales for an extra hour, despite a law that would allow her to do that for the World Series, AZFamily’s David Baker reports. Her spokesman noted the games start at 5 p.m., so people should be able to finish partying by 2 a.m. Meanwhile, Republic columnist Joanna Allhands invites you to try some former toilet water beer, which she prefers to call “ultra-purified recycled water” beer that the Republic is brewing up with a local brewer in the name of sustainability. Finally, the Tempe City Council voted to raise the smoking and vaping age to 21, making it the third Arizona city to do so after Flagstaff and Tucson.
Those big-money Tucsonans: Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik deserves a raise, he says in an op-ed in the Daily Star, but not one as big as what’s on the ballot in Tucson’s Prop 413, which would bump his pay from about $24,000 to almost $97,000 by 2025. He especially doesn’t like that it would take councilmembers’ pay out of the hands of voters and tie it to what lawmakers decide to pay county supervisors. But if you think $24,000 is too low for a city council member, don’t tell Star Valley Council Member George Binney, who recently voted not to give himself a pay raise above the current $6,000 per year, per the Payson Roundup’s Teresa McQuerrey.
“This town has always been very conservative. If you figure $500 and two hours a night twice a month, the council is making $125 an hour. That is pretty good pay,” Binney said.
Build on: The Mormon Church is building a giant development of rental homes in Queen Creek, the Phoenix Business Journal’s Angela Gonzales writes. The Church owns a lot of land, and the property will contain 320 units. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management is developing land outside of Apache Junction into a recreation area, pushing the area’s rural semi-homeless RVers further out into the desert and “putting them at increased risk of crime, dehydration and other dangers,” the Republic’s Sasha Hupka and Helen Rummel write.
Just tell them there’s been some kind of mistake: A woman who allegedly stole from youth sports groups was supposed to be released from jail after prosecutors didn’t bring charges following her arrest, but she sat in a Cochise County jail for an additional week erroneously, the Herald-Review’s Terri Jo Neff reports. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels has promised an investigation into why she wasn’t released.
Batting about 62%:5 As part of a series into public records, the Arizona Capitol Times submitted 55 public records requests for all the public records requests that state agencies received in a week. Thirty-four of the agencies fulfilled the requests or said they didn’t have any responsive records.6
Gov. Katie Hobbs is hard at work trying to figure out who paid for her security detail during the campaign.
Technically, “Every Eligible American” paid for it, though nobody knows who “Every Eligible American” is because it’s just another vaguely named dark money group.
The Republic’s Stacey Barchenger has been hot on the story, pressing Hobbs to find out who exactly paid for the security.
But something tells us Hobbs won’t ever get to the bottom of it.
“Hobbs this month said ‘sure’ when asked if she would request Every Eligible American to disclose who paid. Two weeks later, her spokesperson, Christian Slater, confirmed ‘the ask has been made’ via phone call. Slater would not provide more details, including information about who made the call or when,” Barchenger reports.
Our free subscribers are still growing at a healthy clip.
The state she moved to is not actually exciting. It’s Minnesota.
Hank did consider writing this whole thing in from the “I” pronoun for once. But it just didn’t feel right. And we’ve come this far let’s just keep rolling with it for another week.
Alone in this particular case means with help from a dozen or so crucial people who make this newsletter and business work, including copy editor Tracy Townsend, Caitlin Schmidt and Curt Prendergast at the Tucson Agenda, our admin team at B.C. Creative, the Substack support team and others whose services and advice Hank relies on.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece had some bad math. Agencies fulfilled 34 of 55 requests, not 47.
No tweet embeds today. Take that, Elon Musk.