The Daily Agenda: It's a whole new Phoenix
And it looks so centrist ... The words "DIY audit" do not inspire confidence ... And we trust ChatGPT.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego’s attempt to remake the city council in her own centrist image ended in victory last night, when one of her endorsed candidates ousted an incumbent and another defeated an incumbent’s hand-picked successor.
In District 6, covering the Arcadia, Ahwatukee, and north-central Phoenix neighborhoods, the Gallego-endorsed former cop Kevin Robinson easily won his runoff race over Sam Stone, a longtime conservative operative who worked for and was endorsed by outgoing city council member Sal Diciccio.
In a major coup for Gallego, Robinson’s landslide victory swaps the council’s most conservative voice with a loyal ally. As a bonus, the District 6 race was yet another blow to Kari Lake, who had employed Stone in her failed gubernatorial campaign and adopted him as her proxy for the city council. Unlike his former boss, Stone was quick to concede defeat last night.
Meanwhile in District 8, which covers south Phoenix and parts of downtown, the Gallego-backed Kesha Hodge Washington easily dispatched Carlos Garcia, the council’s most progressive member, by a 12-percentage-point margin. Gallego had slammed Garcia as an obstructionist who had little interest in governing and backed Hodge Washington, an attorney who presented herself as a practical public servant.
While her support for literally anyone over Stone was a political no-brainer, Gallego ran a significant risk in backing a challenger to Garcia. Had she failed to defeat him, it would have certainly burned what little working relationship the two had.
The gamble ultimately paid off, and Team Gallego painted last night’s victory as a referendum on the mayor’s leadership. But even in victory, she lost a lot of goodwill from progressives.
Now, Gallego has a centrist governing majority as she continues to build her political profile for a seemingly inevitable eventual run for higher office. But the council faces big challenges, including housing affordability and homelessness, dwindling water resources and rapid growth amid a shaky economy, crime and the U.S. Department of Justice investigation into its police force, to name a few.
This is Gallego’s council, and whether it rises or fails to meet those challenges will reflect directly on her.
And it’s worth noting that Garcia’s departure increases the chances that other progressives on the council decide to call it quits. Two of them, Yassamin Ansari and Laura Pastor, were already considering a run for U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego’s seat in Congress as he attempts to run for the U.S. Senate. Without Garcia’s vote on the city council, the remaining progressives are in the minority without a viable path to forming a governing coalition.
DIY audit > Cyber Ninjas audit?: Votebeat’s Jen Fifield has a deep dive into Republican Sen. Ken Bennett’s quest to earn bipartisan backing for his Senate Bill 1324, which would make images of ballots public in hopes that DIY auditors will find everything on the up-and-up. While the former Secretary of State and former Cyber Ninjas audit liaison has received support for the idea from Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, not everyone is convinced.
“Allowing conspiracy theorists to conduct home-based audits will not encourage more trust,” Democratic Sen. Juan Mendez said at a committee hearing last month. “This will only add more kindling to the fire.”
Tree-hugger grows profits: At the Oatman Flats Ranch south of Gila Bend, rancher and farmer Dax Hansen is turning a profit through “regenerative agriculture” practices that focus on water conservation and soil improvement and is based on many Indigenous farming methods, the Republic’s Jake Frederico reports.
Insult to injury: After Phoenix police shot and killed 19-year-old Jacob Harris in 2019, prosecutors charged his friends with the murder under Arizona’s “felony murder” law that allows accomplices of a crime to be charged in each others’ deaths. His father has been on a quest for justice against the police officer who shot him, the Appeal’s Meg O’Connor writes in an investigation published in the Phoenix New Times. Police surveilled the group of teens as part of an investigation into a string of local robberies and watched as they robbed a Whataburger with an airsoft gun before using a grappling hook device to stop their vehicle and shooting Harris in the back as he ran away. The Phoenix Police Department, which is under a Department of Justice investigation for its use-of-force policies, has denied any wrongdoing, and one of the cops is trying to get the Harris family to pay his legal fees after a federal court dismissed the family’s wrongful death suit.
Wouldn’t a call be better?: Four members of the Phoenix City Council are attempting to pressure Mayor Kate Gallego to vote for protections for mobile home residents, writing an op-ed in the Republic saying they need just one more vote. They say the mayor or someone else on the council should show some leadership by supporting the zoning changes that would keep several mobile home parks as mobile home parks.
Doing interviews is a start: New Department of Corrections head Ryan Thornell sat down for an hourlong Q&A with longtime prisons reporter Jimmy Jenkins. In his first media interview since being appointed to lead the beleaguered agency (the Senate has not yet confirmed him), Thornell pledged more accountability and transparency than his predecessor.
So hot right now: Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a rising star on the non-MAGA right and the first naturalized American from Mexico to represent Arizona in the U.S House, spoke to KTAR’s Griselda Zetino about growing up poor, slinging burgers at Wendy’s, unclogging toilets at the local community college and working as an intern on the Hill with a Green Card. And after Ciscomani delivered the Republican response in Spanish to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, he sat down with the Arizona Daily Star’s Tim Steller for an interview in Spanish about being bilingual, saying as a kid, he translated for his parents, but now it can be hard to remember to speak Spanish in front of his own kids, who he and his wife are trying to raise bilingual. The column is also published in Spanish.
“When I gave the response to the president’s speech, I told the kids, ‘This is why it’s important to speak Spanish, because opportunities like this open up. If I didn’t speak Spanish, or if I spoke it badly, this opportunity wouldn’t have presented itself,’” he told Steller.
Who’s running this state?: The Republic’s Stacey Barchenger has more details about Gov. Katie Hobbs’ trip to Oman, her second international trip as governor. Hobbs again didn’t tell the public that she was leaving the state and the “taxpayer-funded trip (was) first publicized by an English-language news site in the sultanate a hemisphere away.” Barchenger also notes that Fontes was out of town Monday on a family vacation, meaning AG Kris Mayes was acting governor. (We wrote Monday that Fontes was in charge.) Fontes came back in time to declare yesterday “State Pi Day” in his first proclamation as acting governor. He did not dress up for the occasion.
It’s not a park without a swing set: Chiricahua National Monument may become Arizona’s fourth national park if a bill from U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema with support from Ciscomani becomes law, KJZZ’s Ron Dungan notes. Turning the area into a national park would bring tourism dollars into rural Cochise County.
Do court orders mean nothing?: Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is trying to force the state to carry out a death warrant against Aaron Gunches, who was sentenced to death in 2008 after being convicted of killing his girlfriend’s ex-husband but whose execution warrant Hobbs recently said she won’t enforce. Mitchell filed a brief arguing nothing in Arizona law or the state Constitution authorizes the governor to ignore the warrant, the Associated Press reports.
Bummer: Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar officially launched his 2024 re-election campaign yesterday surrounded by Republicans like failed U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters and state Sen. Sonny Borrelli.
Appoint me!: Republican Rep. David Cook is calling on Hobbs to restructure the Arizona-Mexico Commission by reducing the number of committees and including one lawmaker from each party (and from Cook’s House International Trade Committee) as a member of the commission. In a letter to the governor, he also made a pitch for Hobbs to appoint former Republican Rep. Tony Rivero to the commission.
Make her stop: Hobbs, Fontes and Maricopa County want Kari Lake and her lawyer to pay their lawyers’ fees and face other sanctions for her ongoing lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2022 election, their lawyers told the Arizona Supreme Court, Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer notes based on the latest round of legal filings from the three offices. The justices haven’t yet set a date to hear her petition appealing her losses in the lower courts.
Trust them to write their own rules: After throwing out the ethics complaint yesterday that a consumer advocate filed against Arizona Corporation Commissioner Kevin Thompson alleging he improperly met with financial institutions that invest in Arizona utilities, members of the commission said they want to rewrite the their ethics complaint process to ensure all complaints are treated the same, the Yellow Sheet Report reports. Another complaint that Hobbs filed against Commissioner Jim O’Connor in September after he used official letterhead to promote election deniers is still awaiting action.
His interview was more interesting, TBH: Hank spoke to KJZZ’s “The Show” yesterday about what the death of Republican Sen. Steve Kaiser’s housing bill, Senate Bill 1117, means for affordable housing in Arizona. But if that’s not your jam, check out this interview “The Show” did with archaeologist Michael Terlep about bug-bedazzled jewelry from around 60 BC that archaeologists found in the Southwest that says a lot about the history of status and bling.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Arizona Agenda to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.