The Daily Agenda: The Wendy Rogers of the left?
Rep. Leezah Sun isn’t making friends … New speaker incoming? ... And the unwritten rules of gubernatorial group chats.
It’s time we talk about Democratic Rep. Leezah Sun.
Ever since Sun started running to represent the West Valley last year, the stories have just not let up. Every few weeks, we hear whispers about a new, bizarre interaction with her colleagues, lobbyists or people in her district.
Usually, they’re just kind of odd. Like the time she asked another lawmaker if they were really Mexican. Or the time she threatened SRP that all of the Democrats would oppose the company’s legislative priorities because they hired her nemesis, former Democratic lawmaker Diego Espinoza. Or the time she tried to file an ethics complaint against fellow Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez for saying their shared assistant was “scared” of Sun.
Sometimes they stretch into the patently offensive, like the time Sun called a Black city council candidate in her district “an Oreo.”1
At least once, it was criminal. She had her campaign manager steal signs from her opponent in the last election.
Then there’s the latest episode, which sparked a trio of harassment injunctions (basically restraining orders) from City of Tolleson employees, per 12News’ Brahm Resnik.
The city manager and two others say she screamed at them, called one a “douchebag” and fell into an anger-induced “trance-like” state at their office before being escorted out. Separately, she allegedly threatened to smack one of the employees in the face and “throw her off of this balcony to kill her,” per a lobbyist who heard her and contacted the police. In a very long response, Sun denied ever making physical threats, saying she’s a pacifist.
Pacifist or not, Sun’s latest freakout is part of a longstanding pattern of behavior that her Democratic colleagues have been unwilling or unable to address.
When a process server comes looking for a lawmaker at the state House, that’s a clear sign you’ve got a problem.
Almost everyone at the Capitol has a weird Leezah Sun story — and the stories are getting weirder. Yesterday’s piece out of Tolleson is almost certainly not the last. We’re already hearing new strange rumblings about her trickling out of a West Valley school district.
The progressive freshman Democrat has quickly earned a moniker at the Capitol, per one Democratic colleague.
“People use a phrase about her. Everybody says the same phrase — it’s ‘batshit crazy,’” the Democrat recounted another official remarking.
We spent yesterday on the phone with a bunch of Democratic lawmakers,2 activists and consultants, almost all of whom had at least one strange, uncomfortable or hostile interaction with Sun.
None wanted to talk on the record. Everyone thought she was a problem. Nobody knew exactly how to handle her. The phrases “lunatic” and “wackadoodle” were uttered, as was “batshit” on several occasions.
Then we called her former campaign manager, Emilio Avila, whom we spoke to more than a year ago after he stole campaign signs on her behalf.
He was happy to talk on the record.
“Getting her elected was by far my biggest mistake, my biggest regret,” he said. “She’s very abusive, she’s very manipulative, and she does whatever she can to get her way.”
As a progressive Democrat, Avila, a former school board candidate who’s active in his legislative district, was never a big fan of his district’s old representatives. So he offered to volunteer for Sun’s campaign in 2022, despite never having met her at the time.
“It just got really toxic,” he said. “I don't even know how to describe when it started. But it got to the point where like, if I was running numbers in her kitchen table, she would come in yelling at me calling me a piece of shit because I wouldn't do things (a certain way).”
During the campaign, Sun convinced Avila to take down some signs advertising Sun’s opponent. He later got slapped with a misdemeanor and a $1,000 fine. That should have been a clear sign to end their relationship, he said, but he didn’t. He tried to quit a few times, but she pressured him back into work with her, he said.
“I didn’t realize at the time that we were being manipulated. But that’s what it was,” he said. “I don’t know what was going through my head, to be quite honest. I should have recognized the toxic relationship she and I had.”
Still, the two shared campaign resources, so he decided to stick it out with her. At one point, Sun tried to withhold payment to their team of teenage canvassers, Avila said. It was their biggest blowout, and while she eventually paid them, she never gave them the bonuses she promised, he said. Instead, she threatened to call their parents and get a lawyer, per screenshots he shared.
On Election Day, Avila and Sun ran into each other at a local polling station and she immediately erupted, he said.
“She's running over to me yelling at me again, calling me a piece of shit, a douchebag, whatever. Saying ‘get the fuck out of here or I’m going to make a big scene.’ By that point, she was already making a big scene,” he said. “It was a handful.”
Avila had also volunteered for Sen. Eva Diaz’s write-in campaign to represent Sun’s Legislative District 22 in the Senate. After she won, Diaz wanted to hire him as her assistant, he said. He went through the hiring process and received an offer letter. But a few days later, the Senate rescinded it. He later heard from other lawmakers that Sun had gone to the Senate to discredit him.
Now, Sun is challenging Diaz in the 2024 Democratic primary for the district’s Senate seat. Avila is running Diaz’s campaign and doing anything he can to stop Sun from staying at the Capitol, where he helped her win a seat. He actually likes Sun’s progressive voting record. It’s her character he can’t stand.
“She talks about karma and how everything comes back to get people who do bad things…. It's great to see that now she's getting exposed for what she is — a complete fraud of a person. It’s just great to see this happen,” he said.
Let the dominoes fall: Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma is officially in the race for Debbie Lesko’s seat in Congressional District 8, sparking all sorts of rumors and gossip about whether he’ll step down as speaker or resign his legislative office altogether. Already, several Republicans are eyeing the gig, but if Congress is any example, settling on a speaker might not be an easy feat. Meanwhile, Sen. Anthony Kern is also officially running, and is simultaneously facing a campaign finance complaint for using campaign funds to pay for a trip to D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod McDonald-Evoy writes. Kern spent about $2,000 of donor money from his failed 2020 re-election bid for travel, food and lodging for his Capitol adventure.
“Setting aside the violent and undemocratic nature of the January 6 rally at the United States Capitol, the use of campaign funds for personal travel expenses violates Arizona’s campaign finance laws,” the complaint says.
And they’ll do it again next year: Attorney General Kris Mayes is investigating Cochise County Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby. The duo got slapped with subpoenas and were ordered to appear before a grand jury this month, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield reports. It’s probably for refusing to certify their county’s election in 2022 (Judd did eventually vote to certify) and attempting to illegally hand-count ballots even though their lawyers warned them not to, though the subpoena didn’t spell that out.
“Judd said she doesn’t regret her actions, but she does feel misled by the outside legal advice she received from private attorneys. ‘They all used me,’ she said. ‘And it makes me sad,’” Fifield writes.
It was me!: Gov. Katie Hobbs is taking credit for a $260 million tax rebate that she didn’t want in the budget and that lawmakers attempted to specifically prevent her from taking credit for, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. That rebate was part of the reason the state budget is already projected to be $400 million in the hole this year.
If Doug couldn’t…: Mayes is also pushing for lawmakers to adopt some “red flag laws” to allow courts to take away guns from someone who may pose a threat to schools. Previous red flag law proposals in Arizona have gone nowhere in the Legislature, even in the brief window when former Gov. Doug Ducey backed them.
Speaking of people who can’t have guns: Private investigator and former reporter William Proctor called up Mark Anthony Rissi, the Iowa man now staring down a 30-month prison sentence for threatening Arizona officials, to see if he still believes the election was stolen. Rissi was contrite at his sentencing. But spoiler alert: He’s still drinking the Kool-Aid.
Try again: Former Democratic lawmaker Tony Navarrete’s trial for allegedly molesting children ended in a hung jury, 12News reports. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office may attempt to try him again.
Seems legit: Arizona PBS, which is now under ASU president Michael Crow’s office, hosted an interview with Sybil Francis, who is Crow’s wife and a client of a consulting firm owned by Arizona PBS’ general manager, former Republic publisher Mi-Ai Parrish. Parrish previously told us that none that of those relationships will affect editorial coverage. The interview celebrated 20 years of Francis’ organization, Center for the Future of Arizona, and didn’t include a single mention of any of those relationships.
The peasants will be pleased: To solve its housing crisis, Sedona is considering letting its workers live in their cars in a “safe” lot, AZFamily’s Mason Carroll reports. The city council is even proposing putting in some showers!
Probably haunted: The family of former governor Raul Castro won a six-figure settlement from the University of Arizona after the family donated his old home in Nogales3 for a border studies program, but the university then put the house up for sale instead. The Castro family also got the house back, the Daily Star’s Ellie Wolfe reports.
Kids these days are growing up in a hard world full of Bad Art Friends and the hell that is reading your group texts in the New York Times.
But they’re adapting.
Check out the Washington Post’s intriguing inquiry into the unwritten rules of teen group texts that all the Generation Alpha kids intuitively know. (Our favorite part was spotting a quote from Jacob Marson, the son of Capitol Power Couple Jen Marson, a lobbyist for counties, and Barrett Marson, a former reporter turned political message master.)
But we wonder, do those same rules apply to the woman gubernatorial group chat that Gov. Katie Hobbs is a part of?
Upon combing the archives, we realized we never actually wrote that story. It was supposed to be a sidebar to the sign theft piece, but it got lost in the madness of the 2022 election shuffle. But we found the audio tapes! The gist is both now-Avondale City Council Member Max White and Sun agreed that Sun called White an “Oreo.” White was offended and taken aback. But Sun said the term wasn’t directed at White. Then Sun said she didn’t even remember saying it.
Sun didn’t return our call.
Fun fact: Hank lived a few doors down from that house back in the day.
Kudos for reporting the failure of AZ PBS to disclose glaring conflicts of interest (I greatly admire ASU and the Crows, but what you describe is a classic example of elites, all of whom know better, employing their own echo chamber to promote themselves and their agenda). I would note this reporting comes on the heels of your prior statement that public trust in the press has been eroded by the claims of a former president - which I think is manifestly untrue. Public trust in the press has been eroded by the bias and distortion that characterizes many (if not most) major media outlets (print and otherwise), exacerbated by the armies of trolls who push particular points of view on the rare occasion when those outlets allow any expression that does not fit the “party line” (for example, check out the comments section following opinion columns published by Boas, Allhands, Roberts, etc., in the Arizona Republic). This acts as a window of opportunity for grifters and opportunists of all stripes (left and right), reinforcing the deep divisions in our current politics. As I see it, our only hope of return to anything approximating “normalcy” lies in endeavors like the Arizona Agenda, the Gaggle and Politics Unplugged (and, nationally, Tangle, the Free Press, public news, etc.) - and, like any “medicine”, it is best served with a spoonful of “sugar” (humor). So, please keep up the good work - our future may, quite literally, depend on it.
Rep. Sun sounds like she has significant mental health issues. How in the world did someone with such reprehensible behavior get elected? Perhaps poor reporting?