The Daily Agenda: We made you a playlist

We're chatty folks ... Does the censure offer still stand? ... And if only he could charm voters as easily as the board.

As independent newsletter writers and political thought leaders, we’re often invited to talk about Arizona politics on podcasts, TV shows and panels.

Last week, it was a lot of podcasts. 

So we’re treating you to a little playlist for this fine Monday morning.

First up, Hank joined Pulso, a national podcast covering Latino news, history and culture, for a little historical context around the Mexican-American Studies fight in Tucson Unified School District and the general vibe in the state at the height of SB1070, and Joe Arpaio’s racial profiling traffic stops and workplace raids.

This episode centers on the history of book banning and the “librotraficante” movement amid the fight for the Mexican American Studies program, but it also delves into how those fights continue today on another front as Arizona and other states have attempted to ban books from queer authors. 

“There is no rebuilding a moment, you know. You can rebuild a program, but this was far more than a program. At its height, it was a movement,” Hank said.

---

Next on your morning playlist, our Tucson Agenda colleague Curt Prendergast chats with “The Gaggle,” the Republic’s politics podcast, about Mayor Regina Romero, the Tucson City Council and next month’s election in Tucson. 

Don’t expect much action out of the mayoral or city council races, he warns. (Spoiler: the Democrats are favored to win re-election.) But the city’s Prop 413 — the question of whether the city’s politicians should get a raise — raises some pretty interesting questions about what a politician is worth.

“The city has half a million people or so, and what (politicians) get paid right now is an absolute pittance,” Curt said. “I suspect a lot of voters are going to say that is way too much money. But if you look at the past, there is no right amount of money. They’ve tried everything.”

And Curt has to explain to the Phoenicians that Tucsonans actually prefer potholes and, in a lot of ways, Tucson isn’t much more of a border town than Anywhere Else, USA. 

---

Finally, Hank and AZFamily’s Dennis Welch shoot the breeze on the “Politics Unplugged Podcast”¹ this week, dissecting the mysteries of Kyrsten Sinema’s phantom campaign, whether Kari Lake 2.0 is any different from the original, and who’s got the money on the 2024 campaign trail. 

Unfortunately, the two didn’t have time to get into the real topics citizens want to hear about, like Welch’s days on tour in a punk band and which bands he still has beef with. If nothing else, you gotta check out his intro music. It’s unlike any other political podcast.

Censure away: After joining with Democrats to oust U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, throwing the House into leaderless chaos, Arizona congressmen Andy Biggs and Eli Crane said Friday they’ll accept a censure for their revolt if they get their guy, Jim Jordan, as the next speaker. Instead, House Republicans failed to vote him in for a third time and then voted to drop Jordan as their candidate altogether. The SNL sketch on the whole episode wasn’t bad. 

So many questions: We mentioned last week that CoreCivic, a private prison company that houses immigration cases, settled a lawsuit that it was forcing inmates to do forced labor (in one of several similar lawsuits). Well, it turns out the company gave independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema a max check of $5,000, and the Republic’s Laura Gersony is curious if she’s going to give it back or donate it, as she has with other controversial supporters. Sinema wouldn’t say. 

Elsewhere in the Republic, columnist Laurie Roberts wants to know what Attorney General Kris Mayes is actually doing with her investigation into Arizona’s fake electors from 2020, noting that a key figure in the Georiga scheme just took a plea deal that requires him to testify against any co-conspirators. 

State of the Nation is windy: Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren gave his State of the Nation address outdoors to nobody in particular after the Navajo Nation Council gave him the runaround on whether they would let him speak, the Navajo Times reports. One of the delegates wanted a written report instead, and by the time they had finished debating, Nygren was back in his office. He couldn’t make the sprint to the chambers in time, he told Navajo Times Kianna Joe, because he busted his ankle in a horse accident at the Northern Navajo Fair parade. Nygren said the whole move was disrespectful, especially since he always has an open-door policy to council members. 

“Technically, I gave the speech, and you could hear the echo on the mesas and the rocks,” Nygren told Joe.

There’s always the USPS drop boxes: The Free Enterprise Club is suing Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in an attempt to ban “unstaffed” ballot drop boxes, saying while manned drop boxes are allowed by law, there’s nothing authorizing unmanned drop boxes, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. 

Gail galls all: Take a deep dive into the dust-up between Republican Sen. Sonny Borrelli and Rep. Gail Griffin over water legislation he championed that would offer more local control of groundwater that she shot down as being advanced by “radical out-of-state environmental organizations.” Fischer has the detailed backstory on Griffin, who has long blocked all sorts of water legislation important to rural Arizona and is now facing pushback from unlikely corners. 

“Western Arizona is completely unregulated,’’ Borrelli told Fischer. “And everybody wants to stick their straw in our district.”

Keep Sedona orgyless: The Sedona City Council and the local chamber of commerce used to advertise the luxury destination in glossy magazines before the pandemic, but as that ended and short-term rentals took off, the city is now overcrowded with “wayward and lost tourists,” author Tom Zoellner writes in the LA Times. Locals can’t find housing, and the city council is trying to crack down on potential “orgies in nice areas” by requiring short-term rental owners to institute background checks on guests.   

More important things to do: Arizona courts sent out a press release last week inviting reporters to watch them hold jury-duty ditchers accountable. The TV stations of course jumped on the story. But they found that many of the 30 no-show jurors had pretty good reasons for not showing, including becoming unexpected foster parents, serious injuries, working multiple jobs, that they couldn’t find childcare and a death in the family, though some offered no good reason at all. 

Pinal County Sheriff and longshot U.S. Senate Republican candidate Mark Lamb had to explain to his county board why his office spent $217,000 that was earmarked for “the education and welfare” of prisoners on things like guns, bullets and new vests for prison guards.

But first, he wanted to make sure the board had all the info. 

“We were accused of spending $217,000 inappropriately,” Lamb said. “The actual total is $222,463.” 

Lamb took shots at the Arizona Luminaria’s John Washington for reporting on the loose spending and told the board that bullets and guns were, in fact, meant for the welfare of inmates, since the guns, bullets and vests protect the guards who protect the inmates. 

It doesn’t appear other sheriffs follow that logic. In Pima County, for example, those funds are used for “tablets, movies, soda, popcorn, air conditioning to replace swamp coolers, etc,” the Pima County Sheriff’s Office told Washington. 

1. Yes, even TV shows need podcasts these days.