The plan all along

The stakes are high in District 7 … Astronauts don’t melt … And Tucson has all the fun.

The battle for the Phoenix City Council seat in District 7 is something of a proxy war between Mayor Kate Gallego and progressive forces that want to see more police accountability following a three-year federal investigation that found Phoenix police use excessive force and discriminate against people of color, among many other concerning findings.

Five candidates piled on to represent the voters in the southwest portion of the city after Yassamin Ansari left her seat on the council in March to run for Congress.

But really, three big names dominate the race.

Former Democratic Rep. Marcelino Quiñonez is Gallego’s hand-picked candidate. He’s a professor at Maricopa County Community Colleges and was once the Democratic whip in the House who used his centrist alignment to line up votes.

Meanwhile, Democratic state Sen. Anna Hernandez has support from hard-charging progressive groups like Poder AZ and Fuerte Arts Movement. Hernandez got into politics after Phoenix police killed her brother in 2019 and has championed legislation to give family members of those killed by police more access to investigations of their deaths, for example.

And former City Council Member Michael Nowakowski is attempting to make a comeback after representing the district for more than a decade up until 2021. His time on the council wasn’t without blemish — in 2016 he faced criticism for anti-LGBTQ remarks, and in 2017 he faced an investigation from the Attorney General’s Office for an alleged conflict of interest on a land deal, for which he was later cleared.

Candidates Martyn Bridgeman and Emilio Avila Solis are also running, and assuming none of the candidates pull more than 50% of the vote in the November election, the top two vote-getters will move on to a run-off election in March 2025.

Ansari’s resignation has complicated the election process, turning a simple election into an appointment and two elections on the same ballot.

After she resigned, the council had to appoint someone to fill her seat, and speculation was rampant earlier this year that Gallego was using that appointment to set up Quiñonez for the job.

When we tracked down Quiñonez at the Capitol in March to ask about rumors he planned to resign to take over Ansari’s seat, he said, “I haven’t done anything,” and dismissed us.

A few weeks later, he resigned and started campaigning for the office, yet he still won’t say if Gallego approached him to run for the open spot.

“I've had many conversations with many individuals,” he repeated several times when we asked.

By the time Quiñonez announced he was running for the office, Hernandez had already been in the race for months. And while he quit to focus on the city council campaign, Hernandez stuck around the Capitol, finishing her term as seven Democratic lawmakers quit this year for other opportunities.

Hernandez told us the last substantive conversation she had with Quiñonez — her former colleague turned contender — was about expanding the Legislature’s Latino caucus back in February.

Ultimately, Quiñonez wasn’t eligible for the appointment since it would have happened during the term that he was elected to the Legislature. But in hindsight, it seems quite clear that was the plan, Hernandez told us.

“I think (Mayor Gallego’s endorsement) just confirms that he was recruited to run for the seat,” Hernandez said.

Now, Phoenix voters who live in the southwest portion of the city will cast two votes for the District 7 seat in November: One deciding who will serve through April, and another deciding who will take the spot for a full four-year term that begins in April.¹

But if history is any indicator, city council candidates that the Phoenix mayor endorses often win their elections.

Gallego has won a string of proxy victories in recent elections that has helped shift the council in a more moderate direction, including last year when she backed longtime police officer Kevin Robinson, an independent. She also backed Kesha Hodge Washington, a former civil litigator with a sympathetic approach to policing reform.

Hernandez has publicly called out Gallego for the candidates she has backed, saying the mayor was “not listening” to community voices after Gallego endorsed Hodge Washington over incumbent Council Member Carlos Garcia, who steadfastly called for accountability for law enforcement and led protests against racial profiling under former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

While city council members make decisions about some of the most important components of everyday life — like tax rates, street conditions and zoning laws — this year’s election will decide who handles the deeply concerning findings from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The next big decision for the council is potentially entering a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice where Phoenix police would be under federal oversight. The consent decree is intended to ensure law enforcement agencies comply with court standards, or be held in contempt and face hefty fines. Several city leaders, including Gallego, have come out against the legal agreement over concerns about the cost.

Quiñonez has joined the opposition, and he told us, “I think Phoenix taxpayer dollars should stay here in Phoenix so that we can help address the issues that need to be adjusted.”

Although police reform has been a hallmark of her political career, Hernandez told us she’s also concerned about the financial impacts a consent decree could have on Phoenix residents and workers.

“The city has allowed for unaccountability to happen for years. We're in a really tough spot now facing a possible consent decree, but how do we do that without impacting every other worker in Phoenix?” she said.

Shoulda gone with the astronaut: Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz repeatedly referred to himself as “a snowman melting” while touring Arizona and the southwest last week, giving the New York Times a perfect excuse to dissect how the candidate who was chosen for his ability to appeal to white midwestern voters with his familiar dadliness is faring with swing Latino voters in the southwest. And Axios notes that while Kamala Harris is winning the Latino vote in polls, her margins aren’t as large as the campaign would like. Meanwhile, Gov. Katie Hobbs hosted “El Grito de Independencia” at the state Capitol for the first time Sunday night, the Republic’s Paula Soria reports. El Grito is the celebration of Mexico’s independence involving shouting “Viva Mexico!”

“At a campaign office in Phoenix, (Walz) laughed with a volunteer from Minnesota as they commiserated about the triple-digit temperatures,” the Times writes.

Collect them all: Gwen Walz, the potential second lady, made her first trip to Arizona on Monday, delivering a stump speech to Arizona Education Association members alongside Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, among other stops, per the Republic’s Stephanie Murray.

Government shutdown, Navajo edition: After a fight between the three branches of the Navajo Nation government over this year’s budget process, Navajo Nation lawmakers are now trying to approve an emergency six-month budget to stave off a government shutdown, Navajo Times’ Donovan Quintero writes. Lawmakers have until Oct. 1 to figure something out and avoid possible layoffs.

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Servers love it!: Steve Chucri, the former Maricopa County supervisor and main backer of Prop 138, a constitutional amendment that would allow restaurant owners to pay tipped workers less, made his case on “The Mike Broomhead Show” on KTAR.

Ask him about La Gitana: Author Richard Grant spoke to KJZZ’s “The Show” about his new book documenting his return to Tucson with his wife and daughter, and some of the wilder outlaw characters he palled around with in his 20’s in the hinterlands of southern Arizona, including Arizona author Chuck Bowden.

Big Teacher is watching: A handful of school districts across Arizona are using security cameras with AI facial recognition technology, the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish reports. Schools are hoping they can monitor for known sex offenders and other threats, as well as help discern who’s at fault in schoolyard dust-ups, but civil liberties advocates are worried the technology is not as accurate and far more dystopian than schools realize.

"If you feel that a camera is not just a dumb eye, but it's actually got a brain behind it that is now looking at you and trying to decide whether it should alert somebody about you, that can really contribute to an oppressive surveillance environment," Jay Stanley, a policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union, said.

No surprise: After the city of Surprise arrested a woman for criticizing the city manager during a city council meeting, Republican state Sen. John Kavanagh spoke to conservative talk show host James T. Harris about his complaint to the Attorney General’s Office. The complaint seeks to withhold a huge portion of the town’s budget if it doesn’t change its policies. Also on the show, Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs claimed he saw police body camera footage of a Haitian woman in Ohio who was arrested for eating a cat.

“I waited three weeks before I (filed the complaint) because I said, ‘Surely, they realize they’re wrong and they’ll correct it.’ They’ve since had a council meeting and they never corrected it,” Kavanagh said.

Today we’re laughing at outgoing Republican Sen. Justine Wadsack’s sad attempt to get people to show up and support her fight against a speeding ticket — AKA her political persecution.

But we also really enjoyed U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s request for his opponent to debate him in a language, that, as far as we know, she does not speak.

1. Neither Hernandez nor Quiñonez is running for the temporary gig, though Nowakowski is running for both the short-term post and the full term.