Working hard, or hardly working?
A case of the Mondays … New DeSantis just dropped? … And no pics, plz.
The state Senate took Monday off, which means the Capitol is officially entering slowdown workweek season.
That’s the calm before the storm when lawmakers only work three days per week because there’s not much left to do besides the budget — and most of them aren’t invited into budget negotiations and don’t understand much about the budget anyway.
So yesterday, we spent most of the morning chasing down rumors about state budget negotiations.
But from what we hear, there’s not much to report. Budget battles haven’t even started in earnest, so it could be a long year for lawmakers. (They may have to work a whole six months this year!)
Meanwhile, Gov. Katie Hobbs was out stumping for bits of her budget proposal, taking photos with veterans in hopes of shoring up legislative and public support for her $5 million ask for her “Homes for Heroes” program that would provide rental assistance for veterans, as well as services to get at the root of the problems, like counseling and substance abuse programs.
While the state budget is still a mystery, the politicians’ 2026 election budget is coming into view.
Candidates filed their campaign finance reports last week, and Capitol scribe Howie Fischer details who’s got the money. It’s mostly Hobbs, who has more than $4 million in the bank for her reelection campaign, including more than $1 million that she raised since January.
Republican gubernatorial candidates and Trump endorsement sharers Andy Biggs and Karrin Taylor Robson are way behind, with $180,000 and $860,000 raised, respectively. But money doesn’t quite mean the same thing to those two — Robson dumped about $17 million of her own money into her failed GOP primary campaign for governor in 2022, and Biggs once won a $10 million sweepstakes.
Arizonans can start enjoying the 2026 election as early as tomorrow, as Robson became the first 2026 candidate to start buying airtime for a primary election that is still 15 merciful months away, per AdImpact, a firm that tracks campaign spending.
Some of our favorite fundraising numbers, however, come from the secretary of state’s race.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has about $85,000 in the bank, or just about enough to run for a mid-sized city council.
But that still gives him a huge lead over his only declared opponent, Republican state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who managed to collect just $1,700 after announcing his campaign for the state’s second-highest office.
As candidates made fundraising calls, the governor stumped for her budget, and senators played hooky from the Capitol, the Arizona House rolled on, sending a wad of bills to the governor’s desk on Monday.
Let’s look at some of the highlights.
Building Bitcoin Reserves
The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act, SB1025, would allow Arizona to invest as much as 10% of its money, including any public retirement accounts, into crypto. As we’ve noted in the A.I. Agenda, we have no idea how much crypto the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers has, thanks to Arizona’s weak financial reporting requirements. And it’s not a conflict of interest for her to vote on legislation that could benefit her digital wallet because our conflict of interest laws are also a joke. Four Republicans voted against the bill, though it still narrowly passed the House.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Finchem’s SB1373 to allow the state to create a “strategic digital reserve,” basically a crypto fund from seized assets, also passed the House — with an assist from five Democrats.
“This is a ‘may’ not a ‘shall’ and this bill basically takes an approach that 15 other states are considering,” Republican Rep. Jeff Weninger, a fellow crypto fan, told the House.
Targeting Trans People
Republicans sent Hobbs a bill to prohibit judges from accepting petitions to change a person’s gender on their birth certificate.
HB2438 is sure to meet the governor’s veto. But Republicans are framing it as bringing Arizona’s laws into line with the U.S. Constitution.
That’s based on a very creative interpretation of a federal court ruling from last year declaring Arizona’s birth certificate change laws unconstitutional: The court said that Arizona can’t force people to undergo sex-change surgeries in order to change their gender on their birth certificates.
Stopping Title Scammers
SB1310 would make it a class 4 felony to alter title documents (rather than a class 1 misdemeanor). The bill is a response to the rise in “title fraud,” where scammers can essentially steal your house.
Honoring Don Bolles
For the second time this year, the House passed a bill to allow a monument to slain journalist Don Bolles on the Capitol lawn — though it lost one supporter.
Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who has voted for the bill the last two years (after voting against it his first year in office), complained that the sponsor, Republican Rep. Selina Bliss, sidestepped the chairman of the Senate Government Committee by reintroducing the bill as a strike-everything amendment.
Bliss’ maneuver was the only real option to keep the bill alive after Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman blocked the bill for the last three years.
The amended bill now officially heads back to the Senate, where it won’t need to go through Hoffman’s committee, and can instead head straight to the full chamber for a vote. Whether that happens, however, will be up to Senate President Warren Petersen, who sets the Senate agenda.
Bliss noted that the National High School Mock Trial Championship will be held in Arizona next month, and the case they’re mock trying is the Bolles assassination.
Cue the MAGA purity test: Donald Trump’s dual endorsement of both GOP candidates for the 2026 governor’s race — U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs and Karrin Taylor Robson — has turned the focus toward grassroots supporters who want to show the base they have the “strongest MAGA bona fides,” former Republican congressman Matt Salmon told the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger. Biggs and Robson are both diehard Trump loyalists, but Robson is outraising the congressman. Meanwhile, Freedom Caucus Republicans like Biggs are strategically winning higher offices across the country, per The Hill. The success of Freedom Caucus members like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is directly linked to the caucus’s network of influence.
Dems have problems too: Much like how Republicans routed their fundraising through the Yuma County Republican Party while the AZGOP was in shambles under former chair Kelli Ward, Democratic donors are testing the waters on a plan to sidestep state party chairman Robert Branscomb after last week’s blowup between him and all the major elected Democrats, Politico reports.
“This public circular firing squad is remarkably unhelpful,” longtime Arizona Democratic strategist Stacy Pearson told Politico.
Make elections optional again: A superior court judge struck down the part of Arizona’s Election Procedures Manual that says county supervisors have to certify election results — and the ruling could have serious impacts on election security, not to mention a pending court case against a Cochise County supervisor, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield reports. Giving supervisors discretion in certifying vote counts leaves the door open to more cases like that of Supervisor Tom Crosby, who refused to certify the 2022 election results and now faces felony counts of conspiracy and interference with an election officer.
Is this DEI?: Republican state lawmakers want to force public school districts to let private school students on their sports teams as an equal-access measure, but the legislation could cause public school kids to lose out on spots on their own schools’ teams, Capitol Media Service’s Bob Christie reports. The bill requires private school students to live in the public school’s boundaries, pay any required fees and to have passing grades. It’s awaiting House approval.
Swinging for the fences: U.S. House Republicans have their sights set on building more wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. A lot more. The Homeland Security Committee is recommending another $46.5 billion for border walls. The committee’s news release didn’t say where the wall would be built, but the money would go toward 701 miles of primary wall, 900 miles of river barriers, 629 miles of secondary barriers and replacing 141 miles of vehicle and pedestrian barriers.
We’d rather build up independent journalism than more border walls.
Hot wheels: Mesa Police arrested someone suspected of setting a Tesla dealership on fire yesterday, and firefighters contained the blaze before it took over the inside of the building, 12News’s John Tanet reports. Tesla vandalism has spiked amid owner Elon Musk’s “doge-ing” of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, overall crime rates in Phoenix fell about 2% last year, per Arizona Department of Public Safety data, Ahwatukee Foothill News’ Paul Maryniak writes. However, that average comes from a 2% spike in violent crime and a 7% decrease in property crime.
May Day: Hundreds of protesters are expected to march from the state Capitol building to the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse on Thursday as part of a national day of action called “May Day” to protest the Trump administration and call for workers’ rights, per the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer. Former Democratic state Sen. Raquel Terán, a veteran of the anti-SB1070/Joe Arpaio movements, is leading Arizona’s protest.
The first to fall: The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced its first charge under a new state law voters passed last year through Prop 314 that makes it a Class 2 felony to sell fentanyl to someone that results in their death. The office says Mesa police found text messages on a man’s phone that showed Cruzita Leon sold him fentanyl powder before he overdosed.
Arizona sits toward the bottom of a lot of national rankings, like public education funding, environmental quality, public health spending and number of days of rain.
But we have another unfortunate addition to the list of lists we perform poorly on: the best places to garden naked.
LawnStarter’s 2025 rankings of the best cities for World Naked Gardening Day (which is this Saturday, in case you wanna celebrate) ranked Phoenix 432 out of 500. (That’s a huge drop for Phoenix, which landed the 210th slot just last year.)
The survey was based on a number of critical nude gardening stats, like laws and weather.
Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale and somehow even Tucson all trailed behind Phoenix.
Miami, Seattle and Austin took the top three slots because they “don’t beat around the bush,” LawnStarter wrote.
The Arizona city with the highest ranking? Well, that’s Yuma, of course.
Re crypto: the most charitable thing I can say about crypto is that it can be a highly volatile investment for speculators. Beyond that it fuels criminal activity and can behave like a Ponzi scheme. It is based on nothing.
I understand the fascination with campaign warchests that legacy media has since advertising dollars, particularly from political campaigns, is their source of revenue.
But why would the Arizona Agenda, which doesn't seem to be overtly dependent on ad revenue, be so fascinated with how much a candidate has in the bank? Is it a holdover from their big media past?
Or is it the only way to keep score about who is ahead and who is behind? Without constant polling, I guess that it is. We all love a good horserace, after all.