A Q&A with His Excellency

There’s a trope in politics that Republicans are joyless, humorless, strange and evil people.

But that’s not always true.

Perhaps the best counterexample is a local Surprise councilman whose eccentric use of Twitter has had us cracking up lately.

A Navy veteran and local GOP political organizer for more than a decade, Johnny Melton was elected to the West Valley suburb’s council in 2024 and represents District 4. Prior to joining the council, he worked in energy performance contracting and corporate real estate.

But he’s become more recognized from folks in Arizona’s political universe for his Twitter account — where his handle is @RinoLivesMatter and his username is “His Excellency Lord of District 4.”

His colorful, unfiltered, hilarious presence is a breath of fresh air from a politician — the usual rigid talking points aren’t the goal for Melton.

These are just some of Melton’s musings on…

The recent state Republican Party meeting, held in January:

His use of social media:

And the Department of Homeland Security’s surprise (pun intended) purchase of a $70 million, 418,400-square-foot warehouse where it plans to put a 1,500-bed ICE facility:

To this day, Melton continues to talk about the purchase — which the council and city were not informed about prior to the public announcement — as though it were John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi thriller.

For the first issue of our reinstated Q&A series, we caught up with Melton last week while he was “still reeling from the pain” of Karrin Taylor Robson suspending her gubernatorial campaign — a pain evident in this tweet.

I’m still trying to think through that. To be honest, I thought Dave (Schweikert) was going to drop out first. But Karrin, she has a good sense for these things. She must have known — she saw something.

You gotta think (Andy) Biggs is going to get the clear endorsement from the president, and the grassroots people love him anyway.

There was a wonderful candidate who was going to run, but she had to back out — life things, you know? So just wanting to make sure we had good representation, I jumped in. I got my wife’s permission, and I won my seat uncontested.

I’ve loved it ever since. I love representing my residents at City Hall. It’s a blessing.

I had to make it a priority to be accessible for two reasons: I ran uncontested and the voters didn’t have a choice, and my predecessor was ill and in poor health during his final year and was not able to engage with people.

People know that they can reach me. I do make it a point to be as accessible as possible.

In the West Valley, we’re all fast-growing, and Surprise is no different. Every day, we do everything we can to try and keep up with the growth. The growth is so fast that trying to keep up with the infrastructure has been very challenging.

A great example of this is the Asante neighborhood in the northwest area of Surprise. That went up so fast and there was not a whole lot of thought into the transportation infrastructure when this neighborhood was created.

This is not exactly a well thought out design. That’s just one example of what happens when you do not plan accordingly.

Keeping up with roads and traffic signals is extremely expensive. Surprise is healthy, not wealthy — we work with what we got.

Congressman (Paul) Gosar, in his letter to DHS, talks about that. Surprise is a fast-growing city and now you’re throwing this in there. That’s another big thing we’ll have to grapple with.

We — the council — were immediately inundated with emails, voicemails. And I had no information to give my residents. We found out the same way everyone else did — through a news story.

I was frustrated. I can’t speak for my seatmates, but for me it was very frustrating that I had nothing to give them. And then I had a lot of questions and concerns coming from not only the Surprise and El Mirage community, but I also got a lot of questions from outside the community, which was a bit strange.

With all due respect, demanding is — we’re not demanding anything. We are respectfully asking for information.

My priority from the beginning is: find the information. Any channel we can get. My seatmates, the city government — same thing. Everybody’s trying to go through channels to try to get ahold of the DHS so that we can know: What is this? What is coming to our community? I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll say it again: This proposed facility will not operate in a vacuum. It’s going to be in our community and it will have impacts on our community. It’s impossible for us to plan if we don’t hear from DHS.

My sense is most of the Surprise community is supportive of ICE and the president’s immigration policies. While that’s true, I’ve had a lot of emails from residents who do not want this here. Just to be clear, I’ve had both.

Those who oppose the ICE facility are more vocal, but I don’t know if they're the majority. However, the concerns that are being brought up are legitimate. Most feedback that I’m getting are the concerns. Even though some people may support ICE, they still have legitimate concerns about how resources are going to be used.

Number one is public safety. If this is going to be a detention facility, obviously it is going to be Surprise Emergency Medical Services that will have to respond to any medical emergencies that arise in the facility. So if that’s true, how is DHS going to support us? How are we going to manage that?

The proposed facility will invite more protests, so we’re going to be using more police officers to make things safe. How are we going to manage that?

What is the impact going to be on our wastewater infrastructure? Is the wastewater infrastructure compatible for its use? What kind of water usage will it take?

This is right across the street from Dysart High School and Dysart Middle School. Will it impact the school? What am I supposed to tell these parents?

Eh, I’m not an immigration expert, man.

I want ICE to operate professionally if they come to my community. I don’t know if ICE is operating outside the bounds of the law. It’s been reported, we’ve heard horrible stories. I don’t know what to believe.

My residents want to make sure that ICE is behaving and operating professionally. And I need those assurances. Our police department has a great relationship with our community. And if ICE comes here, they expect that same level of professionalism and care for our community.

Coffee and fruit. And a cigarette.

Chef Peter’s Bistro in Sun Village, where I hold my monthly community meetings. I hold my meetings on Wednesdays, which is also karaoke night at Chef Peter’s. I’ll arrive early to have dinner and listen to karaoke before going upstairs to meet with residents. Don Rueben’s also deserves special mention; best steak fajitas!

It has to be “Frontier Psychiatrist” by The Avalanches. I think they’re brilliant and courageous; drawing inspiration and samples from anywhere they can or want. I admire that.

When I was running for office and knocking doors, I discovered one of my neighbors was an exorcist. His services include aiding those who’ve been possessed or just struggling with ghosts in general. Fascinating dude. My second favorite was the retiree who went for his knife because he thought I was an APS employee.

The humble RINO… I mean Rhino.