Just as the race to be the next governor of Arizona is heating up, a new candidate has emerged with an unlikely platform of fascinating “common sense” proposals — not least of which includes:
No taxes for families or companies
Friendly regulatory policies for industries to access land so that they may profit and share their wealth with everyone
Shutting down the last Sizzler restaurant in the state of Arizona (which is in Flagstaff)
Transporting all seven wonders of the world to the Grand Canyon State
Sounds pretty awesome, right?
If you find Democratic incumbent Gov. Katie Hobbs despicable, but also feel uninspired by Republican challenger Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schwiekert, you might want to check out the campaign announcement video from the fresh new politician on the block.
His name is New Amato, and if you haven’t heard of him — as we hadn’t before yesterday — consider this your primer.
But first, do yourself a favor and watch this video (which he posted yesterday) before we get into it.
Where to begin? Give us a moment while we stop laughing about Amato calling Biggs “Andy Piggs” and referring to another candidate as “the woman that’s running” — though it isn’t clear whether that means Hobbs or Republican Karrin Taylor Robson, who dropped out of the race months ago.
First, it probably makes the most sense to point out that Amato is not a real person.
He’s a fictional character from a show called “On Cinema” played by comedian Tim Heidecker, who, along with fellow comedian Gregg Turkington, runs the independent streaming service and media platform HEI Network. The character is well-known for having questionable political ambitions and for being the son of mysterious investor and businessman G. Amato.
You can read Amato’s obituary — or, “obitchorary,” as he spelled it — for his late father — whose last name he also misspelled and who supposedly passed away in 2025.
Amato also has a home in Lake Havasu City, apparently.
Here’s another video of Amato. Tell us this man couldn’t get a budget passed by April.
So Amato is a fake candidate — but we don’t mean it in the sense that a Republican is effectively masquerading as a Green Party candidate to throw off the election.
He simply is not a real person.
Still, Amato claims he's running as a third-party candidate with “the New Party,” which, as far as we can tell, has not been created yet.
A Hobbs campaign spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry about Amato or a question about whether the governor views him as a threat to her reelection campaign.
We hear you — this isn’t serious. So why waste time writing about it?
It’s because even if the deadline for candidates to get their names on the ballot already passed on March 23, theoretically, voters can write Amato’s name in on the ballot.
And clearly, there is some excitement building for Amato, especially from Republican friends of the newsletter like Surprise Councilman Johnny Melton and Secretary of State candidate Gina Swoboda — who, in our wide-ranging interview with her, told us that she really wanted to go to Egypt.
Plus, the Agenda has always had a weird fixation with no-chance candidates.
But considering Amato is not (yet) a real candidate, will votes for him actually count? We spoke with Tom Collins, the executive director of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission to set things straight.
Collins told us that if a candidate filed as an official write-in candidate for the November election, then those votes would be tallied.
“If, on the other hand, a candidate has not submitted a nomination paper to be a write-in candidate, a write-in vote for those candidates is not effective and is kind of a pain for election administrators, because if you bubble in that write-in line, somebody actually has to look and see if the person there is an official write-in candidate or not,” Collins explained. “So sadly, there is a potentially negative consequence ... (that) it actually does slow the process down.”
It takes about five minutes on the internet to register as a write-in candidate for Arizona governor, and write-ins have until September 5 to file.
So don't count Amato out just yet. But since he’s not even a real person, surely Amato cannot file paperwork to be a write-in candidate, right?
“I think that we are all prepared for new adventures in the First Amendment,” Collins said. “But I think that under current law and current interpretation of the law, a fictional person can’t be a candidate. That said, the law’s changing all the time — and as Mitt Romney famously said, ‘Corporations are people too, my friend.’”
Collins also mentioned that the commission has not been contacted by Amato about participation in any of its debates — about which he sounded rather peeved.
There are a lot of unanswered questions floating around — including who his lieutenant governor running mate would be — and for now, we don’t have any more answers.
But rest assured that we will continue to monitor the Amato situation — and hopefully, snag an exclusive interview with the candidate.
Time to turn off your TVs: The actual candidates for public office are busy putting out the first round of campaign ads. Gov. Katie Hobbs is highlighting her tough childhood when her “parents didn’t make a lot of money” and her days as an Uber driver, while Republican gubernatorial hopeful Andy Biggs is blaming Hobbs for rising gas prices and Republican Warren Petersen is hyping up his endorsement by President Donald Trump in the race to get the GOP nomination for attorney general.
Yet another Lamb mine: Former Pinal County sheriff and current candidate for Congress Mark Lamb continues to have a very bad week. This time, the Republic’s Robert Anglen and Laura Gersony dug up social media messages from a decade ago that show Lamb laughing it up with racists. A supporter of Lamb’s wrote a message to him saying the vigilante group Border Narcotics Intelligence “work like (N-words)” to help Lamb’s campaign. Lamb replied “Hahahaha! So you don’t do anything?” followed by a pair of laughing emojis. The vigilante had to clarify that he meant they were working hard. Beyond the racism, Lamb also peppered his messages with various forms of homophobia and misogyny.
That post-fight glow: State budget negotiations appear to be wrapping up, and each side is taking a softer tone with the other, Craig Harris reports for 12News. The negotiations have been unfolding behind closed doors as Hobbs and GOP leadership in the state House and Senate hammer out the details. So far, neither side has said publicly what those details might be. GOP budget guru Sen. John Kavanagh says he expects to reach an agreement as early as next week, while Hobbs says it could take a bit longer. The deadline to approve the budget is June 30.
“A lot of what we see in the public is political gamesmanship,” Hobbs said. “And we’ve had that before, and we’ve gotten past that and gotten to the table in negotiations, and I feel confident we will do that.”
Good-ish news: Arizona saw its first positive job growth since October by adding 8,100 new jobs in April, Gloria Rebecca Gomez reports for the Arizona Mirror. The state unemployment rate also stopped rising for the first time since October. Still, Arizona’s unemployment picture has been stuck at 2024 levels, and the Grand Canyon Institute says the state’s job market “remains weak on any historical basis.”
Salt in their wounds: The people waiting in line at St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix on Monday were pissed at the state for making it so hard to comply with new requirements to get SNAP benefits, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez reports. One woman said she calls the Department of Economic Security every day, but usually doesn’t get an answer, or the response is so late that her paperwork has already expired. Another woman said she’s trying to feed her kids, but her application has been pending for two months, which sounds a lot like what we heard last month.
Unfortunately, voters didn’t get a chance to meet the candidates vying for LD10’s House seats on Tuesday night, because none of them bothered to show up to their primary debate.
That’s especially regrettable because the blood-red East Valley district is guaranteed at least one new face this year, as Republican Rep. Ralph Heap runs for Corporation Commission.
The district’s other Republican representative, Turning Point USA CFO Justin Olson, already has a friendly replacement in mind for his seatmate.
That’s James Rogers, an attorney at America First Legal (AFL), who is now running for the Legislature in Mr. Rogers cosplay.
AFL was founded by White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, who would probably file a federal lawsuit accusing Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood of illegal DEI programming.
His group has built its brand on culture-war litigation, including school pronoun policies, Target’s LGBTQ+ Pride campaign and, in Arizona, a lawsuit accusing every county of leaving 50,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls.
Rogers’ campaign materials highlight his legal work: challenging COVID-19 vaccine mandates with former Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and suing Mesa Public Schools over student gender-transition policies at AFL. And more recently, Rogers has helped litigate Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s election-administration lawsuit against the county’s board of supervisors.
Anyway, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.