There are few names more widely recognized in American politics than U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent and elder statesman of leftism who has twice posed a formidable challenge to the Democratic Party’s mainstream candidates in presidential primaries.
So, why did Sanders reach down from the halls of power in Washington D.C. to throw his weight behind a candidate for city office in a Phoenix-area suburb of fewer than 200,000 people? And with the endorsement coming just days before polls close in the election, will it even matter?
Any answer would be speculative, but by tonight, it might be more clear.
On Friday, Sanders endorsed Tempe City Council candidate Bobby Nichols — a Democrat running with the support of the Phoenix chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America — with about 100 hours to go before polls close in the election.
Nichols, along with candidate Brooke St. George, are challenging incumbent Councilwomen Jennifer Adams and Berdetta Hodge for two seats in a runoff election. Back during the first round of voting in March, Councilwoman Arlene Chin garnered enough votes to win a seat outright, and two other candidates were eliminated from contention.
The last-minute endorsement makes sense on paper: Nichols has centered his campaign around populist economic issues like housing affordability — much in the same vein as Sanders’ previous campaign messaging and that of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — as Tempe becomes increasingly expensive for working and poor families.
“Tempe has the land, the resources, and the talent to be a city where working families can thrive. What we’ve been missing is leadership willing to fight for it,” Nichols said in a press release announcing the decision. “When this council ignored Tempe residents, we organized, we fought back, and we made them listen.”
Nichols was referring to a campaign he helped lead against the council as city leaders battled to stop residents from feeding unhoused people in city parks. The council voted 7-0 to pass a controversial ordinance restricting activity in the parks in the face of widespread opposition, and Nichols drafted a referendum to repeal the ordinance. When it garnered about 4,000 signatures and the council was forced to send it to the ballot or repeal the new law, its members opted for the latter option in another lockstep vote.
Now, the city is working to pass a new version of the ordinance, which Nichols and other critics have already criticized as too similar to the one the council repealed.
Tempe resident Ron Tapscott is one such opposition figure — one whom Mayor Corey Woods compared to a “crazy uncle” in a tape of a secret meeting that was released because the council violated open records law.
“It is time for the citizens of the city to once again address the fundamental issues of neighborhood and community,” Tapscott said in an email. “And once again it is time for us to realize our municipal government is being led by the wrong people.”
Both Nichols and St. George have been attacked by a new Arizona PAC using out-of-state funds from a Republican super PAC to claim the two are “socialists” who will “make Tempe a magnet for the homeless and crime.”
The socialist claim isn’t remotely true for St. George, but Nichols has embraced the Democratic Socialists of America, garnering an endorsement and key organizing support from the party to which Sanders has deep ties.
Still, that Sanders and his staff would be paying attention to the down-ballot race is a bit surprising. But it’s part of a larger strategy by the king of American progressive politics to support candidates with similar positions as he enters the final stages of his career, as the New York Times reported.
Sanders’ endorsement of Nichols was one of 79 the senator doled out last week, with the vast majority of them going to state and local candidates. Another five Arizona candidates notched support as well, including Democratic state Sen. Analise Ortiz and state Reps. Lorena Austin, Mariana Sandoval and Brian Garcia.
But while those candidates have months to tout their Sanders endorsements in primaries and the November election, Nichols only has four days to spread the word and convince more progressive Tempe voters to mobilize.
It seems the announcement wasn’t timed specifically for the council election, and it’s unclear what kind of an impact it’ll have. It could be argued that most progressive voters were already likely to vote for Nichols, but the campaign believes the endorsement could shake some younger or less-engaged voters on the fence or unmotivated to vote.
“The biggest thing is the traction that we got on social media, and that turned into traction over the weekend on the doors,” Mikah Dyer, Nichols’ campaign manager, told us. “The endorsement energized our base and our volunteers to come out and support the campaign even more. It came at a pivotal moment, and it was definitely to our benefit that it came at this time.”
Dyer said that the campaign, in the final days, spent its time persuading voters who hadn’t seen their ballot yet to fill it out and drop it off — the demographic he believes will be most excited by the endorsement. He also added that as of Monday morning, more ballots had been submitted than at the same time in the March election, indicating that there will probably be a higher turnout.
The Sanders endorsement is essentially the only eye-catching one of the local race — but there was another notable non-endorsement.
Last week, the Republic’s Lauren De Young noted that in April, Councilwoman Adams recently called Councilwoman Chin a “fucking bitch” in a late-night, typo-laden email as she was getting ready to tout an endorsement from Chin. St. George — the challenger candidate who used to work for Adams at City Hall — has at several points during the campaign criticized the councilwoman’s personal conduct as inappropriate.
It’s a hilarious tale of two endorsements.
With about 12 hours before ballots are due, the Bernie backing might just be the push Nichols needs to get over the hump and knock off an incumbent — and it may even help lift St. George, who received more votes in the March primary, along the way.
Please welcome the Agenda’s newest intern, George Headley. While you may only see him once in a blue moon for announcements in the newsletter (like this one), he is focused on some special projects for the election season and beyond.
His first project is to improve and automate (to the fullest degree possible) our public records request system. Plus, we’ve got a bunch of other ideas that he and the team will crank out through the midterm elections.
George has worked in numerous statewide and national outlets as a managing editor for the State Press, a journalism fellow for Small Wars Journal, an intern fact checker for PolitiFact in Washington, D.C. and an editorial intern at KJZZ. He is an Arizona native and a keen follower of all environmental, political and business news.
George in D.C. this spring.
George recently graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication with a bachelor’s degree and is spending his summer with us before he heads off to graduate school for a master’s degree in Mass Communication in August.
When he’s not in the office, you can find him pretty much where every other guy in their early 20s’ is at: a desk playing video games and chugging coffee from Dunkin’.
“I’m excited to share what the team over at the Arizona Agenda is preparing for its readers. I have been a long-time fan of the newsletter in my student days and can’t wait to bring my own skillset and ideas to an already accomplished team of journalists,” George quotes himself as saying.1
Wanna help George get started?
Great! You can help increase his workload by submitting your own ideas for public records requests using this form. We'll take these ideas and turn them into real inquiries the newsroom will follow up on with various agencies and institutions. All we are asking is for your creativity — we’ll handle the rest.
Don't understand what a public records request is or how any of this this works? Here's a good primer from the archives.
Click the link above, or the button below!
Mud-slinging bonanza: If you were within 100 miles of Phoenix last week, better check your clothes for mud. GOP candidates threw around a metric ton of it in a series of colorful debates for Arizona secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction and attorney general. Meanwhile, Jay Feely, a Republican candidate in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, is fending off allegations that he “imported Haitians,” 12News’ Brahm Resnik reports. His rival, state Rep. Joseph Chaplik, is playing off the racist nonsense about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio, while Feely says he’s proud to have helped two Haitian men settle legally in the U.S. after a massive earthquake hit Haiti in 2010.
“When you go, and you see real poverty, and you see it firsthand,” Feely said. “You work, and you try to create opportunity for them there in that country, you know you can't fix all the problems, and so our answer was, ‘Well, we can help this one family.’”
Need more power (and money)!: APS tucked a plan to raise electric bills every year deep inside a new 2,000-page proposal to state regulators, per ABC15’s Anne Ryman. Hearings begin this week on APS’ request, which is already facing stiff headwinds from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who called it “blatant corporate greed.” Mayes is one of at least six attorneys general who are pushing back on utility rate increases they believe are tied to the boom in the artificial intelligence industry, per the Associated Press.
Shifting gears: A broad coalition of Colorado River water users is asking the federal government to pony up $2 billion for water conservation, per the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis. It’s the first organized effort to get money for long-term conservation projects, instead of stop-gap measures like pulling farmland out of production. Seven states and numerous tribes and cities are dealing with long-term drought, but negotiations for a cohesive plan for the river’s future fell apart earlier this year.
Why do so many people rent these days?: Phoenix and Mesa are right near the top of large cities with the biggest increases in home prices over the last decade, per the New Times’ Clarissa Sosin. Both cities saw prices go up by 99% since 2016, while 13 smaller Arizona cities also saw prices skyrocket, including a 109% increase in San Tan Valley.
Where’d everybody go?: Hobbs lifted her month-long moratorium on bills last week after “good-faith negotiations” began with Republican lawmakers to finalize the budget, per the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger. During the bill-signing drought, which sparked a recess House Democrats called a month-long “paid vacation,” some lawmakers, like Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen, kept up appearances in the ghost town called the Arizona Capitol by showing up for meetings he already had on the books, the Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington reports.
In case you missed it, last week’s Legislative District 3 Senate debate that we hosted featured quite a number of entertaining moments between the Republican primary candidates — and the internet took notice.
Long-time incumbent Sen. John Kavanagh, who’s looking to mark his 20th year at the Legislature next year, faces a challenge from Turning Point Action employee Robert Wallace from… well, it’s not clear exactly where on the political spectrum.
Kavanagh launched a website to document Wallace’s record of what he, during the debate, called “bizarre beliefs” — including that Wallace has said he has traveled to alternate dimensions, experienced “hallucinations of Teletubbie & lizard-like beings” and is a reincarnated “Black gangbanger.”
But Wallace confidently defended all his past remarks from his podcast.
“That’s just a fact — for me,” Wallace responded to the last point without a shred of doubt.
GOP researcher and former Doug Ducey staffer Brian Anderson dropped a great supercut of the funniest moments from the debate, which we’ll just leave here for your viewing pleasure.
Enjoy.
1 Yeah, we made George write this whole intro in that awkward third-person voice.