Bipartisan for Bolles
False alarm … Welcome the new justice … And that’s not the best top 10.
We were pretty stoked when we noticed that a bill to allow a monument honoring murdered Arizona journalist Don Bolles was scheduled for a hearing in the House Government Committee yesterday.
Those of you who are new here might be wondering why we’re so invested in this one — or even who Don Bolles is. These bullet points are for you:
Bolles was an investigative reporter for the Republic until he was murdered via a car bomb outside a downtown Phoenix hotel in 1976 — retribution for his work uncovering organized crime and corruption in Arizona’s political and business communities.1 While one man went to prison for planting the bomb, nobody was ever convicted for ordering the hit. And although Bolles worked the Capitol beat and kept a desk in the Capitol press office, the state Capitol contains no mention of his life, death or legacy.
Two years ago, we got the idea that Bolles deserves a monument at the Arizona Capitol’s Wesley Bolin Plaza. But the only way to put a monument at the Capitol is via a bill, so we convinced a few lawmakers to sponsor it. In 2023, the bill passed the House with bipartisan support, making it one of only a handful of Democratic-sponsored bills to achieve that honor. In 2024, it passed the House with even more bipartisan backing.
So when we saw the bill get yanked off of the agenda for yesterday’s House Government Committee, we hustled down to the Capitol, ready to grill the committee chairman, Republican Rep. Walt Blackman.
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Here’s our video tour of some of the other monuments lawmakers have approved at Wesley Bolin Plaza.
Turns out that was unnecessary.
Blackman isn’t trying to block the bill. The reason it got delayed was actually kind of cute.
You see, both Republican Rep. Selina Bliss and Democratic Rep. Stacey Travers sponsored versions of the bill this year — without speaking to each other.2
But Travers offered to stand down and throw her support behind Bliss’ version3 instead, she told us, because a Republican-sponsored bill would stand a better chance of passing in the Senate.
Bliss will be a fierce advocate for the idea. She’s a history buff who feels a personal connection to the story, saying she remembers watching the news of the Bolles bombing when she was a child.
“I was just so upset – it really rocked our world back then,” she told us. “And when I saw the bill go through the last two years, I was so frustrated that people didn’t get it and said stupid stuff (about it). So I said ‘I’m going to run this bill next year and take the lead.’”
The bill will need a fierce advocate to get past Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman, who has killed the idea two years in a row by refusing to give it a hearing in his Senate Government Committee.
Of course, it shouldn’t matter whose name is on the bill — lawmakers should judge an idea on its merits. Unfortunately, that’s not how the Arizona Legislature works.
Still, there’s something truly heartwarming about watching a Republican and a Democrat working together strategically to help pass a bill honoring a journalist in this day and age.
And that makes us more hopeful than ever that this year’s bill will actually make it into law.
Our sister ‘sletter, the Tucson Agenda, is serving up a master class in media literacy today.
That knowledge is gonna come in handy over the next four years.
They deconstructed a debunked tweet to show you some of the warning signs of fake news, and they delivered some basic pointers, like how to identify the true source of the news you see online.
“Our advice is fairly straightforward: Take a breath before you re-post on social media. Consider the unintended consequences for your friends and family – who might already be grappling with a lot of anxiety – of reading that repost.”
A lot of firsts: Appeals Court Judge Maria Elena Cruz will become the first Black and Latina Arizonan to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court after Gov. Katie Hobbs’ announced her appointment yesterday, per the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger. Cruz is also the first state Supreme Court justice to be appointed by a Democrat in 20 years. Arizona’s six other justices were all appointed by Republicans.
Pointing fingers: A Secretary of State’s Office review into the state Motor Vehicle Division “glitch” that falsely marked thousands of people as having proof of citizenship to vote found that office employees knew about the glitch in 2017, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports. However, it’s not clear if employees told Adrian Fontes, Katie Hobbs or Michele Reagan, who have all been the secretary of state since then. Fontes fired the longtime employee who had flagged the glitch and now he and Hobbs are pointing fingers about who’s to blame.
Houses, porn and chemtrails: The “Starter Homes Act” that would preempt cities from making restrictive zoning requirements passed a state House committee yesterday. But the League of Arizona Cities and Towns (which opposed last year’s bill) said it’s coming up with a dueling version of the bill that will guarantee housing affordability, the Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington reports. Meanwhile, a Republican proposal to make people prove they’re 18 or older before watching online porn passed a committee, per the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, as did a conspiracy theorist-backed bill to ban weather-modification projects, the Republic’s Ray Stern writes.
Too little too late: More than 100,000 registered Democrats who voted in 2020 didn’t vote in 2024, the Republic’s Caitlin McGlade writes. That’s not enough to have flipped the presidential election results in Arizona, but they could have put a dent in Trump’s 187,000-vote margin of victory here. Republicans gained the most ground among Hispanic voters, young men and in some left-leaning areas across the state, per the Republic analysis. A nationwide poll found 42% of those who didn’t vote wish they had.
According to a poll we completely made up, 100% of Arizona Agenda readers who didn’t support local journalism wish they had. Or they will wish they had someday…
Better than tarps: A major uranium mining company reached an agreement with the Navajo Nation that will let it resume transporting the radioactive material across 174 miles of Navajo land, the Arizona Mirror’s Shondiin Silversmith reports. That settlement includes allowing the Navajo Nation to monitor trucks transporting uranium and providing funding to improve safety measures. The company is also using “state-of-the-art cover systems” instead of tarps to keep uranium ore dust from blowing out of trucks. Meanwhile, the Navajo Nation said federal immigration officials are questioning its members on their citizenship statuses, and at least 15 Indigenous people in the southwest have been questioned or detained, per Axios.
In other news no one asked for, Arizona came in seventh place for states with the most people looking up sex toys online, per the Phoenix New Times’ Jennifer Goldberg.
That’s one out of every 178 Arizonans, in case you’re curious.
Why is it that when we rank in the top 10, it’s never something nice, like education funding?
If you want the full history, here’s an awesome podcast about Bolles with the Republic’s Richard Ruelas.
The bill sponsors didn’t speak to us either, for that matter. We’re no longer involved with efforts to pass the bill, other than by writing about it, which we have been told is not actually helping.
The two bills are exactly the same except for the name of the sponsor.
Of course Hoffman won't give the Bolles bill a listen...he was an actual JOURNALIST. Who DIED on the job. Investigating Kemper Marley. Jake Hoffman is a sniveling weasel.
Rep. Travers, that's a noble move on your part toward getting the bill onboard for Don Bolles to be recognized. It's a burr in my saddle that we Democrats acquiesce to achieve our goals, but a feather for our cowboy hats, that we can strategize toward the long gains.