Following the Maricopa money
As goes Maricopa County … The coup ahead … And let the earplug conspiracies begin.
Arizona’s largest county — which has long been dominated by Republican leadership — may be teetering on the edge of turning blue next month for the first time in most Arizonans’ lifetimes.
Three seats on the county board of supervisors are changing hands this year as the incumbents aren’t on the ballot for reelection. Same for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, where incumbent Stephen Richer got bounced in the Republican primary after spending four years fighting his party’s cult-like belief that the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen from their candidates.
Much like Richer, Republican Supervisors Bill Gates, Clint Hickman and Jack Sellers have endured relentless abuse from their conspiracy-minded party-mates. Gates and Hickman decided to call it quits and not seek reelection, thus skipping what likely would have been bruising primary battles, at least. Sellers lost his primary to an opponent who refuses to say whether the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen.
That gives Democrats a unique opening to flip some of the most important positions in Arizona’s largest county.
Two of the Republican-held supervisor seats are within reach for Democrats, and if they can flip them, Democrats will take control of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for the first time since the late 1960s.
It doesn’t hurt their chances that several of the outgoing Republicans seem more concerned about the Republican candidates who might take their seats than about their party losing control.
Sellers, for example, has endorsed Democrat Joel Navarro to replace him in District 1, which covers the southeast valley, including parts of Ahwatukee, Tempe, Chandler and Gilbert. Navarro is a member of the Tempe City Council and a longtime firefighter. The Republican who defeated Sellers in the primary, Chandler City Council member Mark Stewart, dog-whistles about election fraud to his base, though he refuses to answer direct questions about whether the elections were stolen.
Gates isn’t endorsing either of his potential replacements in his Central Phoenix District 3: former moderate Republican lawmaker Kate Brophy McGee and former Democratic Phoenix City Council member Danny Valenzuela.
The other three districts are so lopsidedly partisan, they’re not really on the map.
Hickman’s District 4 seat will almost certainly go to U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko, who voted to overturn the results of Arizona’s 2020 presidential election while she was a member of Congress. She has Donald Trump’s endorsement. The West Valley district is reliably Republican, and Democrat David Sandoval, a school board member, faces steep odds to overcome the voter registration numbers in the district. Republican Supervisor Thomas Galvin will likely retain his District 2 seat in the eastern county as he faces a challenge from Democrat Julie Cieniawski, given Republicans’ commanding voter registration advantage. And Democratic Supervisor Steve Gallardo faces no real challenge from Republican election conspiracist Ann Niemann in his solidly Democratic District 5 covering the southwest portion of the county.
While Richer isn’t formally endorsing anyone running to replace him, he made his feelings about his election-skeptical Republican challenger, Republican state Rep. Justin Heap, pretty well known during the primary. Richer also spoke with Democrat Tim Stringham about entering the race as a contingency candidate in case Richer lost his primary.
Still, Democrats face a pretty steep uphill climb in the county.
Republicans still outnumber Democrats in Maricopa County by more than seven percentage points (though independents and third-party voters make up the largest voting bloc in the county). And Republicans have the voter registration advantage in both of the competitive supervisor districts up for grabs, though that advantage is especially slim in District 3, where Brophy McGee and Valenzuela are squaring off.
And although Maricopa County is home to more Republicans than Democrats, the county as a whole hasn’t voted that way in several recent high-profile races. In 2020, Trump lost Maricopa County by about 45,000 votes, leading him to lose the state. Maricopa County voters chose Mark Kelly over Blake Masters for the U.S. Senate seat in the last election, and voters here rejected Kari Lake in favor of Katie Hobbs for governor on the same ballot.
But whether Democrats can pull off the coup and turn the county leadership blue will depend largely on how much money they can raise to get their messages to voters.
So how are the challengers faring in this final month of the election cycle? We waded through the most recent round of Maricopa County campaign finance reports to find out.
It’s ballot season, so we’re once again keeping tabs on Democratic Strategist Sam Almy’s ballot return dashboard.1
So far, almost 400,000 Arizonans have cast an early ballot, or about 9.2% of voters.
The mighty Gila County is leading the state, with 19% of its voters turning out already, while in Santa Cruz County just 0.7% of voters have cast a ballot so far, according to the dashboard. Maricopa County lags behind the statewide average with just 7.6% of ballots returned, and Pima County is slightly above, with 10.5% of ballots cast.
Democrats are straggling behind Republicans in raw number of ballots cast2 and only about half as many independents as Republicans have voted so far.
Return those ballots, independents!
Here we go again: Donald Trump’s path to a presidential victory is much narrower than it was in 2020, but he and his allies are already setting the stage to attempt to overturn the election again, Politico reports. The formula is familiar and includes spreading voter fraud claims, asking county and state officials to not certify results, and having swing state legislatures like Arizona’s appoint alternate electors. And the former president refuses to agree to a peaceful transfer of power.
“I think they are sowing doubt. They have been sowing doubt and preparing the ground for an outcome they are not happy with and then finding an easy scapegoat to blame,” Arizona state Sen. Priya Sundareshan told Politico.
Soul searching: The unsealed divorce papers between Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and Rep. Ruben Gallego didn’t reveal any salacious secrets as Kari Lake had hoped. There were still a lot of redacted sections, and some interesting tidbits like that Ruben asked the court to have Kate pay for his attorney's fees, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer writes. Still, Lake is refusing to apologize at the former couple’s request “for lying about our family and the circumstances of our divorce,” per the Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen. Lake’s planned press conference Friday to talk about it pivoted to laying out her eight-part “Mama Bear” agenda and said she would only concede defeat in her race if it was a “lawful election,” which she refused to define.
The McCain method: Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of 7,000 at the University of Arizona Friday to campaign for Kamala Harris, where he threw jabs at Trump and pumped up his own legacy, the Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff reports. Senator Mark Kelly and former congresswoman Gabby Giffords also spoke at the rally, and Obama threw an endorsement to Congressman Gallego, who sat behind him on stage.3 The Republic notes how Obama’s specific mention of his former presidential rival John McCain, who he said “understood that some values transcend party,” is part of a larger effort in Harris’ campaign to win over independents and moderate Republicans.
You can’t mute everything: Arizona college students are being bombarded with campaign texts while TV ads, internet pop-ups and phone calls from campaigns are burying voters in all seven swing states as the presidential campaign approaches its final stages, the New York Times reports. About 20% of all the country’s voters live in seven swing states that will decide the outcome of the presidential election, and campaigns are tailoring their messaging to inundate those voters with their causes. Still, some voters can’t be swayed, and Las Vegas voter Dennis Fritts said his “remote has a really strong mute button” that he puts to use when pro-Harris ads come on.
We have another unsolicited pitch to throw your way: Consider subscribing to support this newsletter as we parse through the barrage of election updates.
Copycats: Senate candidates copying Trump’s rhetoric aren’t seeing his same political success, the New York Times notes, using Lake as their lead example. Similar situations are playing out for the Republican U.S. Senate candidates in Nevada and Pennsylvania, and polling indicates more voters may ticket-split between candidates of different parties this year and help Democrats retain control in the Senate. Gallego, for example, was recently approached at dinner by a man wearing a MAGA hat who said he and some of his veteran friends were interested in voting for him. His success thus far can in part be attributed to a deep-rooted resistance to Lake across Arizona.
The knocks that never happened: Leaked data shows Elon Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC didn’t knock on a quarter of the doors it claimed it had in Arizona and Nevada, per the Guardian. Trump’s campaign has outsourced a lot of its groundwork to the committee, and that risk might not pay off, although the PAC denies seeing such a high level of fraud.
Whoops: After Maricopa County found an error on ballots for the Phoenix Union High School District elections, a federal judge wants the candidates to weigh in on how to remedy it, the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish reports. Typically, voters can cast votes for however many seats are open, but a consent decree based on past evidence of diluting minority voting strength requires voters only select one candidate in the Phoenix Union Governing Board’s elections, even though there are two open seats. The ballot failed to note that. The two solutions are either to ignore the issue or cancel the votes and hold a special election in March. Meanwhile, the Pinal County School Office is forming a committee to vet potential replacements for their frequent school board vacancies instead of having the Pinal School Superintendent do all the work, per Pinal Central’s Noah Cullen.
A politician we support: Local elementary school class treasurer Cormac Dobson gave candidates some pointers on running for office on KJZZ’s "The Show." He has won two elections already — his third-grade class president race and his more recent fourth-grade treasurer's race.
“When my mom told me it involved math, I just circled (the job) right away because I love math,” he told host Sam Dingman. “I have to count up all the money and stuff… It was exciting because I don’t really have much responsibilities since I’m 8 years old, but I want to have some responsibilities so I know how it feels like.”
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk got roasted for posting a picture of himself wearing earplugs at a football game, and some of the comments from his far-right fans were brutal, the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L'Heureux reports.
Our favorites include: “Watch on your couch if you’re gona wear ear plugs,” and “I don’t wear ear plugs because I just don’t trust the science.”
Kirk posted the same photo on Instagram two days later, this time with the “beta-male” earplugs edited out.
There are a few other ballot return dashboards out there, including from Republican pollster George Khalaf, but Almy’s is generally updated most quickly.
Though as a percentage of voter registration, Democrats are actually slightly leading.
Fun fact, we were in Tucson on Friday and spotted Gallego and Kelly drinking at a fundraiser at our hotel.
Great Fun Fact Gallego & Kelly were enjoying libationated conversation. : )
If Chump is able to have the GOP House install him in the White House...plan on Civil War on some level. When will this loathsome backwash go away? I am cautiously optimistic...but that's my nature.