Introducing: The Elections Agenda

As Election Day nears and those big fat ballots start landing in your mailbox, we’re launching the Elections Agenda to help you vote.

It’s not a newsletter — it’s an expansive voter guide for readers who don’t want to surf the hellscape of candidate websites and social media to figure out who these people are and what they stand for.

We know how grueling it is to try to get to know the politicians running for statewide, federal and legislative office in Arizona, especially while you’re frantically filling in dots on your ballot.

Luckily, we’ve spent the last few months studying the candidates as we moderate debates, write background-heavy previews of those debates and crank out recaps of what the candidates said.

It’s been a lot of work. But as we looked back, we realized we had something kind of special on our hands.

So we put it all under one roof.

The Elections Agenda has everything a voter needs to be confident about their choice.

Plus, a very cool Agendowl graphic.

Think of the Elections Agenda as a structured version of our notes on the candidates. We’ve collected about as much information on candidates as a sane person could want, and then some, and made it searchable and useful.

For legislative, congressional and statewide elections, we’ve included statistics about the districts, short bios on the candidates, original articles detailing political dynamics of the races and videos of the debate.

We’ve also got their campaign websites and social media accounts, like their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we snagged their campaign finance filings, financial disclosure statements so you know who’s backing them.

The Agenda also sent out a form to all candidates whose emails could be scrounged up to request additional information, like their top issues, professional experiences and family life. If a candidate responded back to the form, their answers are included in their card.

And, since we’ve been covering most of the incumbents for years, you can browse all the times they appeared in our “In Other News” section.

Some of it’s pretty funny.

Remember Mark Lamb’s “good old fashioned dick pics” or Gov. Katie Hobbs throwing Attorney General Kris Mayes under the bus for saying ICE agents might get shot if they manhandle Arizonans who are packing heat?

Propositions also make an appearance, with a clear summary of what the measures entail, as well as an analysis of how they came to be and the bigger message they are trying to send.

The website isn’t a static project — we’ll be adding more information and elements as the election season drags on.

We designed the hub with this particular moment in mind. Your ballot arrives in the mail, you open it and immediately get overwhelmed with all the choices you’re supposed to make.

But we’d love to hear from you about what else it needs.

If you have any suggestions, or even totally different ideas, drop us a line at [email protected].

Home is where your base is: A handful of legislative candidates face allegations they don’t live where they say they do, but elections lawyer Kory Langhofer notes residency challenges are notoriously difficult to enforce in court, the Republic’s Laura Gersony and Helen Rummel report. Still, Legislative District 4 Democratic candidate Tammy Caputi faces allegations that the Scottsdale condo she lists as her residence was recently listed for sale and appears sparsely furnished. Republican Sen. Janae Shamp faces a formal complaint alleging she actually lives in Wickenburg, about 20 miles outside her Surprise-based district. And Republican Rep. Laurin Hendrix recently bought a Queen Creek home outside his district.

Politick somewhere else: About a third of Maricopa County’s vote centers have banned electioneering anywhere on their property — a concession county election officials say they had to make as polling places become harder to recruit, the Capitol Times’ Jordan Gerard reports. State law already bars electioneering within 75 feet of a polling place, but 86 sites got permission to prohibit campaigning across the entire property amid concerns about political violence and general tomfoolery.

Wrong Robert: Gilbert officials are investigating whether police resources were misused to fuel a false rumor about Republic reporter Robert Anglen, the Republic’s Harrison Mantas reports. Vice Mayor Chuck Bongiovanni alleged in a 2024 text that Anglen had a grudge against Gilbert police because of a “little personal issue,” as the reporter investigated the Gilbert Goons case. But police records show a different Robert Anglen was arrested in 2013 on suspicion of harassing an ex-girlfriend. Identifying details, including his birth date and physical description, didn’t match the reporter. Councilmember Beth Goulden asked the town to investigate how the rumor started and whether anyone improperly accessed police files.

Place your bets: Online prediction markets put Gov. Katie Hobbs’ chances of winning another term at 87% — considerably more confidence than recent polling, which has shown her lead ranging from 15 percentage points to a statistical tie, Cronkite News’ Noah Flug reports. A Maricopa County candidate said he knows “a campaign or two” using Kalshi as a pseudo-polling tool, particularly in downballot races where traditional polling is scarce.

Missing money: State auditors found Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind may have left millions of dollars on the table through basic financial management failures, KGUN9’s JJ McKinney reports. It’s the latest in a series of setbacks for the schools, which face a lawsuit over allegations they violated special education law during a controversial campus relocation, along with a $2.6 million budget deficit.

The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission is the state’s only official, nonpartisan voter education resource — created by Arizona voters for voters.

We publish the voter education guide, host the debates, and break down what’s on your ballot. Not who you should vote for — what you need to know before you do.

With a month until the election, Turning Point continues to pump out the AI slop, making another addition to its growing library of AI-generated political shenanigans.

This time, the shenanigans look like a pair of blond twins holding political pamphlets for Turning Point’s favored slate of candidates.

As it turned out, in this instance Turning Point leader Tyler Bowyer got bamboozled by AI.

We’re not sure if the image is AI-generated, but those pamphlets read like especially sloppy ChatGPT slop.

One of the candidates listed is Kristen Petersen, which sounds like a kinda creepy amalgamation of Attorney General Kris Mayes and her Republican challenger, Senate President Warren Petersen.

And GOP superintendent of public instruction nominee Kimberly Yee is looking a lot like a white dude these days (and that dude is running for the wrong office).

As we expect many politicos are going to do as the tidal wave of AI slop slams the shores of the political world, Bowyer deleted his retweet.