It's Capitol / Campaign Season
Let the shenanigans begin ... Catching up and planning ahead ... And Kari Lake is not the weirdest candidate.
Welcome to season 3 of The Agenda, which finds our main characters preparing for a grueling legislative session and presidential election season.
Hopefully, you got some rest this holiday season. You’re going to need it during the marathon of madness that 2024 has in store for us.
How were our holidays? Well, thank you for asking!
Nicole’s streak of bad luck continued during our break — after finally getting the boot taken off her broken foot, she caught COVID-19 (for the first time!) while visiting family in Nebraska. Hank, meanwhile, spent a few weeks hanging out with his wife’s family in Mexico City, unsuccessfully attempting to avoid work and befriend the animals in the mountains outside the city.
Finally, thanks to your very generous generosity we raised $16,400 in year-end tax-deductible contributions to support the Agenda and expand our mission in this critical election year.
A most heartfelt thank you to all who donated!
We set a pretty ambitious goal of $30,000. While we didn’t make it all the way there, $16,400 will certainly get us started. We’re not allowed to solicit any more donations until we fill out some paperwork with our fiscal sponsor, the Local Media Foundation, but if you forgot to give and want to do it now, rest assured we’ll receive the money.
Anyway, the 2024 legislative session and presidential election are coming up fast, and they promise to be doozies.
Last year’s bipartisan budget buster leaves legislators with nearly $1 billion worth of cuts to make from the state budget when they return to the Capitol on Monday. And the 2024 election will either bring us the return of President Donald Trump or a whole new cycle of lies about how the election was stolen from him. Lots to look forward to!
But before we can talk about what’s coming up in 2024, let’s catch up on what we missed in the last two weeks of 2023.
The border continued to be a problem, or a lucrative business and political opportunity, depending on your perspective. Independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is trying to solve the problem with a bipartisan bill, potentially as her swan song, declaring passing the legislation “the hardest thing we’ve done” — meaning the hardest thing they’ve not done. Speaking of things she hasn’t done, Sinema did not take the holidays to announce whether she’s running for re-election, but she has been fundraising in Chicago, the stomping grounds of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego, the local paper reported in a profile of the formerly poor politician.
The game of “Legislative Survivor” continued as Democratic Rep. Athena Salman decided to give up her seat in the halls of power to lead Arizona campaigns for NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Democratic Rep. Leezah Sun pleaded with her colleagues on the House Ethics Committee to let her stay, despite a parade of testimony about her bizarre and unhinged behavior, saying she didn’t know that screaming at people and threatening them was frowned upon. Even Gov. Katie Hobbs’ agency leaders aren’t safe from the elimination gameshow at the Capitol: Senate President Warren Petersen filed a lawsuit arguing Hobbs can’t skirt Senate confirmation by calling directors “executive deputy directors” even if the Senate refuses to confirm almost all of her choices.
The 2022 election denialism continued through the end of 2023, as Trump-endorsed congressional carpetbagger Abe Hamadeh, who is also the failed attorney general candidate from now two calendar years ago, argued in court that he should replace actual AG Kris Mayes, since she “usurped, intruded into or unlawfully holds” the office after beating him by 280 votes. Meanwhile, his election-denying allies have come up with a new legal strategy: arguing that judges can’t decide election cases because they’re biased because they’re elected too. Also, Scottsdale Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin filed a Bar complaint against the Cochise County attorney for telling the county supervisors there that finger-counting ballots was illegal — they’re now facing criminal charges for attempting to do just that. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is preparing for AI-fueled election disinformation by creating some deep fakes of himself. Failed gubernatorial candidate turned U.S. Senate hopeful Kari Lake couldn’t convince a judge to throw out Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s defamation lawsuit against her. And Colorado Supreme Court justices barred Trump from the 2024 ballot there for engaging in “insurrection or rebellion” on Jan. 6, 2021, and two secretaries of state have also said he won’t be on their ballots, though appeals continue and lawsuits linger in other states. Meanwhile, Karl Rove ponders whether banning Trump from the ballot is bad for democracy.
The end of the year also brought us some very sad news. The first female U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Arizona’s own Sandra Day O’Connor, was laid to rest with all the pomp and circumstance befitting her position. Frank Riggs, a charter school pioneer, a former California congressman and one-time Arizona school chief candidate, passed away at the age of 73. Finally, police say the widow of former Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel killed two people at a Christmas Eve party before taking his own life.
Break out your brand-new 2024 planner!
A lot is coming at you quick in the first few months of the year, and we’ve got a few election and Capitol calendar dates you might want to jot down, along with some predictions for you to throw in our faces if they’re wrong.
Monday, January 8: The legislative session begins and Gov. Katie Hobbs will deliver her second State of the State address.
Prediction: She’ll call for a moratorium on school voucher growth as the state wrestles with budget cuts.
Friday, January 12: Hobbs delivers her budget proposal.
Prediction: It’ll propose balancing the budget by cutting things Republican lawmakers like.
Tuesday, January 16: Deadline for candidates and PACs to file campaign finance reports, the first time in a year that candidates have had to file anything.
Prediction: Some lawmakers, including Rep. Alma Hernandez, will be late.
Wednesday, January 31: Deadline for politicians to file their financial disclosure statements showing junkets and other gifts from lobbyists, and lobbyists to file their expenditure reports showing junkets and other gifts to lawmakers.
Prediction: The reports won’t match.
Monday, February 19: “Crossover week” begins at the state Capitol — meaning any House bill that isn’t approved by the full House or Senate bill that isn’t approved by the full Senate, before Friday is “dead.”
Prediction: Most bills will die at this point, but the worst ones will come back as “strike-everything” amendments.
Tuesday, February 201: Last day to register to vote for the March 19 Presidential Preference Election.
Prediction: Lots of independent voters won’t realize they need to re-register with a political party to vote in the presidential primary. The Republic will run an op-ed about it.
Wednesday, February 21: Early voting officially begins for the March 19 presidential primary.
Prediction: We’ll see the kind of long lines that plagued the presidential primary in 2016, the last time both parties had a presidential primary choice — except they’ll be in Pinal County this time.
Saturday, March 9: Candidates can begin filing nomination petitions for their races.
Prediction: We still won’t know if Kyrsten Sinema is running for re-election.
Tuesday, March 19: Arizona will hold its presidential primaries.
Prediction: Nobody will cry fraud when Trump and Biden win.
Monday, April 8: Deadline for candidates to file nominating petitions for their races.
Prediction: Sinema announces she’s running and already has all her signatures.
Tuesday, April 16: The 100th day of the legislative session, by which lawmakers are supposed to be finished for the year.
Prediction: They won’t be finished for the year.
If you buy an annual subscription today, you’ll be the smartest political nerd at all your 2024 political nerd gatherings!
Finally, it’s worth noting that lawmakers have already introduced 124 pieces of legislation as of Monday, many of which Hobbs previously vetoed.
So today, we’re starting a pool to see who can guess how many bills, (including memorials and resolutions) will ultimately be introduced in the Legislature this year, and how many of them will get veto-stamped.
Comment below to make your predictions.
The person closest to predicting the actual number of bills introduced will receive one of these fancy Arizona Agenda mugs. Whoever guesses closest to the real number of vetoes in 2024 will get a super elite Arizona Agenda secret society lapel pin.2
Speaking of exciting things coming up in 2024, former Republican state lawmaker John Fillmore, who proposed returning Arizona to 1958-style voting and liked marijuana before it was cool, got all sauced up early on New Year’s Eve eve and announced he’s running for office again.
Pretty wild campaign platform he’s got there.
CORRECTION: The date we originally listed for the deadline to register for the presidential primary was wrong.
Somebody please remind us in six months that we said this.
I predict that John Fillmore's revealed racism guarantees that he'll be elected.
How about a second contest for number of vetoes?