Know your Grijalva
The political dynasty news quiz ... Some good news, for once ... And keep your VPN handy.
Happy Election Day, readers!
Today is the final day to vote in the special election to replace Raúl Grijalva in Southern Arizona’s Congressional District 7.
We haven’t written much about the race since the primary, where Adelita Grijalva dominated her two Democratic opponents with more than 60% of the vote.
That’s because, given the heavily Democratic makeup of the district1 — which spans from Yuma to Tucson’s west side to the far outskirts of the West Valley — Grijalva’s Republican opponent would need a pretty sizable miracle to win tonight.
Raúl wasn’t exactly known for his campaign work ethic, but he still beat Republican Daniel Butierez by a cool 30 percentage points last year. Butierez is running again this year against Adelita.
So, with that in mind, the question about today’s election isn’t really “Who will win?” but “Who is Adelita Grijalva?”
The younger Grijalva has been involved in politics in Tucson for decades. But for many of our Phoenix readers, Arizona’s next congresswoman is still something of an unknown.
But considering she’s the daughter of Arizona’s longest-serving congressman, you may have some idea what her politics are like.
You may even know that she has followed in her father’s political footsteps — almost exactly — as she moved up the political ranks. Both served roughly 25 years in local politics before heading to DC — first at the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board, then on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
But how well do you really know the difference between the last Grijalva and the next one?
Today, we’ve got a quiz to test that.
Below, you’ll find a quote from each Grijalva on five separate topics. Your challenge is to correctly infer which Grijalva said it.
Before we get into it, a disclaimer: These are not meant to be end-all, be-all explanations of their policy positions. They’re just quotes that hopefully provide illuminating snapshots of the difference in the way they think about, approach, or talk about issues.
We’ll deliver the answers — and the probably unsurprising results of tonight’s election — in tomorrow’s edition.
And don’t forget: If you want a sticker for playing along, send your physical address to info@arizonaagenda.com.
Ok, on to the quiz!
On Israel
"We see more and more leaders on both sides of the aisle take a position, and that is something I’m ready to do — an unequivocal condemnation of what’s happening there, what’s happening with Hamas, but what is happening with Israel’s government."
"Right now, the priority is the defense of a democracy, Israel and a defense of its people. At the same time, I hope that every effort is going on to try to limit the effect on non-combatants and civilians, particularly the elderly and children."
On Trump
“The real power in holding back some of the worst instincts of Trump and the majority in the House and in the Senate is going to come from people themselves.”
“I’ll acknowledge wrongdoing when Trump apologizes for the racist, misogynistic, sexist, inflammatory comments he’s made about women, people of color, LGBTQ, immigrants and frankly anyone who disagrees with him or isn’t one of his fans.”
On SB1070
“The need to join litigation against SB1070 has been somewhat negated by the federal government, I believe, wisely moving forward toward litigation against Arizona.”
“I think acquiescing, not bringing attention to it, not reacting in a very strong way to the law kind of leaves you in a position where you're either — it's a nodding approval or there's no consequences to the law.”
On protests
“I worry if this (protesting) continues, what the reaction is going to be from the community.”
“I was proud to be at the immigration reform rally in Washington yesterday and to stand with my colleagues in an act of civil disobedience.”
On mining
“It’s very personal to me to stand up against mining projects in the Santa Ritas, to stand with Apache Stronghold. You can’t undo it once it’s done.”
“It’s not about stopping mining, it’s about mining being done where it should be done.”
This ain’t Truth Social: A few hours after we wrote about President Donald Trump’s ridiculous, but kind of terrifying, lawsuit against the New York Times, a federal judge threw out the lawsuit, saying it was, well, ridiculous. Trump’s lawyers wrote dozens of pages of “florid and enervating” praise for Trump before they even stated what the lawsuit was about, the judge wrote on Friday. But the legal battle might not be over. The judge said he wasn’t ruling on the lawsuit’s merits, just the “tedious and burdensome” way it was presented. He did, however, give the Trump team a page limit if they want to re-file the lawsuit. In other good-ish news for freedom of speech, Jimmy Kimmel’s show will be back on the air tonight, CNN reports. Disney executives didn’t mention feeling pressured by the chair of the Federal Communications Commission saying the network could “do this the easy way or the hard way.” Instead, Disney issued a statement saying Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk were “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
The records prove it: Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap turned over text messages he exchanged with county supervisors on his personal phone, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield reports. Fifield filed a records request for the texts in April as she covered Heap’s attempts to pressure county supervisors to give him more control over elections. The text messages that Heap released support her earlier reporting that he privately pushed his colleagues to allow him to run early in-person voting, election-related IT services, and other key election processes.
Show me the money: 12News filed a lawsuit against Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and State Treasurer Kimberly Yee after they denied access to records on what parents have bought with $1.5 billion in taxpayer-funded vouchers over the past two years, 12New’s Craig Harris reports. Previous records, which Yee turned over for past years, have shown ESA accounts have been used to buy “luxury items like diamond rings, Kenmore appliances and lingerie,” Harris notes.
“The additional data you are seeking is not something already compiled and in our possession and is not reasonably attainable,” Horne’s office responded.
Gotta go back to school: The Arizona Supreme Court decided that one year of law school isn’t enough training to adequately handle criminal cases, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. The court was trying to fill an unmet need for more lawyers, particularly in rural parts of Arizona, but the public backlash against the idea led the justices to nix the idea.
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Way-mo public transportation: Self-driving cars are now on the menu for public transit in Chandler, KJZZ’s Ignacio Ventura reports. City officials partnered with Waymo as they tried to address shortfalls in the city’s transportation services, especially in the afternoon when people are coming back from work or school. Over in Phoenix, the Arizona Department of Transportation approved Tesla’s application to test self-driving vehicles, although a human driver will have to be on board for safety, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports.
In other, other news
The public radio station serving the Hopi community will watch half its budget disappear after the gutting of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Helen Rummel / Republic) … The Court of Appeals refused to hear Attorney General Kris Mayes’ argument that a lower court had erred when it said she had screwed up the fake electors case by not telling the grand jury information that would have helped the fake electors — effectively sending the case back to square one (Wayne Schutsky / KJZZ)2… A baby planet was spotted outside the solar system by astronomers from the University of Arizona (Ignacio Ventura / KJZZ) … Jimmy McCain, the son of late Sen. John McCain, was selected as the newest member of the Arizona Board of Regents (Helen Rummel / Republic) … Adelita Grijalva is set to become the first Latina ever elected to Congress from Arizona (Mel Leonor Barclay and Jessica Kutz / The 19th).
Gov. Katie Hobbs signed 265 bills into law this year. And most of them become official on Friday.
So this week, we’re continuing our tradition of telling you about some of the most interesting laws coming your way.
Speaking of bills, we’re doing a series of webinars you can pop into to hear from your colleagues about how Skywolf, our legislative tracking software, can help your legislative workflow.
On Thursday, we’ll show you a workflow designed specifically for policy professionals working at municipalities.
On Friday, we’ve got a webinar designed specifically for associations.
Arizona’s anti-pornography law, which requires you to show a government ID to access porn sites, is coming online this week.
In response, Pornhub is blocking all IP addresses coming from Arizona, as it has done for other states that have adopted similar laws. The company says collecting that “highly sensitive personal information (would put) user safety in jeopardy.”
Luckily for you porn-lovers out there, the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L’Heureux is teaching you how to get around that law by using a VPN to make it look like you’re logging on from a more porn-friendly state.
All you gotta do is download a VPN and turn it on, L’Heureux explains.
“It’s as simple as that. Happy, uh, ending,” he writes.
In other Arizona sex news — Grindr may or may not have experienced outages in Phoenix and Glendale this weekend.
Users of the gay dating/hookup site reported they were having trouble accessing the app while the Charlie Kirk memorial was in town.
However, that very well could have been a big joke based on the fact that Grindr has actually suffered usability issues during other large-scale GOP gatherings.
The official Grindr status page didn’t show any confirmed issues.
About 40% of voters in CD7 are Democrats, while Republicans only account for about 20%. The other 40% are independents (who mostly lean Democratic).
Correction: We originally said the appeals court had agreed with the lower court, but it just refused to hear Mayes’ appeal.
Intrigued by the idea of a one-year law school program for lawyers whose practices would be limited to criminal law, I asked ChatGPT, your moonlighting AI art intern, to show me a typical three-year law school curriculum. When you keep the courses that are common to all law practices -- evidence, constitutional law, legal writing and research, and others -- and then add the criminal law courses, you can easily pare down the in-class work to a year. Add to that some apprentice work (not with Trump), and you can have a capable criminal law attorney who specializes in criminal law. I suspect that would be better than most lawyers today, who often handle only criminal cases on the side and may have taken only one or no criminal law classes in law school.
There was a time that you could only do manicures if you completed the full 500-hour cosmetology program because, obviously, someone who cannot color hair surely cannot cut your toenails, just like it would be a civil rights violation to be represented by a lawyer in a criminal case who could not also draw you up a will, especially in capital cases where a will might be a good idea.
I got 100% on the quiz, but I'm a Tucsonan, in an adjacent Grijalva district.