Letting the voters decide

A Q&A with Garrick Taylor … ElEcTiOn FrAuD … And where do they find these quacks?

Letting voters decide the fate of new developments is becoming a lot more common in Arizona.

Tempe’s voters shot down building an entertainment district to make a new home arena for the Arizona Coyotes in 2023. That same year, Flagstaff’s voters gave a resounding no to letting a privately funded hospital set up shop there.

Those cases represented 46 and 100 acres of land, respectively, to build complex properties that would redefine the areas around them.

Now, Glendale’s voters will get the final say on whether a 10-acre spot of land can turn into parking and office space for the VAI Resort that’s already being constructed around it as part of a billion-dollar entertainment complex near State Farm Stadium. There’s a mail-in only election to answer that question on May 20.

Proposition 401 will determine if the city can rezone the land from "parks and open space" to "corporate commerce center.”

Proposition 402 would allow the city to conditionally rezone the land so it doesn’t have to adhere to stipulations on roadway designs, sewer access and dark sky lighting.

Glendale’s City Council already said in 2020 that VAI could develop the land in question. The pair of props, if passed, basically permits VAI to build the office space for its employees that they planned on building anyway.

But a labor advocacy group called Worker Power got enough signatures to put that decision to the voters instead.

Longtime Arizona politico Garrick Taylor is the guy in charge of communications for the pro-Propositions 401 and 402 campaign.

He’s had political past lives running policy development for the Border Trade Alliance, communications for the state Republican Party and government affairs and communications for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.

He’s pretty much a business-centric public affairs guru.

Worker Power has framed the election as a choice between a park or a parking lot. The land is currently zoned as park space.

“Anybody who's lived in the area will tell you there was never a park there. There wasn't going to be a park. It was a dirt lot. But that's a legacy zoning designation that goes back many years,” Taylor told us.

The group against the development has also expressed environmental concerns of exacerbating the heat island effect in the area, and says Glendale is giving special privileges to VAI through tax breaks and lax zoning approvals.

But VAI says the area is a connecting point for its overall plans for the area, which include the Mattel Adventure Park.

Taylor told us the long-awaited amusement park is on hold because part of its land is adjacent to the land that voters now have to approve the conditions for.

Worker Power isn’t a new thorn in VAI’s side.

In 2023, they successfully referred the city council’s decision to give VAI a tax break to the ballot, but the council reversed its decision to avoid the referendum. Last year, they put on the ballot to raise workers’ minimum wage at the Glendale hotel and event center to $20 an hour — voters rejected it.

But the ordeal begs a larger question than those that voters will decide on May 20: Are major development decisions shifting from the hands of local councils to the voters?

“This is, unfortunately, simply throwing sand in the gears of the zoning of this parcel adjacent to the resort. It's unfortunate, but here we are…” Taylor said. “There's been some reporting that says that Worker Power has a host of issues that they care about…So I don't know if this is a sign of things to come, or what is motivating them to get involved in all these projects.”

A quick Q&A

As we do with most subjects of our Q&As, we asked Taylor some semi-non-pertinent questions to get to know him better.

Q: Given your extensive background in politics and communications, what sources of political media do you rely on to stay informed, and how do you sift through the noise to focus on what's most relevant to your work?

A: Taylor acknowledged he doesn’t “do a very good job of filtering out the noise,” but he is a paid Arizona Agenda subscriber.

“If there is a type of media that you think is important, you should probably plunk down a few pennies,” he said.

Taylor said he has the “viewing habits of a 75-year-old man,” so he watches “CBS Evening News” and “60 Minutes.”

Q: If you could go back and give your past self advice when you were first starting in public policy communications, what would it be?

A: ”It's gonna get worse,” Taylor joked — kind of.

He remembers the adoption of NAFTA and the resulting “hostility toward free trade on the left begin to soften, and it became a bipartisan consensus that tariff-free trade was a good thing.”

“We were very fortunate through tariff-free trade to integrate these economies in a really profound and powerful way. The advice would be: don't take that for granted, because those relationships can be harmed and dismantled over time.”

Q: What’s your favorite political movie or TV show?

A: BBC’s “The Thick of It” is Taylor’s favorite political show, though he warns you’ll probably need subtitles to get through the “Scottish brogue.”

Q: Is there a crucial element, or secret sauce, to crafting a message that resonates with voters and gets through to the media?

A:

”If there were, I'd be sitting on a beach right now,” Taylor said.

But he did acknowledge he’s worked for some savvy political consultants who have made his life easier. And as is the case in special elections like Glendale’s, it goes a long way to let voters know that there is indeed a real ballot in their mailboxes in an off-season and that they should vote.

Q: Will you be riding the Mattel amusement park’s rollercoaster if the development goes through?

“I'll be there with bells on,” Taylor said.

The election integrity guy: The Arizona Republican Party’s chair is threatening to sue Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap over his illegal plan to send ballots to voters who have not requested them in the upcoming special primary election to replace Raúl Grijalva, the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. Other Republicans like Supervisors Thomas Galvin and Debbie Lesko took to social media to trash the former Republican state lawmakers’ proposal, while state GOP chair Gina Swoboda told the New Times she’ll sue if Heap sends out unsolicited ballots.

“I’m astounded that someone who ran on election integrity can think that’s a good idea,” Swoboda said.

Give a mouse a cookie: Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego’s recent trip to Pennsylvania has the national outlets speculating about his potential future run for the presidency. Gallego told the Washington Post it’s not something he’s thinking about “right now” since he has a toddler. Meanwhile, he’s still on the fence about the crypto-backed stablecoin bill, lashing out at Republicans who tried “to f‑‑‑ us” by not amending it, per The Hill.

When the help line needs help: The 211 crisis help line that connects people to things like housing and utility assistance needs about $1.5 million in additional funding to keep operating, and Gov. Katie Hobbs’ office says they’ll work with APS to fund the line through the beginning of 2026, per KJZZ’s Kathy Ritchie. Meanwhile, state lawmakers sent a bill to Hobbs’ desk to establish a statewide alert system for missing Indigenous people called the “Turquoise Alert,” KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio writes. Arizona will be the fifth state to enact such a system if the governor signs it.

Cracking down on the college town: A recent Tempe Police Department sting of the Tempe Tavern found 173 patrons under 21, and the fake IDs police found are becoming alarmingly realistic, per 12News’ Chase Golightly. Meanwhile, Tempe City Council increased the fines for nuisance and loud party violations by upping the penalty for first-time offenders from $250 to $500 starting June 1, KTAR’s David Veenstra reports.

Scottsdale drama: Scottsdale City Council took away two of Mayor Lisa Borowsky’s employees in a surprise coup led by Councilman Adam Kwasman, per the Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon.

“You and a couple other members want to continue to undermine the mayor – me – who was elected by 72,000 voters in Scottsdale,” Borowsky said. “I think this is a very inappropriate motion to make and really shows true colors as to what’s going on here.”

Navajo County news drama: The founder and editor of the Mountain Daily Star, best known for breaking the story of Arizona House candidate Steve Slaton’s stolen valor case in last year’s election, was charged with two felonies after authorities accused her of faking reddit posts about a missing child. Molly Kathryn Ottman allegedly told police that the father of the missing kid had posted allusions to molesting him. But police say Ottoman created the posts herself. She’s also a private investigator who worked for a firm hired by the family of the missing kid, the Navajo-Hopi Observer’s Alexandra Wittenberg reports.

Going down: Phoenix and other major American cities are sinking, in large part due to groundwater pumping, the New York Times writes. Phoenix has slowed down its sink in recent years from the massive rate of decline experienced from 1950 to 1990, when the city dropped 18 feet.

This newsroom runs on dust, caffeine and your money — no water required.

Save the bees: Students at Phoenix Union High School District are mad that administrators killed a hive of bees at Carl Hayden Community High School, and they petitioned the school board to relocate bees in the future, the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish writes. The district has already contracted with some no-kill companies for future bee removal — provided the hives aren’t an immediate danger to students or staff.

Deport the vets: The Trump administration arrested and is trying to deport a U.S. Army veteran who served two tours in Iraq. Marlon Parris, a Laveen resident, was arrested on drug charges and served five years in prison before he was released in 2016 and told that ICE would not deport him over the crime. He’s appealing last week’s ruling that he should be deported, per KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick.

Let it burn: While the Trump administration is considering a massive increase in National Forest logging and a “suppression-only” wildfire management policy, experts say we should let natural forests fires burn more area, like they used to, the Republic’s Brandon Loomis writes.

In a Twitter beef that perfectly illustrates the national debate on health, conspiracy theorist and MAGA activist Laura Loomer is attacking Trump’s pick to be the next surgeon general.

Trump picked Arizona “wellness entrepreneur” Casey Means to be his next surgeon general, even though Means doesn’t have an active medical license and dropped out of her medical residency. Apparently Robert F. Kennedy is a big fan of hers.

But Loomer (an Arizona native) is not, calling her a “Woo woo woman … who consumes shrooms and literally talks to trees and spiritual mediums.” Not to mention she got the “COVID jab.”

Means’ brother, co-author and partner in health influencing, Tempe resident Calley Means, jumped to her defense.

The whole thing spiraled into a back-and-forth so stupid that the QAnon Shaman got in on it.