Our group chat got leaked

Hey readers!

You wanna hang out on Election Day?

No, not in real life — that sounds like a hassle. (Though maybe we’ll see you at the election night parties?) 

Instead, we were thinking you could hop into our newsroom Slack. ¹

We have a lot of fun on Slack, as you can tell from our edition about the debate between Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani and Democratic challenger JoAnna Mendoza in the competitive Congressional District 6.

Our team uses Slack to discuss the day’s news, share links, post memes, make fun of politicians, kick around story ideas and yell at each other for blowing the daily deadline.  

It’s like a real newsroom in there!

The comments section, on the other hand, can feel like a series of drive-by shootings. Not super fun.

So we’ve been thinking: What if we just killed off the comments section and invited you all into our private Slack instead? 

It’s super easy to set up and navigate. And once you’re in, you can see the behind-the-scenes making of the newsletter.  

Even better: You can start influencing our coverage. 

And of course, we’ll make sure you can still just comment on the day’s edition and dunk on Republican Sen. John Kavanagh (a favorite pastime of many of our commenters, which the senator actually seems to relish).

In fact, the coolest part of this idea is that we can bring together our network of political insiders and outsiders to a central meeting place where we can all dunk on Kavanagh. (Kidding, senator!) Where we can hang out and learn from each other and have a little fun. 

Like the comments section, it’ll be limited to paid subscribers, so you know you’re hearing from the best and brightest in Arizona’s politicosphere. 

And we’re starting with Election Day — so we’ll have lots to talk about.

Our team will be hanging out there all day, and we’re going to invite some friends to join. 

But most of all, we want to hear from you:  

If you’re not a paid subscriber but you’re thinking, “hot damn, a Slack with all the coolest Arizona politicos,” well, you’re in luck. 

We want you in our club! 

And to celebrate the end of election season, we’re handing out Agenda swag!

Win today’s prediction contest, win a super cool T-shirt (and other stuff). 

But you gotta play to win!

Start the countdown.

Tomorrow is Election Day, which means we’re 37 hours away from polls closing… and 16 days away from candidates being required to remove those irksome roadside campaign signs.

We know all our fellow political junkies are getting their popcorn ready to watch the results trickle in tomorrow night. And campaign staffers, we can only assume, are preparing to pop some bottles to either celebrate or drink the sorrow away.

So — since we couldn’t contain our excitement — we decided to make things a little more fun for everyone’s election night.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Agenda’s 2026 prediction contest — and YOU could be a winner.

We’ve laid out a game composed of 13 questions as a fun way to test your political premonition ahead of the Tuesday night hullabaloo.

Think of it like the prediction market platform Kalshi — but without the insider trading.

The questions are below. But if you want to enter the contest, you’ll have to log your predictions by filling out this Google form.

What’s at stake?

The three top-performing contestants will get some sweet Agenda swag, and the winner will get ultimate bragging rights in the newsletter so everyone will know you’re a political genius.

Just get your predictions in by the time polls close at 7 p.m. tomorrow.

Now, on to the questions.

The governor has emerged as the heavy favorite in her reelection race. While recent polling from political consulting firm HighGround shows Hobbs with an unbelievable 12-point lead over Biggs, a few other surveys put Hobbs up by a much more likely 5 or 6 percentage points — either of which would result in a shellacking. So the question here basically is: Will this be a blowout?

Hourihan pulled off one of July’s biggest primary upsets when she won 56% of the No Labels gubernatorial primary vote and ousted wealthy entrepreneur Hugh Lytle. And, by her account, she has God’s vote.

For years, Democrats have claimed that they’re on the verge of winning enough seats for a majority in the House — and they’re once again hopeful that this might finally be their year. Whether or not they control the chamber for the first time in several decades depends on a few key swing district races — like Legislative District 4 in Scottsdale and north Phoenix, and the nearby LD2. But there’s also the possibility of an evenly split 30-30 House that would throw everything into even more chaos.

The Republican candidate challenging incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has based his campaign around insinuations that Fontes has incompetently run aspects of Arizona’s election system. But Kolodin is even more of a long shot than Biggs. Since a Kolodin victory seems almost out of the question at this point — and after he admitted on a call with fellow Republican candidates and supporters that things aren’t looking great for the GOP — the aching question is whether or not he’ll throw in the towel on election night or keep up a fight into the days following the election. To some degree, the answer depends on how badly he loses.

All of the three top statewide GOP candidates are underdogs at this point — but it’s unclear which of them will have the best performance.

Republican Treasurer Kimberly Yee knocked out incumbent Tom Horne in the primary, but she now faces Democrat Teresa Leyba Ruiz, a former math teacher and community college president. Recent polling has Yee performing better than other statewide GOP contenders.

As Democrats look to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives, all eyes are on the Scottsdale and north Phoenix swing district, which is a critical seat for both parties after Republican Congressman David Schweikert opted to run for governor and lost handily in the primary. Democrat Amish Shah is favored, and Republican Jay Feely — even with heavy support from his patron President Donald Trump and his allies — admitted that he’s running from behind. In the Democratic primary, Shah beat out Marlene Galán-Woods (who had the backing of the Dem establishment), even as her super PAC supporters attacked Shah by bringing his cat Hillary into the mix in a weird attack ad — which we felt the need to mention since it’s still spooky season.

Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani won his last two elections by fewer than 3 percentage points, but the Cook Political Report recently shifted his race against Democrat JoAnna Mendoza from “toss-up” to “leans Democrat.”

Currently, the commission — a widely misunderstood government body that regulates energy utilities, among other responsibilities — is controlled completely by five Republicans. Democrats Jonathon Hill and Clara Pratte are hoping to break that GOP stranglehold and both win seats up for grabs, but they’re up against Republican incumbent Commissioner Kevin Thompson and outgoing Republican Rep. Ralph Heap.

Nearly 63% of Arizona’s registered voters cast ballots in the 2022 midterms. This year, Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett thinks his county’s turnout will be the highest since the 1970s.

Heap and his nemeses on the board of supervisors have spent much of the year fighting over control of the county’s elections. They settled the legal dispute in July, but the online beefing hasn’t stopped.

We’re letting the state’s paper of record decide if Democrats lived up to the hype.

So far, the president has given plenty of attention to Arizona’s Republican congressional candidates and Biggs on his social media app of choice.