We've got some big news to share today, readers!
This year, the Agenda team is working with the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission to reimagine and moderate their legislative debates.
It's the biggest civic project in the Agenda's history, and we want to take a minute to tell you about it directly — what it is, why we're doing it and what it means for our work.
First, a word about Clean Elections.
If you don’t know, Clean Elections is the independent commission created by Arizona voters in 1998 to promote participation in the political process.
It is Arizona's only non-partisan voter education entity, and it hosts the state's official debates program. Clean Elections also produces the Voter Education Guide, runs an optional clean funding program for candidates and enforces the Clean Elections Act.
We’ve moderated their debates for years because we have enormous respect for Clean Elections and its team.
They are fiercely independent and nonpartisan, and their whole reason for existing is to give voters more power in Arizona's political system.
That mission squarely aligns with our own.
Clean Elections came to the Agenda because it knows we have spent years delivering Arizona politics, policy and government in a way that makes people actually want to pay attention.
It's an honor we don't take lightly.
We'll have more details as debate season approaches.
But broadly, the goal is to redesign the debate experience from the ground up — a more dynamic format that actually reveals who these candidates are, and distribution that reaches voters where they are.
We'll be promoting, moderating and writing about the debates, and building tools to help voters connect what they see on stage to the decisions they make in the voting booth.
As we put it in a joint statement with Clean Elections:
“Clean Elections is the gold standard for fair, nonpartisan debates. When they approached us about reimagining their legislative program, we saw a chance to match that with what the Agenda does best: make people want to pay attention to local politics. We're building a format that puts more candidates at the table and gets more voters tuning in.”
We are embarking on this project as journalists and partners of Clean Elections, and that means we will hold ourselves to Clean Elections’ nonpartisan standards in debates.
As always, every candidate who steps onto that debate stage will be treated fairly, regardless of party or ideology.
And our coverage of candidates in the Agenda won’t change.
We cover all sides of Arizona's political landscape — we write tough stories about both Democrats and Republicans, and we've got the hate mail from both sides to prove it.
Arizona's legislative races decide the fate of our state, and we’re proud to have a greater role in informing voters of their options.
We hope you’ll tune in!
After a New York Times investigation revealed allegations that civil rights leader César Chávez sexually assaulted young women, governing bodies across Arizona have taken steps to withdraw public honors bearing his name.
The rollback of Chávez's recognition has now reached the Capitol, where a Senate committee voted unanimously yesterday to eliminate Dr. César Estrada Chávez Day from state law.
Lawmakers designated March 31 as the commemorative state holiday in 2000, but government workers do not get the day off.
Democrats on the Senate Committee on Regulatory Affairs and Government Efficiency asked that the bill be amended later in the legislative process to rename the holiday “Farm Workers Day.”
“I think it's important that we repeal this holiday, that we remove this violent, dangerous person's name from all spaces, and we should rename this day to farm workers’ day, so the contributions of this movement are not erased,” Democratic Sen. Analise Ortiz said.
California’s state lawmakers are currently moving to rename the Chávez holiday “Farmworkers Day.”
But Arizona is a little different than California. And the committee’s Republicans didn’t respond to the idea of continuing to honor farmworkers.
Legislative Republicans are very interested, however, in drawing a clear moral line. Republican leadership sent out a press release last week forcefully denouncing Chávez’s behavior and demanding immediate removal of his statewide honors.
“Protecting children and holding predators accountable is a fundamental responsibility of government. Arizona law should never be used to honor someone tied to that kind of harm,” President Warren Petersen said in the statement.
Down the street at Phoenix City Hall yesterday, councilmembers also voted unanimously to remove Chávez’s name and likeness from city facilities. They renamed this year’s March 31 holiday as “Farmworkers Day” at the city level — though the council will later have the chance to give it a new long-term name.
“It makes sense to rename this in honor of the farmworkers themselves as opposed to an individual person,” Councilwoman Laura Pastor said. “Who we really need to recognize are the unsung heroes who do and did the work, who make the movement happen. We need to honor those who make it possible for us to bring food to our dinner table every night.”
Since the city has a number of facilities named after Chávez — including a library and streets — the council will have to rename those as well, and that process begins now. The decisions about what to rename the facilities will be left to the departments that have control over them. For instance, Cesar Chavez Park in Laveen Village is under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department, which will choose a new name. Honorary streets bearing Chavez’s name will be immediately removed and don’t need to be renamed — though they can be, if the council wants.
While one resident voiced concern that the council was moving too quickly to make those changes, Vice Mayor Kesha Hodge Washington noted that the council had seen enough.
“As a lawyer, due process is important to me, and I understand the concerns,” Hodge Washington said. “The survivors’ statement and the posture of the Chavez family, the foundation that bears his name and the union that he’s founded has confirmed to me that this is the right approach.”
Label-less once again: The Arizona Independent Party is no more after a Maricopa County Superior Court judge overruled Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ decision last year to let the “No Labels Party call itself the “Arizona Independent Party,” the Capitol Times’ Reagan Priest reports. The ruling leaves quite a few unknowns, considering around a dozen Arizona Independent Party candidates have qualified for the ballot, running for everything from the Governor’s Office to Congress to state Legislature. Fontes said he won’t appeal, but Arizona independent Party leader Paul Johnson told Axios Phoenix’s Jeremy Duda that he wants to take the issue to a higher court. And he hopes that his party’s candidates can still run under the party formerly known as No Labels. The judge called the name-swap a “political bait and switch.”
"Would the same 41,000 people who signed petitions to recognize the No Labels Party have signed to support the 'Arizona Nazi Party' or the 'Arizona Anarchists'?” the judge wrote.
Elections have consequences: Arizona Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar were on the radar of former special counsel Jack Smith as he investigated President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, per Politico. Newly released documents show Smith was going after phone logs for prominent Republican lawmakers and officials, and both Biggs and Gosar were on his subpoena target list.
Amid the hustle and bustle: The arrival of ICE agents to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport is getting mixed reviews from travelers, KJZZ’s Matthew Casey reports from Terminal 4. One man on his way to Miami said President Donald Trump “loves chaos,” while a woman traveling to Tennessee said ICE agents are “doing a great job” and a man going to El Paso said ICE agents cause some people anxiety, but “I guess if they’re here to help get people through, that’s a good use of the time then.”
Subscribe to the Agenda so you sound smart if a reporter asks you a question at the airport.
How long until it’s a DNA test?: Republican state lawmakers are trying to block immigrants without legal status from using banks, credit unions or check-cashing services, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, is aiming at the ID cards issued by Mexican consular offices, saying anybody who wants to use a bank must have an ID that shows they’re a U.S. citizen or legal resident. SB1421 already made it through the Senate, with no support from Democrats, and now it’s in the House.
Making it official: A month after Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap claimed he found voters who weren’t U.S. citizens on county voter rolls, he formally asked the county attorney to investigate 207 people, Sasha Hupka reports for Votebeat. He pulled the names from a notoriously faulty database, but he’s still moving those voters to “not eligible status” until he sees proof they’re citizens.
In other, other news
After talks broke down last month, the seven states that rely on the Colorado River are pitching ideas again, including one from Nevada that involves releasing 500,000 acre feet from an upper basin reservoir to help Lake Powell (Scott Franz / KUNC) … A liberal group is considering a lawsuit against Arizona State University after the school rejected their request to hold an event on campus at the same time as Turning Point USA, when campus police said it would be too dangerous (Helen Rummel / Republic) … And the vaping industry is pushing a bill at the state Capitol to regulate the vape industry, which opponents say is just a backdoor way to keep the Attorney General’s Office from busting vape vendors for selling to minors (Howie Fischer / Capitol Media Services).
“Strange,” “wacky,” and “erroneous.”
Those aren’t terms you want to hear about a police evidence system, but that’s how Goodyear officials described theirs.
Problems with the handling of evidence led a judge to suspend the murder trial against a former Phoenix police officer and his wife, which spurred Goodyear officials to conduct an administrative investigation.
They found that anybody could open and re-tape evidence without documenting it, as well as change the dates and times of property entered into a database without leaving a record, per ABC15’s Dave Biscobing.
And nobody has done a formal audit of the property and evidence unit in nearly a decade.
As one detective put it: “This may be a massive shit storm.”