Neither representative of east Mesa’s uber-conservative Legislative District 10 is seeking reelection, leaving the door open for some new, and familiar, faces.
Current Reps. Justin Heap and Barbara Parker aren’t seeking another term. Heap is instead challenging incumbent Stephen Richer for Maricopa County Recorder.
Heap’s father, Ralph Heap, is running for a seat, as is former Arizona Representative, state Corporation Commissioner and Turning Point USA executive Justin Olson.
Newcomer Matt Greer, an Army vet and realtor, is also running, representing the more moderate wing of the party.
And in this blood-red district, whoever wins the Republican primary for the two House seats should coast through the November election. The district’s senator, Republican David Farnsworth, is unopposed in the primary.
Matt Greer
Newcomer Greer represents the more moderate choice in the district. He’s received a small donation from former Republican Sen. Jerry Lewis, who took out Russell Pearce in the 2011 recall election, and is focused on issues like housing and the economy.
What does he do?: He’s an East Valley realtor and Army veteran.
Fun fact: Greer was a paratrooper for 5 years and deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. On the lighter side, you can tour some houses with him on his Youtube channel.
Campaign website: www.mattgreeraz.com
Ralph Heap
Heap is running for the vacancy left by his son, current Rep. Justin Heap. He lost in the Republican primaries for LD25’s Senate seat in 20141 and is politically aligned with his son, who has become one of the MAGA leaders at the Capitol.
Career experience: Heap is an orthopedic surgeon in Mesa. He’s been on medical missions to provide pediatric orthopedic care in countries like Bolivia, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe.
Fun fact: Heap lists his hobbies as “competing in triathlons, enjoying astronomy and playing in a bluegrass band” called the Red Mountain Bluegrass Band. And to answer your next question — yes, they do play a mean rendition of “Man of Constant Sorrow.”
Campaign website: www.heapforhouse.com
Justin Olson
Olson was elected to the state House in 2010 and served through 2016. Former Gov. Doug Ducey appointed Olson to the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2017 and was elected to a full term in 2018. He lost his U.S. Senate bid to Blake Masters in the 2022 primaries and was defeated by Andy Biggs in a U.S. House run in 2016.
Currently: He’s the Chief Financial Officer of Turning Point USA, a MAGA youth organization, where he’s “in the trenches fighting the good fight to save our country,” per his campaign website.
Fun fact: Olson was a congressional aide for former U.S. Rep. Trent Franks.
Campaign website: www.votejustinolson.com
At about 8 o’clock last night, lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced the budget package, a 16-bill tome rivaling the Bible in length. Lawmakers will take their first votes starting at 10:30 this morning and hope to have it on the governor’s desk on Friday.
They must be fast readers!
Anyway, as they waited for staffers to draft the bills yesterday, lawmakers kept themselves busy by loading up your ballot with ideas that the governor would veto, including:
SCR1012: rulemaking; legislative ratification; regulatory costsWill ask voters to require legislative approval for any regulations that a state government office implements that will cost businesses money.
SCR1023: general election day; all officesWill ask voters to bar cities, towns and school districts from holding their own local elections outside of the November election. That one still needs final approval from the Senate.
SCR1041: ballot measures; challengesWill ask voters to allow people to file constitutional challenges to citizens’ initiatives before they even qualify for the ballot.
Additionally, Democrats and Freedom Caucus Republicans shot down HB2201, a hotly debated water measure that would have encouraged farms to become housing subdivisions.
And lawmakers rejected a plan to exempt themselves from transparency requirements like open meetings and public notice laws after a handful of Republicans voted against it.
Anything (isn’t) possible: Gov. Katie Hobbs is appealing a judge’s decision that she has to work with the Republican majority in the Senate to get her agency directors confirmed, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer writes. The governor has been running state departments with non-legislatively approved “executive deputy directors” and said working with Senate President Warren Petersen on approving department heads isn’t “possible at this point,” especially with Sen. Jake Hoffman in charge of the committee reviewing the nominees.
Divide and conquer: A Mohave County power plant won’t have to undergo an environmental impact assessment for a 200-megawatt expansion after UniSource Energy argued the development is split into four individual 50-megawatt units that individually don’t meet the legal threshold for review, KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky reports. The Arizona Corporation Commission agreed with the power plant’s owner in a 4-1 vote that overturned another committee’s ruling denying the exemption request.
Wasted management: Internal emails and police reports about this year’s unruly Waste Management Phoenix Open show the Scottsdale Police Department was more concerned than it previously indicated as police used crowd control techniques "never before seen" at the tournament, per the Republic’s Sam Kmack. Police closed the front gates, shut down streets and cut off alcohol sales to prevent further chaos as a woman fell two stories at the 16th hole and officers made a record number of arrests largely related to alcohol use. Police and event organizers blamed the intensity on cold, wet weather.
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Break out the chicken suit: Kari Lake, who once drafted a whole fake photograph pretending to depict Hobbs in a chicken suit when Hobbs refused to debate her, is officially refusing to debate her primary election opponent, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, per the Republic’s Ron Hansen.
Elon, not NASA: The University of Arizona recently launched a “space law” course, one of the first of its kind in the country looking into the little-litigated area of space. Mark Brodie sat down with Andrew Woods, one of the professors teaching the course, to talk about it on “The Show.”
“The major treaties that deal with the rules that govern countries operating in outer space, all of those rules apply only or almost exclusively to sovereign countries and don’t really contemplate private commercial space exploration and activity. And yet today, what we see happening is not the United States government doing so much more space stuff, but rather private: Blue Origin (and) SpaceX,” Woods said.
Arizonan Alice Cooper is running for president.
Or at least he’s pulling a publicity stunt claiming he’s running for president in an attempt to drum up interest in his tour and juice his email list.
His pitch to voters is that he has no idea what he’s doing, so he should fit in.
And at just 76 years old — a year younger than Donald Trump and six years younger than President Joe Biden — he could also court the youth vote.