Primary Prepping: LD15 House Republicans
Quite the MAGA mashup … 2022 not 1864 … And sleuthing on socials.
The East Valley’s deep red Legislative District 15 will have at least one new representative next year.
Current Rep. Neal Carter is vying for another term, but his seatmate Rep. Jacqueline Parker isn’t seeking reelection to the district, which includes all of Queen Creek, parts of Mesa and most of the San Tan Valley.
All four Republican candidates running for the GOP nomination to the two open House seats seem to espouse the same hard-right, MAGA principles as Parker, a Freedom Caucus member. Carter’s voting record in the Legislature has proved steadfastly conservative, while challengers Peter Anello and Michael Way say they stand for America First viewpoints, and Donald Trump himself, across their campaign websites.
Anello has a leg up compared to his opponents, however. He’s running on a slate with Carter and LD15 Sen. Jake Hoffman.
Candidate Alex Stovall says he campaigned for Trump in 2020 and is a proud NRA member, but an even further right organization has tried to out him as a phony Republican.
And in the Senate, Freedom Caucus champion Hoffman is seeking reelection to LD15. He faces no primary opposition and one Democratic challenger in November. And one Democrat is running for the House, though in a district this red, Democrats don’t stand much of a chance.
Peter Anello
This Iraq combat veteran is running with the endorsements of both Parkers in the state Legislature — Reps. Jacqueline Parker, who he’s vying to replace, and her mother, Barbara Parker — not to mention Carter and Hoffman. Election integrity tops the issues list on his website.
What else he does: Anello’s a chaplain at the Queen Creek Post 129 American Legion and works in marketing for an insurance broker.
Fun fact: He posted QAnon conspiracy theories and anti-LGBTQ+ memes on his Truth Social account.
Campaign website: www.electpeteranello.com
Rep. Neal Carter
Incumbent Rep. Neal Carter is seeking a second term in LD15 after he was appointed to take over a House seat in 2021 following former lawmaker Frank Pratt’s death. Carter won his first full term in the 2022 election.
Career experience: Carter works for the software company Nuix and is a licensed lawyer. He’s the general counsel for the Pinal County Republican Committee and works pro bono for some veterans groups.
Fun fact: Carter lists his hobbies as playing the cello, horse riding and “cruising around in his ’64 Buick named ‘Cassie.’”
Campaign website: www.nealcarterarizona.com
Alex Stovall
Stovall filed paperwork to run for U.S. House seats in 2022 and this year, but he never made it on the ballot.
What does he do?: Stovall is a U.S. Army veteran and licensed minister. He’s currently a material handler at Honeywell, per his LinkedIn. On his LinkedIn, Stovall lists one of his previous jobs as an “actor model” with a California modeling agency.
Fun fact: The Army investigated Stovall in 2021 after he wore his uniform on a right-wing TV network while disparaging President Joe Biden, according to the military news outlet Stars and Stripes.
Plus: Project Veritas, a far-right activist group that publishes secretly recorded (and often misleading) videos in an attempt to discredit progressive organizations, published recordings of Stovall saying he doesn’t agree with election conspiracies that Donald Trump won in 2020.
Campaign website: www.alex4arizona.com
Michael Way
This challenging candidate presents himself as “a family man and an accomplished business executive, not a career politician.”
What does he do?: Way is the president of business development at Charter One, his family business that’s a service provider for charter schools.
Fun fact: Way is the son of Glenn Way, a former Utah lawmaker who brought his American Leadership Academy to Arizona and banked millions of taxpayer dollars from charter schools. He wrote an op-ed denouncing the North Carolina State Board of Education for denying one of American Leadership Academy’s charter school applications.
Campaign website: www.michaelwayforaz.com
Called it: Arizona’s territorial-era abortion ban won’t actually go into effect, despite a court ruling saying it would. Lawmakers repealed the ban and ended the legislative session in time to have the repeal take effect before the 1864 law goes back on the books, Cronkite News’ Sahara Sajjadi reports. Attorney General Kris Mayes agrees, telling the Republic’s Stephanie Innes that the “general effective date” for this year’s laws (including the repeal of the 1864 law) is September 14, while the 1864 law was slated to go into effect no earlier than September 27. After that, the state will operate under the 15-week ban that Republicans approved in 2022 — at least until voters have a say with the pro-choice initiative in November.
Who’s in charge?: Maternal death rates have been climbing over the past two decades in Arizona, Natasha Yee writes for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Although the state Department of Health Services has developed a set of recommendations to improve that, health officials don’t seem to know whether many are being adopted across state agencies.
Shocking: Newly released emails from Cochise County supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd show pretty much what you’d expect, our friend Rachel Leingang reports for the Guardian U.S. Basically, the emails turned over to American Oversight after a yearlong fight show Crosby is a big fan of conspiracy websites Gateway Pundit and Epoch Times, and Judd was pushing for the county to hand-count ballots, despite her claims otherwise.
College fund for homeschoolers: While lawmakers were looking for budgets to sweep, they never considered recouping the $175 million sitting unused in Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, Dillon Rosenblatt reports in the Fourth Estate 48. ESA families can sit on the funds for up to four years after a student graduates from high school, and some families have more than $200,000 in the bank.
The Arizona Agenda isn’t eligible for ESAs. We depend on our subscribers to pay our student loans.
Thanks, Donald: Nearly five years after three children died when their family attempted to cross the flooded Tonto Creek, which is the only access to the Tonto Basin community, a new bridge is finally open, ABC15 reports. Lawmakers attempted to appropriate more than $20 million for the project shortly after the tragedy, but that idea stalled out and the funds ultimately came from the federal government.
Truth challenged: Former Democratic Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall declared her Democratic successor Laura Conover “factually unhinged” in an op-ed endorsing Conover’s Democratic challenger Mike Jette. In the piece, LaWall details various untruths she says Conover has told since taking office, which range from “lies” to “Absolutely. Positively. Not true.”
“It is truly alarming to realize how factually unhinged Conover is,” LaWall wrote.
A sliver of good news: After yesterday’s thoroughly depressing story about an Apache County deputy shooting seven starving dogs at an abandoned property, we’ve got a little heartwarming follow-up to that tragedy. Two dogs survived and were picked up by animal welfare advocates, though one later died of parvo. But the lone survivor, Darla, now renamed Mya, has found her forever home with a family in Pine, the Mountain Daily Star reports.
One of guiltiest online pleasures is watching videos from trashy local accounts like “It’s All Phoenix,” or the original Arizona trash account, “Tucson TMZ,” which highlights “the craziest, wildest and funniest content from Tucson,” including videos of fist fights, reckless drivers and drunk bar patrons. In late April, a video of a stabbing at the Pima County Fair racked up more than 183,000 views.
Well, our Tucson Agenda colleague Caitlin Schmidt1 has unmasked the person who is almost certainly behind the account: Frankie/Francisco Lopez, a local constable whose day job with Pima County includes serving eviction notices, orders of protection and other types of legal paperwork.
Meaning an elected peace officer who voters trust to engage with community members during their most vulnerable times is spending his off-hours posting videos of those same people in their worst moments.
With a little help from our own Nicole Ludden
There were "animal welfare advocates" in Apache County, but no one in the sheriff's office knew about them? The family that rescued Mya should make PSAs.
I moved to Tucson in 2018, and so I missed most of the LaWall years in Pima County, but people whose judgment I trust have told me about the inefficiencies and deceptive practices of the county attorney's office during that time. From what this non-attorney can see, Laura Conover has always acted with professionalism and has greatly improved that office, and since I’m naturally suspicious of someone who has recently registered as a Democrat in order to seek office in an overwhelmingly Democratic county (her opponent), I intend to vote for Ms. Conover and encourage fellow residents of Pima County to do the same.