Primary prepping: LD28 House Republicans
If at first you don’t succeed, rack up endorsements … Boycott my president … And apparently we still got him.
Republican voters more than double the number of Democrat voters in this West Valley district, so the only real political battle will be in the Republican primary.
Both of Legislative District 28’s current representatives, David Livingston and Beverly Pingerelli, are seeking reelection, and they’ve already beat their challenger in the area, which covers Sun City, Sun City West and portions of Peoria, Surprise, Glendale and Phoenix.
Susan Black is again challenging the incumbents for a House seat. The same three candidates faced off in a primary election in 2022, but Black failed to get the Republican nomination.
But this year, she’s been endorsed by notable Freedom Caucus legislators like Sen. Jake Hoffman, Sen. Anthony Kern and Rep. Jacqueline Parker, showing the significant division within the Republican caucus.
The two top vote-getters will face one Democratic challenger in November. Republican Sen. Frank Carroll will again represent the district in 2024 as the sole candidate in the Senate race.
Susan Black
Black ran a failed bid for one of LD28’s House seats in 2022 and lost in the primary to the current incumbents by a significant margin.
Career experience: She’s a realtor and founding member of the Adams Traditional Academy elementary charter school.
Fun fact: Black says she played an “influential part” in getting the Lifewise program into Peoria schools, which teaches bible classes during school hours.
Campaign website: susanblackforarizona.com
Rep. David Livingston
Livingston is the House Appropriations Committee chair, charged with wrangling together votes among Republicans. He was first elected in 2012 and is now seeking his seventh term in the state Legislature.
Career experience: He’s a former franchise owner of Ameriprise Financial in Peoria and sold his business in 2013. Livingston says he’s semi-retired, but still owns the Livingston Financial Center, per his LinkedIn.
Fun fact: Livingston found out in January he has an adult daughter he never knew after she took a 23andMe DNA test. He said the math puts the daughter’s conception during Livingston’s freshman year at ASU, when he was having “relations.”
Campaign website: davidlivingston.vote
Rep. Beverly Pingerelli
Pingerelli is running for her third term in the state House. She’s a full-time science program coordinator at Grand Canyon University.
Career experience: Pingerelli was previously a cytogenetics technologist and performed tests for infectious diseases and genetic tests on cancer biopsies. She served on the Peoria Unified School District Governing Board from 2015 to 2022.
Fun fact: Pingerelli grew up in Detroit and was the first of her family to graduate from college.
Campaign website: beverlypingerelli.org
CORRECTION: In a profile of LD23 House Democratic primary last week, we incorrectly stated Republican Rep. Michelle Peña unseated an appointed incumbent Democrat in 2022. Brian Fernandez was appointed to the House, but he chose not to run for re-election and instead ran successfully for Senate. These were open House seats in that election and Peña ran against Jesus Lugo, Jr. and Mariana Sandoval, who were not incumbents. Additionally, we wrote that Matias Rosales is a former member of the San Luis City Council. His current term ends in December.
Since we last spoke: U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva called on President Joe Biden to “get out of this race,” becoming the second — but not the last — major Democrat to do so, the New York Times reported.1 The Times even built a handy guide tracking the major Dems who want him to drop out. Meanwhile, every Democratic governor in the nation joined a meeting with Biden late last week where he told them he needs to be in bed by 8 p.m., and that he had a medical checkup before that debate. Then Biden sat for a 22-minute interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that failed to convince many that he’s capable of leading a nation.
Now “make sense of the money”: We’re finally seeing the dark money election spending reports that political PACs are required to file under Prop 211 after Secretary of State Adrian Fontes got beat up in the Republic for not posting them on his broken-down “See the Money” campaign finance website. They’re almost impossible to find and totally incomprehensible anyway, unless you’re as smart as the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl, who attempted to make sense of the handful of reports filed. Speaking of campaign cash, Gov. Katie Hobbs told Capitol scribe Howie Fischer that she’s raising “millions” to flip the Legislature into Democratic hands. And speaking of governors, former Gov. Jan Brewer continued denouncing election lies while pledging to vote for Donald Trump in an interview with Rachel Leingang2 in the Guardian U.S.
A long ballot and lots of prep: The three initiatives we mentioned last week — abortion, open primaries and minimum wage — all turned in more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, pending verification and legal challenges. And Arizona is among as many as 11 states that could have an abortion rights issue on the ballot this year, per the New York Times. Meanwhile, counties are training poll workers and testing election equipment ahead of the July 30 primary.
They’re fleeing the actual war zones: Asylum seekers at the border are not being allowed to plead concerns for their safety before being deported, which human rights lawyers say is a violation of U.S. asylum law and international refugee law, the Nogales International’s Daisy Zavala Magaña reports. And Arizona border residents chuckled at the idea that the border is in chaos, telling a reporter for the Guardian U.S. that their towns are not a “war zone,” as both presidential candidates and major parties claim. Migrants aren’t a burden and life is pretty chill, if a little dull. Finally, the Border Chronicle newsletter has a summer border reading list for your perusing.
“Yeah, no we are good.” Oscar Felix Jr, a local radio host, told the Guardian.
Don’t trust the polls: Two-thirds of Gen Z Arizonans told researchers they’re going to vote this year, though only about a third of their age group showed up to the polls in 2022, per Axios Phoenix’s Jessica Boehm. And more than half of Phoenix Police officers told the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association that they’d consider leaving the department if the Department of Justice starts monitoring its civil rights abuses against people of color, protesters, and people with behavioral disabilities.
“Our officers are smart. They see what happens in other communities with the DOJ,” Phoenix Law Enforcement Association President Darrell Kriplean told KTAR. “This is a depolicing maneuver, essentially, because officers are afraid that they won’t be able to do their jobs and serve the community.”
Shade, water, air conditioning: An excessive heat warning is in effect across major swaths of Arizona as a heat wave rips through the West Coast. Heat-related deaths are up, and temperatures continue to break daily records.
This week, we’re wrapping up the last of the Clean Elections primary election debates.
Catch the GOP primary debate for the Senate seat in Legislative District 2, which covers the north central Phoenix, at 6 p.m. tonight.
Tomorrow at 6 p.m., it’s the Democratic primary debate for the two House seats in northeastern Arizona’s LD6.
On Wednesday, we’ve got the Dem primary debate for the two House seats in LD8, covering Tempe, south Scottsdale and parts of Phoenix.
And Friday is the last debate of the primary campaign season – the Democrats running for the House seats in the west Valley’s LD24 will square off at 6 p.m.
You can check out our entire political calendar here. Add it to your own Google calendar here.
And send us events through this form, or email us at info@arizonaagenda.com. As long as it’s Arizona politics-related and has all the info, we’ll post it.
A few weeks ago, Nicole and Hank joined 12News’ Brahm Resnik on “Sunday Square Off.”
As we were waiting to tape the segment, we watched — mouths agape — as former DPS Director and current Maricopa County Sheriff candidate Frank Milstead told Resnik that Leslie Merritt Jr. “is still the freeway shooter, we had the right guy in custody."
In case you don’t remember, in 2015, the Valley was terrorized by a “freeway shooter,” and minutes after Merritt was arrested, former Gov. Doug Ducey gleefully tweeted about it.
Merritt eventually won a rare order from a court actually clearing him of the crime. Maricopa County settled a lawsuit for $100,000 and the state paid out millions to fight Merritt’s lawsuits.
Now the Milstead campaign is facing a defamation lawsuit from Merritt based on that interview, Resnik reports.
It was the second-hottest take he has ever had.
Yes, our Rachel Leingang.
A crucial note to understanding that Gen Z voter poll: researchers polled those who were already registered to vote, meaning the poll numbers are skewed toward higher engagement from the very beginning.
So Jan Brewer endorses Stephen Richer AND Donald Trump? Is she trying to get her photo used as the definition for "cognitive dissonance"?