Rebranding independence
Someone labeled No Labels … The Kirktopus has many tentacles … And Make Hobbs Progressive Again.
Hey readers!
You might remember Paul Johnson from last year’s open primary ballot fight. The voters said no, but Johnson’s still fighting to eliminate extremists and bring politics back to the center.
We caught up with him to talk about his plans to rebrand the No Labels Party, and why he hopes the mainstream parties continue to hate him.
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For several years, Paul Johnson has been on a mission to give Arizona’s independent voters a real voice in a system built for two parties.
He recently realized: If you can’t beat them, join them.
Johnson, a former Phoenix mayor who most recently helped to spearhead Arizona’s failed “open primaries” initiative, Prop 140, is taking over the No Labels Party and rebranding it as a political home for independents.
No Labels became an official Arizona state party in 2023, but it had national political ambitions. Amid mass frustration with both of last year’s presidential candidates, the group announced it will run a third-party, centrist alternative.
But it couldn’t find the right person for the job. So it gave up.
While No Labels was searching for a centrist presidential nominee, Johnson was running Prop 140, an Arizona ballot measure to create an open primary system where every candidate runs against each other in a primary.
It was a solution to the plight of the independent: Even though more than a third of Arizona voters are registered as independents, they have little say in who ends up on their ballots. Unaffiliated voters can’t automatically vote in party primaries — they have to request a ballot, and few actually do.
And because independent candidates don’t run in partisan primaries, they have to gather far more petition signatures to qualify for the general election ballot.
Plus, proponents argued that opening the primaries would weed out extreme candidates by requiring them to appeal beyond their party’s base. But both Republican and Democrat-backed groups spent heavily to oppose the measure.
More than 58% of voters shot down Johnson’s open primaries measure last year. And No Labels voters memorably received blank primary election ballots as the party refused to let local candidates use its namesake.
But in the quiet collapse of Arizona’s No Labels movement, Johnson saw an opening.
He’s taken control of the party and rebranded it as the “Arizona Independent Party.” The name change was part of the agreement to inherit No Label’s spot on the ballot and more than 42,000 registered voters.
It’s a clever naming scheme, considering “independents” — who are technically registered to vote under “party not designated” or PND — make up 35% of Arizona’s electorate, comprising the second-largest bloc of voters.
After losing the Prop 140 effort, Johnson said he was already working with the measure’s campaign staff to create a state political — or anti-political — party.
“I think you call it luck or karma, faith,” Johnson said. “I don’t know how it completely came about, but what I do know is that when we lost that election, we were looking for a way to be able to open it up and let that group of voters participate. And lo and behold, it showed up.”
Johnson described the handoff as an amicable agreement with No Labels co-founder Nancy Jacobson. There were only two members on Arizona’s No Labels board, and at the direction of the national leadership, they made Johnson chairman.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes approved No Labels’ name change, which takes effect on Dec. 1. He told 12News’ Brahm Resnik he’ll work on making sure voters know the difference between selecting no party and the new Arizona Independent Party on registration forms.
The independent platform
No Labels secured ballot access in Arizona to advance a presidential campaign. So when non-presidential statewide candidates began running under its banner in 2024, the party sued to stop it, but eventually got shut down by an appeals court.
Johnson’s worked with No Labels before, but he thinks he can do a better job localizing the independent-party experiment.
“If I’m willing to let people who I really care about in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party be infuriated with me in the cause of creating greater competition and forcing them to have to address these independents, yeah, there’s something we can do that (No Labels) won’t do,” Johnson said.
So far, three No Labels candidates have submitted statements of interest to run in the 2026 midterms, and Johnson anticipates several more contenders before the election.
Anyone can run under the new Arizona Independent Party, he said. But there are requirements to earn an official party endorsement, or a “litmus test,” as Johnson puts it.
To get the party’s blessing, candidates must support open primaries, commit to bipartisanship and — if they’re aiming for the state Legislature or Congress — commit to forming an independent caucus.
While a lot of American independent voters admit to partisan leanings, a good portion really do consider themselves politically moderate.
To clarify what an “independent” candidate actually stands for, Johnson helped write 14 statements of belief — a platform for the ostensibly platformless.
His party supports the military and a diversified energy strategy of both oil and renewables. It wants “reform in the classroom not the bathroom,” and more investment in education.
The government should make it easier to build things, one statement says, and “excessive regulations, taxes, and fees” harm Americans.
Johnson said the belief statements are to let potential candidates and voters know what the party is “trying to promote.” The new independent party avoided hot-button issues like abortion rights, the kinds of topics that already define Republican and Democratic ideologies.
“If we run and we’re out there actively talking about issues, we force them to have to address our issues,” he said. “I really hope that both parties hate us so bad that instead of trying to change the rules to put us out of business, they decide that the right way to put us out of business is to appeal to that mainstream voter.”
It’s not his ideal outcome, but Johnson called the new political party an “iteration” of his decade-long fight to make Arizona’s elections fairer for independents.
“I still don’t think it’s the perfect way. I think the perfect way is to allow independents and unaffiliated voters to have an open primary,” he said. “But this is better than nothing at all.”
The Kirktopus: Members of the Scottsdale and Fountain Hills city councils are considering measures to officially memorialize conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and the Phoenix City Council will consider a petition to name a street downtown after Kirk today in response to a citizen petition from “controversial activist” Jarrett Maupin, per KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky.1 Meanwhile, Politico zooms in on Turning Point’s biggest test since Kirk’s death — the attempted recall of Mesa City Councilmember Julie Spilsbury in Tuesday’s election. And so does the New York Times. And the Republic’s Stephanie Murray has a breakdown of the Turning Point network and the scale of the conservative empire Kirk built, which has only grown since his assassination.
“It’s not uncommon for large political groups to use a network of nonprofits to operate and carry out different duties. Examples include the Koch Brothers on the right and the Sixteen Thirty Fund on the left,” Murray explains.
Where the sunlight doesn’t shine: Among the forms of political dark money not outlawed under the Voters’ Right to Know Act (AKA outlaw dark money) is funds for gathering signatures for a candidate to qualify for the ballot. That’s become an issue in the recall election for Tolleson Unified School Board member and former nutty lawmaker Leezah Sun, Axios Phoenix’s Jeremy Duda writes. A nonprofit gave $55,000 to the recall committee to gather signatures, but nobody knows who funded the nonprofit.2
Go back to Plan A: Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen held a press conference to announce his plans in the upcoming legislative session to let chronic speeders keep their driving privileges if they install a speed-governing device, per the Republic’s Ray Stern. The companies that make the governing devices are stoked. Last year, Nguyen filed a bill to eliminate “legislative privilege” from speeding tickets after his seatmate, Sen. Mark Finchem, and Freedom Caucus leader Sen. Jake Hoffman both got out of speeding tickets thanks to legislative privilege.
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Purging the purgers: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security allegedly removed five ICE field office chiefs in cities across the country, including Phoenix, but members of Congress are either in the dark or staying mum about it, per Courthouse News. The ousted officials are allegedly being replaced by senior leaders inside Border Patrol, and one lawmaker speculated that the shake-up was aimed at supporting the Trump administration’s “unrealistic” deportation quotas.
Welcome back to the chaos: The Navajo Nation is on its fourth attorney general in less than a year. The new guy, Kris Beecher, is chief of staff to Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and was already AG once, per KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio. The Navajo Nation Council refused to confirm the last guy, Colin Bradley, who was acting attorney general for less than three months.
Gov. Katie Hobbs is calling her upcoming reelection campaign stop an “Arizona First Rally.”
Which strikes us as desperately unoriginal.
Pitch for the next stop: The Make Arizona Great Again rally.
The controversial remark is probably alluding to the time Maupin was charged with a felony and had to resign from the school board for lying to the FBI about having a tape of former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon molesting children, which did not exist. But really, it could be any number of things.
Petition circulating is one of the most interesting gigs in politics.
I first heard of Charlie Kirk in or around 2015 when he had a bunch of underage kids, in the basement of some church, sending out Russian disinformation about Hillary Clinton. My first thought was what was he doing to those children?, He was not apparently paying them, he was teaching them that lying in the name of Christ is ok. Then I hear about his gig finding homosexuals at work and harassing them, aka, ASU professors. Charlie Kirk was a coward and slick carney barker who used a Socratic style of debate to batter college students into submission. He couldn’t fight at his own punching weight. Naming a street or a monument to such an individual is blasphemy. Where is the street name or statue of Don Bolles a true Arizona hero?
I was tired of Charlie Kirks weak act 5 years ago. Now...he's a martyr. Oh, goody. Let's build statues, rename roads, physical landmarks, etc. 50% of us couldn't stand him. But, until we can get Republicans out of State Government we will we have no meaningful voice and they will try to put his NIL on everything. Think midterms. Then we can stop this shizzle.