The best (and worst) of debate season

Over the last two months, 53 legislative candidates running in both parties’ primary elections gave voters a look at who they are, where they stand and in some cases what they think of their opponents in debates.

In 16 legislative district primary debates – sponsored by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission and moderated by Arizona Agenda and Tucson Agenda reporters – candidates revealed intra-party divisions, who knew their stuff and who didn’t, how they responded to pressure, and who was honest and who wasn’t.

As part of the Agenda’s partnership with Clean Elections, veteran reporter Gary Grado wrote previews for most of the 27 scheduled debates for competitive races and provided coverage of all 16 that took place. We shared his stories with news organizations around the state to use how they wanted, and many took us up on the offer.

Ten debates were canceled because candidates either declined or ignored their invitations, so we tip our hat to the candidates who took the opportunity to speak to voters.

After all of that coverage, here are some tidbits, trends and highlights worth sharing with Agenda readers.

Arizona is home to more than 1 million foreign-born residents, according to the 2024 U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, and the American Immigration Council reports that about one in six Arizonans have an immigrant parent, so naturally there are legislative candidates from both sets — and they’re proud to broadcast it.

Call it the Mexico to Arizona Capitol pipeline.

Genoveva Diaz, who’s running with Rep. Alma Hernandez and Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales as a team in Tucson’s Legislative District 20, mentioned her Mexican upbringing, her university studies in Mexico and working for the president of a prestigious Mexican university in her debate opening remarks.

Diaz said she was born in California and moved to Mexico as a child and returned in 2009 to the states.

Diaz is a political newcomer, but she’s friends with the Hernandez family — which includes Hernandez and her lawmaker sister, Democratic Rep. Consuelo Hernandez, and former lawmaker Daniel Hernandez.

In the Democratic primary for the district’s Senate seat, Alma Hernandez and her opponent, Rocque Perez, both highlighted that their mothers are immigrants from Mexico. Perez said he grew up “under threats to my family as immigrants.”

In neighboring LD21, which stretches from Tucson to the U.S.-Mexico border, Consuelo Hernandez, who also mentioned her mother’s immigration status, has a running mate who lived 18 years in Mexico, Maritza Higuera.

Higuera said she’s a U.S. citizen, but she had to learn English when she returned to the states.

Higuera writes bilingual books and runs an orchard and horse boarding business with her husband in Rio Rico, an unincorporated area about 60 miles south of Tucson.

Higuera, who stressed her education and border-area credentials throughout the debate, was on a shortlist for the Santa Cruz County school superintendent appointment last year, but the supervisors did not choose her.

The immigrant roots story came up again in LD24’s Democratic House debate. Candidate Alberto Flores spoke about being the son of immigrants and living in a mixed-status family, while Lisbeth Arescurenaga told voters that it took her many years to get her bachelor’s degree as she was living here illegally.

Flores said on his campaign website that his parents came here illegally and he cut his political teeth “fighting back against Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-immigrant crackdown.”

Arescurenaga said in a previous interview she came here from Peru at 15 years old and overstayed her visa for seven years.

In the debate, she told voters about her journey to legal status while working on her education.

Barby Ingle, a candidate for the state House in LD7, was the only Republican to debate who talked about a personal immigration experience.

Speaking of immigrants, the subject of illegal immigration arose many times during the debates, but nobody addressed it quite like Andrew Costanzo, a candidate for the House in northeastern Arizona’s LD7 and a MAGA banner waver, who cloaked his position in compassion.

He said “every illegal alien” should be deported because each harms an American and they even harm themselves because they “become a subclass of human within our country.”

We get his not-so eloquent point that immigrants have suffered discrimination, poverty and abuse throughout our history and still do.

But he didn’t elaborate on the benefit of returning to, in many cases, third-world poverty, war, authoritarian regimes, ethnic cleansing, religious persecution or any of the other situations from which people are trying to escape.

In talking about his 2014 termination from the El Mirage Police Department, where he was an enforcement code officer, and then getting placed on a roster of cops accused of dishonesty, no-longer indicted fake elector Anthony Kern made a couple of attention-grabbing comments.

He said he sued El Mirage over getting placed on what is known as the Brady List, and that he won. He also said that Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell told him “that if I give her what I have, I could easily be removed from that list.”

A quick check of Maricopa County Superior Court, U.S. District Court for Arizona and Maricopa County Justice Courts show no record of Kern suing the city. Kern is not a plaintiff in any suit but he’s a defendant in three lawsuits filed by creditors trying to get repaid.

It took the city several weeks to sift through records in the City Clerk’s Office, human resources, finance, legal and risk pool claims, but they came up with nothing. And Kern didn’t respond to follow up questions about his lawsuit.

Kern said his lawsuit alleged only sworn police officers who lie under oath should be on the Brady list, which gets its name from the U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 decision that requires the state to turn over all evidence that could be favorable to the defense.

But Kern said the list now includes civilian police department employees and there’s no due process.

The Brady list does not automatically disqualify anyone from being a police officer or testifying in court. Officers with all sorts of integrity issues such as arrests, convictions, lying on police reports have made the list, including Maricopa County Jerry Sheridan, who a federal judge found lied under oath. The list also includes a former Tempe justice of the peace who issued a search warrant without probable cause.

Being on the list didn’t stop Kern from being hired as a reserve officer from 2016 to 2019 with the Tombstone Marshal’s Office, according to Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board records.

As several media reports have indicated, Kern said he wound up on the list because he lost a $400 tablet and promised to pay for it, but he missed payments. He said “for that, for telling the truth” he was put on the list as a civilian.

The county attorney’s office confirmed the conversation between Kern and Mitchell took place.

Kern, who convinced Sen. John Kavanagh to run legislation that would have eliminated him from the list without telling the senator he’s on it, said getting his name removed is “not a huge issue for me.”

Primary debates can often turn into presentations of party talking points and meetings of the mutual admiration society, leaving viewers to nod off. But pit a progressive against a moderate Democrat and the insinuations, accusations and recriminations can fly.

Take Sen. Lauren Kuby and Deborah Nardozzi, who are facing off in the Democratic primary for the state Senate in Tempe’s LD8, for example.

Kuby presented herself as the anti-establishment candidate who takes no money from corporations or lobbyists. They’re trying to buy the district and fill Nardozzi’s campaign chest, she said, and Kuby had the data handy to prove her point.

Nardozzi, who served one session in the House as an appointee when the district’s representatives kept resigning in 2024, took exception to Kuby’s comments.

Nardozzi said that Kuby also accepts money from millionaires and special interests, but only those that are “in your bubble.”

The fireworks began after the two largely agreed about what’s to blame for Arizona’s housing shortage crisis: Republican policies that have led to the surge of corporate-owned short-term rentals.

But Kuby added that the legislation only benefits billionaire developers, “just like the ones that are funding my opponent’s campaign.”

LD20 Democratic socialist Miranda Lopez came out swinging at moderate Democrat Consuelo Hernandez at the bell, ignoring the two other candidates for two House seat nominations.

She said Hernandez has spent four years taking money from corporate PACs and “from the utility companies raising our bills, from the developers pricing out our renters, from the police PAC after she voted to lock in police budgets at the expense of every other service our southern Arizona cities and towns need.”

Lopez maintained her attacks throughout the debate, and Hernandez didn’t respond until near the end, when Lopez complained about her working with Republicans.

Hernandez invited Lopez to the Capitol “just to give you an insight on how the system works.”

Lopez, whose political experience is behind the scenes in campaigns and leading the Pima County Democratic Party, said that is no reason for Democrats to vote with Republicans.

Lopez is part of a slate that includes Perez, Flores and Arescurenaga who are targeting the Hernandez sisters and Lydia Hernandez (who is not related to the family of lawmakers). That progressive bloc is led by Sen. Analise Ortiz, who has feuded with Lydia Hernandez since they took office in 2023, and they’re backed by an ActBlue fundraising effort called No Safe Seats.

Lydia Hernandez and her running mate Rosa Cantu, (both of whom sit on the Cartwright School District Governing Board), didn’t attend the LD23 debate, but Flores and Arescurenaga took turns bashing them throughout.

Kavanagh and Robert Wallace also had entertaining exchanges in their LD3 GOP Senate debate.

Wallace, a former Turning Point employee who didn’t get its endorsement, tried to paint Kavanagh as a career politician who’s abused the spirit of term limits and is part of “the swamp.”

Those points could have landed, but Kavanagh seized on Wallace’s YouTube videos and podcasts in which he muses about Telletubbies, lizard people and interdimensional travel.

Kavanagh said one of Wallace’s Twitter posts is antisemitic and “downright ugly” as it blames Jews for pornography, hook-up culture, LGBTQ culture, and includes a list of doctors responsible for the COVID-19 vaccine that has “Jewish” next to each name.

The debates introduced several newcomers from each party who stood out for their eloquence, grasp of the issues, background, experience and humility in times when they didn’t have a grasp of the issues. Our research on candidates unearthed a few other possible standouts, but these are the ones who showed up for their debates, and they’re not endorsements, just people to watch.

Sandra Christensen: A member of the Paradise Valley Unified School District board who’s looking to take one of the seats from Reps. Matt Gress or Pamela Carter in LD4. She passed on the chance to go negative in her debate-turned-interview when the incumbents no-showed.

Jedidiah Lyons: A 27-year-old former staffer for Republican U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh and an entrepreneur who started a pro-life nonprofit that delivers necessities for newborns to mothers. He’s running for the GOP House nomination in LD14.

Grace Hecht: A Bullhead City native, she founded Make Bullhead Better, an organization inspired by the death of her 22-month-old son and the community’s response to it. She’s running in a crowded field for the LD30 House GOP nomination.

Caroline Strecker: A nurse who sported a lab coat in her LD30 GOP House debate, she likes to rely on data in her decision-making like other health care professionals running for office and sitting in office.

Christopher King: He has the GOP credibility as a longtime precinct committeeman and school board member and he showed a firm grasp of the issues in his debate, but his military job of diffusing bombs would make him the baddest ass in the Legislature if he’s elected to the Senate in LD17.

Flores and Arescurenaga: These two are running as a team in LD24 and each has an up-by-the-bootstraps story. Arescurenaga moved here from Peru at 15 and put herself through college as a single mother. Flores ran his family’s machine shop full time at 16 and took online classes at night to graduate high school.

Naomi Miguel: Her bad experience with the MVD inspired her to run for the House in the LD23 Democratic primary, but she brings six years of experience as a staffer in Congress and the White House, and has worked on legislation related to Native American tribes.

Emilia Cortez: She is also running for the House in LD23 and she stressed in the debate her experience on several boards, in public service and in economic development and her ability to create coalitions to solve problems.

Amelia Gallitano: A recruit of former Democratic lawmaker Judy Schwiebert, Gallitano is running for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in LD2. She’s a physician and researcher who had data at her fingertips to support her arguments in the debate.

Daniel Toporek: He’s Gallitano’s opponent and neither had a cross word for the other in their debate. He’s a retired military pilot who was well-versed on all the issues after having run and lost a race for Maricopa County Treasurer and working for Sen. Mark Kelly.

Voters in the Lake Havasu Unified School District didn’t mind that local pastor David Rose spent years in prison in Kentucky, and he’s hoping the same is true for voters in northwestern Arizona’s LD30.

News reports from 2011 say he abandoned his girlfriend and business partners after they bankrolled a short-lived newspaper he founded in Louisville, Ky. He told the Havasu News Herald that he was charged with theft of services and theft by deception related to writing bad checks.

His ex-girlfriend told a local news station at the time that she cashed out tens of thousands of dollars from her retirement savings to fund the business.

His criminal record never came up in the debate, but he has told news outlets in the district that he’s paid full restitution and had his rights restored.

We’re still trying to get his prison records from Kentucky, but non-residents aren’t allowed public records in that state, so we had to reach out to a friend there to help us out.

Rose is involved with Turning Point Action’s faith arm and has their endorsement.

Juan Guerrero a Democratic House candidate in LD23, which spans from Yuma to the western edges of the Valley, resigned from his justice of the peace office in 2024 after pleading guilty to a drunken driving charge.

Guerrero addressed his downfall indirectly in the debate, saying he is “battle tested” and he’s willing to face the exposure that comes with running for office.

One candidate who didn’t debate, but whose brush with the law led to a court martial, is Ciara Anderson. She’s running for the GOP nomination for the House in LD10.

Anderson discloses her court martial on her campaign website, in her campaign material and in stories about her online. She says that she rebuilt her life through faith after a difficult childhood, and the 2004 court martial at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming changed her life.

The type of court martial and the punishment suggest she committed a lesser offense under military justice or the equivalent of a misdemeanor in civilian court, but she says on her website that an addiction that began in high school followed her to the military.

A 2005 U.S. Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals order affirmed her sentence of a bad-conduct discharge, four months in jail and a demotion. A bad-conduct discharge is less severe than a dishonorable discharge, according to the Manual of Courts Martial.

Several candidates in the debates didn’t seem to understand Proposition 123, the 2016 voter-approved measure that allowed the state to tap into the state land trust to pay for yearly inflation adjustments. They either had no grasp of what it did, its history, its current status and what the Legislature has done to make up for the dollars lost from its expiration.

A standard question in many of the debates was whether the candidates would vote to send a clean renewal of Prop. 123 to the voters.

Anthony Dunham, Senate candidate in LD17, said he would “have to look at the bill in more detail before I would say yes.”

In the Wallace-Kavanagh debate, Wallace's answer included remarks about teacher raises and school vouchers, prompting Kavanagh to say his answer wasn’t a Republican answer and he should join the Democrats.

Other candidates tap danced with answers about taxation, bloated government or wasteful spending.

Rose, the school board president, said he wouldn’t vote to increase school spending until school districts become more transparent in their spending. And he recounted how his own district discovered millions in hidden funds and dormant accounts.

Strecker said she would vote no because “we need to start cutting back” and Mike Gannuscio, a former president of the Arizona Cattle Growers Association who’s in the same race, was also a no.

Getting a paycheck from Turning Point Action doesn’t guarantee an endorsement.

Wallace and Lyons listed the activist group as employers on their financial disclosure forms, but didn’t get the coveted endorsement.

Instead, Lyons’ opponents, Republican Rep. Laurin Hendrix and Tyler Farnsworth made TPA’s endorsement page.

Wallace might find solace knowing Kavanagh didn’t get an endorsement either.

Other candidates who debated and got endorsements included Rose, Kern, and Dunham, who’s had legal problems of his own, though not criminal.

And one candidate who skipped his race’s debate, George Khalaf, also got an endorsement despite admitting in a settlement agreement that he “improperly caused” former Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s U.S. Senate campaign “to not timely pay valid invoices” in the amount of nearly $500,000 from a Washington, D.C. fundraising firm.

The late Brnovich’s campaign is still in debt $463,173 because of the non-payment, but Khalaf’s own firms all got paid.