The Daily Agenda: Congressional scramble!

Who's got the money? ... Who needs a speaker? ... And who remembers Rachael?

Republican U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko blindsided Arizona’s political junkies yesterday when she announced she has had enough of the swamp.

“Right now, Washington D.C. is broken; it is hard to get anything done,” she wrote, declaring she won’t run for reelection next year so she can spend more time with her mother and grandchildren.

Already, the scramble is on to replace her. There are rumors that last year’s U.S. Senate GOP nominee Blake Masters might get in the race. That Mark Lamb might drop out of the Senate race and run for the West Valley district instead. That Arizona Treasurer Kim Yee could resign and run, or that any number of Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Ben Toma and Rep. Steve Montenegro, might be eyeing the soon-to-be-vacant seat. 

Kari Lake has already announced she’s backing failed Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh, who made it official and jumped into the race a few hours after getting slapped with $55,000 in court sanctions for making things up in his election lawsuit. 

Add Congressional District 8 to your 2024 watch list!

Meanwhile, congressional candidates had to file their campaign finance reports this week, offering you a look at who’s funding them and who has the upper hand in the election that’s fast approaching. 

Besides shedding light on what kinds of shady characters or special interests might be backing your local congressional candidate, seeing how politicians spend their donors’ dollars can offer some insight into how they might spend your money. 

Are they cautious, burning bills only on the most necessary tactics to win? Or are they a spendthrift, blowing money on the most expensive consulting and polling firms? In the case of a couple of Arizona members of Congress, it was trips to Walt Disney World and cycling shorts for the security gang. 

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U.S. SENATE

As she keeps the world in suspense about whether she plans to run for re-election, politicos are looking to U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s campaign finance reports for insights. 

We already knew Sinema spent everything she had raised this quarter. But now we know that was only about $700,000. (To put that in perspective, no-chance Republican candidate Mark Lamb raised almost $500,000 and Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego raised around $3 million in those same three months.)¹

Perhaps more telling than the numbers, though, are the details. 

Sinema’s expenses don’t include a single poll or piece of mail, as far as we can tell. Democrats have taken note, increasing skepticism that she’ll even run. 

The reports show some standard exorbitant fees from political consultants and fundraisers, but much of the spending appears to be lifestyle-based: airfare, lodging, meals and about $85,000 for personal security in the last three months (not to mention bicycle apparel for her personal security.) 

Still, Sinema can afford to splurge. Her $11 million war chest is about twice as large as Gallego’s. 

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Congressional District 1

In U.S. Rep. David Schweikert’s Congressional District 1, six Democrats are attempting to distinguish themselves as they vie for the chance to take on one of the nation’s most vulnerable Republicans. 

Marlene Galán-Woods, a former TV news reporter, former Republican and widow of former AG Grant Woods, and Andrei Cherny, the former Arizona Democratic Party chair, have widely been viewed as the frontrunners. But Galán-Woods had a weak fundraising quarter, dimming her rising star status.

Meanwhile, political newcomer Conor O’Callaghan’s impressive fundraising haul (and liberal self-funding) helped springboard him to financial frontrunner. Democratic state lawmaker Amish Shah, on the other hand, had a bad quarter — leaving his future on the campaign trail uncertain. 

Democrats in the district will have to walk the line between playing to the base in a crowded primary without appearing too liberal for the traditionally Republican area. 

But already, candidates are taking shots at each others’ liberal bona fides. Cherny’s background as a No Labels founder and Tea Party enthusiast has raised questions in the primary, for example. 

Galán-Woods’ campaign finance reports have also raised questions. They’re littered with Republican operatives who are old friends of the family. After the Daily Beast called her out for taking a maximum donation from sanctioned election conspiracy lawyer Dennis Wilenchik, Galán-Woods claimed she hardly knew the guy. She promised to give the check to the League of Women Voters to stick it to him. Instead, she reimbursed him. She also sent a reimbursement check to former Arizona Public Service lobbyist and strategist Jessica Pacheco, the latest reports show.

But there are still several other notable Republicans on her donor list, including Republican campaign hype man Jason Rose, who worked for U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar and J.D. Hayworth when he ran a failed primary challenge against John McCain. Also, Chuck Coughlin and Doug Cole, longtime Republican operatives who worked for Gov. Jan Brewer back in the days of SB1070. 

Galán-Woods can’t seem to give Republicans their money back fast enough!

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Congressional District 2

Democrats have nearly no shot in CD2, where MAGA Republican Eli Crane ousted former Republican-lawmaker-turned-Democratic-congressman Tom O’Halleran last year after the formerly competitive district was redrawn with a considerable Republican advantage. 

But that’s not stopping Jonathan Nez, former president of the Navajo Nation, from challenging the freshman Republican congressman, Nez announced this week. 

He’s probably the best candidate Democrats are going to find in the rural district, which includes the Navajo Nation. But his campaign is still very much a longshot. 

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Congressional District 3

In the West Valley district’s five-way Democratic primary to replace Gallego, nobody’s worried about reimbursing Republican money or running too far to the left. The winner of the primary will cruise through the November election in this Dem-heavy district.

So far, Phoenix City Councilwoman Yassamin Ansari is way ahead in fundraising, having collected more than $750,000 since beginning her campaign and is currently sitting on well over a half-million. Her closest competitor, former state senator and Democratic Party leader Raquel Terán, has raised less than $500,000 and has just about $300,000 on hand.²

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Congressional District 6

In Southern Arizona’s CD6, the stage is already set for a rematch between Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani and former Democratic lawmaker Kirsten Engel, who narrowly lost to him last year. 

Engel outraised him this cycle, raising roughly $425,000 to his $325,000. And Ciscomani spent far more than Engel did, mostly on consultants, food and airplane tickets, but he also dropped $2,000 at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. (He was there for a fundraiser, his campaign spox tells us, though they weren’t sure if he took the kids along for the adventure.)

But it’s going to take a lot of stellar fundraising cycles for Engel to catch up — Ciscomani still has $1.8 million in the bank to her $600,000.

Raw deal with the devil: Arizona’s vulnerable Republican congressmen, Juan Ciscomani and David Schweikert, joined the rest of Arizona’s Republican congressional delegation in supporting MAGA Republican Jim Jordan for speaker of the U.S. House. But then Jordan lost his first bid after receiving only 200 votes, short of the 217 needed because 20 Republicans voted against him. The vote-whipping for the next speaker continues today. Meanwhile, Barry Goldwater Jr. penned an op-ed in the Republic accusing Reps. Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of making the party “look silly, disorganized and weak in the public eye” by voting to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Even worse, they joined with Democrats and broke party unity, he writes.  

She’s starting the APAB gang: Victims of Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel’s trumped-up gang charges (she was the prosecutor who invented the ACAB, or the “All Cops Are Bastards,” gang) testified at her State Bar trial. The criminal charges she slapped them with following a 2020 protest gave them nightmares, PTSD and made them distrust law enforcement, ABC15’s Dave Biscobing reports.

“I’m very conservative. I’ve always been pro-police. Still am. It just kind of shook my trust in law enforcement,” Phoenix nurse Ryder Collins, who was among those arrested and charged, said. “As much as I support the cops, I’m afraid to talk to them.”

Sanity is tired of winning: Kari Lake and Mark Finchem lost yet another legal challenge. This time, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals shot down their bid to overturn a lower court decision against their lawsuit attempting to ban ballot tabulation machines, the Associated Press reports. 

Why not try though?: The Arizona Department of Weights and Measures told a legislative study committee that it still doesn’t think the federal government will grant Arizona a waiver to bring in a different, cheaper fuel blend that isn’t as clean, the Republic’s Ryan Randazzo reports. Randazzo broke the original story that Hobbs didn’t seek a waiver even after gas companies warned her that a limited supply of the Arizona blend would lead to the state’s spiking gas prices this summer. 

Yay tax simplification: Arizona is utilizing a new IRS tool that will allow people to file their state and federal taxes for free online through the IRS, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced. Only certain types of filers can use the new pilot program, which 13 states are participating in this year.

Rachael Sedgwick is back, this time seeking a seat on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, per her socials.  

If you haven’t had the pleasure, the former Tucson Unified School District board member is a legend among the Tucson education and journalism crowd.

Perhaps our favorite story is the time she got 86ed from a Tucson bar after refusing to pay for a $12 craft beer she had ordered and then “got very irate and started screaming, 'I just got elected to the school board. Do you know who I am?’” according to the bar manager. 

Or maybe it’s the time, during the height of the pandemic, when she planned to run for the Pima County Board of Supervisors but bailed to Jamaica instead and had to finish her term on the school board from there. 

Or maybe it’s the time she tried to cut the salary of the school board employee who filed a hostile workplace complaint against her. 

Or maybe it’s the time the State Bar wouldn’t license her as an attorney because of “deficiencies in honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability and respect for the law and legal institutions” after she misled them about her 2006 DUI arrest and a felony assault charge from 2012. 

Or maybe it was the time when she got mad at reporter Danyelle Khmara for reporting on the Bar situation and created a really weird theory about Democratic U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva and the local paper.

Or perhaps it was the time she wrote a whole rant about “the media” on Facebook, then declared that when she said “the media,” she just meant Hank.³

Anyway, now she’s an “astrologist and psychic” doing professional tarot card readings and she has a 10-point plan to clean up Pima County that contains four different font colors. 

Good luck, Santa Cruz County!

1. Kari Lake didn’t enter the race in time to qualify for this month’s campaign finance deadline.

2. CORRECTION: A previous version of this piece listed Laura Pastor as among the candidates in the CD3 race. She dropped out of the race.

3. We unfortunately don’t even remember what set her off and couldn’t find a link to that Facebook post.