The Daily Agenda: Doesn’t anyone remember Tom Horne?
The Daily Agenda: Doesn’t anyone remember Tom Horne?
We'll just keep reminding you ... We all take catnaps on the job ... And vampires are not an Arizona problem.
A new poll of the lesser-watched statewide races shows Republicans holding a narrow edge down-ballot, including in the superintendent of public instruction race, where Republican Tom Horne is attempting to make his political comeback.
For those of us who remember Horne’s reign as Arizona’s attorney general and schools chief, his one-percentage-point lead over Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman is something of a shocker.
Hoffman is viewed as the safest statewide elected Democrat in Arizona, perhaps even more so than U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly. Her tenure in politics has been largely unmarred by controversy, and Hoffman, a former speech therapist, has shown a political instinct rarely seen in a newcomer. As an unknown in 2018, she dispatched a longtime education politics powerplayer in the primary and went on to win the general election with a larger share of the vote than Democratic U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema or Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
But more than anything, the numbers are surprising because she’s running against Horne.
But a lot of voters have no memory of Horne’s storied tenure, Mike Noble, top pollster at OH Predictive Insights, reminds us.
For those of you who didn’t have the joy of living though that eventful era, here’s the CliffsNotes version of what you need to know about the Horne scandals of the previous decade:
During his run for attorney general in 2010, it came out that Horne had received a lifetime ban from the Securities Exchange Commission more than a quarter-century before for violating anti-fraud laws and filing false financial reports.
His 2010 campaign was dogged by allegations that he illegally coordinated with his aide Kathleen Winn when she ran an outside group supporting his campaign. The case ping-ponged between prosecutors and all the way up to the state Supreme Court, and Horne was eventually cleared, with prosecutors saying while the two were clearly communicating, there wasn’t enough evidence to secure a conviction.
In 2012, while trailing him for the alleged campaign finance violations of his 2010 run, the FBI documented his no-note fender bender during what the New York Times described as an extramarital “lunchtime tryst” with his then-employee Carmen Chenal, a lawyer who he had hired at the superintendent of public instruction office despite her own set of legal problems in the 2000s. The two have since married, and Chenal has made a career of defending politicians with ethical problems.
His 2014 re-election to AG, which he ultimately lost, was dogged by allegations from a whistleblower who alleged Horne encouraged her and other staffers to illegally work on his campaign on taxpayer time. He eventually agreed to pay a $10,000 fine to the Clean Elections Commission, and a subsequent investigation found that while he broke campaign laws, the fine essentially settled the matter.
Shortly after launching his current campaign, Horne posted photos of former Rep. David Stringer working for Horne’s campaign. Stringer resigned from the Legislature in 2019 after the Phoenix New Times discovered he had been arrested for molesting young boys in the 1980s, including a child with a developmental disability. He accepted a plea deal at the time. Horne initially doubled down on defending Stringer before attempting to distance himself. (Chenal was Stringer’s lawyer during his legislative ethics investigation.)
As a publicly funded candidate, Hoffman’s fundraising is capped at what she receives from Clean Elections. Horne’s is not, and he’s outraising and outspending her four-to-one. While Hoffman has benefitted from some outside money boosting her campaign, it has been a relatively meager amount so far. And perhaps because the race is seen as a slam dunk for Hoffman, it hasn’t received much attention from the media.
Nearly 20% of voters in the race are undecided, according to the OHPI poll. Let’s hope that before they make up their minds, they familiarize themselves with Horne’s record.
A record you don’t want to set: Evictions in the Phoenix area have hit their highest level since 2008, after seeing a decline during the pandemic because of eviction moratoriums, the Republic’s Catherine Reagor reports. The amount owed by each tenant on average is also at a record high. Meanwhile, in Pima County, only four of the 10 constable positions are actively working since one of their colleagues was shot and killed during an eviction service, the Arizona Daily Star’s Nicole Ludden reports.
Background your coworkers: The Republic’s Justin Price updated the paper’s government salary database, an annual exercise of records requests to state and local agencies to see how much government employees are paid. Keep this tool bookmarked — it comes in handy when you want to background a public worker or lament the high salaries paid to sports coaches at state universities. (Or, if you are a public employee, it’ll help you see if you’re paid commensurate with your colleagues’ salaries.)
Follow the money: On his Substack, local reporter Dillon Rosenblatt has a helpful breakdown of the Q3 campaign finance numbers, which show Democrats are mostly winning outraising Republicans in competitive races.
You’re not in Tucson anymore: Customs and Border Protection Chief (and former Tucson top cop) Chris Magnus is under fire from colleagues for skipping meetings, seeming uninformed, talking trash about colleagues and sleeping on the job, Politico reports based on anonymous sources in the Biden administration. Magnus explained the sleeping, saying his multiple sclerosis makes him tired, and he has adjusted his meds to deal with it.
We recommend us: Rachel is now freelancing for The Guardian on democracy issues, and her first story focuses on the three ballot measures voters here will face in November that could curtail citizens' initiatives, a reaction from the Republican-led Legislature to progressive measures at the ballot. Hank is somehow still allowed on the radio, so he spoke about backgrounding down-ballot candidates on KJZZ’s “The Show” yesterday.
Her?: Despite her dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants and her plan to declare an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border if she wins, GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s immigration plans are finding fans among some Latinos, the Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez reports. While Latinos as a voting bloc still favor Democrats, Republicans have made some gains with the population in recent years.
On the ground: The Arizona Mirror’s Gloria Rebecca Gomez heads to Somerton, near the border, to check out the buses that are bringing migrants from that area to Washington, D.C. Migrants said they were boarding the buses to get closer to their eventual U.S. destinations. Some groups claim the program is a political stunt that doesn’t help migrants, while the Ducey administration and the border health nonprofit running it defend it.
Drivers are collateral damage: Cartels are hiring young people online from the U.S. to smuggle people in vehicles after they cross the border, resulting in more high-speed, sometimes deadly, chases from Custom and Border Protection, the Daily Star’s Danyelle Khmara reports. The increasing incidents have called attention to the agency’s policies on pursuing these vehicles and whether these pursuits are creating more danger than they’re preventing.
The reality behind the policy: The Payson Roundup’s Michele Nelson puts into focus the issue of rural fire districts, which could see a boost if Proposition 310 passes. The proposition would add a sales tax statewide to fund rural districts that are on the brink, leading to dangerous consequences when people need help in accidents.
“Welcome to the threadbare, over-stretched emergency response system in rural Arizona — where homeowners paying big property tax bills to fire districts to subsidize a system that’s routinely strained by the demands of accidents involving out-of-town residents on the highways,” Nelson writes.
Another problem that never gets fixed: Some Arizonans who received unemployment benefits during the pandemic are getting notices asking them to repay some or all of what they got, in what the Department of Economic Security has categorized as “non-fraud overpayments,” 12News’ Colleen Sikora reports. Democrats have sought an audit of DES and a fix for the overpayment issues, but Gov. Doug Ducey and Republicans haven’t made any moves to do either, and DES director Michael Wisehart isn’t talking.
Cars are out: The City of Flagstaff will be making big changes to how it designs transportation in the city, moving to prioritize bicycles, pedestrians and public transit over individual vehicles in what the city calls the “Big Shift,” the Arizona Daily Sun’s Sean Golightly reports.
Everyone has a side hustle: Three incumbent supervisors in Santa Cruz County not only work their $63,800 a year supervisor jobs, but maintain additional work on the side, sometimes multiple additional jobs, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi reports.
Seems like a pattern: In just the first six months of this year, Mesa’s insurer has paid more than $5.4 million to settle 10 claims against the city’s police department from people who accused officers of things like excessive force, assaults and wrongful death, though the incidents are from prior years, the Mesa Tribune’s Scott Schumaker reports.
The fourth branch: The fate of renewable energy could be at stake in this year’s Arizona Corporation Commission races, where two Democrats — Lauren Kuby and Sandra Kennedy — face two Republicans, Nick Myers and Kevin Thompson, Arizona Public Media’s Duncan Moon reports.
Rest in peace: Former Democratic state lawmaker Sylvia Laughter passed away, her Democratic colleagues announced. Laughter, a Democrat representing the Navajo Nation, was a frequent thorn in the side of Democratic leadership at the Capitol from 1999 to 2005. During her final term in office, she dropped her party affiliation and became an independent.
The world — and, unfortunately, the news — is full of junk surveys conducted by companies trying to promote their business and hook people in by their outrageousness. But this “ranking” may be the best/worst we’ve seen.
One company ranked the “best and worst cities for vampires,” assessing things like basements, sun and garlic festivals. By sun alone, really, Phoenix would be vampire-unfriendly.
And as long as we’re talking about vampires, here’s a throwback to a write-in candidate for state mine inspector in 2014 who made his whole campaign about cleansing our mines of vampires.
Three weeks away from the unhinged, radical and wacky election day coming for us here in Arizona. Don't forget your popcorn folks. I especially hope Hank and Rachel get plenty of rest and relaxation the weekend before the "festivities." They'll need it as we will need their voice of reason in the daily agenda's days (and perhaps weeks!!) after November 8th.