The Daily Agenda: Swing districts are overrated
The Daily Agenda: Swing districts are overrated
If the mine inspector resigns and no reporters are alerted, did he really resign? ... Happy belated Halloween ... And these maps make more sense when you use emojis.
Arizona’s political mapmakers finalized their “draft maps” on Thursday, kicking off the Independent Redistricting Commission’s mandatory 30-day cooling-down period and statewide tour to solicit comments from local communities.
The next month is crucial for citizens who want to influence the IRC. After that, commissioners will tinker with the maps one last time and vote on final maps that will rule Arizona’s political landscape for the next decade. (The commission still hasn’t finalized the times, locations or dates of their statewide listening tour, but we’ll be sure to let you know when it does.)
Under the draft maps, the vast majority of Arizonans will have no real choice in whether their member of Congress, state senator or state representatives are Republicans or Democrats. Only two legislative districts are true “toss-up” districts, according to the IRC’s own metrics, the Arizona Mirror’s Jeremy Duda notes. No congressional districts are true toss-ups.
Still, expect hard-fought battles in the districts that lean toward one party or another. Four legislative and four congressional districts are leaners.
But the rest of the state’s legislative and congressional districts are locks for partisans, and the only real fights will be in the primary elections.
Here’s our cheat sheet:
Arizona is broken into roughly thirds among Republicans, independents and Democrats, so you may be asking, why can’t commissioners just draw all the districts competitively?
Well, the commission has several constitutional requirements, and competitiveness is usually thought of as the only “secondary” criteria, after things like complying with the U.S. Constitution, having similar populations, being geographically compact and contiguous, having boundaries that respect “communities of interest” and having boundaries run along geographic features or city lines.
Sure, we all want to be in a competitive district to imagine that our single vote might be the one that sways the election.
But it’s also important to ask, does your district make sense? Is it balanced economically, culturally and geographically? Do the other communities share similar values, economic drivers and political issues?
Sometimes whether the district serves your personal politics is less important than if it serves the needs of your community.
Do you know anyone else who could make complex map-making as simple as understanding some emojis? We don’t either. If you dig it our maps-as-emoji explainer, please consider signing up as a paid subscriber for just $7 per month.
Gov. Doug Ducey’s announcement on Friday that he’d appointed a new state mine inspector drew baffled responses because, well, no one seemed to know that the previous one had resigned.
As we recently wrote, the mine inspector’s job is to inspect mines, and Arizona is the only state where such a position is elected.
Joe Hart, a Republican, has held the job since 2007, making him the longest-serving statewide elected official. He wrote a resignation letter to Ducey on Oct. 25, but didn’t announce he was stepping down publicly. He still hasn’t. His resignation was effective Oct. 31.
It’s hard to imagine any other statewide position where someone could abruptly resign and the news could go unnoticed for four days. Even a whiff of resignation gossip about the other statewide offices would ignite the rumor mill. But then, it’s hard to imagine having an elected state mine inspector in the first place.
In his resignation letter, Hart didn’t offer a reason, but said he was stepping down “with a heavy heart.” He signed the letter off with the most mine-inspectory sendoff possible: “For this cowboy, it was one heckuva ride!”
The governor’s office said they didn’t announce Hart’s resignation publicly because it wasn’t their place. With any other elected official, the governor would defer such an announcement to the official themselves. We reached out to Hart via the mine inspector’s office, but haven’t heard back yet. Then again, all other statewide officials have more robust media relations branches than the mine inspector.
Ducey appointed Paul Marsh, the ready mix operations manager in the Phoenix division for CalPortland Company, to take over for Hart.
The position will be up for election next November.
Political rhetoric turned deadly: In Tucson, the harsh political environment boiled over into incidents of election-related violence last year, including a man who killed another man for writing political political graffiti on his own property and another man who fired shots near a school because he was “gonna start the next Civil War,” the Arizona Daily Star’s Tim Steller reports.
School board meetings keep getting worse: A woman at a Chandler Unified School District Board meeting last week spouted all kinds of anti-science stuff, then made anti-Semitic remarks, a video of the meeting shows. Board members didn’t say anything, and some in the audience clapped. In response, the Anti-Defamation League of Arizona asked the board to fight against antisemitism, and the Secular AZ called on the board to speak out about misinformation at its meetings.
If it’s not a supply chain, it’s a labor shortage: The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was so understaffed in its jails, it asked for National Guard troops to come in and fill in, then withdrew that request, the Republic’s Jimmy Jenkins reports. It wouldn’t have been the first time the National Guard was used for this purpose, and jail staffing continues to be an issue.
A trial to watch: A trial over Arizona prison health care begins today in federal court, the latest in an ongoing battle between people in prison who deserve better care and the private prison health care providers, and ultimately the state, that have failed to provide it, reports Jenkins in a collaboration with the Marshall Project’s Beth Schwartzapfel.
The new Sal?: Republican political operative Sam Stone wants to succeed his former boss. The former chief of staff announced he’s running for Phoenix City Council in District 6, the seat held by Sal DiCiccio, who has reached the end of his term limit.
Another day, another resignation: Just when you thought the Arizona Legislature was maybe catching up on all the replacements for its very own Great Resignation, another one comes along. Republican Rep. Becky Nutt announced last week that she was quitting, too. She didn’t say why.
Welcome to the Capitol press corps, Nick: The fight between Arizona and the feds over who manages workplace safety rules involves rare legal maneuvers and will take a while until it’s resolved, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Nick Phillips reports.
Let’s not do this again: The Stop the Steal circus is aiming for Pima County now, courtesy of former President Donald Trump and current Republican Rep. Mark Finchem. Like the Maricopa County election audit, the claims about Pima County are similarly based on a stack of conspiracy theories, reports the Tucson Weekly’s Jake Dean.
The least surprising turn of events: And speaking of Finchem, he and three other Republican Arizona lawmakers — Rep. Leo Biasiucci, Sen. Sonny Borrelli and Sen. Wendy Rogers — spoke at a QAnon conference, the Patriot Double Down, in Las Vegas last week.
Some legacy: Gov. Doug Ducey has about a year left in office, and his legacy won’t be the tax cuts he wants people to remember, the Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small writes. Instead, Ducey will be remembered for his unwillingness to adequately confront the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving thousands of Arizonans to die in service to his political ambitions.
“And if there’s one thing about Ducey that you can take to the bank, it’s that he will reverse course at a moment’s notice in pursuit of praise. Faced with a few bad headlines, Ducey’s backbone melts like a Crayon on a Phoenix sidewalk in July,” Small wrote of Ducey.
Putting some new shine on it: The Arizona Capitol’s iconic copper dome (iconic might be an overstatement, but there’s nothing else at our sad Capitol that we could claim as iconic) is getting a facelift. The Yellow Sheet Report broke the news last week, saying the dome was last replaced just 10 years ago, but wasn’t sealed properly. It should be completed in time for the new year.
When the old way isn’t working, try something new: The Tucson Police Department is trying a new strategy to fight the overdose epidemic. The department identified drug dealers in a certain ZIP code and, instead of charging them, offered them a chance to turn their lives around, reports the Arizona Daily Star’s Caitlin Schmidt. It worked so far for the six people who accepted the agreements.
A public celebration of life: Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, who died unexpectedly last weekend, will be celebrated at a public ceremony at the Orpheum Theater in Phoenix at 10 a.m. on Nov. 12, 12News’ Brahm Resnik reports. And while we’re on the subject, Woods’ longtime friend, Republic columnist Robert Robb, wrote the kind of tribute that only a true friend could write.
Governments at all levels frequently try to hide the names of candidates for high-profile jobs. But there’s a seminal court decision on the topic that you should know: Phoenix Newspapers v. Arizona Board of Regents. The decision tries to balance the public’s right to know who the city is considering, with some privacy rights for the applicants, who presumably have other jobs that they would have to leave if selected.
But last week, the City of Nogales was forced to backpedal its refusal to identify the new city manager semi-finalists after the Nogales International took the city council to task for interviewing candidates behind closed doors.
Nogales International editor Jonathan Clark noted that by refusing to release the names of those semi-finalists that the city seriously considered,” the city council was falling squarely on the wrong side of that balancing act. Because of the pressure from the small community paper, it released the names of the semi-finalists that it interviewed.
Remember Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which became the unexpected scene of a Trump campaign press conference led by Rudy Giuliani in Philadelphia last November? The company joked on Twitter that their Halloween costume was a banner with the words “Four Seasons Hotel” on their garage door.
Sean Noble, a longtime Arizona-based GOP operative, will give a free lecture on the state of politics in Arizona at 5 p.m. at Arizona State University’s Coor Hall #4403, at 975 S. Myrtle Ave. Tempe.
Kris Mayes, a former member of the Corporation Commission who is running for the Democratic nomination for attorney general will speak at the Democrats of Greater Tucson meeting at noon. You can register for the livestream here.