The Daily Agenda: The sign wars continue
What's the serial number on the piece of rebar? ... It's campaign finance time ... And finally, some journalism Kari likes.
Housekeeping note: Wow, we loved all your feedback on our podcast/no podcast discussion on Friday! Thanks so much to everyone who shared their thoughts. Our takeaway is: We'll set aside a podcast for now, since we're seeing that it’s not a priority for many of you. We also appreciate your thoughts about how podcasts can be used to expand an audience. Once we find more bandwidth/can afford some help, we’ll revisit the idea. Thanks again, y'all! Also today’s email is too long, so click that button at the bottom to read to the end.
For weeks leading up to early voting, roadside campaign signs for Democratic Rep. Diego Espinoza and his running mates, Rep. Lorenzo Sierra and Sen. Lupe Contreras, mysteriously went missing.
After replacing the same sign twice in one day, Espinoza decided to go on a stakeout at 96th Avenue and Van Buren Street, where he spotted two familiar faces removing one of his signs: campaign employees of his opponent for the House in Legislative District 22, Leezah Sun.
“As soon as I parked, they took off running,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone running that fast in flip-flops before. That was some pretty good time. I should have clocked him.”
Every election cycle, candidates accuse their opponents of destroying or stealing their signs. But it’s rare for candidates to actually catch opponents in the act. Most “sign theft” is probably just random voters who don’t like the candidates, the wind or people who use signs as shelter.
Espinoza snapped a photo of the car one of the men hopped in and called the police, who tracked the car to the mother of Markus Cenicero, a campaign employee for Sun and school board candidate in the Littleton Elementary School District. A few days later, Sun and her running mate, Democratic Rep. Richard Andrade, showed up to the police station with Cenicero and campaign manager Emilio Avila, who is a candidate for the Tolleson High School District governing board, according to a police report.
The four told police that they weren’t stealing Espinoza’s sign — they were reclaiming their rebar holding up the sign by removing his sign and replacing it with a sign for Sun and Andrade. In fact, surveillance video footage shows that just before the duo of campaign workers snatched the sign, they were inside the Family Dollar store on that corner with Sun buying a marker to leave a message on her own sign: “Don't think you can get away with our rebar.”
Police didn’t buy the story that it was Sun’s rebar, writing that “it must be noted, the rebar at the scene of the incident matches the description of (Espinoza’s) rebar.” Police requested that Avila be charged with sign tampering and destruction of property, according to the police report. (It’s not clear if police have actually filed charges, and Avila said he hasn’t received any paperwork or other indications that he’s been charged with a crime. The Tolleson Police Department didn’t return our call over the weekend.)
Sun doesn’t deny that she and her team removed Espinoza’s sign. But in her telling, it’s Espinoza and his slate that got caught using her rebar to put up their signs, so she was within her rights to have her staff remove the sign. She accused the incumbent lawmakers of having sway over local police and using that power to set her up.
“This is just another shenanigan that these opponents think they can get away with. And this is a common thing that they do around here. Being in this community as long as they have been, they have the connections, the influence, this is what they do,” she said.
Avila said he took care to not damage the sign when removing it, and he was planning to leave it there for the incumbents to find and put back up -- on their own rebar.
But if they were in the right, why did they flee the scene? Sun argued her employees didn’t run, but both Cenicero and Avila acknowledged they did.
“We just didn't feel the need to create a big conflict that, at the end of the day, would have made both campaigns really bad, would have made the candidates look super unprofessional like they sit there and play childish games over a street sign,” Cenicero told us.
As we’ve mentioned time and time again, there’s no shortage of sign wars, despite signs not being all that important to winning. But still, no matter how petty, it’s worth charting the behavior of your would-be lawmakers.
Candidates faced campaign finance deadlines on Friday, and one thing is clear: It sure ain’t cheap to run in Arizona.
We’re still looking through the reports (if you see anything of interest, please shoot us an email or DM), but here’s what others have reported so far.
The governor’s race, in particular, is record-breakingly expensive, largely because of GOP candidate Karrin Taylor Robson’s massive self-funding. She’s spent about $15 million so far. Lake has more individual donors, though. Lake spent money at Mar-a-Lago, as did Mark Finchem, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, who continues to bring in lots of small-dollar donations from out of state.
Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget director, Matt Gress, got more than $100,000 from Ducey’s Arizonans for Strong Leadership PAC for his race for Legislative District 4 House, the Yellow Sheet Report notes.
In the U.S. Senate GOP primary, candidates’ hauls still pale in comparison to U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly’s coffers, and they’re spending on a crowded primary while Kelly doesn’t have to. Kelly has an eye-popping $25 million cash on hand, Axios reports.
And U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar spent $92,000 and $55,000 in legal fees, respectively, since March.
If you’re considering contributing to a candidate’s campaign, just don’t. They have too much money as it is. Give us your money instead. The world will be better off.
We’ll take a sit-down interview next, governor: Gov. Doug Ducey appeared on CNN yesterday to double down on his endorsement of GOP gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson, saying her opponent, Kari Lake, is “misleading voters with no evidence” by saying the 2020 election was stolen. He brought up the Robson campaign’s nickname for Lake, Fake Lake, and said Lake’s campaign is “all an act” and incongruous with her actions over the past few decades. He called the GOP primary for governor a “margin-of-error race.” But it sounds like the Republican Governors Association, of which Ducey is the chair, would still support a Lake candidacy if she makes it through the primary, though their role post-primary is still “to be determined,” Ducey said.
We still have questions: Reginald Bolding finally turned over his firewall agreement to the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl (he still hasn’t sent it to us and didn’t respond to texts following up last week). But Pitzl’s piece about it only raises more questions for the Democratic Secretary of State candidate and dark money organization leader. The document was created when Bolding launched his campaign, and amended the day before he and competitor, Adrian Fontes, first debated the issue of his dual role. He also sent the three-page firewall agreement to ABC15, which published it and other forms sent related to the organization. Bolding and his wife are paying themselves pretty good money to run the org — a combined $144,000 — Pitzl notes, citing the 2020 990 forms he showed her. (The organization still hasn’t filed the IRS forms for 2021.) And Pitzl drew attention to another Bolding-aligned PAC that deserves some scrutiny: the Bold Leadership PAC, which he started four years ago with Democratic Rep. Diego Espinoza, contributed $4,800 to Bolding’s campaign. Espinoza said he was “pretty shocked” that Bolding gave himself the money, since they had agreed any remaining cash should go to scholarships. Bolding wouldn’t talk about that to Pitzl. But our favorite line in her story is the question about how Bolding will vote on former Democratic AG Terry Goddard’s latest attempt to outlaw dark money via the Right to Know Act.
“Bolding has no position on the measure; he said he hasn’t had time to explore it. If elected secretary of state, and if the measure passes, he would have to administer it,” Pitzl writes.
Give Mary Jo Pitzl a raise: The Atlantic profiled “Steve Bannon’s Man in Arizona,” Mark Finchem, and his run for Arizona secretary of state on a platform devoted entirely to election denialism. And though the man “who wears a cowboy hat and bolo tie despite having spent most of his life in Michigan” would have been a fringe candidate in years past, journalist Elaine Godfrey writes, this could be his year, at least in the GOP primary. And if you’re deciding on who deserves your vote in the GOP or Dem primary for secretary of state, check out Pitzl’s profiles of Finchem, Shawnna Bolick, Beau Lane and Michelle Ugenti-Rita on the right, and Bolding and Fontes on the left.
MAGA or Ultra MAGA: Voters will decide whether the Arizona Legislature will swing farther to the right or moderate itself, based on who they elect during several primaries where those who win the primary almost certainly make it through the general based on districts’ makeups, the Republic’s Ray Stern reports.
More frivolous lawsuits on the horizon: A 2020 lawsuit where a man filed wrongful death claims over his ex-wife’s abortion on behalf of the embryo could be a “harbinger of things to come” in the post-Roe era, which legal experts expect will bring all kinds of novel legal strategies, ProPublica’s Nicole Santa Cruz reports. The woman did not want the pregnancy and said the marriage was unstable and included emotional abuse at the time of the abortion.
School starts soon: Despite claims from the Biden administration that the federal government could withhold COVID-19 relief funds because of Ducey’s plans to entice school districts with money to not issue mask mandates, the Treasury Department still gave Arizona more than $2 billion last month, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile, the ongoing teacher shortage means that some Tucson students could be taught math via livestream by a Chicago company, the Arizona Daily Star reports. And GOP Arizona Sen. David Livingston said at a public forum that a plan to refer the state’s new universal voucher expansion to the ballot could mean “war” over schools’ need for an increase in the aggregate expenditure limit, 12News reports.
Quiet part loud: The state relies on cheap prison labor to the extent that, were this labor supply to go away, it “would collapse in many of your counties, for your constituents,” Arizona Department of Corrections director David Shinn told state lawmakers, according to the Republic’s Jimmy Jenkins. The cheap labor supply is one reason the state needs to keep prisons open despite declining populations, he said.
It’s 2022: Check out this rundown by the Republic to understand whether candidates for public office outright deny the results of the 2020 election, flirt with election denying or accept the election results. Also, a member of 1st Amendment Praetorian warned Staci Burk that she could be in danger or even killed for cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee, Mother Jones reports. And Turning Point allegedly told House Speaker Rusty Bowers that he was the group’s primary target this election.
It’s so hot: We have a dwindling supply of water that people have tried to warn us will diminish for decades, in part because it’s so hot and dry. That heat, and the deaths it causes, led City of Phoenix staff and volunteers to hit the streets to provide water, sunscreen and other resources to people living outside this summer (something advocates have been doing for years). And in Tucson, groups work to address a housing crisis during a climate crisis.
A rare win for cities: Cities overrun by short-term rentals will now be able to require licenses for the properties, which can be revoked for certain violations, a win for cities after six years of complaints over party houses and neighborhoods going from local owners to mostly short-term rentals, the Republic’s Ryan Randazzo reports.
Quick hits: Here are seven stories in one sentence each.
The Trump rally planned for Prescott got rescheduled to this Friday after the death of Trump’s former wife, Ivana Trump.
Roopali Desai, nominated to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, answered questions from U.S. senators who will vote on her confirmation.
When Lake was a news anchor, she expressed support for trans people and transitioning, a contrast to her current anti-trans views.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego called out Tanya Contreras Wheeless, a GOP candidate running for Congressional District 4, over her not using her maiden name publicly until now.
Arizona Department of Health Services director Don Herrington provided some defenses for the agency’s failure to investigate abuse and neglect in long-term care facilities, though his answers didn’t satisfy lawmakers.
Kathleen Winn, a GOP candidate in Congressional District 6, filed and then withdrew a lawsuit against Pinal County over its ballot errors and plan to address them.
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar’s siblings are back.
Music, including Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” helped former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the subject of a new documentary, regain her ability to speak.
Legislative District 11 is a Dem-heavy district where six candidates are running in the House to win two seats in November.
LD11 contains most of what used to be LD27 in the West Phoenix and Laveen areas of Maricopa County, but also extends to the east, where Phoenix Sky Harbor sits up to State Route 143. It covers Van Buren Street on its north edge, down to South Mountain.
Rep. Marcelino Quiñonez, who was appointed to LD27 when Diego Rodriguez resigned during his short bid for attorney general, is the only incumbent in this race for the House. Quiñonez is perhaps best known for his politically themed plays, one of which he wrote with late-Attorney General Grant Woods. Also running are: Shams Abdussamad, a City of Phoenix employee and grassroots organizer; Michael Butts, a former teacher and Cincinnati Police officer; Oscar De Los Santos, a former 6th grade English teacher who currently works for the Arizona Democracy Resource Center; Wesley Leasy, a former Arizona Cardinals linebacker; and Naketa Ross, a school board member who started a non-profit to help children currently going through foster care transition into adulthood.
The Senate race sees the attempted return, once again, of former lawmaker Catherine Miranda. Running against her is Junelle Cavero, a small businesswoman who founded the Arizona Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Democratic Caucus, and Janelle Wood, the founder of the Black Mothers Forum who got a shoutout in Ducey's final State of the State address.
Kari Lake repurposed reporting from the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger (spurred by tweets from Dem consultant Tony Cani) into a lengthy campaign video that reads like a class-action lawsuit commercial warning that her rival, Karrin Taylor Robson, tricked seniors into donating to her campaign.
After Barchenger pointed out that Lake cribbed her reporting, Lake — who frequently lambasts the Republic generally and Barchenger specifically, including getting her removed as a debate moderator — applauded her.
Love the District of the Day pieces! Super helpful.