The Daily Agenda: We're taking bets on when we'll see the Cyber Ninjas report
There's more Alice Cooper in here, and some fishing news.
Wednesday was just another day without a report from the Cyber Ninjas. Senators met yesterday as planned to discuss the report, but they still didn’t have it. So instead senators discussed when they’d get the report but came to no conclusions, writes KJZZ’s Ben Giles.
After COVID-19 struck several of the audit team members, Senate President Karen Fann announced the draft report would be delayed from its planned Monday delivery. She said Wednesday would definitely be the big day.
This deadline-blowing should sound familiar because it has happened an uncountable amount of times during the audit process.
Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward wasn’t deterred by the truth. The Republican Party of Arizona posted a video of Ward giving an update on the audit, claiming that the Cyber Ninjas delivered a partial report to the Senate on Wednesday.
The Senate Republicans’ attorney and liaison then told reporters that the Senate did not, in fact, receive any of the report on Wednesday.
When will a report finally be released to the public? It’s anyone’s guess at this point. We’re setting the over/under at eight weeks until we get our hands on it. Let us know your predictions.
Our Dougs make it to the big time: The Select Committee in Congress that’s investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol requested mountains of documents from all sorts of people in relation in that day’s events. And of course, some of those people have Arizona ties. Eagle-eyed Will Gaona pointed out that two Arizona Dougs — Gov. Doug Ducey and Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan — made the list.
We will reiterate that a flow chart would be helpful: In another lawsuit related to Cyber Ninjas’ records, a judge ordered the company to preserve its documents for eventual release. We won’t see the records from this case, brought by the Arizona Republic, just yet. A separate lawsuit is under consideration for an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.
Would be great to learn even one lesson: COVID-19 cases are again stretching resources at Arizona hospitals as they battle the third wave of illness in the past 18 months. This time, patients are younger, and most are unvaccinated, KJZZ’s Katherine Davis-Young reports.
A ban on bans: Education groups will have their day in court on Sept. 13 to make the case that Arizona shouldn’t ban mask mandates.
Phoenix setting national trends again: In many U.S. cities, homeless people are treated as blight instead of, you know, people. The Department of Justice investigation into how Phoenix Police treat people experiencing homelessness could carry more broadly into how cities manage blight, reports the Republic’s Jessica Boehm.
What would Donald Trump tweet about this?: The Arizona Supreme Court won’t reconsider the case seeking the death penalty for Apolinar Altamirano, a Mexican immigrant who killed Mesa convenience store clerk Grant Ronnebeck in 2015.
Double whoops: The Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling that the Invest in Ed initiative could be unconstitutional because of spending limits has implications on another large pot of K-12 funding, reports the AZ Mirror’s Jeremy Duda.
On the one hand, the pay is shit. On the other hand, there’s a virus spreading: Arizona already struggles to get enough teachers into classrooms, but COVID-19 and quarantines for exposure mean there’s even more demand this year for substitute teachers, ABC 15’s Danielle Lerner reports.
Fine, we’ll conduct the investigation: The City of Phoenix is still looking for someone, anyone, to conduct an outside criminal investigation into the gang charges filed against protestors last year.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll catch boatloads of $300 brown trout: You can snag some cash if you catch the right fish.
Yesterday’s tidbit noted that before he filmed a happy birthday video for the Kari Lake gubernatorial campaign, Alice Cooper had dissed his fellow rockers for endorsing candidates. But former reporter turned PR guy Chip Scutari reached out on Twitter to note that he had a distinct memory of attending a press conference for Matt Salmon’s failed 2002 campaign for governor in which Cooper endorsed Salmon. Lake and Salmon, of course, are now squaring off in the 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary.
We spent a solid hour trying to track down a photo of Salmon and Cooper to bring smiles to your faces, but came up empty-handed. We were, however, able to use LexisNexis to track down this lovely little Political Notebook column in the Arizona Daily Star that confirmed Scutari’s memory.
Word is that Republican gubernatorial hopeful Matt Salmon, who was lead singer of the group Jammin' With Salmon while in Congress, does a pretty funny rendition of "I Wanna Be Your Lover" - except that Salmon's version is "I Want to Be Your Next Governor."
Maybe he's getting some tips from black-eyed rocker Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent, he of the hair, loud music and gun-rights activism, who are both supporting his campaign. We can't vouch for his musical taste, but we can say he's winning the celebrity endorsement race so far.
While his happy birthday video wasn’t exactly an endorsement, it seems that like much of the GOP base, Cooper is over Salmon and into Lake. (No word on whether Nugent plans to back Lake this year.)
As if writing about one junk poll wasn’t enough, the Republic is back with another story about a damn mascot. A completely manufactured news cycle on something absolutely no one needed! This time, they quoted their own poll, conducted very scientifically on Twitter dot com. Though we have to hand it to them — writing a whole story about how silly people thought your first story was is bold.
The reason there’s a second story is because too many people clicked on the first one. We linked to the story here, but for god’s sake, don’t click on it. We don’t want to have to write another follow-up.
The Arizona Democratic Party’s Seniors Council meets virtually at 6 p.m. tonight. You can find details on how to attend online.
There are two Republican meetings in Green Valley today: The United Republican Club of Green Valley meets at noon at 101 S LaCanada, Suite 17 in Green Valley. And the Green Valley MAGA Meetup takes place at 5 p.m. at the Triple Play at 1570 W Duval Mine Road in Green Valley.