Election season recap

A cram session before the election … She wants a helpful legislature … And grill ‘em, Tom.

You’ve been bombarded with campaign signs on your daily commutes, your mailboxes are stuffed with campaign flyers, and get-out-the-vote organizations are probably clogging up your text messages, too.

This election season, we’ve also brought essential election coverage to your inboxes. Over the past few months, we’ve spent our time covering the election stories that go overlooked — and bringing some levity to a stressful time for all of us.

But now that ballots are in your mailbox, we thought it’d be a good time to recap the candidates, politicking and other shenanigans we’ve covered this year as some helpful context while you sit down to fill out those ballots.

So saddle up as we review the 2024 election madness thus far.

Our art intern, ChatGPT, thinks all this election mail is just magical.

Who, and what, you’ll be voting for:

Arizona’s voters have a lot of important decisions to make about who will make important decisions for them.

We’ve spent a lot of time this year talking about the candidates further down your ballot, from the people who regulate energy to those who control our voter rolls, not to mention the long list of questions you’ll face as you sit down to fill in those bubbles.

• The scores of judges up for retention near the end of your ballot, for example, are especially important in a year when the retention system itself is at stake. We told you how that retention system works, and how you can background judges for yourself.

• Three seats are up for grabs on the inconspicuous, but hugely consequential, Arizona Corporation Commission. And they do a lot more than regulate utilities.

• There will be a new Maricopa County sheriff, and both candidates have skeletons in their closet for voters to sort through.

• After Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer lost in the primary, we introduced you to Democrat Tim Stringham, who’s running to fight election conspiracists. We also wrote a round-up of county recorder races throughout the state — and an alarming number of election deniers are vying for control of the voter rolls.

• The race for Maricopa County Superintendent of Schools is a low-key position that has the power to determine who sits on school boards across the state. We told you about MAGA candidate Shelli Boggs’ weird history of cease and desist orders and support for Kari Lake-adjacent school organizations.

• Proposition 479, the proposed continuation of a half-cent countywide sales tax to fund transportation infrastructure, could be essential to determining what development in Maricopa County looks like in the coming years. Read up if you don’t understand it.

• Some of the most everyday-life-affecting decisions happen on the local level, and there’s an interesting battle playing out for Phoenix City Council’s District 7 seat.

• We also just dropped a comprehensive run-down of every statewide proposition on your ballot.

2024’s hottest trends

But elections aren’t just about the candidates and issues you have to vote on. They’re an indicator of where we’re going as a state, and how we’re viewed from the outside. Here are a few examples.

• Moderate vs. MAGA mashups in the primary elections set the tone for the November election. After losing, longtime Republican lawmakers David Cook and Ken Bennett told us about the shift in Arizona’s Republican caucus.

• A-listers like Steven Spielberg, Sarah Jessica Parker and Ben Affleck gave millions to a mega PAC called The PAC for America's Future - AZ, which is trying to turn Arizona’s Legislature blue.

• And this election season, Arizona is doubly hot from the political spotlight shining on it as a swing state. We launched the Agenda declaring that Arizona was at the center of the political universe, and the barrage of presidential visits, campaign money and polling has proved that point.

Election season silliness

Finally, election season brings out the silliest people and even sillier campaign tactics. We love following their strange stories on their way to election or political oblivion.

• We reviewed the campaign signs proliferating at intersections across the state. We still have no idea who the Bluto guy is.

• We followed the saga of the lawsuit claiming Republican House candidate Michael Way can’t run for office in Arizona because he voted in North Carolina in 2021 and 2022, and the even weirder speculation that Republicans were behind that litigation. Way won the case, adding his name to the list of Arizona politicians who carpetbag without consequences.

• Amish Shah, the Democratic nominee in Arizona’s super-competitive First Congressional District, posted a campaign mailer showing him talking to a Tempe cop in full uniform. State law prohibits using city resources to influence the outcome of a campaign, but Shah wasn’t too worried about it.

• Finally, this election cycle, we spent a day asking write-in candidates why they bother, and introduced you to some of the most interesting candidates who aren’t even on your ballot.

Ground team go: Gov. Katie Hobbs spent the weekend campaigning with legislative candidates, including joining Stacey Seaman and her father Rep. Keith Seaman in Pinal County’s battleground Legislative District 16, the Maricopa Monitor’s Joey Chenoweth reports. She also hit the campaign trail for state House candidate Deborah Howard in the West Valley’s LD27, which is more of a reach for Democrats.

#1 vacation destination: Donald Trump rallied in Prescott Valley on Sunday, promising to hire an additional 10,000 Border Patrol agents and increase their pay by 10%. Next up, former President Barack Obama is traveling to Tucson on Friday to campaign for Kamala Harris, though details are still scant. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is blasting airwaves with an ad of “lifelong Republican” and outgoing Mesa Mayor John Giles explaining why he’s supporting her, Politico reports.

“The biggest people in government even from other administrations, they said Trump’s the greatest president, Trump’s the greatest for security. Which is true. Which is true. And is said this is a big story, wow, this is a great story I love it. And they put it out and the fake news didn’t pick it up,” Trump told rally-goers.

Delay, delay, delay: The state Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that Ruben and Kate Gallego’s divorce records must be made (mostly) public, but given that they can appeal to the state Supreme Court, don’t expect to see those records before the election. Right-wing news site the Washington Free Beacon has been suing to get ahold of the records, which were sealed suspiciously tight and filed in a county where they do not live, as the Republic’s Taylor Seely explains. Kari Lake is pretty jazzed about the decision, as she told a local radio talk show host.

“It’s gotta be bad. It’s gotta be horrible,” she said of the contents of the records.

If it ain’t broke: Former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Scott Bales told KJZZ’s Mark Brodie that Prop 137 would undermine Arizona’s very good merit selection process for judges. The legislative referral would basically eliminate Arizona voters’ ability to expel judges from office, and it would be retroactive to protect Supreme Court Justices Clint Bolick and Kathryn King and allow them to stay in office even if voters kick them out in November.

Deficits and fiscal cliffs: Arizona will continue to be cash-strapped for a few years, though the deficit that lawmakers scrambled to fill this year doesn’t appear to be getting any worse, Capitol Media Services’ Bob Christie reports after last week’s meeting of the Finance Advisory Committee, which monitors the state budget. The big thing on the horizon is that Prop 123, which diverts around $300 million annually from the state land trust to K-12 schools, will expire in July.

Help your favorite local political newsletter become less cash-strapped by upgrading to a paid subscription today.

It’s not a conspiracy: If you’re wondering “Why are (Democrats or Republicans) listed first on my ballot?” Capitol scribe Howie Fischer explains that state law says who goes first on your local ballot based on the most recent gubernatorial vote in your county. The Democrats challenged that law in court a few years back, saying being second hurt their chances, but they lost and haven’t seemed interested in trying again since they’re now listed first in Maricopa County.

But crazy is our bread and butter: Francis Wick, CEO of Wick Communications, which owns many of the local and rural newspapers in Arizona, penned an oped in his papers supporting Prop 140, which would eliminate partisan primaries. Meanwhile, Robert Robb, the conservative former Republic columnist turned Substacker, supports the “flawed” but “necessary” proposition it because it’ll stop the GOP from nominating the most unelectable options.

“Some Democrats and Republicans see Prop. 140 as a threat to their dominance, and it is. A two-party system works for them. But it doesn’t work for all of us and that is un-American,” Wick wrote.

Brophy still not full of poor kids: Despite promises that universal ESAs would empower low-income students to attend the best private schools, the richest zip codes are using the most school vouchers, ProPublica found after analyzing the data. The logistics of getting to those fancy private schools and the cost, which is often more than a voucher pays, have kept poor families from using the system, even when they want to.

“Just because you gave me a 50%-off coupon at Saks Fifth Avenue doesn’t mean I can afford to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue,” said Curt Cardine, a longtime school superintendent, principal and teacher who is now a fellow at the Grand Canyon Institute, a left-leaning public policy think tank in Phoenix.

Spoilers gonna spoil: The New York Times dives into the “spoiler effect” that third-party presidential candidates could play in the upcoming election, complete with cool maps. Arizona has two third-party candidates on the ballot, Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Oliver Chase, but at least we dodged Robert Kennedy and Cornel West.

The Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon wasn’t satisfied with the softball questions his local mayoral candidates have received at local forums, so he hit them with the fastballs, curveballs and sliders that most reporters and moderators are too polite to ask.

Candidate Lisa Borowsky had to answer this doozy, for example.

Your brother, Todd Borowsky, owns two “strip clubs” in Scottsdale. A lawsuit alleges these clubs were part of a scheme to drug and rob patrons. Do you have a business relationship with your brother? Is your father, who you apparently have a business relationship with, tied to your brother’s operations?

If elected, how would you deal with any of your brother's and/or father's businesses that come before City Council?