The no shows

It’s the least we can ask … The cybertruck army … And the paddle goat business is booming.

When voters in north-central Phoenix tuned in to the debate among the six politicians vying for their votes in one of Arizona’s most fiercely competitive legislative districts, there wasn’t exactly a lively discussion awaiting them.

Instead, they got a one-on-one conversation with Republican LD2 House candidate Ari Daniel Bradshaw, who answered questions on Zoom from his parked car.¹

Arizona voters who base their ballot decisions on factors besides the letter behind a candidate's name have a lot of information to tap into.

There’s the Arizona publicity pamphlet, ample media coverage and voter guides from political organizations across the spectrum.

But voters also have an opportunity to hear directly from candidates in contested state legislative races through the Clean Elections debates that all candidates were invited to this year.

By our count, 64 legislative candidates didn’t show up to their debates.

We went through the general election debates for every competitive legislative district and found only 19 of 45 total candidates participated.² Half of the debates scheduled in competitive legislative districts featured only the Democratic candidates, and the Northwest Valley’s Legislative District 27 was the only debate with all contenders present.

The Citizens Clean Elections Commission has an intensive voter education campaign underway, and part of it is setting up debates for contested elections where journalists like us moderate and help voters hear directly from the people they’re voting for in an easily comparable setting.

Most of those debates don’t happen in fancy news studios where candidates speak over each other from their podiums. The legislative debates are conducted through Zoom, livestreamed on YouTube, and usually take about an hour of a candidate’s evening.

Still, candidates in some of the most competitive legislative races that will determine which party controls the Legislature next year couldn’t be bothered to show up.

Maybe it’s too much of a risk to slip up live and have sound bites of the debate turned into oppositional campaign fodder. Or maybe it’s too much of a commitment in an already jam-packed election season.

Or maybe they’re just following that age-old law of politics that states “If you’re winning, quit talking.”

And sure, it’s not like most voters are sitting down to view the myriad virtual debates available to them in a given election season before making up their minds.

But taking the time to show up says a lot about a candidate’s priorities, and how they view their responsibilities to the voters.

And in an election cycle as important as this one, showing up is really the least we should expect from our would-be elected officials.

If they won’t even show up for the interview, how can we be sure they’ll show up to do the job?

You can see all of Clean Elections’ general election debates at azcleanelections.gov/past-debates.

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The no-shows

(These aren’t even the only no-shows, just the ones in competitive district races.)

LD2

Senate:
Shawnna Bolick (R)
Judy Schwiebert (D)
Dennis Pugsley (G)

House:
Justin Wilmeth (R)
Stephanie Simacek (D)
Tom Simes (I)

LD4

Senate:
Carine Werner (R)
Christine Marsh (D)

House:
Pamela Carter (R)
Matt Gress (R)

LD9

Senate:
Robert Scantlebury (R)
Eva Burch (D)

House:
Kylie Barber (R)
Mary Ann Mendoza (R)

LD13

Senate:
J.D. Mesnard (R)
Sharon Winters (D)

House:
Jeff Weninger (R)
Julie Willoughby (R)

LD16

Senate
T.J. Shope (R)

House
Chris Lopez (R)
Teresa Martinez (R)

LD17

Senate:
Vince Leach (R)

House:
Rachel Jones (R)
Cory McGarr (R)

LD23

House:
Michele Peña (R)

Danger ahead: Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is coordinating active shooter drills and sending emergency first-aid kits to election workers, and he doesn’t think he’s overreacting, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. Election workers across the country say they’re prepping for political unrest and scaling up efforts to combat misinformation. Meanwhile, leaked chat records from Arizona-based election denial groups show collaboration between poll-watching groups and far-right militia organizations, including plans to patrol ballot boxes in the 2022 election, per the Guardian. Many of the conspiracy theories circulating originated from high-profile conservatives like Elon Musk.

The San Luis swing: The small border town of San Luis, Arizona, had the largest swing toward Republicans in the nation between 2016 and 2020, and these voter swings could be key to Donald Trump’s path to victory, the Washington Post reports. The town’s constituents are nearly 100% Latino and the majority aren’t college-educated.

Playing defense: The Gilbert Town Council is trying to figure out how to minimize the impact of three laws the Legislature passed this year to increase the state’s housing stock, the Gilbert Sun News’ Aparna Sekhar writes. And the Mesa City Council is looking into increasing the number of places homeless people can be arrested for sleeping in public by expanding its urban camping ordinance, the Mesa Tribune’s Cecilia Chan reports.

California-ing our Arizona: Californians are coming to Arizona to canvass for Kamala Harris, Ruben Gallego and the Arizona for Abortion Access ballot initiative in hopes of making a bigger difference in a newly purple state as opposed to their deeply blue home state, per the Los Angeles Times. Union members are also knocking on doors here in support of Harris and her pro-worker’s rights campaign, the Guardian reports.

No need to cross state lines — you can make a difference in this election with one simple click.

One seat away: Arizona “is one (legislative) seat away from turning into California” and Senate President Warren Petersen has been knocking on doors every day since ballots were mailed out to ensure that doesn’t happen, he told the Conservative Circus podcast. He pointed to higher Republican returns than Democratic ones for early votes so far, said Republicans are on track to keep the legislative majority because voters are tired of “inflation, crime … the wokeness (in) boys and girls sports.”

Too little, too late: Pinal County doesn’t have to set up voting centers where voters can cast a ballot at any location instead of using the precinct-based polling system it has now, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. Fontes’ new Elections Procedures Manual requires every polling place to be able to print out anyone’s ballot, but the justices said it’s too late to enforce those changes before the November election.

Far out: U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly flew himself across rural Arizona to Havasu to galvanize voters and talk a lot about how Donald Trump is unfit for office, the Kingman Miner’s Brandon Messick reports. Meanwhile, Gallego visited Payson, where he started his campaign 22 months ago, and told supporters he hopes the country will “continue moving towards the light,” per the White Mountain Independent’s Peter Aleshire. And Democratic congressional candidate Jonathan Nez also stopped in Payson in a last-minute push to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, Aleshire notes.

Hundreds of witches and warlocks paddleboarded on Lake Havasu’s Bridgewater Channel over the weekend in the annual Witches Paddle event, per Havasu News.

That alone would be almost funny enough to include. But when we first saw the pictures, it triggered a memory.

The event was put on by Libertarian write-in U.S. Senate candidate Sarah Williams, who we included in a profile of long-shot candidates earlier this election season.

As we noted at the time, her campaign appears to be roughly equal parts political pipe dream and promotional scheme for her strange businesses, including paddle-board tours and yoga with goats.

1. We’re not sure whether to give him bonus points for showing up, despite being in his car, or to deduct points for showing up in his car.

2. Fun fact: The Agenda team moderated five of the eight competitive district debates. Pretty cool.