The big day is here.
The nonstop campaigning should finally come to an end after tonight, when Arizona voters get the last word on which politicians lock in the jobs they’ve spent months fighting over.
As the results start rolling in, Nicole will be at Republican gubernatorial hopeful Andy Biggs’ watch party, and TJ will be with the Democrats.
But before the election night chaos begins, we’re taking advantage of the calm before the storm to reminisce about our favorite Arizona midterm moments so far.
And what a strange few months it’s been.
When Rob Schneider had his big moment
We moderated the legislative debates in partnership with the Clean Elections Commission this year but, despite our best efforts, couldn’t top the performance of Adam Sandler’s former sidekick, Rob Schneider.
The “Waterboy” actor — who’s since moved to Scottsdale and branched out into anti-vax activism and criticizing Arizona cities’ “toilet to crap tap technology” — moderated a fake debate between Gov. Katie Hobbs and Biggs.
It was an elaborate way to call Hobbs “chicken” for skipping the real debate. And it gave Schneider the chance to dust off his comedy chops by oscillating between Biggs’ actual answers and playing cricket sounds to an empty podium in place of Hobbs’.
The lowbrow bit gave us an excuse to more seriously analyze Hobbs’ continued debate avoidance, and veteran political consultant Chuck Coughlin reminded us of the potential flubs gubernatorial candidates risk when they do show up. We’ll let former Gov. Jan Brewer explain.
When Democrats ate crow
D.C. Democrats spent the primary season trying to defeat the guy they’re now counting on to flip Congressional District 1: centrist Democrat Amish Shah.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee threw its weight behind Marlene Galán-Woods, and an outside group even disparaged Shah’s cat in campaign mailers. But Shah and his cat, Hillary, still came out on top of the four-way Democratic primary.
Ironically, national Dems ended up doing a very feline thing in eating crow.
The DCCC quickly changed its tune and swapped Galán-Woods out for Shah in its “Red to Blue” campaign support program.
Tonight, we’ll see how Shah fares against Trump-endorsed Republican and former NFL kicker Jay Feely.
When Ralph got into a heap of trouble
We broke the news of Republican Corporation Commission hopeful Ralph Heap’s looming campaign finance troubles back in July.
Hundreds of Heap’s campaign signs had popped up across the state, but his campaign finance reports reflected just $644 in sign spending. That meant Heap either got the bulk discount of a lifetime or violated the rules of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission’s public financing program.
The apparent lack of reported spending threatened to cost Heap nearly $370,000 in campaign funding after he narrowly won his primary election. But the Clean Elections Commission voted to give him the public campaign funds anyway as the investigation continued.
Heap hasn’t reported spending any of the funds yet, and the Capitol Times recently reported that he’s virtually disappeared from the campaign trail.
We’ve still spotted his signs, however, planted on several intersections.
When Crane’s backers got the wrong guy
National Democrats weren’t spending much in reliably red Congressional District 2 when we examined the race back in September.
Republican Congressman Eli Crane faces a rematch there against former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, whom Crane defeated by 9 points in 2024.
National Republicans, however, have recently seemed a little more worried about the race. The Trump-aligned No Going Back PAC poured more than $3.3 million into defending Crane.
Except they got a bit confused about his opponent.
The PAC produced an attack ad that misidentified Nez, using photos of his former Navajo Nation vice president, Myron Lizeras instead. Lizeras is a Trump supporter who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
The ad has since been corrected, and Nez told the New Times that plenty of constituents “were laughing about it.”
When all eyes turned to Bullhead City
Arizona’s deep-red Bullhead City got its moment in the national spotlight last month when President Donald Trump rolled into town to rally Republicans and hand out some backhanded compliments.
The president rambled for nearly 100 minutes, revisiting election conspiracy theories and declaring that people who leak information to the press “should be shot.”
Eventually, Trump remembered he was there to drum up support for Republicans, and he invited gubernatorial hopeful Biggs onstage with strict instructions to speak for just one minute. (Because he knows Biggs is boring.)
But our favorite moment came when Trump spotted Republican secretary of state hopeful Alex Kolodin in the crowd:
“You look good, central casting, actually. You want a secretary of state to look exactly like that — a little bit nerdy, and that’s good.”
Honorable mention: When the rosé resurfaced
Speaking of Kolodin, the Republican lawmaker’s entire secretary of state campaign thus far is worth its own memorable election moment.
In August, AZFamily’s Dennis Welch dug up footage of Kolodin’s 2020 traffic stop, during which Scottsdale police officers reported seeing a passenger throw an “unidentifiable shiny object” out of the car.
Officers later found a can of “Smirnoff Spiked Sparkling Raspberry Rosé” near the scene. They ticketed Kolodin for littering.
A few days after that story dropped, Kolodin dutifully attended Arizona PBS’s secretary of state debate against current officeholder Adrian Fontes.
Kolodin dodged questions about Arizona’s 2020 election results throughout the discussion, and afterward, he made a beeline for a freight elevator as reporters followed him with more questions.
The elevator took its sweet time.
More than 200 of Arizona’s best and brightest political nerds filled out our 2026 election prediction contest.
We have no real way to gauge this, but that feels like a lot. Cool! If you haven’t filled out your predictions yet, you’re missing the chance to win a pretty sweet Agendowl T-shirt.
Hank’s niece Kennedy was so stoked to be mentioned in yesterday’s edition that we’re using this pic twice.
So what are the predictions?
Well, by a 3-to-1 margin, you all think that Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is about to wallop Republican challenger Andy Biggs.
Though many of our recent statewide races have been decided by razor-thin margins, most of you think Hobbs is headed for a win by more than 4 percentage points.
We’d call that a landslide.
By roughly the same margin, you don’t think that Republican secretary of state candidate Alex Kolodin will concede the race tonight. (No, the question is not about whether he will win.)
But perhaps the biggest blowout of the election prediction contest so far is whether Republican Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap will throw a fit and blame the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for screwing up something. Per our question, really, any criticism would check this box.
More than 90% of you bet your Agendowl shirt on that one.
A reminder: You have until the time polls close today to fill out your predictions.
And if you like dumb election games, don’t forget to hop into our newsroom Slack channel, where we’ll be playing Election Bingo and giving away more swag!
In this season of crazy campaign mailers, it takes a lot to stand out.
But this mailer from Republican House candidate David Richardson, who’s running in the solidly blue Legislative District 12, caught our eye.
No, it’s not outrageous policy positions, a bizarre photo or a flat-out lie.
It’s the mailer’s assault on the English language.
“Compare THAN decide” is just the start. Keep reading.
It’s worth noting that Richardson had nothing to do with this mailer. (And his website isn’t littered with the kind of grammatical errors that you see in this mail piece — we checked.)
The mailer was sent by the Arizona Republican Party.
Well, AZGOP, you lost the grammar nerd vote.