A neuroscientist, a former child actor, a teacher, a January 6 participant and the author of “Playtime in Phoenix: The Ultimate Guide to Learning & Having Fun with Kids!” all walk into a bar.
Except that bar is not a bar — it’s Legislative District 2.
Five candidates are vying for three seats representing the northern edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area, where legislative jobs often switch back and forth from one party to the other — making it one of the state’s crucial swing districts.
We’re hosting the debate for the district’s candidates at 6 p.m. tonight — but only the two Democrats have confirmed they’ll participate, while the three Republicans still haven’t RSVP’d.
Three of the candidates are incumbents — two Republicans and one Democrat — while a challenger from each party is trying to win a seat back for their respective side.
In the Senate, that challenger is Democrat Amelia Gallitano, the neuroscientist researcher and psychiatrist with both a PhD and an MD — taking the fight to GOP Sen. Shawnna Bolick, a veteran lawmaker who’s been in that chamber since 2023 and served four years in the House before that.
And in case you were wondering, Bolick’s also the author of the book we mentioned up top. We can’t leave a review because we haven’t read it, yet.
Bolick is notable for being one of the few Republicans in the chamber who sometimes steps out of line with the party. She was one of the key GOP members who flipped to repeal Arizona’s 1864 law banning abortion in almost all instances, was most recently chair of the chamber’s Ethics Committee, and is married to Arizona Supreme Court Clint Bolick — which makes them one of the state’s top political power couples.
It’s the first time that Gallitano — who runs a lab at the University of Arizona’s school of health studying how the brain’s genes that relate to mental illness are affected by outside stimuli — has run for political office. She said she was persuaded by former Rep. Judy Schweibert, who lost a run for the Senate in 2024, to join the Democratic quest to take back the Senate.
Over in the House, incumbent lawmakers Democrat Stephanie Simacek and Republican Justin Wilmeth were the top two vote-getters of the 2024 election.
This year, Democrats are sticking with a “single shot” to retain Simacek, and Republicans are putting up another candidate — Paul Carver — to try to knock her out of that second seat.
As we reported earlier this month, Carver used to run in extremist circles. He used to be the leader of Arizona’s chapter of a group that was involved in the 2017 bombing of a mosque and the Charlottesville white supremacist march, and he basically posted on Facebook about the January 6 insurrection that you wouldn’t understand how awesome it was unless you were there.
He entered as a write-in candidate later in the primary and racked up enough write-in votes to secure his spot on the November ballot.
While he’s looking to knock Simacek — a teacher who also serves on the Deer Valley Unified School District Governing Board — out of her seat, there’s always the chance he could take the seat away from his fellow Republican.
Wilmeth is seeking his fourth term in the House, where he’s become a colorful fixture. Before that, he was a staffer at the state House, which gives him a unique perspective on the process and the politicians who run the building.
He chaired the Commerce Committee from 2023 to 2025 and the new Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Committee this past session, about which we interviewed him about for the AI Agenda.
“I think that over the next few years, if this is a 100-point scale and the left is ‘helpful intern,’ and 100% is Skynet, I think we're maybe at like, 12 or 14 now,” he told us. “And within four or five years, we'd be at like, double, yeah, we could be in the 70s or 80s or 90s in five years.”
He also started a talk show called Legislative Oversight, where his inner former child actor really shows.
Last year, the district’s races were both close — especially in the House, where the top three candidates were all within about 1,000 votes of each other.
As we mentioned, only Gallitano and Simacek have accepted the invitation to attend tonight’s debate for the toss-up district, which is unfortunate for the voters who might have the chance to exercise major influence on who controls the Legislature come January.
A Champion for no-bid contracts: After Senate President Warren Petersen highlighted during last week’s debate a no-bid contract that Attorney General Kris Mayes awarded to her political consultant, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger went through state records and found Mayes paid the public relations firm of the consultant, Stacey Champion, $10,000 a month. All told, Champion’s firm got about $300,000 from 2023 to February 2026. Champion responded on social media by saying reporters “are well aware of the rumors and stories the Senate President was pushing prior to this bullshit,” while Mayes’ spokesman took a more measured approach and said Champion is a “widely recognized consumer advocate” and the contract complied with state regulations.
On past and future fraudits: Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes are asking U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine to confirm that voters’ personal information isn’t being used to look for noncitizens, Gloria Rebecca Gomez reports for the Arizona Mirror. The FBI subpoenaed the records from the 2020 election “fraudit” featuring the Cyber Ninjas, and Petersen turned them over in March, which was followed by a federal whistleblower account last week that says U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is using state voter records to find noncitizen voters. Courchaine hasn’t responded to Fontes and Mayes yet, but he did write a letter about the fraudit records in April that was laughably naive about Arizona’s past with bonkers election deniers.
Plz hate us more: Fontes is also battling with Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap over whether Fontes must turn over a list of people with alleged felony convictions, per the Republic’s Stephanie Murray. Heap says he needs the list to clean voter rolls. Fontes says it’s buried in a 1,600-page list the U.S. Department of Justice sent to his office, and that Heap is playing “immature” games ahead of the election to stir up trouble and help Fontes’ opponent, Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin. Heap says such a claim is “bordering on tinfoil-hat territory,” and Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman took the opportunity to blather on about the news media.
“A rogue propagandist is one thing, but this slop had to go through editors, headline writers and be approved for distribution,” Hoffman wrote of the Republic’s coverage of the issue. “Multiple far-Left Democrats masquerading as journos signed off on this. Like I said, you don’t hate the media enough.”
Life as a Blackman: Republican Rep. Walk Blackman tweeted out some truly heinous images that his former Republican primary opponent, Steve Slaton, has been posting online depicting Black Americans as apes and other “degrading racist stereotypes.” Slaton, who had the support of Blackman’s seatmate, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, in the last election, has been posting the racist images while urging people to vote against Blackman this election cycle. In response, Blackman issued a press release calling on elected officials and others “across the political spectrum” to condemn the posts.
“This is my reality, every day. I know who I am. These posts will not define me, silence me, or change my commitment to serve. And I will speak plainly about the racial contempt I see in them,” Blackman wrote.
JD trying to be JP: A once-sleepy race to be a justice of the peace in Chandler now features two fairly big names in Arizona politics. Republican Sen. J.D. Mesnard decided against running for another term in the Legislature, and is instead competing with former Democratic Rep. Jennifer Jermaine, who is serving as justice of the peace right now, per Ken Stain at the SanTan Sun News. The last time there was more than one candidate for the JP gig in the area was 2010.
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Phoenix City Council member Kevin Robinson got a $5,000 campaign contribution from the chief development officer of a data center company building a complex in Robinson’s district.
Local anti-data center activists were not pleased, and they pressured him to give them the money instead, which he did.
“I appreciate anytime someone wants to support my campaign,” Robinson told the Republic’s Ray Stern. “And I was just turning around, sending the same amount to a nonprofit in the area because, well, I thought it was the right thing to do.”
Which got us thinking… If you’re a politician who has received some campaign cash from enemies of the free press, we hereby pressure you to give that money to local news organizations.
And if you’re a person who donates to political campaigns, we’d like to once again ask that you stop feeding the politicians and support local news instead.