We’re back!
What'd we miss? ... Time for a lightning round … And don’t tell the local paper about your criminal plans.
Hey readers!
Welcome to Season 5 of the Agenda1, which finds our authors rested and ready for the July primary election. We’re also somewhat concerned that state lawmakers still have not come up with a draft budget, despite the threat of a government shutdown in 28 days.
Anyway, thanks for letting us take last week off of publishing!
We didn’t miss anything big, did we?
Luckily, we timed our vacation just right for Arizona’s political season.
It’s getting hot, so everyone was on their best behavior. Except for the Phoenix City Council, candidates for Congress, the Navajo Nation president and vice president, Rudy Giuliani and the Hells Angels…
We’ll get to all that and more in today’s Lightning Round edition.
But first, we’ve got some news of our own to share.
Mark your calendars!
We’re hosting two events in the next two weeks.
Mark your calendars for Tuesday, June 11 at 7 p.m. for our biggest “drinking with politicians” event yet.
We’re tossing back a few with former Speaker of the Arizona House Rusty Bowers and Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman in Valley Bar’s Music Hall where we’ll swap war stories from the frontlines of defending democracy.
The event is free and open to everyone! No tickets or RSVP required. Just show up thirsty!
And this Saturday, June 8, join LOOKOUT and the Agenda at Boycott Bar, where we’re talking to some of the state’s most effective former politicians and staffers about working in politics, what bipartisan lessons they learned and what they see for the future of queer people who want to be part of the political process.
Space is limited, and you have to RSVP. But last we checked, there were still some spots open.
Speaking of calendars…
We’re launching an Arizona politics calendar.
But we can’t possibly keep track of all the campaign happenings across the state alone.
So here’s the deal: We’ll add the government meetings. You add the campaign events.
Readers, this is your chance to get the word out about your event to more than 11,000 of Arizona’s most engaged, informed citizens. You can add protests, debates, house parties, fundraisers, candidate stump speeches at the local park — whatever!
Candidates and campaigns, our subscribers are the kind of folks who vote, donate and show up to events. Post your own events or those of your opponents! We don’t care!
Click the link to view the calendar.
Click here to add an event.
(Just fill in the form and we’ll approve it.2 Too lazy to fill out the form? Email us the event details at Info@arizonaagenda.com with the subject line “EVENTS.” As long as it has all the required info, we’ll post it.)
On Mondays, we’ll deliver a rundown of some of the best upcoming political events.
While we were gone…
The national press corps began to realize that it’s hot in Arizona. Politico was first with the scoop that it’s “just brutal” here, citing homelessness advocate Elizabeth Venable, who says even if people don’t want homeless people camped out, they “don’t really want them to literally bake on the sidewalk.”
The Phoenix City Council, however, appears more concerned about which sidewalks the homeless burn on, and voted last week to ban them from camping long enough to burn within 500 feet of schools, shelters, daycares and parks.
It’s unclear if the definition of “shelters” also includes dog shelters, but Maricopa County isn’t building a new one anyway, since nobody seems sure what happened to the millions of dollars that former Sheriff Paul Penzone raised for the effort, the Republic’s Jimmy Jenkins reports.
"As far as I know, what's left is sitting in a fund, but I don't know," Leslie Rachels, the president of the nonprofit that raised the money, said.
The Republican-led committee set up to investigate Attorney General Kris Mayes predictably recommended impeaching her for going after county supervisors who didn’t wanna certify their election results, among other things.
Meanwhile, lawmakers still haven’t passed a budget and have less than a month to the end of the fiscal year. But they sent Gov. Katie Hobbs a bill fining people for making political AI deepfakes that aren’t clearly labeled, which she signed. And Republicans in the state Senate approved HCR20603, which would ask voters in November to make it a state crime to cross the border illegally. The House is expected to take a final vote on Tuesday and Hobbs can’t veto the measure.
Speaking of borders, the press was barred from the annual Border Security Expo for the first time in its 17 year history, but the Border Chronicle’s Todd Miller got in as an academic. Robotic dogs, AI video cameras and “smart fences” are all the rage.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego is unopposed in her reelection bid, so the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L'Heureux pits the mayor against herself, fact-checking her statements on housing, jobs, parks and homelessness, ranking them from plausible to “verges on insane.”
And now, a tale of two Gallegos…
The state’s competitive congressional primaries are getting nasty — in the West Valley’s Congressional District 8, former brosephs Abe Hamadeh and Blake Masters — the failed 2022 GOP nominees for attorney general and U.S. Senate, respectively —are having a very public falling out, which includes Masters publishing Hamadeh’s texts calling election deniers “crazies.”
Kari Lake came to Hamadeh’s defense, calling Masters “a rat.” Former AZGOP chair Jeff DeWit didn’t miss the irony.
In Central Phoenix’s CD1, Democrat Amish Shah wouldn’t commit to supporting whichever Democrat emerges victorious in his party’s primary to take on Republican Rep. David Schweikert. And in Southern Arizona’s CD6, former President Donald Trump, just before being convicted of 34 felony charges, endorsed Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani. Ciscomani barely won the seat in the last election without Trump’s endorsement.
How was Rudy Giuliani’s second celebration of his 80th birthday, you ask? Almost as bad as his first 80th birthday party where Arizona law enforcement agents served him with with an indictment for his role in the fake electors scheme, the New York Times answers. The lawsuits have left him bankrupt, and now he’s hawking coffee on the internet for a suspicious nonprofit, Tara Kavaler reports for NOTUS.
Richelle Montoya, the Navajo Nation’s first female vice president who previously revealed she had been sexually harassed by a member of the administration, said it was Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren who got creepy with her after learning of her separation from her husband. Nygren accused her of slander and said she’s refusing to show his office her travel reports.
Meanwhile, a former Nygren staffer accused Montoya of sexually harassing him, saying she asked him to plug in her computer and then brushed up against him in a sexual manner. The local governing chapters are beginning to get concerned and are calling for an investigation into what the heck is happening, the Navajo Times’ Krista Allen reports in one heck of a front-page package.
Mohave County Supervisor and former lawmaker Ron Gould is taking on the Hells Angels after a large group of bikers met up at a local business. It doesn’t appear they caused any trouble at the home-based business, but the gathering still prompted a response from the Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement, per Today’s News-Herald’s Brandon Messick.
“Any (event) of 100 or more people required a permit,” Gould told the local paper. “The event had no permit. I asked the county manager to have staff gather the evidence to proceed with possible charges.”
In case you missed it while we were out, Hank spoke to the Republic’s Richard Ruelas about our latest failure to pass a bill creating a monument to honor assassinated journalist Don Bolles on the Capitol lawn.
Hank may have explained a little too much about his planned lobbying tactic for 2025.
Hopefully, lawmakers and law enforcement officers don’t read this stuff…
“If this stops being a legitimate attempt, we’re going to have to take it to its logical extreme and start bribing people,” Hank told Ruelas.
The season numbers are arbitrary, but we do think of the newsletter kind of like a TV show.
We’ll approve anything political, regardless of what it’s promoting – within reason.
Sans the provision sticking it to DACA kids.
Speaking of bribery, what is the deal with I-11? How do they get to the state & fed people? I understand the elected people need and take the money - eg., Hobbs - but salaried folks? Why would they possibly consider the route through parks? Aligning with 19 & 10 is too sensible? I sense there is a big story there. Please look at it.
Thanks, Paul Mercer
Two thoughts:
First, I didn’t think our subscription fees to the Agenda were raking in enough dough for Henk to bribing anyone. Poor Wayne Schutsky, according to Twitter, lives through summers with his AC at 78° because that’s how you have to live as a journalist with college bound offspring, but, meanwhile, Henk is out there with bribery money. Wayne! Take heed! You need a substack and then you won’t be sweating all summer!😂
Secondly, Amish Shah. Wow. For a candidate who was already questioned about his past GOP leanings, that was a pretty bold (and, by bold, I mean incredibly dumb) move to say he wouldn’t support the eventual nominee in the CD1 primary. Seriously, that is disqualifying. Tell us you aren’t actually a Dem without telling us you aren’t actually a Dem. 🙄 Truly, I found that surprising. Sure, we all suspected he wasn’t actually a Dem, but, I think everyone thought he was smart enough to not admit to it in a podcast. I’m not a political operative so I can’t see how that would help him in the general, either. “Hey moderate and conservative voters, like you, I can see myself supporting Schweikert, too, depending on the circumstances.” Right? It’s weird that a Dem primary candidate is kind of endorsing their eventual opponent in the general. If someone working in politics can explain the strategy here, I’m dying to learn because the logic escapes me.