Where do we find these people?
Some highlights(?) of next year’s election … The texts are weird … And send her prayers!
Good morning, readers!
What do a top MAGA lawyer, a sovereign citizen, a hat lady, a fake elector and the daughter of a congressman all have in common?
Yep! They’re all running for the state Legislature.
We’re screwed up this morning and only sent today’s edition to our paid subscribers at the usual 6 a.m.
But if you upgrade to a paid subscription, you won’t have to worry about that kind of thing happening.
By now, you probably know that Republicans Karrin Taylor Robson and Andy Biggs are running against Gov. Katie Hobbs next year.
You may even remember that Senate President Warren Petersen and one-time Democratic Tucson City Council member Rodney Glassman are running for attorney general against Kris Mayes. Or that Drinking with Politicians star Alexander Kolodin is running for secretary of state against Adrian Fontes.
But we’re betting that there are a lot of potential names on your ballot next year that you haven’t heard of yet.
More than 250 candidates have already filed “statements of interest” for 2026 — and we spent yesterday scouring the list to bring you a sneak preview of some of the most colorful candidates you may see on your ballot next year.
Or, at least, some of the candidates we’re most looking forward to covering.1
Let’s dive in!
The younger Biggs
As a 2024 college grad, Mylie Biggs is just barely old enough to serve in the state Legislature.
But she has a powerful ally who’s boosting her chances: Dad.
She’s running for the state Senate in Legislative District 14 to represent the Gilbert area, just as her father did from 2003 to 2017. And she’s teaming up with the district’s current representatives, Laurin Hendrix and Khyl Powell.
Although the younger Biggs has earned credentials all her own — she has worked for Freedom Works, the Free Enterprise Club and Turning Point USA — her policies are a spitting image of the conservative firebrand’s.
Like her father, she’s not a fan of the “anti-car, woke transportation agenda,” as she recently outlined in an op-ed for the Daily Caller, or student loan forgiveness, as she wrote for Townhall.
If both Biggs candidates are successful, they would be the first governor-lawmaker father-daughter duo in Arizona (all of U.S.?) history. And maybe she’ll run for Senate president someday, taking the post her father held for two terms from 2013 to 2017.
The sovereign citizen
Up in northern Arizona, we’re keeping an eye on Matt Tucciarone, who’s seeking a House seat in Legislative District 1.
He’s a self-described “sovereign citizen” who drove around without license plates, begging to get pulled over and filming the interactions with police while spouting the weird legal theories espoused by those people. At least, he did, until he got pulled over and dragged out of his car by a cop who wasn’t having it.
Here — the only thing better than this video (and its bemused British narrator) is the comments it generated.
Tucciarone was also arrested at a Sedona Natural Grocers in 2021 for refusing to wear a mask, as the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting noted in a profile of the sovereign citizen movement a few years back. And he’s big on talking about the dangers of 5G cell service.
Although (or because) he thinks he isn’t subject to the law, Tucciarone nabbed the endorsement of Joe Arpaio, Arizona’s most famous lawman (who also thought he was above the law) during his already abandoned run for Sedona mayor this year.
The America First lawyer
James Rogers is the top lawyer at America First Legal, a conservative advocacy group started by Trump advisor Stephen Miller.2
But he wants to be the next state representative from Mesa’s Legislative District 10.
He’s a Harvard-educated lawyer who worked for Osborn Maledon, in the U.S. Department of State and at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office under Mark Brnovich.
But he really became a known entity in Arizona politics through his work for the Trump-aligned America First Legal, where he has worked on immigration, DEI, elections and education policy.
Rogers scored a victory last year against Adrian Fontes by forcing his office to release the list of voters who never had to provide proof of citizenship, thanks to a glitch within the Motor Vehicle Division database.
More recently, he sued the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on behalf of Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, arguing they’re trying to seize control of the county elections from Heap.
But our favorite detail is that he described himself as a sixth-generation “Arizonian” in a bio for a congressional hearing, which is the first bio that pops up when you Google him.
The hat lady
Linda “The Hat Lady” Brickman, as she calls herself in her statement of interest, is a known entity in Arizona politics.
She’s a longtime activist, a GOP precinct committeeman in north Phoenix’s Legislative District 2 (where she’s now seeking a seat in the House) and the former chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party.
As part of that role, she certified the post-election logic and accuracy test for the 2020 election — while scribbling in the margins next to her signature “certification denied.”
But her real claim to fame is as a star witness at an unofficial legislative hearing about the stolen 2020 election that featured Rudy Giuliani. She urged lawmakers to reject the results of Arizona’s presidential election, saying it was “bought and paid for by a few people at the top.”
Brickman is also known for her festive hats (in case that wasn’t obvious).
The reruns
And we’ll wrap this list with a quick shout-out to three former lawmakers we spotted on the statement of interest forms.
Anthony Kern, a former state senator and fake elector, wants his old seat back in the West Valley’s Legislative District 27. He lost to a Democrat in 2020.
David Cook, last seen challenging MAGA Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers for the state Senate seat in northern Arizona’s Legislative District 7, is attempting to make a comeback. But he’s not taking Rogers on again — he wants a seat in the House.
And John Fillmore, who was one of the more, uh, colorful lawmakers to grace the state Capitol in recent years, is trying to run for Congress against Greg Stanton in Phoenix’s Congressional District 4.
A brief backstory
Political reporters are always keeping an eye on the state’s statement of interest forms that show who’s planning to run for the state Legislature, Congress and statewide offices (candidates for local offices like city council also have to file statements of interest with their city or county).
Fun backstory on those statements of interest: Back in 2019, some lawmaker3 was mad that they didn’t know that someone was running against them until that somebody filed their nominating petitions at the last minute.
So in the waning days of the legislative session, they took advantage of a conference committee to add a provision to a bill that was attempting to crack down on initiative petitions to also require that candidates file “statements of interest” to run for office before they begin collecting signatures to get on the ballot.
Thanks to that petty grievance of one politician not knowing who their political opponent was ahead of time, we now have statements of interest, which generate endless news stories like this one.
So thanks, forgotten lawmaker!
With the last elections a solid eight months behind us, elected officials are already gearing up to play another round of political musical chairs.
Speculation is rampant that Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego is gearing up for a 2028 presidential run after the senator visited Iowa and plans to appear in New Hampshire.
Nationally, Dems have also started debating whether former Vice President Kamala Harris would be the right person to put up for the California governor’s race. (She said yesterday that she's not running, which just opened the door for speculation about whether she’d run for president again.)
Across the country, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is said to be considering running for office in Tennessee.
All that speculation and shakeup got us thinking: What Arizona politicians do you want to see join the game of musical chairs?
We’ll start: How about Kari Lake for Maricopa County Recorder? Kyrsten Sinema for her old seat in the Legislature? Joe Arpaio for (fill in the blank).
Draft a candidate in the comments section!
Leaked and loaded: Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap secretly pressured two county supervisors to give him more election power, Votebeat’s Jen Fifield found through a public records request of the supervisors’ texts. Heap asked Supervisors Debbie Lesko and Mark Stewart to go around Chairman Thomas Galvin to come up with an agreement that gives the recorder a greater share of election duties, and the texts reveal heated in-person exchanges with county employees. Heap has yet to release his share of the texts.
“Hopefully you and I don’t receive Public Recorders Requests from journalists for our personal cell phones tomorrow,” Heap wrote to Lesko in April.
Do vouchers cover audits?: Arizona Auditor General Lindsay Perry told lawmakers last week that the Education Department isn’t complying with a 2024 state law to make sure ESA recipients follow spending guidelines, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports. John Ward, the ESA program’s executive director, said complying with the law is not a priority for the department. Looks like it became a priority after lawmakers grilled him, and the Education Department met with auditors this week, per Fourth Estate 48.
Side-swiped by the system: An Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper called ICE on a man after he called to file a police report when someone side-swiped his truck, the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. Back in June, DPS said it “does not engage in direct immigration enforcement,” but after Julio handed over the immigration papers he keeps in his wallet, the trooper had him talk with an ICE agent on his personal cell phone and detained him. An organizer with an immigration rights group showed up and he was eventually released.
Artificial, not intelligent: Disgraced former lawmaker David Stringer posted racist AI-generated cartoons on his local “news” site depicting Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. Nguyen thinks Stinger is attacking him because he previously asked Nguyen if he would support a moratorium on all immigration, and he doesn’t. Nguyen immigrated to the U.S. as a child after his family fled communist Vietnam.
Campaigns and closure: Eric Descheenie, the director of tribal government relations for the Navajo County Board of Supervisors, is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane for Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District seat, the Navajo-Hopi Observer’s Alexandra Wittenberg reports. Descheenie served in the state House from 2016 to 2019, and he’ll challenge former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez in the Democratic primary. Meanwhile, current Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and Vice President Richelle Montoya have reconciled nine months after Nygren called for the VP’s resignation when she accused Nygren of harassing her, the Arizona Mirror’s Shondiin Silversmith reports.
Closure is complicated. Luckily, subscribing isn’t.
Flockstaff: Some Flagstaff residents are worried about the company behind the Flagstaff Police Department’s automated license plate readers, but police think the benefits outweigh the risks, the Daily Sun’s Sam McLaughlin writes. Flock is being accused of conducting mass surveillance, and some local police departments have used the technology on behalf of ICE, while police officers have used it to stalk their ex-partners.
There were a lot of reasons we thought former state Sen. Justine Wadsack’s lawyer was dropping her in her lawsuit against Tucson for a 2024 traffic stop.
At the top of the list was not that Wadsack can no longer afford to pay him, as Howie Fischer reports.
Wadsack set up a GiveSendGo, which is like the Christian GoFundMe, asking for $75,000 to pay Attorney Dennis Wilenchik. She said her lawyer didn’t ask to withdraw from the case because of the merits of suing for millions because police pulled her over in a conspiracy to ruin her reelection chances, but because Wadsack can’t pay him.
The former senator is in good company — Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd also set up GiveSendGo accounts to pay off their legal fees after they were indicted for delaying the county’s vote certification in 2022.
When we checked yesterday, Wadsack had raised $1,440 and seven prayers.
While we’d usually make fun of the prayer button, she needs all the divine intervention she can get right now. Wilenchik has a storied history of threatening clients who owe him money.
Yes, today’s comical candidate roundup is all Republicans. We tried to find a QAnon-loving Democrat or something to round it out, but all we could come up with was “Saint Omer ‘Captain’ Kakou” who is running for governor. But we honestly didn’t even know how to describe what he’s got going on here.
No relation to James E. Rogers, after whom the University of Arizona College of Law is named. In case you’re wondering.
We cannot remember who that lawmaker was or find an archive on this — though we wasted at least an hour yesterday calling people who were around back then, so we know our vague recollection is correct.