If only the Associated Press called elections for small-town America.
But since they don’t, we went ahead and invented our very own “Decision Desk” so we could follow up on election results in Pima County.
A lot of races were too close to call on Tuesday night, when thousands of ballots were still being processed. And, to be honest, the rules for nonpartisan municipal elections are complicated.
Just look at Marana. They have a three-part process to determine whether each of the town candidates won the “majority of all the votes cast” in Tuesday’s primary.
It all comes down to math. Lots and lots of math.
As of Wednesday night, there were still some votes that hadn’t been counted, but the gaps between our projected winners and losers are big enough that we don’t expect any comebacks.
Let’s start with the growing town of Marana. The fight for four seats on the town council was a split decision, with voters backing three incumbents: Herb Kai, Teri Murphy and John Officer.
The fourth seat will go to data center critic and member of the “Marana for the People” slate Jackie McGuire.
The four have a sizable lead over the other three candidates in the race, including the rest of McGuire’s slate and write-in candidate Jackie Craig.
While both factions would have preferred a blowout on Tuesday night, at least it won’t go to a runoff election. Plus, the new town council meetings will be very interesting for local political junkies.
For the last few months, McGuire has been vocal about her opposition to planned (as well as unannounced) data centers in town, as well as the planned ICE detention center.
In Oro Valley, we’re ready to call the race for former Council member Rhonda Pina, as well as political newcomers Rosa Dailey and Matt Wood.
All five candidates did well in the race, but those three candidates have insurmountable leads over Jacob “Jake” Herrington and right-wing podcast host Chris DeSimone.
Last night, we called the race for Oro Valley’s next mayor, with current Vice Mayor Melanie Barrett receiving about 57% of the vote.
While Pina has served on the council, both Dailey and Wood have not. The changing of the guard across three seats could represent a change in town priorities.
In South Tucson, voters backed the three incumbents for another term: Mayor Roxanna Valenzuela and Council members Cesar Aguirre and Brian Flagg.
In the square-mile town, voters don’t directly elect the mayor, so it’s not clear yet whether Valenzuela will continue as mayor. It’s up to the seven-member city council to designate one of its own to serve as mayor.
In Sahuarita, voters don’t choose their own mayor either. The council does.
Mayor Tom Murphy and Council member Deborah Morales have sizable leads, and we’re confident they will each serve another term.
The third seat is likely to go to political novice Chelsea Hundal, who had 414 more votes than her nearest political rival — JD Cubillo.
South Tucson City Hall, but the council meets next door in the city courthouse.
In Legislative District 21, which stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border to Tucson's southeast side, we’re still watching to see whether former Pima County Democratic Party chair Miranda Lopez will keep her lead over Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton.
As of Wednesday night, Lopez had a 203-vote lead over Stahl Hamilton.
However, Rep. Consuelo Hernandez is ahead of both of them by nearly 1,600 votes for the district’s first House seat.
Among the 15 candidates winning the five races that we’re revisiting today, voters backed nine incumbents and six political newcomers.
That mix is going to make for some interesting local politics after everybody is sworn in.
Of course, we would have written that last sentence no matter who won on Tuesday night.
A lot happens on the campaign trail that doesn’t make it into our daily newsletters, especially in heated races like the one in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District.
To give you a better sense of the mudslinging — without letting it take over every edition of the daily newsletter — we’re trying out a new segment where we corral all that political ephemera into one place.
Think of it as your “CD6 Bullshit Bucket.”
For the last few weeks, we’ve been getting text messages and emails blasting either Republican incumbent Congressman Juan Ciscomani or the newly minted Democratic nominee, JoAnna Mendoza.
For example:
“Democrat lobbyist Joanna Mendoza would raise taxes and the cost of living to pay for this far-left agenda,” wrote one of Mendoza’s (paid) critics.
And:
“Despite explicitly promising that he ‘cannot and will not’ cut Medicaid due to the pain it would cause rural and Hispanic communities, Ciscomani cast the deciding vote to gut the program in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires,” wrote another going after Ciscomani.
Here’s the last week in a nutshell:
Ciscomani put out an ad attacking Mendoza for a 2020 interview with the Arizona Daily Star discussing transgender athletes. (A 2022 Arizona state law already bans transgender girls competing on female sports teams.)
The Free Beacon found a deleted tweet from Mendoza, also from 2020, essentially calling to defund the police. Her campaign said in March she supports more funding for law enforcement.
The New York Post found several of the 12,000 people Mendoza followed on Instagram to be sus, including former Arizona Democratic Party Vice Chair Brianna Westbrook. While Mendoza does not follow Westbrook any longer, the transgender rights activist once posted some pics of bondage gear and dildos on her Instagram account, and was recently arrested for allegedly forcing her way into her partner’s home with a knife and tape, which Westbrook claimed was a “misunderstanding” over a BDSM scene they were roleplaying.
Arizona families are paying higher electric bills “because Juan Ciscomani and Andy Biggs bent their knee to Donald Trump,” the Arizona Director of Climate Power said in a news release on Tuesday, which also claimed Ciscomani “fought for Big Oil.”
Also on Tuesday, the DCCC — the campaign arm of the Democratic Party — called Ciscomani a “Republican Party puppet who consistently prioritizes D.C. party bosses” over Southern Arizonans. The DCCC also called Ciscomani “one of the most corrupt politicians” and tried to make it sound objective by linking to the End Citizens United group.
One last thing, the attacks are going to be lopsided week to week. This won’t be a space for equal time to criticize candidates. We’ll just be covering whatever new or recycled bullshit they throw at us (and you).
Elsewhere in Southern Arizona: It looks like Amy Burkert is going to be the next mayor of Bisbee. Burkert garnered 786 votes so far as Cochise County officials work toward counting the remaining ballots, per the Herald/Review’s Matt Hickman. Over in Nogales, tomato broker Louie Parra is leading with 1,352 votes as he seeks one of the three open seats on the city council, the Nogales International’s Alessandra De Zubeldia reports. Former Council member Joe Diaz is close behind, followed by incumbent John Doyle and local merchant Mike Melendez.
The bigger picture: While we tend to focus on Southern Arizona elections, our sister newsletter the Arizona Agenda has the skinny on the statewide and legislative races — including the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that led up to Tuesday’s primary elections, the larger ideological battles that are raging within the Republican Party and the upcoming battles between the newly anointed candidates.
Yep, you read that right: Attorney General Kris Mayes asked a judge to allow Prop 314 to go into effect, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. The voter-approved law makes crossing the Arizona-Mexico border a state crime, and Democratic officials generally oppose that kind of thing. No Democratic lawmakers supported a version of the measure when it was a bill at the state Legislature, and Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed it after Republican lawmakers pushed it through. But the political calculus may have changed in recent weeks. Prop 314 was modeled on a Texas law that an appeals court recently deemed constitutional. As soon as that happened, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen — the Republican whom Mayes will face in the general election — said he’d defend the law in court if Mayes wouldn’t.
Maybe don’t unpack just yet?: State officials say the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind violated federal law when its officials decided to relocate deaf and hard-of-hearing students to Oro Valley earlier this year, the Arizona Daily Star’s Sierra Blaser reports. The University of Arizona law school filed a complaint against the relocation, saying school officials’ decision wasn’t based on the needs of individual students, as required by federal law, and parents weren’t consulted about their children’s education. The Arizona Department of Education reviewed the situation and came to the same conclusion.
We hope you come to the conclusion that the Tucson Agenda is worth a few of your hard-earned dollars.
Hindsight is 20/20: Pima County Attorney Laura Conover is taking heat because the suspect in this week’s mass shooting in downtown Tucson was put on probation after a 2024 shooting incident at a car wash, Griffin Salkowski reports for the Star. If prosecutors had pushed for a dangerous offense allegation, David Leroy French might have still been in prison. Conover’s critics — notably, longtime Conover antagonist and former Chief Criminal Deputy County Attorney David Berkman — say that decision in 2024 shows Conover is too soft on crime. Conover says prosecutors didn’t pursue the dangerous offense allegation because they were trying to encourage French to take a plea deal.
“We gave him barely any benefit at all to get the felony conviction to get a chance at prison,” Conover said. “Otherwise, we’d have to do, I don’t know, 20,000 trials a year. We cannot take every shots fired to trial. We cannot. No one can. The court can’t do that.”
It’s not like us to kick a man while he’s down — but in this case, it seems the man is used to it.
The tweets about the fifth consecutive election loss of perennial candidate Rodney Glassman — a former Democratic Tucson City Council member who lost in the GOP primary for attorney general — are legitimately hilarious.
And there sure were a lot of them to choose from… but out of respect, we narrowed it to our top three.
First up, it’s never too late to learn something new, Rodney!
And here’s another beautiful potential timeline, especially if Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly runs for president.
But Glassman’s greatest hit will always be sketched in poetic lyricism.
How about that?
… [raucous cheers and chanting for an encore]
Okay — we lied. We’ll do another. Four tweets!!!
This isn’t goodbye, Rodney — it’s “see you later.”
<3