Hank [5:27 PM]: @Joe, wanna just slack each other snide comments about the debate tonight and use that as our notes for tomorrow’s top? lol
Joe [5:35 PM]: Sounds fun! Here’s all the NRCC talking points on Mendoza. So helpfully put in one place: https://www.democratfacts.org/candidates/joanna-mendoza/
Hank [5:44 PM]: lol nice I’ve been getting dumb emails from these ppl all day. that could be our first bullet point.
The pregame
Joe [5:50 PM]: Love it. Let’s take em behind our curtain, the calls, texts and emails from the hired guns.
I am honestly surprised I haven’t heard from Rodd by now.
Hank [5:52 PM]: Or Scarp… he still doing Juan’s comms?
Joe [5:53 PM]: Yep! He never reaches out.
Hank [5:53 PM]: Honestly I think he’s still mad at me about the whole wedding thing.
Context: Rodd is Rodd McLeod, the longtime Democratic political strategist who ran campaigns for Gabby Giffords and now works for JoAnna Mendoza. Scarp is Daniel Scarpinato, the longtime Republican strategist who ran campaigns for Doug Ducey and now works for Juan Ciscomani.
They’re the kind of people reporters often hear from before a debate — they want to set expectations and explain why their candidate will win.
(And Scarpinato may or may not still be mad at Hank for writing about his wedding in Italy last year to Republican Rep. Matt Gress, one of the Legislature’s budget gurus — during the middle of state budget season.)
And here’s a sample of the kind of messages we get blasted with from campaigns and their allies minutes after the debate ends.
“Representative Juan Ciscomani resoundingly won tonight’s debate, showing the clear contrast between his record of common sense results and far-left lobbyist Joanna Mendoza’s self-serving, extreme liberal agenda.”
“JoAnna Mendoza emerged as the clear winner of tonight’s Clean Elections debate. Throughout the hour-long debate Mendoza showed why she’s the independent leader that Southern Arizonans deserve in Congress.”
Hank [6:02 PM]: <200 ppl watching. sad!
Joe [6:02 PM]: I thought the same thing.
When does Juan coach football exactly?
Hank [6:03 PM]: That’s a pretty good opening statement. American Dream then straight into attack.
Joe [6:04 PM]: It was a good opening statement. Come out swinging.
Hank [6:04 PM]: Oh Mendoza shouts out to her son. Cute! Plus an Iraq vet. Eat that, Juan!
Context: Ciscomani went hard against Mendoza in his opening statements.
After briefly mentioning 9/11, his bipartisan record, the fact that he comes from an immigrant family and that he coaches youth football, he immediately went into attack mode, calling Mendoza a lobbyist and a tax cheat who wants to defund the police.
“That’s a record that she’s trying to run away from,” Ciscomani said.
Mendoza, in contrast, stuck to talking about herself, starting with a shout-out to her son, and a nod to her farmworker parents.
And in what would become a theme of the night, she noted that she joined the military at age 17 and spent 20 years serving her country, including combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’m answering the call to serve again. I’ve taken an oath to protect this country and uphold the Constitution, and that oath does not expire,” she said.
Hank [6:09 PM]: Strengthen the safety net?! that’s crazy to claim. TIPS AND OVERTIME IS NOT THE SAFETY NET.
Joe [6:10 PM]: He is tiptoeing around the real cuts of HR1, and is hyper focusing on the tax cuts.
Hank [6:11 PM]: I do hate taxes tho.
Joe [6:11 PM]: We all do.
Hank [6:11 PM]: She cheated $400 on her property taxes. I meannnn who among us?
Joe [6:12 PM]: Only those of us with two houses…
Hank [6:13 PM]: lol that’s true I never cheated on property taxes bc i’m actually poor.
Joe [6:13 PM]: Jesus, they are both promising tax cuts. That doesn’t help when you are paying $4.50 a gallon for gas.
Hank [6:14 PM]: "expand and strengthen the safety net" is the biggest lie of the night so far
Context: The first question was about President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” or HR1.
That bill slashed the social safety net in part by implementing strict new regulations that have forced Arizona to kick almost half of its food stamp recipients out of the program.
Republicans, including Ciscomani, have claimed that those rules are reducing “fraud and waste” in the federal budget. But independent analyses of HR1 have argued the cuts will hurt the economy more than the savings in federal spending will help. Plus, a lot of those people who have been kicked off are entitled to benefits — they just can’t jump through the maze of hoops that HR1 created to keep their benefits.
Ciscomani argued that he lobbied the White House for better terms when it came to Medicaid funding, noting the draft version of the bill would have cut even more Arizonans off of Medicaid.
“The entire expansion population of Medicaid would have been off the books. That would have been devastating for the state,” he said. “I fought hard for that, and I held my vote until that was taken off the table.”
Joe [6:18 PM]: Nice burn.
Hank [6:18 PM]: lol yes “it’s like bringing a glass of water to a fire you started” is the best line so far
Ciscomani is the most bipartisan member of Congress? Is that true?
Joe [6:19 PM]: Kinda. But it is not exactly what you think. He had some Democrats sign on to bills that did not pass.
It’s a super skewed metric.
Context: After Ciscomani explained how he withheld his vote from the “Big Beautiful Bill” until changes were made, Mendoza shot back the most quotable line of the night.
And as reporters, we’re always looking for the most quotable line.
Also, it’s a fact that the Lugar Center’s Bipartisan Index ranked Ciscomani as one of the most “Bipartisan and Effective Members of Congress.”
But the devil is in the details, as they primarily measure bipartisan cosponsorship, not how many of those bills are signed into law.
Hank [6:25 PM]: One time when Ciscomani was running for the Legislature in a super blue district in 2008 he invited me to his grandma’s house to interview him. But now he never calls.
Joe [6:25 PM]: Outright lie. Town halls are closed to the public, open to specific groups. Hasn’t had a public tele-town hall in a while.
Joe [6:26 PM]: He is accessible at children’s birthdays, apparently. (When not coaching.)
How long Mendoza? I forget how long you served ....
Context: Nothing annoys reporters more than politicians who are not accessible.
So when Ciscomani went on a long tirade about how he’s super accessible (catch him at the grocery store!), we got animated.
The second-most-annoying thing a politician can do is repeat the same talking point over and over again — like that Mendoza served the country for 20 years.
Hank [6:44 PM]: What the hell is she saying? None of that made any sense.
Joe [6:44 PM]: She lost me. Apparently Safford doesn’t have enough cops?
Hank [6:47 PM]: Well, Ciscomani’s answers on border and water were far more coherent than Mendoza’s.
Joe [6:47 PM]: We should have written a cheat sheet for the roughly ~300 people who watched the Congressional District 6 debate.
Both candidates leaned heavily on insider jargon as they made promises to fix long-broken issues in the rural district.
Context: It was around this point that both Hank and Joe agreed that Ciscomani had won the debate.
As reporters, we don’t judge the “winner” by how much we agree with what they said, but whether the message was well-delivered.
And when it came to border and water policy, Ciscomani presented a coherent thought while Mendoza mostly strung a bunch of words together to fill the time.
Hank [6:48 PM]: "I support mail in voting" deserves a real follow up here...
Also you can vote in person in Tucson elections, Juan, lol
Joe [6:48 PM]: Not true. You can vote in person for the Tucson election. Everyone gets a mail-in ballot, but there are polling places.
Jinx.
Hank [6:49 PM]: ARE WE NOT GOING TO MENTION THE POST OFFICE? That is a wild choice
Context: We expected a real fight over mail-in voting, but we were surprised when the Republican who has lived in Tucson for most of his life pivoted to complaining about how the City of Tucson handles its off-year elections.
Obviously, we both were quick to correct the record.
But the bigger surprise was Mendoza didn’t mention Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting — especially how he wanted to drag the United States Postal Service into the mix.
In fact, Mendoza never even mentioned Trump by name during the debate.
Hank [6:59 PM]: hmmmm what to do with this debate? I have a fun concept but i’m not sure if it would work. But basically just explain we live-slacked this debate to each other and take screenshots of the acceptable stuff and then stick context between the screenshots.
May be a dumb idea
Joe [7:01 PM]: It’s the reason I love working here, we try different things and don’t stick to AP style inverted pyramids. Let’s try it.
Context: We went for it, readers! Still might have been a dumb idea.
The bizfolk love it!: The Southern Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce penned an op-ed in the Star supporting Prop 421, the TEP franchise agreement that we wrote about yesterday. And so did the Southern Arizona Energy Alliance, a group formed to support Prop 421 that’s led by Larry Lucero, a retired TEP executive, Frank Grijalva, an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers representative and Sharon Bronson, the former longtime Pima County supervisor. While the chamber’s op-ed was relatively positive and tame, the trio at the Southern Arizona Energy Alliance went all out in their fear mongering to try to convince Tucsonans to support the measure.
“This reckless thinking (from opponents) poses massive risks for residents. … Opponents want to hold vital infrastructure upgrades hostage as leverage for unrelated issues. We don’t want our critical services stuck in slow permitting processes, especially when delayed repairs during the summer heat could have deadly ramifications,” the group wrote.
Speaking of opinions: Former Arizona Republic columnist and water wonk Joanna Allhands — who was part of the wave of buyouts that swallowed the entire Republic editorial board last year — is now writing op-eds on behalf of the Arizona Farm Bureau, like this one that ran in the Herald/Review defending water-intensive pistachio and pecan farming in Cochise County as local farmers face potential cuts.
If that last item bothers you as much as it bothers us, please consider supporting local journalism so we don’t end up working for the Farm Bureau.
Not brought to you by the Farm Bureau: Our resident water guru Arren penned a piece for the Arizona Agenda today about the water laws that passed this year and are officially going live tomorrow. The good news is there were a few bipartisan ideas that made it into law — the bad news is none of them are really meeting the crisis of the moment.
“What Happens in Vegas” doesn’t apply here, guys: Two top employees of publicly funded Tucson charter school Academy Del Sol were charged by Attorney General Kris Mayes with using $100,000 of state funds on extravagant vacations, casinos, plastic surgery and other items, the Republic’s Erick Trevino reports. Mayes’ office also believes the school’s office administrator logged some of the expenses as school services like cleaning, technology and landscaping. The giveaway must have the been the 2020 Cadillac Escalade they allegedly bought with the funds.
Not the kind of MO that makes you friends: Destruction is already underway on the Tohono O’odham Nation’s southern border with Mexico, where the federal government is destroying sacred, historic Indigenous sites to clear land for 62 miles of border wall, Paul Ingram writes for the Tucson Sentinel. As the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals considers whether to weigh in on an ongoing lawsuit between the tribe and the Trump administration, tribal leaders say Customs and Border Protection officials’ relentless drive to build the wall has left them distrustful of the agency and damaged the working relationship.
Over the past few weeks, the public backlash to surveillance cameras has included some pretty hilarious stunts.
“Star Wars” fans might appreciate the guy who showed up to a San Diego City City Council dressed as Darth Vader.
“The emperor is a fan of Flock and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum,” he said.
What made that performance even funnier was the clerk having to say in a serious voice that the next person at call to the public was “Darth Vader.”
That bit was even funnier at a public safety hearing in Seattle, where the clerk had to say “Next up, we have Dr. Victor Von Doom.” You can almost hear in the clerk’s voice when he realized this was a bit.
Moments later, a man dressed up as the Marvel comics villain walked up to the podium to give his blessing to the city’s new surveillance cameras (made by Arizona’s own Axon).
“Doom has total dominion over the city of Seattle,” the green-cloaked man said, adding, “Doom will be able to find your immigrant neighbors and Doom will be able to ensure the safety of the women of Seattle alongside officers that stalk their exes.”