Marana voters never got the referendum on data centers many of them wanted.
On July 21, they’ll get the next best thing.
A slate of four Marana residents is challenging the incumbents on the Marana Town Council after making opposition to the planned Luckett Road North and South data centers the signature issue of their campaigns.
For now, the election may be the lone opportunity for residents who’ve spent months speaking against the project during Call to the Public at town council meetings to make their voices heard at the ballot box.
And what would normally be a sleepy town council race has turned into one of the nastiest municipal elections we’ve seen in a while.
The race has taken an ugly turn over the last few weeks as three super PACs unleashed a wave of negative advertising against the challengers.
One of the attack ads being aired on digital media, which was paid for by political action committees that are unaffiliated with any campaign.
To be honest, we were surprised anyone was willing to spend serious money on a Marana town council race. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening.
And while a PAC putting up campaign signs isn’t that unusual, Local Majority PAC is also paying for digital ads on streaming services and social media attacking council candidate Jackie McGuire — calling her "Wacky Jackie" and claiming she’s "too radical" for Marana.
Technically, Marana town elections are nonpartisan. But that hasn’t stopped partisan groups from getting involved.
Local Majority PAC’s sole contributor this year, according to campaign finance records, is a Chandler businessman with a history of backing GOP candidates.
So who’s running?
Data scientist McGuire, engineer Sue Ritz and former journalist Julie Prince are running for three of the four seats on the council, while accountant Greg Johnsen is running for mayor.
McGuire is perhaps the best-known member of the slate. She sued the town earlier this year after officials rejected two referendum petitions with roughly 2,800 signatures each that sought to put the Luckett Road data centers before voters. She is now paying to appeal a Pima County Superior Court ruling that sided with town officials.
One interesting wrinkle: Beale Infrastructure, the company behind Project Blue, successfully intervened in the lawsuit.
Running as an anti-data center slate, these four candidates could redefine Marana’s politics and future if elected.
At a forum held at a Marana elementary school last week, Ritz leaned into her background as an engineer working with mines as she talked about her opposition to the data center.
“I want to tell you a little bit about the mining industry and why I am standing on this side of the fence versus the one where I usually am the villain,” Ritz told the crowd. “My big question (to the incumbents) would be ‘Why are we doing this?’”
Marana doesn’t want to see the long-term impacts data centers have had on other communities, the metallurgical engineer said.
McGuire and Ritz vowed that, if elected, they would rewrite the town’s regulations governing data centers. Their comments came just days after news broke that another proposed data center campus had entered the town’s development review process.
Prince and Johnsen, the other two members of the ticket, have also spoken out against the data center.
If the entire slate is elected, it would represent a new majority on the council opposed to data centers, while also giving the group control of the mayor’s office.
They differ on other topics from their incumbent rivals, but we’re focusing on data centers in today’s article.
Critics of the slate argue the challengers would make Marana more like Tucson — complete with homelessness and, apparently, potholes.
Incumbents on the ballot
With three council members up for reelection, a fourth seat is open because Council member Patti Comerford is retiring.
Former Council member Jackie Craig, who is running as a write-in candidate, has aligned herself with Marana Mayor Jon Post and the three incumbents on the council who voted in favor of the Luckett Road data centers.
Incumbent Herb Kai, who is seeking reelection, recused himself from the formal vote because his family owns property within the proposed data center campus.
Post is running to complete the remainder of former Mayor Ed Honea’s term after Honea died in November 2024. Post was appointed mayor about 18 months ago and has served on the council since 2008.
Not as direct as their “Don’t Tucson Our Marana” signs, Arizona Patriots Super PAC’s other sign with the rainbow lettering and camping tents isn’t very subtle.
Together, Post, Kai, Council member John Officer, Council member Teri Murphy and Craig have effectively formed their own slate, arguing Marana should continue pursuing growth, new industries and the jobs that come with them.
Except for Craig, each has spent months defending the Luckett Road project as criticism voiced during Call to the Public evolved into litigation — and ultimately a slate of challengers.
In interviews on the data center, Post defends the town’s existing data center ordinance and says interest from data centers is an example that the town is ready for new economic development.
Marana’s nonpartisan elections award a seat outright to any candidate who receives 50% plus one vote. Candidates who fall short advance to a November runoff.
With four council seats and seven candidates on the ballot, we expect the primary to settle the mayor’s race and likely decide at least some of the council seats as well.
In our experience, write-in candidates like Craig are longshots. We can’t remember a major Southern Arizona office being won by a candidate whose name voters had to write in themselves.
This could mean candidates on both slates could prevail in two weeks (or in the runoff election in November) leading to a divided council and, well, very interesting meetings.
The slate of incumbents on the Marana Town Council have pulled write-in candidate Jackie Craig out of political retirement to try for another four-year term.
McGuire becomes a target
There may be streaks of purple in McGuire’s hair, but little else about her campaign has been unserious. Her fight over data centers has spilled into the public discourse and has been fought on both legal and political fronts for months. She has been profiled in the New York Times and MS Now.
Her critics are laser-focused on McGuire. While the rest of the slate is usually mentioned all in the same breath, the entrepreneur and data scientist has been branded both as a carpetbagger and as "Wacky Jackie."
It’s rare for a town of roughly 67,000 residents and about 42,000 registered voters to attract multiple political action committees determined to convince voters that electing McGuire and her allies would turn Marana into Tucson in all but name.
One of several signs paid for by the Marana-based Arizona Patriots Super PAC, which registered with the town earlier this year.
Supporters of the current council have also pointed to the Tucson City Council’s rejection of a complicated development agreement with a Beale Infrastructure subsidiary, arguing it shows what happens when local governments become hostile to large economic development projects.
The Tucson agreement would have seen the data center developer invest millions in upgrading city infrastructure while paying millions more in additional taxes by becoming part of the city.
Tucson officials reject that the town isn’t “open for business,” noting they have multiple irons in the fire when it comes to economic development, including a state and regional collaboration to bring in new businesses from Taiwan.
The latter is designed to coordinate with TSMC Arizona, which is a $165 billion semiconductor manufacturing campus in north Phoenix.
However, McGuire has also attracted national attention for fighting a data center in the middle of the desert on land that had been planned for housing for roughly two decades.
The newest proposal, known as Ranch House, would abandon long-standing plans for a residential community on the 841-acre property in favor of another data center campus.
To opponents, that’s evidence developers now believe a data center campus — with its associated water rights and long-term power agreements — is more valuable than building homes.
Whether that message resonates with voters will become clear on July 21. Residents won’t technically vote on a data center. Instead, they’ll decide whether the officials who approved one deserve another term.
Signature issues: The backers of a ballot measure to reform Arizona’s school voucher program appear to have gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot in November, although those signatures still need to be verified, Noor Haghighi reports for Arizona Public Media. A Pima County-focused measure would have created a position — like a public defender — so undocumented immigrants would have legal representation in federal court, but the Justice for All group didn’t gather enough signatures, per the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel and Paul Ingram.
Speaking of needing lawyers: A Venezuelan asylum seeker was released from ICE custody after she was wrongly detained in Eloy for nine months, per the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel. Federal officials admitted in court that Erianny Rodriguez Balza had protected status and therefore couldn’t be detained for her immigration status. But the detention cost her dearly. She says she lost her job, her dog was adopted by someone else and her credit card bills were sent to a collections agency.
This is why you shouldn’t smoke meth: A California man pleaded guilty to sending ransom messages to Nancy Guthrie’s family, Griffin Salkowski reports for the Arizona Daily Star. Derrick Callella, 42, admitted to asking the family to send him bitcoin in exchange for releasing Guthrie. He had to explain in court that he smoked meth a few days before his hearing, but he wasn’t under the influence. He is expected to be sentenced to five years’ probation. Callella only accounts for some of the various ransom notes that were sent.
A little noblesse oblige: The son of billionaire Warren Buffett donated more than $1 million to fire districts in Cochise County, but the way the money was divvied up ruffled some feathers, the Herald/Review’s Matt Hickman reports. Instead of spreading the wealth evenly among the fire districts, the sheriff’s office left out some districts, which made County Supervisor Kathleen Gomez “pretty upset.” Howard Buffett owns land in Cochise County and often donates to local public safety agencies.
Back in action: Armory Park reopened last week after a $1.7 million renovation that began in September was completed, Summer Williams reports for the Arizona Luminaria. Tucsonans gathered last Thursday evening to celebrate the new plaza, performance area, benches, dog park and other amenities that were funded by Prop 407, AKA Tucson Delivers, which voters approved in 2018.
If you heard what sounded like an old man having a massive orgasm last weekend,1don’t be alarmed.
It was just billionaire David Hoffmann reacting to the package of ego-stroking stories he forced the Arizona Daily Star to run, alongside dozens of other newspapers he took over earlier this year. Each paper was ordered to run the stories on their highest-circulation days, unless they could cite a “special circumstance,” per Poynter.
When Hoffmann took over Lee Enterprises, the Star’s parent company, we expected to see subtle, behind-the-scenes moves to make the newspaper more pro-business.
But this sad fellow jumped the shark.
The promo video atop all four (4!) stories the Star ran about Hoffman.
The package of four stories — complete with a promotional video featuring Hoffmann’s baby pics — shows that owning our local newspaper is just a giant vanity project for him.
Each story strokes Hoffmann’s ego from a different angle: as the savior of local journalism, as a generous philanthropist, as the builder of a business empire, as a talented young man who gave up on a football career to stay close to family.
Most of all, he was portrayed as a Horatio Alger-style hero who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
Apparently, that’s really what gets Hoffmann’s juices flowing.
How embarrassing for all the hard-working reporters and editors at the Lee papers, especially former Star executive editor David McCumber, who had to write thousands of words praising his new boss.
And what a sad sign of things to come.
Anyway, please support one of the dwindling number of news outlets that isn’t run by a billionaire cosplaying as a newsman by upgrading to a paid subscription. (Or by giving a gift subscription!)
1 We’re so sorry for that mental image. But that’s how shocking this move is. Blame Hoffmann.