Mike Johnson protects his gavel

Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani will be holding a major fundraiser today featuring his boss in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson.

In August, Johnson and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent came out to stump for Ciscomani, visiting a PepsiCo Frito-Lay plant in Casa Grande. They also held a “roundtable” at the northern edge of the district with business leaders.

Critics used the photo-op to remind voters that Ciscomani supported legislation that led to roughly 700 people being laid off at nearby Lucid Motors. The electric vehicle credits from a Biden-era program that helped Lucid to expand were eliminated when the “One Big Beautiful Bill” was signed into law last year.

We got our hands on a copy of the invite to what they’re calling a “Delivering Results Rally,” but it’s closed to the press.

Johnson has been one of Ciscomani’s largest financial supporters this political cycle.

And that makes sense, considering Ciscomani’s seat could very well determine if Johnson is running for speaker again, or he’s running for minority leader.

His joint fundraising committee, Grow the Majority, has given Ciscomani roughly $830,000 in contributions in the last two years.

Put another way, roughly 13% of the $6.17 million Ciscomani’s team has raised this cycle came from Johnson and his contributors.

Something caught our eye when we were browsing through Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reports filed by local television stations.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) — which named Ciscomani to its ‘Patriot Program’ for vulnerable incumbents this spring — has been putting money into television ads.

At KVOA, the NRCC and the Ciscomani campaign committee placed joint orders for 1,541 commercials worth roughly $550,000.

The Federal Election Commission doesn’t require them to specify who paid for what when buying the ads, but these ads are in addition to the major ad buys the Ciscomani campaign has already placed at KVOA.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is doing the same with Democratic challenger JoAnna Mendoza’s campaign, squeezing even more ads onto the airwaves. For an apples-to-apples comparison, we again are using FCC reports on KVOA ad buys.

The joint committee bought 577 spots on the NBC affiliate at a cost of about $250,000.

This, again, is in addition to the ads that Mendoza’s campaign already bought on its own.

So thanks to the NRCC and DCCC for the extra 2,000 political ads this cycle.

Since dredging up old (and usually deleted) tweets is all the rage in Arizona’s Congressional District 6 right now, we thought we’d add a few more to the mix.

We know all about how Mendoza scrubbed her Twitter before launching her run for Congress — but did you know that Ciscomani did the same thing?

At least there is something that they agree on. Nothing more bipartisan than deleting tweets.

We’re not sure why Ciscomani nuked the tweets — they’re inoffensive posts that show what you’d expect from a senior official working for a Republican governor, including highlighting accomplishments like securing 250,000 COVID test kits during the early days of the pandemic.

We’re also not sure when he pulled them down.

Services like Politwoops and PoliTweet used to track that sort of thing, but when Elon Musk bought Twitter, he made changes that made it impossible for those services to continue.

But maybe a Twitter cleanse is just the norm for anyone running in the highly competitive CD6.

Getting ICEy in Marana: The company slated to run the former state prison in Marana as an ICE detention center could open the facility in the next 60 days, Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff reports. The Management & Training Corporation confirmed it has signed a contract with ICE to operate the facility with up to 775 beds, roughly 50% more than the aging facility was designed to hold.

Not crossing the border is a crime: The U.S. Forest Service’s decision to make it illegal to go near the border during wall construction isn’t just a short-term ban, it’s for a whopping two whole years, the Green Valley News’ Dan Shearer reports. Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, whose district covers the area and almost all of Arizona’s border with Mexico, called the move and the secrecy surrounding it “unnecessary and deeply troubling.” The restriction comes after Border Patrol started threatening protesters with citations for being near the border, and after the Trump administration recently destroyed centuries-old cottonwoods and some ancient glyphs along the border while building without the formerly required environmental assessments and permits.

A dust-up over Dusty: A pair of Tombstone politicos got into a scuffle at a June campaign event for Tombstone Mayor Dusty Escapule — and now one of them is facing assault charges, the Herald/Review’s Terri Jo Neff reports. Thomas P. Clark allegedly grabbed the wrists of Eric Malone and ripped the battery pack out of a microphone Malone was holding as he questioned the mayor. Several off-duty Tombstone Marshal’s Office employees, including Marshal Bob Randall, were at the event, which created some weird conflicts of interest since Randall is supporting Escapule’s reelection. The whole case was eventually transferred to the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office to investigate.

No such thing as free: Aluminum Dynamics Inc. — the company that wanted to build a smelter in Benson but was driven out of town in June after locals rose up and recalled three council members — wanted to gift its modular 12,000-square-foot building to the City of Benson to use as City Hall, per the Herald/Review’s Matt Hickman. But it would have cost the city between $1.2 million and $1.7 million to disassemble, move and reassemble the building. And even though the council has set aside $1.8 million for a new City Hall, the council said “no thanks” to the donation.

He’s no Chavez: The debate over whether longtime Chicano rights activist Sal Baldenegro deserves a park named after him continues, as leaders of the effort to rename Joaquin Murrieta Park park in Baldenegro’s honor write in an oped for the Star that the 1973 newspaper stories about him getting arrested on suspicion of hitting his wife prove nothing.

Inside the Issues is a nonpartisan series from the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission about the issues shaping Arizona’s future — the ones that are complex, consequential, and easy to overlook.

Each episode brings voters into the conversation with experts, public officials, and community leaders who explain what’s actually at stake and what decisions are ahead. No pundits, no party line — just the context you need to walk into the voting booth informed instead of guessing.

Right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley stopped in Tucson on Tuesday.

Shirley made a lot of headlines for “exposing” Minnesota daycare fraud, although we’ll remind you that it was local news that first reported the story years before Shirley jumped on the bandwagon, and most of Shirley’s specific accusations didn’t hold up when state inspectors checked.

The last visit we remember getting from Shirley was back in 2024, when he attempted to sneak a man loaded with hidden cameras into a migrant shelter just off of Oracle Road.

Politicos noted that he’s standing outside the Chicanos Por La Causa office on Oracle Road north of Speedway, which can’t be a coincidence.

You can thank Art Del Cueto, former vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, for bringing him back to Tucson.