Tucson City Councilwoman Miranda Schubert showed up to our podcast studio on her bike.
That’s how she gets around Tucson.
A few minutes later, sitting across from her in the studio, I listened as she talked about switching to a bike because she was selling her old clothes at Buffalo Exchange to afford gas to make it to her job.
I remember thinking: Even city council members worry about gas money.
That interview changed the way I thought about local politics. Before that, the city government felt distant to me, something that happened in council chambers or campaign ads. But hearing Schubert talk honestly about money made me realize local politics is really about everyday questions:
How do I get to work?
What happens if rent goes up?
What do I do if I can’t afford gas this week?
I’m Nicole Camacho, a Tucson native, University of Arizona student, and Tucson Agenda’s new summer intern. Last year, I co-founded the UAZ Podcast to interview local politicians and community leaders — people most students on campus probably couldn’t name, even though their decisions affect our everyday lives.
Nicole Camacho
This summer, I’m excited to continue that work at the Tucson Agenda and learn more about the people behind local politics.
What surprised me most when I started the podcast was how personal the conversations became. I expected polished political answers, and sometimes I got them. But I also heard stories about faith, money, pressure and responsibility that made these leaders feel much more human.
Democratic state Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton from Tucson was another memorable interview because of how openly she discussed faith and religion. I was interested in her background because she had studied theology, rather than political science. It felt different from most politicians I’d interviewed.
During our conversation, she talked about seeing how underfunded local schools were.
“My daughter for the longest time ran around with a computer that was held together with duck tape,” she said.
What stayed with me was how genuine she sounded. It made me think more about how personal beliefs shape the way people lead and serve their communities.
Interviewing Democratic congressional candidate Deja Foxx was a completely different experience. I was nervous going into it because she already had such a large public platform. One thing I noticed right away was how message-disciplined she was. Every answer sounded intentional.
As an interviewer, it was harder to get beyond the public-facing version of her and into something more personal. At times, the conversation felt rehearsed.
But it also made me realize how carefully young politicians, especially young women, have to present themselves in public. Even so, I was still impressed by her confidence and determination, especially hearing her talk about launching a campaign from her bedroom with no staff and just her belief in herself.
My conversation with then-Tucson City Councilman (and current state Senate candidate) Rocque Perez stayed with me because of how candid he was. He spoke about a moment during his time as a student senator at the University of Arizona when immigration enforcement officers came onto campus, and students looked to him for answers and protection.
He admitted that at the time he “didn’t necessarily grasp the weight of those concerns.”
That honesty caught my attention because politicians don’t usually admit moments when they felt unprepared. It made me think differently about what leadership means — it’s not necessarily always having the right answer, but learning how much responsibility comes with representing people.
The thing I’ve learned from these interviews is that local politics becomes more meaningful when people share the experiences behind their policies.
Once you hear stories about struggling to afford gas, feeling called to serve others, or realizing people are depending on you during difficult moments, politics stops feeling distant.
It starts to feel personal.
That’s the kind of storytelling I’m excited to keep exploring this summer at Tucson Agenda.
His past catching up with him: Local Democratic Senate candidate Rocque Perez is facing tough questions over social media posts he made when he was in college. Among the various posts cited by the Republic’s Ray Stern was a comment Perez made in 2020, saying “So kill them, do your duty baby girl” to a Twitter user who was complaining about conservative family members. In another post, he said “someone throw this b—— off the capitol building roof please” about Ivanka Trump. Perez was cagey as he answered questions from Stern about the posts (and about whether he ran an OnlyFans account), but he acknowledged he knew the posts would become an issue as he ran for office. Perez’s opponent in the Democratic primary in Legislative District 20, incumbent Rep. Alma Hernandez, said his posts were “unacceptable for anyone seeking public office.”
“To brush it off and say you were young and dumb, that’s not an excuse,” Hernandez said.
Holding the line on AI: The TUSD governing board deadlocked on whether to expand the use of AI tools beyond high schools, Arizona Public Media’s Noor Haghighi reports. Board member Sadie Shaw said she doesn’t want students to use AI in schools, while Board President Ravi Shah and Board member Natalie Luna-Rose, argued AI is so widespread the district needs a policy to limit its use.
Not just a number: The DACA recipient whose detention caused an uproar in Tucson held a press conference Friday alongside Tucson Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz to draw attention to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, Summer Williams reports for the Arizona Luminaria. Karla Toledo said her detention wasn’t “something new,” while Santa Cruz said Toledo is “our friend” and “not just a statistic of this administration.”
“It’s something very constant and right now what I’m going through is guilt because I’m here and there’s so many people in there still,” Toledo said. “People who are like me. They’re humans, we’re all humans and we shouldn’t be treated that way.”
Tools for success: A Tucson concrete company has taken a novel approach to its Spanish-speaking employees, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. Escalante Concrete teamed up with Literacy Connects to teach employees how to speak English. The goal is to help employees deal with customers and inspectors more easily and move up in the company, with the added benefit of being able to explain to your friends why former baseball player Fernando Valenzuela (a native of the same town in Sonora as one of the employees) was one of the greatest pitchers of all time.
If only our “pitches” to convince you to subscribe were as effective as Valenzuela’s famous screwball.
Fed up with the status quo: The protest at a local law office appears to have shaken Tucson’s political establishment. Local political heavyweight Ted Maxwell listed off complaints in an op-ed in the Star about public drug use, attacks at bus stops and street racing before getting to the protest at the law office of the firm representing Project Blue developers. He said the response to the protest showed a lack of leadership among elected officials. Leaders “must take ownership” of problems, instead of making citizens “feel dismissed, lectured, or treated as adversaries.”
“Yet once again, the City, as well as the County, has seemed hesitant, muted, or absent altogether,” Maxwell wrote about the protest at the law office. “Only three elected officials — Supervisors (Rex) Scott and (Matt) Heinz and Councilmember (Nikki) Lee — spoke out about the incident and the lines crossed in such actions. And people notice the silence.”
It’s a slow week for those looking for their fix of local political events.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors meets today at 4 p.m. for a special meeting at the County Administrative building in downtown Tucson. (Agenda / Live-stream.)
The Pima County Republican Club meets on Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. at The Kettle just west of I-10 on 22nd St.
The Oro Valley Town Council will meet on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at 11000 N. La Cañada Drive in Oro Valley. (Agenda / Live-stream.)
The Marana Town Council will meet on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at 11555 W. Civic Center Drive in Marana. (Agenda / Live-stream.)
Did we miss an event? Email Joe to get it on his radar.
Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher told a story on “The Bill Buckmaster Show” on Friday about a former county IT employee who apparently got the job using AI.
But as the old adage goes — live by the sword, die by the sword.
AI helped the unnamed employee crush it during the interview stages, but their dream of being a well-paid IT tech with a ChatGPT subscription didn’t last long.
“I had a department director thinking they had just hired the most outstanding candidate ever in the history of the world,” Lesher said. ”(They) had done their entire interview based on AI and then came to work and in about the first week was able to make it work by doing all their work on AI.”
Lesher told Buckmaster the employee was let go after it became clear they were relying on AI.
Actually doing the job, it turns out, was a much more difficult prompt than “how do I ace this interview?”