No one asked us, but we have a few questions we’d love to see the candidates wrestle with during the upcoming Congressional District 6 debate.
We have full confidence that the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission will do an amazing job Thursday night, when Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani and Democratic challenger JoAnna Mendoza meet for their first (and probably only) real head-to-head matchup.1
The race has been defined mostly by third-party partisan attack ads over the last year, although both candidates have recently gotten their hands dirty by running attack ads of their own.
CD6 is one of the most competitive districts in the nation. Accordingly, Mendoza has adopted an aggressive campaign schedule, and even Ciscomani has begun making more public appearances in the district.
But getting together with the Border Patrol union for an endorsement or making a brief statement at the Pima Area Labor Federation’s annual Labor Day event doesn’t give either candidate much room to make in-depth policy statements about specific topics.
Their websites also lack the details that we, as members of the Tucson community, want to see from candidates running for office.
JoAnna Mendoza’s policy page is so generic that it could have come from any candidate in the last decade.
It’s great that Mendoza says she is a “fighter” and Ciscomani wants you to know that he “gets things done,” but we want to know what they specifically plan to do in the future, especially if it means crossing party lines.
That’s where debates come in.
The CD6 race in Arizona, as we’ve noted before, is key to national Democrats’ plans to take back the House and to Republicans’ efforts to keep the chamber in the party’s hands.
The district has been hyper-competitive in recent election cycles. The two-term Republican congressman won it by 2.5 percentage points in 2024 and just 1.5 points in 2022. With President Donald Trump’s approval ratings near the low point of his second term, most political trackers list the race as a “toss-up.”
Mendoza has done her share of media interviews — although her critics are far more focused on statements she made years ago as a state Senate candidate — and Ciscomani has an established voting record from his last three and a half years in office.
But there’s a lot we still don’t know about the candidates, and Thursday night’s debate gives us a rare opportunity to put them head-to-head and ask specific questions before ballots go out.
For example: Tucson has had two mass shootings in the last few months. Is there a sensible middle ground on gun control that either candidate would support? What would it look like?
And while Trump likes to tell the press he is “on” the ballot, we are going out of our way not to make these questions about him. (But yes, Joe has a counter ready for how many times his name comes up Thursday.)
Sure, we could have polished our newsroom-issued knives to propose some very cutting partisan questions, but debates are more than theater.
Yes, politics is a bloodsport. But debates don’t have to be!
They’re about giving the candidates a chance to make their case, and giving voters a chance to get to know their options before casting their ballots.
In that vein, before we get to our own questions, we’d like to hear from you!
We left the comments section open to all subscribers today (rather than only our elite paid subscribers). Let us know what you think, what we missed and what issues matter most to you.
Drop a note in the comments section or reply to this email and we’ll make sure that the moderators see your questions.
And who knows? You may have the perfect question that elucidates the candidates’ positions and helps your fellow voter. (Or the perfect zinger that stumps the candidates and goes viral!)
Anyway, here are some of the questions we’d like to hear the candidates answer:
Economy and federal policy
More than a year after passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” are Americans better off? What evidence do you use to reach that conclusion?
Iran
What would a successful end to the war with Iran look like? What role should Congress play in determining how long the conflict continues?
Health care
An estimated 365,000 Arizonans could lose health coverage because of federal policy changes, and many of them are children. If elected in November, what would you do to ensure they still have access to basic medical care?
Food safety
Recent FDA recalls have disrupted the food supply. Some restaurants have temporarily removed ingredients such as lettuce. Have federal policy changes made the nation’s food supply less safe? If so, what should Congress do about it?
Voting
Should the federal government play any role in Arizona elections? Do you support USPS getting involved in screening mail-in ballots, or sending uniformed law enforcement to polling locations?
Colorado River
Should Arizona sue the federal government over its plan for managing shortage on the Colorado River? If so, what outcome should the state seek?
The midtown showdown: The candidates in midtown Tucson’s Legislative District 18 showed up for their Clean Elections debate last week, arguing over data centers, school vouchers and a host of other issues, per our debate correspondent Gary Grado. LD18 is a Democratic stronghold currently represented by Democratic Reps. Nancy Gutierrez and Chris Mathis, and Sen. Priya Sundareshan. Republicans Bob Dohse and Doug Everett are challenging for the House and Senate, respectively. While the Democrats were solidly in favor of putting a blanket moratorium on new data centers, the Republicans didn’t like that idea.
“If we don’t want (data centers), we might as well end the debate now because this Zoom debate’s made possible by a data center,” Everett said.
Candidates’ spouses are the worst: The husband of a candidate for Sierra Vista mayor is spreading misinformation about her opponents online, the Herald/Review’s Terri Jo Neff reports in one of the stranger local election stories we’ve seen of late. Basically, Tim Flowers, the husband of vice mayor and mayoral candidate Carolyn Flowers, was fed up with the lack of reporting on the race and took to Facebook to claim his wife is “the only candidate who has not been investigated or arrested by Sierra Vista PD, Scottsdale PD or the AZ Attorney General!” Except she’s not. It seems that neither of her opponents, Councilman Mark Rodriguez and former congressional candidate Brandon Martin, has been arrested or “investigated,” though both have spoken to police at one time or another. And as Neff notes in a separate piece, Martin has had a few restraining orders taken out against him, including by his ex-wife and members of the Cochise County Republican Committee.
Support local journalism so you don’t have to rely on the candidates’ spouses for information this election season.
Speaking of Cochise County: Tom Crosby, the supervisor in Cochise County who refused to certify the results of the 2022 election, won’t stand trial until next year, Neff reports. The case has been delayed more than a dozen times, most recently because an investigator for the AG’s Office who worked the Crosby case quit while he was being investigated for misconduct.
Always fight: While reps for a solar company planning to build a 5,500-acre solar farm near Three Points argue it will be a boon to the local economy and power grid, residents argue it will devastate the local ecosystem and wipe out protected saguaros and other plant and animal life, KGUN’s Vanessa Gongora writes. The potential to add jobs in the local community and generate enough power for about 124,000 Arizona homes isn’t appealing to neighbors like Robert Steinbach, who worry it will turn their desert ecosystem into a desolate solar wasteland.
“Some people were like, oh, why fight? We’re gonna lose. But majority consensus is we have to stand up and make our voice heard,” Steinbach said.
Flow state: Arizona’s gubernatorial nominees have very different visions for the state’s water future, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez reports. While Gov. Katie Hobbs emphasizes conservation and tighter groundwater protections, Republican challenger Andy Biggs wants to increase the state’s water supply through projects such as reviving Yuma’s dormant desalting plant.
When we heard that Elon Musk was putting money into the Congressional District 6 race, we expected him to spend eye-popping amounts of cash helping Congressman Juan Ciscomani.
His political action committee, America PAC, jumped into the race on Friday night.
For a measly $12,220.
Maybe one of the world’s richest men is hedging his bets in this midterm election.
Or maybe, after spending more than $21 million trying — and failing — to sway last year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Musk decided to start smaller.
In any event, we doubt Musk is coming to Southern Arizona to personally hand over $1 million checks to voters like he did in Wisconsin.
1 Full disclosure: We’re partnering with Clean Elections this year to moderate its legislative debates, and we get paid for that work. We’re not involved in the congressional debates.