Things we noticed: election edition
How many write-in votes? … Secretive supervisors … And welcome home — have a taco.
Roughly 75% of Tucson voters didn’t bother to send in their ballots for Tuesday’s City Council election — so, once again, the vast majority of people sat this one out.
It’s actually pretty normal for an off-cycle city election, especially when the biggest race on the ballot is for a seat on the council. Turnout was almost exactly the same two years ago when Mayor Regina Romero was up for re-election.
The Pima County Recorder’s Office reports approximately 7,600 ballots that are being processed on Wednesday, so the voter turnout number will tick up a few percentage points before the election is officially over.
Democrat Selina Barajas was the only name on the ballot to represent Ward 5 — and still, about 19,000 people skipped that race entirely. That’s what’s known as an undervote. Another 2,925 people went a step further and wrote someone else in.
To put that in perspective: In Ward 3, only about 1,500 people left their bubbles blank, and just 151 wrote in someone — whether it was Taylor Swift, Zohran Mamdani, or maybe Rodney Glassman. The numbers in Ward 6 looked about the same.
We’re guessing on those write-in names, of course. Pima County Elections doesn’t track who people write in unless there’s an official registered candidate. (There were no legitimate write-in candidates in the race, so those votes go to nobody.)
That said, Barajas does get bragging rights — she still pulled in about 4,000 more votes than either Kevin Dahl or Miranda Schubert. Running uncontested has its advantages!
Meanwhile, Plan Tucson 2025 — Proposition 417 — passed, but with thousands fewer votes than either Dahl or Schubert got.
So was it voter apathy toward long-term city planning? Or was it just the very last box on the ballot? We’ll let you decide.
Propositions were closer races
The margins between winning and losing were a lot closer on the three school-related propositions.
Tucson Unified’s Proposition 414 — the $45 million budget override — passed with 56% of the vote. That’s a big deal, since voters haven’t approved one of these in more than 30 years. But here’s the twist: The numbers suggest several thousand people who voted for Democrats also couldn’t bring themselves to say yes to a tax increase.
We don’t get voting breakdowns by party, so this is based on a basic assumption — Republicans mostly voted Republican, Democrats stuck with Democrats, and independents landed somewhere in between. If that’s the case, then thousands of Democratic and independent voters likely backed Dem candidates and then turned around and voted “no” on Prop 414.
We’re guessing it was a financial decision.
For a Tucson home assessed at $200,000, homeowners will pay an additional $205 in property taxes annually because of Proposition 414.
Another notable observation comes from Sunnyside Unified School District’s Proposition 416, which narrowly passed by a margin of about 850 votes.
Roughly 5,100 southside residents voted on whether to increase property taxes to generate $120 million for the district to repair its aging school buildings.
But with a margin of solely 850 votes, the decision at the ballot box pencils out to each of those votes being worth $141,176 to the district over the next decade.
We’re going to have to wait a little longer to find out whether the Pima County Board of Supervisors plans to take any action on Project Blue.
After a 3.5-hour closed-door meeting with county attorneys, the supervisors came back and took no action on the data center issue, nor an outside investigation into the Sheriff’s Department. Both items were listed as “informational only,” meaning no vote was required.
That said, the county already has a contract with an outside law firm, so it’s possible something is happening behind the scenes.
In other county action:
Supervisors voted 4 -1 to postpone a vote on giving additional funding for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona and the Sahuarita Food Bank. County officials want more time to evaluate spending $800,000 from the contingency fund. Supervisor Matt Heinz voted against postponing the item, supporting the measure.
The board voted to join Attorney General Kris Mayes’ lawsuit asking the courts to force Congress to swear Adelita Grijalva into office.
A majority of supervisors supported a proposal to add stricter short-term rental oversight to their legislative agenda. Several supervisors said they regularly hear from residents frustrated with “party houses” or problematic rentals — but their hands are tied, thanks to state laws prohibiting them from enacting certain regulations on short-term rentals.
And finally, the board wants to push state agencies — including the Arizona Department of Economic Security and the Arizona Department of Transportation — to remove unnecessary barriers for refugees. One example: making sure MVD staff don’t turn away refugees who have all the proper documents when they’re trying to get or renew an Arizona driver’s license.
Costume kerfuffle: The brouhaha over the Halloween costumes worn by Cienega High School teachers continues, with local columnists offering their takes. The Star’s Tim Steller says the people who casually incited the online mob that went after the teachers need to be held accountable, but he notes that’s virtually impossible to do in the age of social media. Over at the Tucson Sentinel, Blake Morlock says the mob was “stupid and dangerous,” noting GOP lawmakers and their crew of rabblerousers “trash ‘cancel culture’ and then they practice it.”
Pandemic vibes: The Casa Maria Soup Kitchen is joining a growing list of food assistance groups that are struggling to keep up with demand now that the federal SNAP program has been partially defunded, KGUN’s Alex Dowd reports. One worker at the soup kitchen said she saw a big spike in need during the Covid pandemic, and that demand never fully went away.
“We go from marginalized community, to unsheltered, to even UofA students [and] working families,” she said. “We’re just here to support community the very best that we can.”
Cold feet: Gov. Katie Hobbs abruptly canceled a roundtable with Cochise County healthcare leaders yesterday after finding out she’d be asked about an FBI investigation into staff at the clinic the event was scheduled at, the Herald/Review’s Terri Jo Neff reports. The roundtable was slated for a Chiricahua Health clinic in Sierra Vista, and Chiricahua Health executives are under federal investigation for shady financial dealings.
Coming down to power up: Hobbs did make it to Tucson on Wednesday to unveil the largest battery energy storage system in Tucson Electric Power’s portfolio, per KVOA. The $350 million battery system, known as the Roadrunner Reserve, can power 42,000 homes for four hours.
High and dry: Mount Lemmon residents are dealing with water restrictions after more than a year of little snow or rain, Jaxon Zeichick reports for Arizona Sonoran News. It’s the first time since 2000 that the local water district has imposed restrictions, which could lead to your water getting shut off if you use more than 2,400 gallons in a month.
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Savannah Guthrie paid homage to her home city of Tucson on the TODAY show yesterday morning. The highlight of Guthrie’s return to the desert? Walking a porcupine.
While most Tucsonans probably don’t do this in their normal day-to-day, you can see the little animal at the Desert Museum.
“I got to walk him with a leash, which was hilarious and a great photo to bring home to my kids,” Guthrie said.