Votes are still being counted in the Pima County primaries, but we’ve already got a sense of some of the major developments emerging from this first stage of election season.
Caitlin Schmidt, the co-founder of the Tucson Agenda, joined The Show to bring us up to speed.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: Let’s start by talking about turnout. How many folks turned out to vote in the primaries?
CAITLIN SCHMIDT: Looks like we had 135,663 people for a 21.6% turnout.
DINGMAN: Gotcha. And do we know how that compares to previous cycles?
SCHMIDT: Actually it’s lower. and I know that we are not done counting, and they actually haven’t updated since just after midnight yesterday, on Wednesday. But it looks like in 2020, there were 145,000 ballots returned. So we’ve got a little ways to go.
DINGMAN: I know that there was a lot of attention on the race for county attorney incumbent Laura Conover against her challenger, Mike Jette. What did we see there?
SCHMIDT: We saw a sweeping victory by Laura Conover, wide margin: 67% of the vote versus Mike Jette’s 33%.
DINGMAN: Wow.
SCHMIDT: So they called that one early.
DINGMAN: Teah, I can imagine. In her victory speech, Conover called it a particularly brutal campaign. What was she referring to there?
SCHMIDT: The campaign got pretty ugly. Mike Jette went after her record. It played out largely on the opinion pages, with people from both sides of the camp writing letters supporting one candidate or the other. But I will say they came after Laura Conover pretty hard.
On the flip side, Mike Jette was attacked for obscuring Republican donors. They came after his voting record. So, it was pretty contentious. Definitely very tense in debates and forums.
DINGMAN: And this race was significant because Conover will now run unopposed in November, right?
SCHMIDT: Yes. So this sealed the deal for her second term.
DINGMAN: And do we have any sense of what priorities she will bring to the office going forward?
SCHMIDT: Yes. She is looking to reintroduce legislation for cash bail reform during the next cycle. I know that reproductive rights is a priority as well. Victim rights, victim services. She’s really looking to improve staffing. I know that they’ve actually just brought on some new attorneys in recent weeks. And red flag laws are once again a priority.
DINGMAN: Gotcha. Well, let’s pivot to the sheriff’s race, which also attracted a lot of attention. What were the big themes that you were focused on during the run up to the primary for the sheriff?
SCHMIDT: It seemed like there was a lot of focus on the jail and the situation in the jail. Last year and the year before, there were a spate of deaths that many argued were quite preventable. They haven’t had an in-custody death in the jails since last September, largely due to staffing increases. But there’s been a lot of talk about the infrastructure.
Sheriff Chris Nanos would like to build a new jail, but it sounds like that’s not in the cards. So much of the discussion would be how to deal with this current jail. The staffing situation, which, while it is better, it’s definitely not 100% in the department. And there was a lot of talk about morale.
DINGMAN: Well, the race featured not just a pair of Democrats, but also three Republicans. So much more competitive than the county attorney race we were just discussing. How did it play out?
SCHMIDT: So, Chris Nanos took pretty easily the victory on the Democratic side with about 61% of the vote versus Sandy Rosenthal’s 39. Over on the Republican side, it’s still pretty close. Heather Lappin had 44% of the vote at the last update. Bill Phillips had 40%. And the other candidate, Terry Frederick, had about 15.
The New York Times called this race, but the Associated Press and other outlets have yet to do that.
DINGMAN: Gotcha. Well, assuming Lappin does prevail, do we have a sense of what the the main themes of a campaign between Nanos and Lappin would be?
SCHMIDT: Yeah. I suspect that she will go after his record. Morale is, like I said, a big theme in the department. She still currently works for the department, so she has a good sense of how it’s playing out there. Substance use issues are a big deal. She has some personal experience with that. She has a son who struggled with substance use issues. And so she has some pretty inside experience ideas about how the department should pivot and deal with that. And then staffing again, I think that’s just a challenge across industries. But especially with law enforcement: how to attract and retain quality individuals while dealing with attrition, which is usually pretty high.
DINGMAN: So, sort of a human resources-centered political conversation, potentially.
SCHMIDT: Yeah. Really interesting. When you take the jail out of it, it is a lot about staffing and personnel, which you don’t typically see in law enforcement related races.
DINGMAN: All right. Well, let’s take a quick look around the rest of the county. It seems like there weren’t too many other surprises. Although we did see an unexpected result in the race for justice of the peace. What happened there?
SCHMIDT: Yeah, that was a surprise. This was a rare occurrence of the incumbent losing in the primary, which almost never happens, especially not in Pima County. So the challenger, Renee Ann Garza, took 66% of the vote to Kendrick Wilson’s 34%. She campaigned on a platform of she’s from south Tucson, she grew up there, the position should be held by someone who lives there and was born there. And it sounds like that campaign really resonated with voters.
DINGMAN: And just in case folks haven’t taken a closer look at their civics textbooks in a while — as perhaps they should have — what does the justice of the peace do?
SCHMIDT: They oversee smaller courts in either the city of Tucson or in Pima County jurisdictions. So this one deals largely with domestic violence courts and animal abuse, interestingly enough. But smaller ticket items that don’t make it to superior court. So misdemeanors and whatnot.
DINGMAN: All right, so Renee Ann Garza unseating incumbent Kendrick Wilson. And who will Garza face this fall?
SCHMIDT: She is running unopposed this fall. So, indeed, the south side will be represented by one of its own citizens, as she hoped would happen.
DINGMAN: All right. Finally, let’s take a look at the congressional race in CD6, where Democrat Kirsten Engle will take on the incumbent Republican Juan Ciscomani for the second time this fall. Is there any sense that that contest will play out differently this time around? Engle previously lost to Ciscomani in 2022.
SCHMIDT: You know, it really doesn’t. I think the you know, the only difference this time around is that her campaign is is able to attack his record and what he’s doing. Tax issues are coming up a lot, as are comments that he has made about reproductive rights and veteran benefits.
So it seems like it’s playing out pretty much the same, but you never know. I think things are about to get a lot uglier across the board in some of these races. So, things could flip very quickly.
DINGMAN: Yes. Ugliness across the board. definitely seeming like a theme this election cycle.
SCHMIDT: Yeah.
