KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about Gov. Hobbs’ potential pick for Lieutenant Governor, a candidate who wants to stop running with Clean Elections and more, The Show sat down with Christina Corieri of Consilium Consulting and Mike Haener of Lumen Strategies.
Transcript
MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, and this is the Friday NewsCap podcast. Each week, we review the biggest stories week with experts, reporters and commentators to put the news in perspective.
Here’s this week’s episode:
JUSTIN HEAP: Overall, I think we had a very smooth and successful primary. I hope that we continue to see that in the general. As all of you know, I think the general is really the test that we’re all gearing up and preparing for.
KRIS MAYES: The answer is no. You cannot blow off the Attorney General’s Office. And so, full stop. No one can, regardless of who they are.
ANDY BIGGS: You know, Charlie endorsed me, and Erica’s endorsed me. But what they’re doing is they’re also actively — not just in Arizona, but in a number of states — knocking on doors trying to help get voter turnout.
NICK MYERS: Campaigns for downballot offices like the (Arizona Corporation Commission) are decided disproportionately on name recognition. Signage is often the single largest driver of that recognition, especially in the final weeks of the race.
KATIE HOBBS: When it became clear that we weren’t going to reach an agreement with the Upper Basin, we pushed for a Lower Basin proposal. A Lower Basin proposal that shares cuts across Nevada, California and Arizona.
JUAN CISCOMANI: These are all real things for real people, putting real money back in their pockets. That’s what’s the core of this bill that we passed. It’s about people, the working class.
MARK BRODIE: And joining me to talk about Gov. Hobbs’ potential pick for lieutenant governor, a candidate who wants to stop running with Clean Elections and more, are Christina Corieri with Concilium Consulting. Christina, good morning.
CHRISTINA CORIERI: Good morning. Great to be here.
MARK BRODIE: Good to have you. And Mike Haener of Lumen Strategies. Mike, good to have you here, as well.
MIKE HAENER: Morning.
MARK BRODIE: So let’s start with some reporting from the New York Times that suggested that Gov. Hobbs is picking, has made her pick for lieutenant governor, and that pick is former Mesa Mayor John Giles. Giles has, of course, endorsed Hobbs. He’s endorsed a number of Democratic candidates over the past couple of years, but was a Republican as the mayor of Mesa.
Mike, I’m not going to ask for like, you know, if he is or is not, but what do you make of the fact that the governor, neither the governor nor her campaign have really commented on this at all? And it’s been almost a week now since the Times reported this.
MIKE HAENER: I don’t make anything of that. The governor and her campaign have a plan on when they want to roll out their lieutenant governor choice, just like the Republican candidate did, just like the other candidates are. And so they’re going to do it when they feel like they want to actually make the announcement and go from there.
MARK BRODIE: Is there, does it hurt at all that actual rollout, the fact that — if, in fact, it is Giles — that it’s sort of been out for some amount of time?
MIKE HAENER: I would argue no, because you’ve now had everybody talking about it for a full week, and then if you make an announcement a week from now, people are going to talk about it again. So I think if this was the strategy, it’s been a great strategy to do it this way, because you’re going to get multiple bites at the apple.
MARK BRODIE: Christina, obviously we don’t really know the answer to this question, because this is the first time we’ve had a lieutenant governor here. But do you get the sense that the pick itself matters in who voters vote for?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: You know, I, we don’t know. I think it’s a lot like the vice presidential pick where you’re following the “first, do no harm” principle. And I think they both followed that. I think you can appoint somebody to that position that can hurt the ticket.
I don’t know how much at the end of the day that they’ll help the ticket. But I think both of these choices make sense for the type of campaign that the principal is running.
MARK BRODIE: OK, so let’s assume, just for argument’s sake, that John Giles is the pick from the governor to be her lieutenant governor. Christina, is this a, you mentioned this is a safe pick. Do you think it helps the governor?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: You know, the governor has to run as a a centrist, somebody who can work across the aisle. The Democrats lag behind both the Republicans and the party not declared independents in terms of voter registration. So the only way the governor wins is with a a sizable amount of those independents and some level of disaffected Republicans. And I think by picking somebody that is seen as more of an independent, that’s how she’s appealing to the group that she absolutely has to win.
MARK BRODIE: Do you think it works? Like, do you think that moderate Republicans might vote for Gov. Hobbs knowing that John Giles is on the ticket?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I think she’s going to be relying more on the independents than the Republicans.
MARK BRODIE: OK. And Mike, is there a danger, potentially — again assuming that Giles is the pick, we haven’t gotten confirmation of that — is there a danger that the left side of the governor’s base might not be thrilled with having somebody who, until recently, was a Republican on the ticket?
MIKE HAENER: I don’t think that that matters either, because at the end of the day, if you’re a progressive, if you’re a far-left Democrat, and your choice is Gov. Hobbs and whoever she picks for the lieutenant governor versus Andy Biggs, you better vote for Gov. Hobbs, because that’s your only choice. Going with Biggs gets you a whole lot of other things that you probably don’t want.
MARK BRODIE: But there’s also the choice of just not voting, right? Which in theory would not be great for the governor.
MIKE HAENER: Which is just like voting for the Republican candidate.
MARK BRODIE: OK. We also this week, Christina, Gov. Ducey, your former boss, came out and endorsed Andy Biggs, the rest of the GOP ticket. And normally this would not be such a notable thing, but in this case, it kind of is, because four years ago, he did not endorse the person who was running to succeed him. So obviously, Gov. Ducey and Andy Biggs have worked together. They crossed paths at the State Capitol. Significance of this endorsement?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: You know, I think it signifies that they are serious candidates that Gov. Ducey is quite familiar with and has worked with. Andy Biggs was one of the chief budget negotiators during Gov. Ducey’s first term. He also endorsed Sen. (Warren) Petersen, (Arizona Senate) President Petersen, for the AG position.
He’s worked with Sen. Petersen on key pieces of legislation. In fact, one of Gov. Ducey’s signature bills was the universal recognition of occupational licenses. President Petersen was actually the legislative sponsor of that bill.
So in both cases, he’s worked with these guys, he knows that they are dealmakers, he knows that they have serious policy chops. I’m not sure that was true of Kari Lake.
MARK BRODIE: Mike, one of the things that we’ve seen already is an attempt to compare Andy Biggs to Kari Lake, both from the Hobbs campaign and others. Does this make it a little harder to do that, the fact that the last Republican governor has endorsed this Republican candidate?
MIKE HAENER: Not at all. I mean, they’re very similar in their policy positions. The difference is that Kari Lake was much more bombastic in how she talked about things, but she and Andy Biggs are very much on the extreme end.
Gov. Ducey has to endorse Andy Biggs, because they worked together and all of that. But frankly, endorsements really don’t matter. They don’t move the needle on who you’re going to vote for at the end of the day.
Doug Ducey’s not on the ticket. It’s Andy Biggs, who is an extreme candidate.
MARK BRODIE: So you don’t think it was necessarily a signal four years ago when Ducey did not endorse Kari Lake to Ducey Republicans that he doesn’t support this person, so maybe you shouldn’t, either?
MIKE HAENER: Not really. Again, I don’t think people really care about who the former elected official endorses in this race. It’s about what they bring to the table and how they’re going to govern. And endorsements are not all that important.
MARK BRODIE: Christina, we talked about whether or not a lieutenant governor would matter. Do endorsements matter in this kind of race?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I think they can. I think especially when the endorser is coming from perhaps a different wing of the party, it can signal to that specific wing. So in Congress, Andy Biggs has been part of the Freedom Caucus and really appeals to that MAGA base.
I think Gov. Ducey was seen as more of an establishment type of Republican than a MAGA or a Freedom Caucus one. And so an endorsement like that tells that wing of the party that they would be safe with a Gov. Biggs.
MARK BRODIE: OK. One more thing on the governor’s race before we move on. There was a poll released just yesterday from AARP, which found Gov. Hobbs leading Andy Biggs pretty substantially, 52 to 44%. It also showed Kris Mayes leading Warren Petersen by 5 points in the race for AG, although neither was above 50%. Mike, last time, the governor won by what, 17,000 votes? Eight points right now — obviously it’s right now, snapshot in time, long time away from the election — but eight points is a lot.
MIKE HAENER: Yeah. Again, unfortunately, this poll only had two candidates in it. There are going to be four on the ballot — a Green Party and a No Labels Party. It’s, as you mentioned, we’re 90 days from the election, so there’s a long time. A lot of things are going to happen, a lot of ads, a lot of discussions, and so we’ll have to see.
But I think the governor has been, has put herself in a very good position from the centrist policies that she’s pushed on water, on the border, on economic development. And so I think it’s going to be very difficult for Biggs to close that gap at the end of the day.
MARK BRODIE: How much do you think that those the third- and fourth-party candidates end up taking in November?
MIKE HAENER: I think a couple of points, total, anywhere from 2 to 5. It’s not going to be a lot. I mean, the Green Party candidate, I think, for governor in the primary got a little over 300 votes. You’re not going to take a lot of votes away in that, but you will take some.
MARK BRODIE: Right. Well, and Christina, to the point of the governor winning by 17,000 votes, like the consensus seems to be, the conventional wisdom seems to be this is going to be another really close race, one that’s potentially won on the margins. So, four candidates on the ballot, maybe a few hundred votes here or there could make a difference.
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I tend to think they’re not going to get that many votes. There’s the hardcores that aren’t going to vote. What I took away from this poll is it is really hard to unseat an incumbent governor. In Arizona, it hasn’t happened since the 1970s. So I think anybody has to say she starts ahead. She also has been up on the air, so she has been getting her message across in a way that Biggs is going to have to come back and do.
But I wouldn’t say that this poll is all cherry for everything for the Democrats. One thing that stuck out to me is that when they polled favorability of the parties, the only thing that voters viewed as less favorable than the Republican Party was the Democrat Party. So I do think that there is still time for these numbers to change.
MARK BRODIE: Right. Well, would you assume also, as a lot of folks tend to, that this race will tighten as it gets closer, that it will not be an eight-point margin at the end?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: Oh, it will tighten. I think in that poll, it had 10% of Republicans voting for Gov. Hobbs. It is not going to be 10% at the end of the day. There’ll be some tightening in the independents, as well.
MARK BRODIE: One of the things, Mike, that I thought was kind of interesting was that there are only 4% undecided. Which, again, for a race in the margins, 4% is a big deal, but 90 days out, a lot of people maybe over the summer weren’t paying that much attention, the governor didn’t have a contested primary, that seemed like an awfully low number of undecideds for a poll this far out. Do you take any significance from that?
MIKE HAENER: No, again, you have to look at what the methodology is that they used and all of the kind of components that go into making a good poll. And so not having that information, it’s hard to speculate on why there was such a small amount of undecideds.
MARK BRODIE: OK. And assuming also that the race will tighten, if you are the Hobbs campaign, is eight points, at this point, is that a wide enough margin to feel comfortable, understanding that it will get closer as we get closer to November?
MIKE HAENER: Eight points is fantastic in August. I don’t think that there was ever an eight-point lead on Kari Lake, and obviously the governor still won. So having a lead now, even though the race will tighten, being up eight points is certainly better than being down eight points.
CHRISTINA CORIERI: Being up eight is better than being down eight at this point. But it feels like right now, with the constant changes coming from Washington, that every single day is like a week in the news cycle. And you should not count your chickens before they hatch. Eight points now is not eight points in November.
MARK BRODIE: Right. A lot can and probably will change between now and November.
MIKE HAENER: And I will say that generally nothing good is coming out of Washington, D.C., and Andy Biggs is responsible for a lot of that bad stuff.
MARK BRODIE: Well, certainly according to the Hobbs campaign, for sure. ...
Christina, let me start with you on Ralph Heap. He’s a Republican candidate for Corporation Commission, has been running as a Clean Elections candidate, but no longer wants to.
There’s been a pretty big kerfuffle about who paid for signs of his when he did not yet get Clean Elections money. The commission rejected his request to withdraw from the program. So where are we with this right now?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: Well, I think I would sum it up with saying he’s in a heap of trouble. And he’s in quite a conundrum for trying to decide what to do.
He’s in a position where he hasn’t been allowed out of Clean Elections. He can’t get the Clean Elections money unless he signs a document stating that his financial papers are accurate, something he’s been unwilling to do at this point. And because he’s still clean, he can’t go raise money elsewhere.
So I don’t see this ending anywhere else but in court. I mean, his choice is to leave the race and allow somebody else to be on there, or to file an emergency action in court and try to see if the court will let him out of Clean Elections so he can raise money.
MARK BRODIE: Let him out of Clean Elections. And is there talk in Republican circles about trying to get him to withdraw, because there is a deadline coming up when ballots have to be printed, where if Republicans want to get another candidate on, like it’s got to be done by a certain time?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I think if you take a look at political Twitter in Arizona, there is a lot of talk about this.
MARK BRODIE: So, Mike, how big of a problem — let’s assume that Heap stays in the race — how big of a problem is it for him that he’s not getting Clean Elections money and can’t raise his own? I mean, clearly he already has signs up, like people seem to know who he is. If he doesn’t withdraw, his name is going to be on the ballot with an R next to it.
MIKE HAENER: Yeah, I don’t see this as a major problem for him, frankly. The Republicans have won the Corp Comm races, I think, unanimously, all five seats for the last couple of cycles. He’s on the ballot. His signs are already up. No one is saying that you have to take them down. So he can campaign and go to forums and do other things while those signs remain up without any money and would probably do pretty well in the election.
MARK BRODIE: So I have to point out that you kind of smirked a little bit when we heard from Nick Myers in the montage at the beginning when he talked about name ID — Nick Myers, current corporation commissioner who lost to Ralph Heap in the primary — talking about how name ID or signs are such a big component in downballot races, which the Corporation Commission is. It sounds like you don’t agree with that assessment.
MIKE HAENER: Well, I don’t think signs are overly helpful at the end of the day. And if you’re Nick Myers and you lost your race after you ran a race and won, you’ve been the corporation commissioner for four years and you lose in the primary, that’s probably not because the other guy had signs.
MARK BRODIE: Christina, do you think it comes down to really just comes down to party affiliation in this kind of thing? And that if Heap stays on the ballot, he still has a decent chance of winning?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I think that party affiliation matters more the further down the ballot you go. I do think with all of the scandal and all of the reporting, if he stays on the ballot, it puts that seat in jeopardy. You’ll have some Republicans who will choose to single shot, and it’ll give the Democrats a better chance for taking a seat on the Corporation Commission.
MARK BRODIE: So there are two seats up for election. Is it two or three?
CORIERI: Two.
MARK BRODIE: I think it’s two. There’s one: Republican, Kevin Thompson, who is an incumbent who made it through the primary; and then Ralph Heap and two Democrats running. Do you really do think there’s a chance for Democrats to take at least one of those seats if Heap stays on?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I think you will see some Republicans choose to vote for only one when they can choose to vote for two, and I think you will see independents who have heard the name on TV in a way that is not flattering and not helpful who will also potentially choose not to vote for him. So I think Republicans will have a better chance with a different candidate that has a clean record.
MARK BRODIE: Mike, do you think that if he stays on, that Democrats could take one of those seats?
MIKE HAENER: I think there’s a possibility, but it’s a very low possibility.
MARK BRODIE: OK. So Christina, obviously crystal balls are often cloudy. Sitting here right now at 9:27 on Friday, the 7th of August, what do you think the odds are that Ralph Heap stays on the ballot, stays in this race?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: You know, I couldn’t answer that for you. It’s going to be a decision that he has to make, and it’s going to be based, I think, on what are the potential personal outcomes in this? And that includes potential fines that might be coming from the Clean Elections Commission, and the willingness to bear those.
MARK BRODIE: OK. Mike, do you think he stays in?
MIKE HAENER: Yes. And the fines don’t matter, because he can put off paying them back, he can do a variety of things. So he stays on the ballot. I don’t think that there’s any issue there.
MARK BRODIE: OK. Guys, this week ... Gov. Hobbs is asking the Homeland Security Department for reimbursement over border security costs, asking for nearly $1 billion. This is not something new. Gov. Napolitano did this back when she was governor. And she didn’t get any reimbursement then, and so far none of her successors have gotten any reimbursement, either.
MIKE HAENER: Correct. And the difference now is in HR 1, there was money appropriated in a bill that the president signed that allocates money to border states for the cost of border security. I know that Gov. Hobbs had included this in her State of the State in 2026. This is now a formal application as part of that bill or that law.
And so the question becomes how is the administration going to administer that fund? Will all the dollars go to Texas?
MARK BRODIE: Which has a Republican governor.
MIKE HAENER: Which has the only Republican governor between Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. So again, this administration has shown that they’ve done nothing but play politics with all of these things, but you still have to ask on behalf of all of the dollars that Arizona taxpayers have spent in securing the border.
MARK BRODIE: Safe to say the governor’s not holding her breath on this?
MIKE HAENER: I don’t think anybody in Arizona is holding their breath on it, but again, you have to do it, and it’s something that she should do.
CHRISTINA CORIERI: Spoiler alert: No money is coming. All four of the past governors have asked for it, none of them have gotten it. It might be an official application this time, but they are going to look at the actions, and I don’t think that the Trump administration is going to view whatever actions Hobbs has taken as sufficient enough to merit federal funding, and I would be surprised if the state sees a penny.
MARK BRODIE: Do you think the money all goes to Texas?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I think a lot of the money will be going to Texas.
MARK BRODIE: All right. So I mentioned Kris Mayes, so let’s talk about her. She sued the Trump administration again over the new tariffs that President Trump announced not that long ago. We saw the Supreme Court ruled in the favor of the states, including Arizona, that sued the last time.
I am not a lawyer, so far be it for me to say, but Christina, any reason to think the outcome here might not be different here? Is there a reason to think that these new tariffs are any more legal in the eyes of the Supreme Court than the last round?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: I don’t think that they’re any more legal, and I think that the Trump administration would do well to rethink their tariff strategy. I mean, if you look at the poll we talked about earlier, the number one issue across Republicans and Democrats is affordability, and tariffs add to the cost of goods.
I know there’s a lot of Republicans who don’t like to hear that. I’m in the Ronald Reagan mold. A tariff is a tax, and it is paid for by the individual who purchases the good. And so my hope would be that the Trump administration would reconsider these even before the lawsuit makes it to court, but if it has to go to court, it has to go to court.
MARK BRODIE: How much of a talking point do you think these new tariffs and this new lawsuit make tariffs in terms of the campaign? Because there was some thought that when the Supreme Court ruled on the last round, that maybe the idea of tariffs wouldn’t be as big of an issue come November. But do you think that this all changes that?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: You know, I don’t think that tariffs are necessarily going to play into Arizona’s elections, because none of the people that we are electing — save maybe the House of Representatives — have a say on tariffs. We’re not electing a U.S. senator, we’re electing a governor and state positions, and they do not impose tariffs. And so tying that to the office that they’re running for I think is a little bit more difficult.
MARK BRODIE: Mike, what do you make of this new lawsuit?
MIKE HAENER: Well, first of all, I totally disagree with that. Andy Biggs supports the tariffs, he thinks that they’re good, he doesn’t think that they’re impacting inflation or affordability. So Andy is very much in favor of the tariff today, and he will be tomorrow, and I think it will be a large part of this campaign talking about all of that.
I do think that Christina’s right. At the end of the day, the Trump administration doesn’t care about the law, and so they’re just going to do whatever they want to do until a court tells them no, again. And this will happen, you know, a year from now.
MARK BRODIE: Right. Perhaps notably, after the election, right? We’ll find out, because court appeals and all that, it takes time to get all that stuff through. All right. Christina Corieri, Mike Haener, thanks so much for the conversation, guys. Really appreciate it.
MIKE HAENER: Anytime.
CHRISTINA CORIERI: Thanks.
