KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the ballot measures we will and will not be voting on this fall, some new polls in the governor’s race and more, The Show sat down with former congressional and gubernatorial candidate Christine Jones and Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies.
Transcript
ANNOUNCER: KJZZ’s original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz.
MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, and this is the Friday NewsCap podcast from KJZZ’s The Show. Each week, we review the biggest and most important political stories of the week with a panel of experts, which puts those stories into perspective to help us understand why they matter.
Here’s this week’s episode:
MARISOL GARCIA: We were hoping to have voters be able to have a say this November on how much we all know they dislike vouchers. Instead, we’re going to have to spend some more time speaking to them about how we got to this place where $1 billion of our taxpayer dollars is being spent on this program.
KATIE HOBBS: I spent eight years in the Legislature watching attacks on our constitutional right to citizens initiative and continuing to raise the bar on getting measures on the ballot, and I voted against most of those — probably all of them.
ANDY BIGGS: I know that if you see a debate between us, you’ll vote for Andy Biggs. And you know what? They know it, too. And that’s why they’re not going to show up for a debate. But I’ll be there.
MARK DANNELS: All we’re asking is reimbursement for the good work we’ve done in Arizona and for our citizens, and we put that back forward to continue to sustain what we’re doing.
JOHN GILES: I felt like I needed to be there to advocate for people like myself that were being shoved out of the party. A few months ago, I realized that’s a lost cause right now.
MARK BRODIE: And with me to talk about the ballot measures we will and will not be voting on this fall, some new polls in the governor’s race and more are Christine Jones, former congressional and gubernatorial candidate. Christine, good morning.
CHRISTINE JONES: Good morning.
MARK BRODIE: And Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies. Stacy, good morning to you, too.
STACY PEARSON: Good morning.
MARK BRODIE: Stacy, I’m going to start with you. Prop 212, which was a measure that a public teachers union and some others put on to try to make some changes to the state’s ESA program — we can’t call them vouchers, we learned that from the State Supreme Court this year — that is not going to be on the ballot. They turned in an awful lot of signatures, it seems, to not have enough to qualify.
STACY PEARSON: Oh, it’s heartbreaking. And with citizens initiatives, it really is death by a thousand paper cuts. The cost is extraordinary, the strict compliance standard is insane. And to explain what that means, if you put PHX instead of the word Phoenix in the box that is for the city, your entire signature can be disqualified. If you transpose your address or your printed name or the — any mistakes in that line, if you color outside the box, if your signature — if the Y in Stacy goes down to the box below, the entire line can be disqualified. And so what winds up happening is the wealthiest among us have to bankroll citizens initiatives now, and they’re no longer in the hands of citizens.
MARK BRODIE: Is there — I hate to put it this way, but like, is there blame to be assigned here?
STACY PEARSON: The blame to be assigned is in the Legislature’s ongoing attempt to undermine our ability to have direct democracy. I mean, direct democracy was enshrined in the state’s constitution. We held out for it. Arizona, the 48th state, held out its constitution for direct democracy. And the Legislature in the past decade has chipped away at it in a way that really means direct democracy must be purchased. It can no longer be just grassroots.
MARK BRODIE: Christine, is it surprising, the end result here, and the number of signatures that ultimately were disqualified?
CHRISTINE JONES: Well, first of all, the number of signatures they got was significantly huge. I mean, we’re talking over 400,000 signatures. As to Stacy’s point, very expensive. They needed 60% of that or something. You know, we all go and get additional signatures just to guard against these strict compliance.
Here’s the problem: The rules matter, and we should ask people to comply with them. But this thing that we’re doing of challenging every single initiative on both sides — both sides do it, every single initiative gets a lawsuit or more — and, you know, basically saying to the citizens, “You don’t get to play this game anymore.”
Like, if we don’t want to do it, let’s just eliminate it altogether, because it is too onerous to get something on the ballot. The Legislature can refer it pretty easily — well, they could have if they had done it right — gets over there pretty cleanly.
And the procedural thing is important. I’m a lawyer, I like to follow rules. But honestly, come on. What are we doing? “Voucher” is a term of art. We’re all calling it vouchers, and suddenly now we can’t call it voucher? So I feel like it’s a little bit of form over substance at this point.
MARK BRODIE: Well, it feels like what you’re describing is sort of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. Is that a fair assessment?
CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to say it, right? So we’re saying the conservative position should be: We don’t want fraud in the ESA system. We don’t want people to have to spend their money on a Chanel watch, or say for example, a NordicTrack or a trip to Disneyland. We want that fraud to be eliminated, and that’s something that we should all try to vote on, right?
Do we want you to get to pick what I do with my education dollars? No. I don’t want that either, right? So these sorts of things matter. But the problem is if we’re going to eliminate all of the signatures, even the duplicates, just because your name appeared on there twice — that feels like form over substance.
MARK BRODIE: So, Stacy, we heard from some of the folks who are pushing this because, obviously, there’s a good amount of money, as you both alluded to, involved in this, talking about, “OK, well now maybe we will put our efforts toward the Legislature.” Do you think those efforts will be any more successful than their effort to get this Prop 212 on the ballot?
STACY PEARSON: So, to Christine’s point, yes, it is going to be more successful because people are motivated by rage right now. And we talk a lot about the waste and fraud and abuse, to the point that I think that phrase is becoming less meaningful.
But we have no accountability on these homeschool kids. They are not taking standardized tests. I have no idea if the weirdos down the street from me are teaching their kids that we’re on a round planet called Earth that orbits the sun, or that 2 plus 2 is 4 and not 22.
I have no idea what those kids on the bikes all hours of the day, every day of the week, are actually learning. They are not being tested. So as a society, we’re going to have to deal with the worst homeschooled kids who think Earth is flat at some point.
MARK BRODIE: I feel like your next neighborhood block party is going to be a little more awkward now.
STACY PEARSON: Oh man, it’s weird. There’s a guy that I refer to as Don Jr. At some point, he’s going to figure out I call him that, too. So, yes.
CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, so last time Stacy called the homeschoolers weirdos, I got in trouble. Like, as if I was the one that did it.
STACY PEARSON: I said it was kooky. I said kooky.
CHRISTINE JONES: Let’s just state for the record: There are a lot of homeschool students who are rock stars. I know a lot of them, and they are very, very well educated.
STACY PEARSON: Absolutely. And they can take a test. They should be able to take a test and show me what rock stars they are.
CHRISTINE JONES: They’ve gone on to great schools and they’ve become very well educated. They’re not kooks, OK? They’re not weirdos. But they should have accountability, I think is your point.
STACY PEARSON: Yeah.
MARK BRODIE: Christine, do you think that the groups who were pushing this ballot measure, do you think that they will be able to — obviously, their goal is now to flip the Legislature so that they can get some of these changes that they wanted in the ballot measure through the Legislature, which will never happen with the Republicans in charge. Do you think they have a chance?
CHRISTINE JONES: I know there’s a couple of really strong efforts to flip the Legislature that the Democrats are running. I’m not as bullish on that as they are, because I just think that there are enough legislative districts that are still leaning Republican that they’re probably pretty easy for the Republicans to pick up.
I wouldn’t sleep on it if I was a GOP candidate in some of those districts, because some of these people are very, very likable, really well spoken, smart, thoughtful, community-minded people. So I do think that their efforts are good.
Are they going to flip it? Probably not. However, the conservative position here and what the Legislature should do is to say: We want to build in some safeguards, we really care about parents being the first and best educators of their children, we want them to pick where their education dollars go, but we also are conservatives fiscally and we don’t want people wasting the money.
That is an OK thing for Republicans to do, and they should, because citizen initiatives, amending the Constitution, enshrining this permanently is probably not the best way for us to legislate. The Legislature should be doing that.
MARK BRODIE: Are you surprised that the Legislature hasn’t done that yet?
CHRISTINE JONES: I’m surprised they did it badly. I think the Republicans got too cute. They tried to get the military family exemption, they tried to get two bites at the apple, which we all know in the rules you cannot do. It has to be just a one-issue ballot measure. They could have handled this, and instead they flopped it up.
So I hope they come back around. I hope they build in the safeguards. Let’s not spend millions upon millions of dollars collecting signatures next time. Let’s have thoughtful legislators get together, say, “Look, we’re going to deal with this on a bipartisan basis” — it’s not controversial. We all want our parents to choose our education models — and let the Legislature refer it cleanly.
MARK BRODIE: One more question on this, Stacy, before we move on. Any chance the secretary of state’s race gets a little more juice because of this? I mean, the primary on the GOP side was almost all about vouchers.
STACY PEARSON: Right. I mean, certainly. Folks are paying closer attention to democracy writ large, and specifically direct democracy. I mean, folks who were circulating petitions — and I was entirely too close to this issue. We had a Protect the Vote initiative to enshrine our ability to vote by mail and vote early in the Constitution. We didn’t get enough signatures. It was constitutional. We would have needed $15 million. Someone to write a check like that?
CHRISTINE JONES: That’s a real number?
STACY PEARSON: That’s a real number. I mean, it’s nuts. We are way beyond the ability to have direct democracy without a billionaire funder. It’s nuts.
But yes, to answer the question, certainly, folks are paying attention, and they’re frustrated that they signed, they want accountability built into the education system. No one’s talking about taking away parental rights, but if you are telling me you’re educating your kid at home, have them take the test. I want to make sure they can add. We’re going to have to deal with these kids when they’re grown up. Make sure the Earth’s not flat. Go ahead, test them.
MARK BRODIE: Christine, you alluded to the military family bill, which would have been Prop 145 — also contained the so-called poison pill, which would have nullified Prop 212 had that passed — whole long, convoluted thing. Given that Prop 212 is not going to be on the ballot, is this, pardon the pun, less of a bitter pill for Republicans to swallow that theirs also got kicked off the ballot?
CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, I think so. Look, school choice won, but it was procedural, right? It was by accident. So, yeah, it’s a temporary, sort of Pyrrhic victory. It’s not real, because we still have to, to Stacy’s point, we still have to come back around and fix the fraud.
Tom Horne had the audacity to say we should put some safeguards in the system, and he got primary challenged and beat. So, it’s a temporary, fake victory. We’ll take it for the minute. We won’t take ESAs away from people, which is always the goal here, but it’s got to get fixed.
MARK BRODIE: Stacy, is there any hindsight at this point, which of course is always 20/20, from those on the left that, gosh, you know, maybe we should have taken that deal in the Legislature when they were offering some kind of guardrails in exchange for us dropping the ballot measure?
STACY PEARSON: I mean, certainly hindsight’s 20/20, right? Getting a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing, as it turns out. But I think the optimism is that Democratic enthusiasm among voters is as high as I’ve ever seen it. And it’s the only way Democrats are going to be able to secure statewide seats.
I mean, we have a registration disadvantage that’s as high as it’s been in a decade. I mean, we have 300,000 less Democrats registered to vote than Republicans, 200,000 fewer than Independents. So a whole of a half million voters means that we have to turn out our base in a way that overcomes those disadvantages. So, I mean, yes, we’re looking at really all options, and ideally, flipping a chamber in the Legislature to try to get some of this done.
MARK BRODIE: Are ESAs the issue that will continue to excite the Democratic base for this election, do you think?
STACY PEARSON: I think ESAs, education is always among the top three issues, and folks are getting increasingly frustrated with campus closures, with their neighborhood school turning over to a —
CHRISTINE JONES: Going away.
STACY PEARSON: Yeah, going away. That affects your property value, it affects where your — it changes the way you get up in the morning and get your kids off to school. If your commute is now 30 minutes and not 10 or five. It changes the way people live.
MARK BRODIE: Christine, one more ballot measure, this one we will be voting on, the State Supreme Court said we will, but we will have a description of it that is OK’d by Secretary of State Fontes. So it sounds like both sides got a little bit.
This is Prop 144, a bunch of changes to the way that elections are done, but not a lot of details on how some of those changes might actually be played out. We’ve been talking about ballot measures that maybe excite voters, get them to the polls. Is this one that those on the right might be excited to come out and vote for?
CHRISTINE JONES: I don’t think so. It feels like a little bit of a sleeper. And honestly, Adrian Fontes fighting over wording — is it voucher or is it ESA, or is it ACES or whatever — it’s so boring. Stacy talking about flat Earthers, that’s interesting, right? Me talking about is ESA money going to a private school, it’s interesting. How you style the ballot initiative, so boring.
Here’s what might motivate people: Nobody wants to be misled. Nobody wants all of the double, triple, quadruple negatives, and if you vote yes it means no, and if you vote no it means yes, and you don’t really know what you’re saying.
The other thing that I think really offends people because they’re not stupid is: Describe what the thing does, don’t advocate to me, don’t make the description adversarial, don’t make it try to tip me in one way or the other, just say what it is. For the love of God, could we not just have some kind of plain language without any advocacy for a change? That, I think, might be motivating.
MARK BRODIE: Christine, we’ve seen in the past, like in the last cycle, there were a number of ballot measures that the Republican Legislature put on the ballot, didn’t really spend much money on in terms of having a campaign for it, and many of them failed. I’m curious what you see for this particular one. Is this one that Republicans are going to maybe put some money, put some effort toward trying to convince voters to vote for it?
CHRISTINE JONES: I haven’t heard of anybody, nobody’s called me and asked me for a check, as an example. So I don’t actually know, but my sense is it’s way down the totem pole when you have something like Save Girls’ Sports on 318 coming, that’s a much more important issue on a bipartisan basis. You know, the vast, vast, vast majority of both — actually, all three party registration designations are in favor of that.
MARK BRODIE: And this is one that you’re working on, we should disclose.
CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, fair disclosure, yeah. I support it. Most parents don’t want their minor daughters changing and, you know, showering with boys, biological boys. So I think that’s probably more motivational, and there’s just a limited amount of money to go around, you know? The Terry Goddard initiative that made the disclosures important has really discouraged out-of-state money, so now you’re just really limited to the donors in state.
To Stacy’s point, how many billionaires are there that want to put $15 million behind one of these? It’s got to be something sexy, it’s got to be something that’s interesting, and something that impacts them, their children, their grandchildren, you know, somebody.
MARK BRODIE: Do you agree, Stacy? I mean, election integrity is like, it seems like one of the few things the president, for example, really enjoys talking about all the time. Like it’s a pretty consistent Republican talking point.
STACY PEARSON: Well, and in full disclosure, we’re working on the No Campaign on 144, and it is undeniably a path to end mail-in voting and early voting. That’s it. I mean, it is in the language that the Legislature will continue to control, and essentially the path to end mail-in voting. So I find it hilarious that 80% of the voters in November will cast their mail-in ballots. If they vote yes on 144 —
CHRISTINE JONES: It’s the last time.
STACY PEARSON: It’s the last time. If you vote yes to end the very method by which you vote, it’s lunacy. And so, yes, I think 144 is going to get interesting, and that was very much a response to the proactive constitutional amendment that we were running to enshrine mail-in voting rights in the state’s constitution.
CHRISTINE JONES: Is there public polling on that?
STACY PEARSON: Oh, yeah. It’s —
CHRISTINE JONES: That’s been released? On 144?
STACY PEARSON: I don’t know.
CHRISTINE JONES: Sorry, I didn’t mean to derail you.
STACY PEARSON: No, but yes —
CHRISTINE JONES: It will be soon.
STACY PEARSON: I mean, they’re going to have to spend millions and millions and millions to try to fool voters into voting against their own way of voting.
MARK BRODIE: OK. So, guys, let’s talk about a couple of polls looking at the governor’s race. There was a poll from Noble Predictive Insights that found that Gov. Hobbs is leading Andy Biggs by 13 points, 48% to 35%. This is, of course, that’s a pretty big margin, especially considering that the governor won by what, 17,000 four years ago. Another poll from American EnCore found the governor up 45-40.
It seems like both polls have the governor roughly in the same ballpark, like mid- to upper 40s, not quite 50, but mid- to upper 40s. They both have her up, but one obviously by a lot more. Obviously, polls, snapshot in time. We’re still what, three months away from the election? What do you make of these, Christine?
CHRISTINE JONES: I mean, as a candidate, we tend to try to disregard the horse race polls as much as possible. Two things that I would say stand out here: First of all, there’s no good way to spin this. These are both bad for Biggs, on just a statistical purpose.
There’s two things I thought were really interesting. Hobbs has already consolidated 86% of Democrat support, and Biggs is only at 75% of Republicans. So fully one in four Republican voters are saying that they don’t support him. That’s a problem for Biggs, whether you’re behind five or 13.
The other thing is at 48, Hobbs already has 48 support in Mike Noble’s poll, 45 in the other. She’s almost at the tipping point. I think this is a bad, bad sign for Biggs, and I think the Republicans got to have a thing to get people to get that 300,000 vote advantage at the polls to vote for the top of the ticket by some other means than being excited about the candidates, because they don’t seem to be particularly excited about the candidates this cycle.
MARK BRODIE: What do you think, Stacy?
STACY PEARSON: The death knell of any candidate is when they say, “The only poll that matters is the election day results.” And I saw a Biggs supporter on X this week say exactly that.
CHRISTINE JONES: A Biggs supporter?
STACY PEARSON: I’m like, “Oh, look at you dusting off your resume. This is cute.” Like, there is — it is very difficult — first, Katie Hobbs has never lost an election, hard stop. She’s never lost. And it is very —
CHRISTINE JONES: Has Biggs? I don’t think Biggs has either.
STACY PEARSON: That’s a good question. But it is very difficult to unseat … an incumbent. Yeah, it’s very difficult to unseat an incumbent. And she’s done a perfectly lovely job. She is — it’s so funny the criticism about it not being more exciting. I want a governor to be boring. Go be boring. Go just do policy stuff. Go stay out of the news. I appreciate it very, very much. I think we need to make leadership boring again.
MARK BRODIE: So, I mean, obviously it’s better to be up 13 or five than down, but there’s still so much time, Stacy, before Election Day. There’s going to be debates that the governor and her running mate will not be participating in, that Andy Biggs and his running mate, Sine Kerr, will be participating in. There’s going to be lots of stuff happening between now and then.
Is it — I mean, I assume if you’re the Hobbs campaign, you don’t want to just assume, “OK, look, these polls show we’re up, we’re good,” because, like, certainly not, the race is not over.
STACY PEARSON: Well, and she has the money advantage, right? The governor has fundraised an extraordinary amount of money. She has the support, full support of the Democratic Governors Association, the DGA. So we’re talking tens of millions of dollars that are coming into the state to talk about her record and to make a debate more irrelevant.
And the Republicans, the Republican machinery has not invested the same way in Andy Biggs for a variety of reasons, some of which I’m certain are these poll numbers, that he is at an extraordinary disadvantage, and his voting record is not one that is standing the test of time.
I mean, we’ve got — he’s got some issues with the votes that he took in the Legislature, and I think some of that is being reflected in the poll, because the governor herself has the financial advantage to be able to remind people that he voted to protect the Colorado City pedophiles.
MARK BRODIE: Well, and how significant is that money advantage? I mean, Andy Biggs is somebody who’s never really had to raise a ton of money, because he’s always been in very safe legislative and congressional districts. Obviously, there will be Turning Point money, and you would think that resources wouldn’t be a concern, but maybe they will be?
CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, I’m surprised at the stark difference, frankly, the big gap between the Hobbs money and the Biggs money. Does TP Action or Turning Point come in? Probably, right?
Although I have to say, the negative ads that are being run against Biggs are widely ineffective. They’re meaningless. People turn off the television or turn down the volume when they come on. So I think if the DGA is to spend a lot of money, they got to improve their ads.
But look, the Republicans — and particularly somebody like Biggs, who’s been in the East Valley, he’s been in office a long time, he’s been in a very safe, conservative Republican seat the entire time, no matter what the legislative district number was or the congressional district, and he’s used to being able to win a primary, win a general — that’s not the case here, right?
We are legitimately a swing state now. I hate to admit it live on the air, but we are purple. We have two Democratic senators, and it matters what we — who we pick in the primary. And we haven’t done a good job of — I’ll just acknowledge — we haven’t done a good job of that as Republicans, and we got to get better at it, because ideologues are not winning general elections.
I will say one other thing: Katie Hobbs should debate. I think it should be an obligation for people who want the public trust. We call it public service, and it should be about serving the public, not yourself. I did 55 debates when I ran for governor. She can do one.
That is obnoxious for her to hide in the basement and not debate and come out and just answer some policy questions. Andy Biggs is not Kari Lake. He’s not a flamethrower. He will have a thoughtful policy conversation with her, and she should show up.
MARK BRODIE: All right. Unfortunately, we’ll have to leave it there. Christine Jones, Stacy Pearson, thanks to you both. Really appreciate it.
STACY PEARSON: Thank you.
CHRISTINE JONES: Thank you.
MARK BRODIE: That’s all for this week’s Friday NewsCap podcast. You can find the full Show podcast at podcast.kjzz.org. I'm Mark Brodie, thanks for listening.
