KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the GOP’s midterm convention, a political deepfake video and more, The Show sat down with Lorna Romero-Ferguson of Elevate Strategies and Dawn Penich of Agave Strategy.
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:
JUAN CISCOMANI: Listen, we’ve been 18 months into this administration trying to get out of the Biden inflation that we had in the last four years before then, and it hasn’t happened as fast as we all hoped it would have happened.
JOANNA MENDOZA: If we look at tariffs, my opponent voted nine times for tariffs — tariffs that are raising prices everywhere we go.
JAY FEELY: America’s best chapter has not been written yet. So stand up! Stand together! Stand for freedom! Stand for opportunity! Stand for the American Dream! And stand up for the greatest nation the world has ever known!
ADRIAN FONTES: We really want to make sure that when one of these knuckleheads goes out there and starts saying dumb crap about our elections, we’ll have already had sort of the facts laid out about how this actually works.
LORENA AUSTIN: I guess my first thought was a little shocked, but not surprised, because being deceptive and deceitful is what this group kind of does.
YASSAMIN ANSARI: With arbitrary quotas constantly that they are trying to hit, we know that rules have been broken and norms have been broken left and right.
MARK BRODIE: And with me to talk about the GOP’s midterm convention, a political deepfake video and more are Lorna Romero Ferguson of Elevate Strategies — Lorna, good morning.
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: Good morning.
MARK BRODIE: And Dawn Penich of Agave Strategy — Dawn, good morning to you.
DAWN PENICH: Good morning.
MARK BRODIE: So Lorna, let’s talk about the GOP midterm convention the last couple of nights in Dallas. Only one Arizona candidate that we know of was there to speak, that was Jay Feely, who is of course in a competitive congressional district in the Scottsdale/Fountain Hills area. Good call for him to go and try to get himself in front of a wider audience and maybe just in his congressional district?
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: You know, I don’t think it necessarily is a bad thing. Is it always better to be in your home district, especially in a competitive race like he’s facing and actually campaigning and knocking doors? 100%, I always say that’s the case. If his strategy was to get in front of a broader audience for fundraising purposes, that makes sense.
But his speech was fine, it was a do-no-harm situation, it was kind of more like a pep rally. So I don’t think any of the content of what he said would be problematic, but it’s just a question of: Is he going to be able to bring in dollars from that? If not, then he probably would have been better off just staying in his home district and talking to voters.
MARK BRODIE: How is he doing in terms of getting national — you know, like the National Republican Congressional Committee or other national groups getting money? This is a very competitive district.
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: It is a very competitive district and it’s one of the top priorities for both Republicans and Democrats. And so he is getting a lot of national support, but I do think that Republicans see that obviously Schweikert had this amazing ability the past few election cycles to survive every cycle where we thought that he was going to be potentially taken out, or that was the rumor, right?
So when you have an open seat like this, it’s a crapshoot at this point. And so there are national groups that are taking this seriously, Feely’s campaign is taking it seriously, and it’s really going to come down to — well, we know that Amish Shah, he works that district. He knocks on a lot of doors, right? And ground game is very important.
And so to be able to counter that, financial resources are important as well. And so I think Jay Feely’s team is looking at every opportunity to make sure between now and Election Day they stay on TV, they’re able to hit Amish Shah with whatever attacks that they have between now and then, and see if Republicans can maintain that seat.
MARK BRODIE: So Dawn, one of the attacks that Jay Feely used in his speech was calling — which I guess is not surprising in this election — calling Amish Shah a socialist. Which is interesting, because during the primary, like the criticism was he was too much like Trump, and in the general it’s that he’s a socialist. Is that an attack that you think is going to stick?
DAWN PENICH: No, I don’t think so. I mean, that is clearly, you know, socialism and communism are the marching beat of the Republican Party right now. We heard it being the dominant theme of the Trumpapalooza.
But Amish Shah, unlike Feely, is a well-known quantity in that district. He’s been working hard over the last several years, former legislator. And if anything, he has a reputation for being more moderate, more centrist than what most Democrats like, which is exactly where you want to be for that district. And so I don’t think he’s going to take a lot of bruising from the way he’s being painted. It’s going to in the end just come down to how many people care enough to actually vote their ballot, send it in and, for the first time, it really is a toss-up.
MARK BRODIE: Do you think that Feely benefits from speaking at the midterm convention? To Lorna’s point, is it possible that could bring in more cash to his campaign?
DAWN PENICH: Well, what it does for Democrats is give them a great talking point of: This is the only Arizona candidate who had a speaking position. He’s here trying to tell us that he’s going to care about Arizona residents, but in fact he’s a loyalist to Trump, that’s why he went. We’re just going to get more Trump, and this was proof of it. So he gave a gift to Shah and Democratic talking points about who he really is and where his loyalties will be if elected.
MARK BRODIE: I feel like you just wrote a campaign commercial right there.
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: She’s been working on it since the speech! But there is, I think, both sides of the party are dealing with this, especially here in Arizona, about exciting their base, right? And for Republicans to be successful in that district, they’ve got to drive out more voters. And without Trump being on the ballot, are Trump voters going to turn out? That’s a question mark, especially not in the droves that they were before.
So Feely has to generate that kind of excitement within the base to come out, and then also make sure that he still has the coffers to be able to run a campaign between now and Election Day. So yeah, is there potential downside from having that talking point of, “Oh, he stood on stage and supported Trump?” Sure. But that’s been the talking point since the primary because he was a Trump-endorsed candidate as well. So that’s a known factor.
So, yeah, it really does come down to resources and to see who’s going to run the stronger ground game between now and Election Day.
MARK BRODIE: Which kind of raises the question, at least in this race and maybe more broadly, does this become a base election? Or is it maybe more sort of won at the margins, as we saw, for example, four years ago in some of the top-of-the-ticket races?
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: You know, it’s really interesting because typically you look at these — and obviously every district is different, right? But the way that CD1 is configured, it’s mainly appealing to the more moderates, Democrats and Republicans, those who are independents in that district. But I think Republicans are seeing statewide that they really do have a motivation issue potentially amongst their base. And so they have to kind of run a two-prong approach in a general of making sure that those Republicans turn out and actually care this cycle, and then also appealing to the moderates more in the center. So it’s an interesting dynamic this year.
MARK BRODIE: That is interesting. Dawn, let me ask you about a political deepfake which we saw this week. Some Turning Point activists posted a photo and video that with a sign that said “Democrats for Biggs.” And one of the people in this was a state representative from Mesa named Lorena Austin, who is a Democrat, a very progressive Democrat, self-identified. Problem: wasn’t them. They say was not part of this. So is this sort of a harbinger of what we’re expecting down the road now?
DAWN PENICH: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think more on the right than on the left, AI videos and kind of deepfakes are just ubiquitous already in political stuff. Thankfully, this was a very local, very micro, relatively innocuous, not a lot of harm done example.
But I think it connects very much to a topic that the entire world has been talking about this week, which is regulation of AI. What are we using it for? What are the ethics around it? What’s legal? The problem with that post is that we have laws in Arizona. Just passed in the last couple years, that was illegal and it has been taken down. Rep. Austin has said that they are considering filing a lawsuit.
But we’re going to continue seeing this, it’s not going away. And the question just becomes: Where are we going to see regulation? The federal level, the local level? It’s something that we have to get used to in this reality, unfortunately.
MARK BRODIE: Do you see a difference between something like that, Dawn, and for example, President Trump is known for posting AI images, but like, we all know that he’s not sitting in the Oval Office with George Washington. That’s very obviously AI.
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: Seriously?
MARK BRODIE: I mean, Washington looks great for being a few hundred years old! But like, is there a difference, you think, between that, which pretty much anybody looking at can tell is not real, and this, which for all intents and purposes could be?
DAWN PENICH: Yeah absolutely, and that’s kind of the problem with an utter lack of regulation, is it’s so subjective. Because to someone who doesn’t know what people really look like or certainly, you know, to most voters are in their 60s and 70s in Arizona. And, you know, if I look at my own parents, they believe videos that to me look very obvious.
And so that subjectivity and that question of what are people really taking from this and what are they not, that’s I think where kind of this scary factor is, where we kind of ask: What was the point of this, and what harm might it cause?
MARK BRODIE: Lorna, why? Like why would Turning Point folks post this? What’s the benefit?
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: I don’t have an answer to that! And that’s a fair question: What is the benefit and why, what was the point? If you wanted to put up “Democrats for Biggs” signs around the Valley, around the state, by all means, go ahead. People do that all the time. If you want to create a Democrats for Biggs coalition, do that, actually get Democrats.
But to pick this specific legislator that’s not — we know who this legislator is, but the broader public does not. It’s just kind of strange. Are we talking about it? Maybe it was for attention because we’re all talking about it.
But Dawn raises a great point: This is going to continue to be an issue. And AI is getting much more sophisticated, much more advanced. These are not situations where, yeah, it’s Trump riding a unicorn up into outer space, you know? It’s very difficult at times to see what’s real and what’s fake. And if people are using that to kind of manipulate voters and sentiment, that’s problematic. And so this is going to be a broader issue. But I wish I could speak to the why, but we are discussing it, so maybe that is why.
MARK BRODIE: Well, and presumably as the technology becomes more sophisticated, maybe even later this election or by the next one, it’ll be maybe harder to tell what’s real and what isn’t, what’s AI-generated and what actually happened.
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: 100%. I mean, I see sometimes going through my social media feed, if you’re just scrolling through quickly and you don’t actually take time to look at something, or you just see the quick headline or whatever, you might think that something is actually real or true. We deal with this all the time. Dawn mentioned her parents — mine too! And I feel like I’m getting older, too, so I probably don’t have as sophisticated of an eye, but it’s going to continue to be problematic, and it’s going to be like: What is real, what is fake? And it’s just going to turn into this interesting conundrum for politics.
MARK BRODIE: And guys, obviously today a very solemn day around the country. It’s the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks of Sept. 11. And I don’t want to spend too much time talking about it here, but I am kind of curious to get both of your perspectives on how the politics in Arizona have changed, or maybe evolved — or maybe haven’t — over those 25 years.
Because obviously we were very polarized right before that, right? The 2000 election was a pretty polarizing election, and those attacks happened and the country really came together. So Dawn, let me start with you. I’m really curious how you’ve, especially in Arizona, how have you seen things maybe evolve over the last two and a half decades?
DAWN PENICH: You know, something I’ve been thinking about all week is, it’s odd to say, but looking back, it almost feels like it was a simpler time. Like it was the tragedy of this country’s history, and yet you look back at that and there were still not just rare, but moments of bipartisanship, moments of unity, moments of kind of coming together on political matters.
And you look back at that and you just don’t see it anymore. And the tenor of conversation and the complexity of the lives that we lead now are just so much more complex. So it was this tragedy. It kicked off so many cultural, social and political changes, and yet I think in some ways it’s a time that a lot of people look back at longingly for the ways that we were able to unify then that we just don't see anymore.
MARK BRODIE: Well, that’s sort of the big question, I think, to your point, that a lot of folks have been asking this week: Can we get back to that, right? Can we get back to a time where you can disagree with somebody on an issue, but not demonize them elsewhere? Do you think we can?
DAWN PENICH: Well, that’ll be something to start to listen for. We’re just weeks away from this midterm election, but really it’s already the next general election as well. We already know who’s eyeing the presidential tickets from both sides, and it’s something to start to listen to. Will a Vance or a Cruz carry kind of the Trump rhetoric, or will they come back to a place of saying that they want to work together with a President Kelly or that kind of thing? So I will be listening for that.
MARK BRODIE: I think you just drafted Mark Kelly into the presidency, by the way.
DAWN PENICH: I’m going to be sending out a lot of invoices this week!
MARK BRODIE: Writing campaign commercials, drafting people. Lorna, what do you think? How have you seen Arizona politics evolve in the last 25 years?
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: Yeah, I do think there’s obviously been a lot more divisive rhetoric. And I do think that’s translated into the types of leaders that have been elected. Obviously there were people who criticized President Bush at the time and his response to 9/11 and that. But he continued to lead. I don’t think anybody would question the way that he conducted himself as a human being, right? Same thing with his Democratic colleagues. And I think that lasted for a good while where we had leaders here in Arizona who were statesmen and stateswomen, you know, that really put their country first and looked at everything in a global context, right?
And you fast-forward to today, and a lot of politicians or people who want to run for office, it’s a lot more self-absorbed, unfortunately, and it’s a lot more catering to the extremes on either side and the social media keyboard warriors that are attacking people that they feel like they need to appease, that they need to keep happy. And much more of this isolationist kind of protectionist policy that we have in the United States, right?
And so it’s a completely different dynamic. I hope we can get to the point where we can go back to having those types of leaders on the national, state, local level that truly care about the entire well-being of the electorate, not just the small segment of their party, but that’s going to take the will of those types of individuals to jump in the arena and do that. I think a lot of folks on the right and the left have been a little intimidated or scared to jump in given the climate that we’ve been seeing, you know, the past few election cycles. And so I’m hoping that someday the tone and rhetoric will go down, but we’re in a different era of social media and the way people consume information different than 25 years ago. So who knows what the future holds.
MARK BRODIE: Yeah, a lot of differences. So another sort of somber anniversary this week was the one-year anniversary since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, of course, the founder of Turning Point, he was killed in Utah. Lorna, let me stick with you in terms of, like, what do you see as his and now his group’s legacy sort of a year on since his death?
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: Oh, definitely. I mean, obviously incredibly tragic, and I think for anybody who’s in this space, it really was a wake-up call of again how divisive and scary things have gotten in politics. Unfortunately, we’re too familiar with that here in Arizona with what happened with Congresswoman Gabby Giffords years ago.
But I think with Charlie, it’s a reminder to everybody, and especially those on the right, not to be fearful of what they believe in, right? And to continue to fight for the direction that you think your state, the country, the world should be going in. But I do think it’s a reminder that folks need to kind of take a breath at times and think: Is this going too far? Obviously, somebody was killed in a very public manner and they have a wife and a family and kids that are dealing with that repercussion.
And I think Turning Point has the opportunity to really move forward and use that as motivation to elect Republicans that they think are aligned with their ideals. But I think from the Charlie Kirk situation individually, it’s a reminder to all of us that we all need to be better when it comes to interacting with people that you disagree with, and that violence is never the answer.
MARK BRODIE: Well, Dawn, that kind of goes back to what you were talking about in terms of, like, thinking about the 25 years since 9/11, sort of the way that we talk to and about each other and the way that we treat each other. Do you see that as some of the legacy of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point a year on?
DAWN PENICH: Well, I don’t know. It’s tough, you know. Since his killing, Turning Point has been kind of a mixed bag. I think that they’ve in many ways kind of marched forward with their own rhetoric, which can also can often be pretty hostile and pretty aggressive, you know. We were chatting earlier about road signs that are up all over town and different actions by different activists.
Turning Point has had very strong fundraising since his assassination, and yet despite very strong fundraising, they’ve also had some very high-profile losses indicating or suggesting that maybe either the policy positions or the way they’re explaining their policy positions to voters is not landing. So I’m thinking of big losses in the SRP election recently, big losses in some municipal candidates that they’ve been backing such as in the East Valley.
So it’s kind of unclear to me at this time. You know, you see strength in Turning Point in, like I said, some fundraising numbers, but then you also see losses. I think it’s an organization that is figuring itself out in this transition moment, and we’ll see. I predict they’ll have some outsized influence because they have so much more funding than the Arizona Republican Party itself right now. And so we’ll get to see what policy and rhetoric is coming out of that group because they are the ones with the money to get their message out there.
MARK BRODIE: Interesting. So one more question I want to ask you guys about. The candidates for the 6th Congressional District, the Southern Arizona one, Juan Ciscomani is the incumbent, they had their debate this week — last night, actually. And the big issue, one of the big issues was the economy. And we keep hearing that, you know, the economy, affordability, tariffs are going to be really important on voters’ minds this year.
And yet, like when you look at commercials and you see some of the signs — Dawn, you mentioned signs — you’re not seeing a ton of that. This debate really seemed to focus on the economy. And Lorna, I’m curious, like how much you see that ultimately when voters go to the polls in — I mean, when they maybe go to the polls in November, sit at their kitchen tables in October and vote at home, like how much will affordability, the economy, cost of living, how much is that playing into it?
LORNA ROMERO FERGUSON: Oh, that is the top issue across the board, and that is going to be how voters are going to make their decisions. When you look at any of the polling that’s even been public or any of the internals that I’ve seen, it is by far the leading issue. Especially when you compare it — looking at Republicans, right? When you compare it to last election cycle, especially in a state like Arizona, border security and immigration always is a top issue, right? That was probably a very close second to the economy.
Now that a lot of those issues, with the Trump administration and some of their policies is not a daily news story, you’ve seen that drop significantly. And just general cost of living and affordability is the top concern. So, yeah, that’s how voters are going to decide. And in a race like that, Juan has the opportunity and the advantage to talk about things that he’s done. And obviously Mendoza is attacking him on votes that he’s cast before, but it’s really going to be who’s going to be able to tell that story to voters. And that’s a very, very interesting district, very competitive. But Juan’s been able to squeak it out before, but affordability, cost of living, top issue across the board anywhere.
MARK BRODIE: Dawn, do you see this as an election that is based on “It’s the economy, stupid”?
DAWN PENICH: Yeah, absolutely. And I was thinking a cycle or a few cycles back, I will criticize my own Democratic colleagues in saying that we have sometimes made the mistake of not caring about what voters care about, and caring more about like kind of these meta high-level cultural issues, right? And I see in watching kind of the Republican convention this week, I saw that happening. They’re over at the convention kind of beating the drum on socialism and communism.
Meanwhile, gas — fuel has hit $100 a barrel this week, highest ever. And people are being asked by the Republican Party to not believe their own eyes, not believe their own math. To worry more about this specter of communism than the fact that their groceries have never been higher, their gas bill has never been higher, their electricity bill has never been higher. And so regardless of what they’re hearing coming out of Dallas or Washington, they’re going to be paying those bills, and those bills are sitting on the same kitchen counter as their ballot. And those two things are going to be connected.
MARK BRODIE: Very interesting. All right, guys, we’ll have to leave it there. Dawn Penich, Lorna Romero Ferguson, thanks to both of you for the conversation. I appreciate it.
DAWN PENICH: 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.
