The Show for July 3, 2026: Some of our favorite conversations around patriotism

The holiday weekend will see many flags flown in celebration. We’ll take a look at what those flags say about us. Plus, how Arizona is celebrating America250.

Transcript

UNDERWRITER: KJZZ’s original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit health care 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, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. On this special Independence Day edition of The Show, we take a look back at some of our favorite conversations around patriotism.

MARK BRODIE: And many flags will be flown this weekend. But what do those flags say about us?

LAUREN GILGER: But first, this weekend marks the United States’ 250th anniversary. Celebrations are being held across the country. Here, the Arizona America 250 Commission is taking the lead on party planning. The commission is headed up by former state lawmaker Laura Terech. Earlier this year, they put together a traveling museum that made its way to each of our state’s 15 counties, complete with an exact replica of the Liberty Bell. I spoke with Terech earlier this year more about it.

LAURA TERECH: It’s really an opportunity for every state and territory to tell their own story and connect with communities in meaningful ways.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So 250 years of this, you know, democracy experiment in the United States of America. I’m sure you’ve been thinking a lot about, as you’ve been running this initiative, what that means to you. Tell us what personally you’ve been thinking about.

LAURA TERECH: Oh, absolutely. Well, it’s the semi-quincentennial ... which is what people are getting to know. Although I always like to tell the story of our friends in Colorado who are celebrating their, their statehood 150th at the same time. So they have branded their efforts the Sesquisemiquincentennial ...

It’s a fascinating moment to be doing something like this. And one of the things I love about it so much. I mean, prior to my own career at the state Legislature, I taught kindergarten and second grade. And this project allows us to touch on so many different parts of Arizona civic life, whether it’s educational initiatives or for tourism, military and veterans support Arizona’s outdoor spaces, our civic life, arts, culture, history. I mean ... this just touches on so many different things.

And it has been such an incredible experience to connect with cities, municipalities, groups, organizations from across the state to really showcase what is so special about the Grand Canyon State and how we are marking this moment.

Because it certainly looks a little different here. You know, we don’t necessarily have the same kind of revolutionary history per se is Pennsylvania or Virginia, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t making history here 250 years ago and beyond. ...

Arizona’s traveling museum (1600x1067, AR: 1.499531396438613)

LAUREN GILGER: That’s interesting to look at the history of Arizona beyond the country’s founding. Tell us about the things you’ve uncovered. What’s part of this traveling museum that, you know, encompasses some of those early days?

LAURA TERECH: Well, the traveling museum has been such an incredible project. Secretary [Adrian] Fontes, who’s the chair of our Arizona America 250 Commission, had this idea about two years ago to pick up Arizona’s replica Liberty Bell — every state has one — and tour it across the the entire state. And, and that’s what we’re doing.

And so we have the Liberty Bell which was quite a challenge to get picked up and get loaded into the vehicle. I’m sure we’ll talk about that.

But we have a section on American history and then we also have a section on Arizona history highlighting things like our, our early territorial days, Indigenous Arizona, the way we’ve shaped our landscape, whether that’s through mining or farming in Yuma and other places, to really showcase Arizona’s rich history that does go beyond 250 years.

LAUREN  GILGER: Yeah, that’s really interesting. What a broad perspective on it. OK, so yeah, I mean like how do you travel around the state to every county with a giant Liberty Bell replica?

LAURA TERECH: Well, it has been quite an interesting logistical challenge. I have to give a big thank you to our friends at Sundt Construction. And in fact there are so many people who have made this possible. We don’t receive any state funding. So every bit of public programming that we’re able to bring to communities across the state is through support of Arizona businesses. You know, Banner Health, Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Arizona, you know, Freeport-McMoRan and so many others have come together to make this moment what it is.

But we worked with Sundt. We all met at the Capitol at about 3:45 in the morning about a month ago and picked the bell up. And we had a vehicle specially built and designed from Michigan. It was quite a sight to see the video of it leaving snowy, snowy Michigan on its way out to us.

And we opened up the side of the rig and lifted the bell. It sits in a special cradle. But when it comes back to the state Capitol after its tour, Sundt is going to be installing and building a brand new ceremonial, beautiful copper base for that bell. Prior to now it had sat rather unceremoniously on two railroad ties, which is certainly not befitting of the ideals that it represents.

LAUREN  GILGER: Yeah, OK, so a little bit of a logistical challenge that you have overcome here. But in this museum I wonder what people have been saying to you? Civics and sort of the civic education that comes with this is kind of hard to come by these days. What kind of comments, questions have you gotten from people?

LAURA TERECH: Well, first and foremost people are so curious about the bell. These bells, a lot of people think they date to the bicentennial. They’re actually older than that. It was part of a post-World War II savings bond drive. And state got one and they toured back then, which is really special. But they each tell such a unique story.

Like, Arizona is one of the few bells that has ever been loaned another state. California in the ’50s ran out of time to get their bell across their vast space, so they borrowed ours. So when it rang on July 4, 1950, that was actually Arizona’s bell.

But one of the things that is the most special is when someone comes into the museum and sees themselves or a part of their own history or something that inspires them and they feel compelled to share that. So when people are moved to connect it to their own story, that is really meaningful.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we’re not at a moment of extreme unity, maybe, I could say, in the country right now. It’s quite a divisive time. I wonder, as you’re touring this around and kind of reflecting on Arizona’s history, on the country’s history, and this kind of thing that should be uniting of us all, that we’re all Americans in this way. Is that a challenge? How do you think about where we are today in light of that history?

LAURA TERECH: Well, it was really important to the commission that in all of our programming, whether it’s the traveling museum or Passport 250, one of our initiatives to help people explore the state, or some of the educational initiatives that we’ve run, scholarship programs, we wanted this to be something that all Arizonans see themselves in and want to participate in.

And what we are seeing over and over again is just how much pride people have in their local communities. And I think that this is actually a really wonderful moment to be talking about these things, because the 250th shines a spotlight that exists kind of outside. You know, we’re not talking necessarily about an election or any political party, certainly. This is about our country and our state and what brings us together and what makes that special and where we want to go from here.

So it’s a very reflective moment. But for me, it’s one that invites a lot of pride. And I’ve seen that same thing echoed in the reception that we’ve received to this in all of our programming since we started.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, a little moment of hope. We’ll leave it there for now. That is Laura Terech, the executive director of the Arizona America 250 Commission joining us. Laura, thanks for coming on. Appreciate you taking the time.

LAURA TERECH: Thank you, and we look forward to celebrating with everyone.

MARK BRODIE: One symbol that will surely be prominent at your local July 4th barbecue or parade is, of course, the United States flag. You’d be hard-pressed to go without seeing the stars and stripes at celebrations this weekend. But Old Glory can elicit different reactions from all kinds of people, some positive and some more complicated. And it’s far from the only flag commonly flown, including the Gadsden flag, service branch flags, first responder flags, the Arizona state flag, and any historic version of the American flag. So, how can flags, national or otherwise, shift in their meaning? To find out, I spoke with Leslie Hahner, a professor at Baylor University back in 2024. She studies the rhetoric of symbols and symbolism. And we started with the role flags generally play in terms of identifying who they are and what they stand for.

LESLIE HAHNER: There is a basic human need to both belong to a community, but to also identify oneself in a unique way, and flags or other symbols allow that complexity of identification. We can fly a flag to say, I belong to this nation, to this state, to this community. But it also marks our belonging to the public in a way that helps us identify who we are, both within a community and as an individual.

MARK BRODIE: For how long has it been a thing that people will fly flags other than, for example, their state flag or the United States flag or maybe even like the flag of a sports team, but they, you know, flags that relate to other causes?

LESLIE HAHNER: We’ve seen a steady increase in flags as a form of identification since about the 1980s. If you think about how LGBTIQ+ flags came into being, as well as other cause flags. So think of, even leading into the 1980s, POW/MIA flags, missing in person flags, those types of symbols began to take on more popularity as there became a more of a feeling of alienation among the populace.

So if you look at U.S. culture, for example, you’ll see those flag sales and those modes of identification begin to increase in the ’80s and ’90s significantly. By the time we get to the 2000s and now the 2010s, those forms of identification have become even more compelling, not just to a domestic audience, but to whole sorts of audiences.

MARK BRODIE: How much of that is new flags that are being designed or developed for particular causes or communities and How much of this is people looking back at older flags? I’m thinking, for example, of the Gadsden flag, the don’t tread on me flag, which is a very old one, which was sort of retaken by the Tea Party, you know, over the last couple of decades for potentially a new meaning.

LESLIE HAHNER: I’d say it’s a mixture of both. I’d say about 50/50. So, for example, the Gadsden flag or the pine tree flag are 18th or 19th century symbols that have become increasingly more resonant with audiences. And we find that resonance because people are constantly looking for ways to differentiate their community and who they are. In the commercial world, we see this even more so. So football flags, for example, are creating record sales now where they wouldn’t in previous years.

MARK BRODIE: How does it come to be that older flags take on newer meanings? Like, how did it come to be that the Gadsden flag represented or came to represent what it did, or the Betsy Ross flag, or now the “An Appeal to Heaven” flag? Like, how does that happen? How does that evolve?

LESLIE HAHNER: What’s fascinating to me is that historically speaking, every flag that has been selected typically must go through a very material process of circulation, such that enough audience members see that symbol and connect it to a particular ideology. So if we go back to the Gadsden flag, that flag has been linked to different causes over the years, and the more repetition of that flag with an associated cause helps us to understand how it becomes, say, associated with the Tea Party or associated with a particular type of Make America Great Again conservative, for example.

MARK BRODIE: Does it pose a challenge though if over the years it’s associated with different causes, like does that make it more difficult for people to associate it with any one in particular?

LESLIE HAHNER: Yes, in fact, the more a symbol circulates with assorted different links to different concepts or ideas, the more difficult it is to re-signify it or to move that symbol in different directions.

So, the Gadsden flag right now is seen as a very, very conservative symbol, and yet, it could mean other things. It could mean all sorts of things. So, for example, in Texas, I see that flag all the time, but it means something different to Texans than it does to the rest of the United States. it tends to signify a Texan attitude more than a U.S.-based attitude.

MARK BRODIE: And in terms of the regulation of flags, I’m curious where you fall on that in terms of like homeowners associations or other entities trying to regulate what flags people are allowed to fly or not, like, are, are some maybe so hurtful or inflammatory that that they shouldn’t be allowed to be flown in certain places.

LESLIE HAHNER: So I have three comments I’ll make here. The first is that a lot of neighborhood associations in Texas and in Arizona and many other states are banning the flying of political flags because they’ve seen how neighbors divide against one another when they fly those political flags. So I think the choice to ban certain flags is an attempt to create a stronger sense of belonging in a community.

However, on the flip side of that, when you ban a flag, it creates sometimes more incentive for people to fly that flag. So there’s a bit of a struggle there over what symbols can do and how we ought to ban them. That said, the most effective, and this is my third point, the most effective way to deal with sort of the struggle over symbols is to create community incentives toward belonging.

So that’s what I find so fascinating about the attraction to football flags or the attraction to community-based flags, say, city flags, for example. Because those are an attempt to get away from the negative ideology that we see that often causes division. And during, from 2016 through the present, flags have been flown often more to create division than to create connection. So I think what we’re seeing in neighborhoods is a struggle over whether or not banning something actually helps create more community or whether or not community must be protected by protecting the symbol.

MARK BRODIE: Is it safe to say, do you think, that the internet and social media maybe more specifically have sort of accelerated the speed at which flags can be adopted by particular groups for particular causes?

LESLIE HAHNER: Yes, throughout the history of different types of symbols, we see people attracted to those symbols over time, and it may take years historically for a symbol to reach prominence. Even something as simple as the American flag, for example, changed dramatically over the years. What we see in this moment is that the internet accelerates the pace at which those symbols become adopted dramatically. To the point where a symbol can change now within one week to two weeks and dramatically change the way that culture and people respond to that symbol.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, that is interesting. All right. Leslie, thank you so much for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

LESLIE HAHNER: All right. Thank you. Have a great day.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. The American experiment has always been tethered to religion, whether it’s in "In God We Trust" or the principle of religious freedom. But under the Trump White House, religion, Christianity in particular, has perhaps never been so front and center. President Trump has received massive support from the evangelical Christian community since his first run for president, and there is now a White House faith office and a religious liberty commission. Trump has expanded the influence of conservative Christians in the White House and declared he’s, quote, "bringing back religion in our country." It’s what John Carlson calls the rise of Christian nationalism. He’s the director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at ASU, and he says these attitudes raise questions about the role of religion in our government today. Last year, I asked him if we’ve ever been here before, and he told me, "not for a long time."

JOHN CARLSON: This is not the kind of phenomenon that we’ve seen Since World War II in the 20th century, the kind of very easy coalescence between many on the Christian right and in this administration, including people in this administration who aren’t necessarily even Christian. It does kind of blend and fuse together in a way that I think most people are not at all used to.

And that’s not really in keeping with what has been the tradition of past administrations, both Republican and Democrat in the past.

LAUREN GILGER: So what’s that looked like traditionally? Like, I think every president we’ve had has been religious. right? Christian of some kind, but not as explicit, not as willing to kind of cross that line, that unspoken line between church and state.

JOHN CARLSON: Yes, I think that’s very fair to say. And I mean, the United States is pretty unique in that it’s always had a very strong religious history that has continued up to this day. And even as religious membership or identity has declined in certain places, there’s still a very strong heritage that’s brought in and sometimes incorporated into what’s called the civil religion. So presidents who use the "God Bless America" that George H.W. bush famously prayed in his very first words in his first act as president. Many presidents have done that, actually, Eisenhower too.

And there’s always been media coverage of presidents attending church, or sitting in a certain pew or things of that nature. So none of that is new.

In fact, you don’t actually see that very much with Donald Trump. It’s a very different understanding and use, if you will, of religion. So, yes, I think this is very much unprecedented and very new and very, for a lot of people, it’s very concerning and disarming.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Yeah. So how are we seeing this, in your opinion, kind of manifest itself? Like, watching the Charlie Kirk funeral on television, which was so overtly Christian and evangelical, I think, was an eye opener to a lot of America. But are there policies? Is it affecting the government and the way the government’s actually functioning, you think?

JOHN CARLSON: This is a great question. There’s a lot of different pieces of this. So I think that what you saw surrounding the Charlie Kirk assassination and then his memorial service was very much in keeping with what a lot of people recognize that are called Christian nationalist instincts, which is a kind of very robust fusing between religious ideas, generally of the Christian right, and political ideas, also of the political right.

And that is something that past government officials or presidents may have held those views privately or even talked about them publicly. George Bush famously said Jesus was his favorite political philosopher, right? We remember that.

That’s, however, different than this kind of fusing of this narrative, particularly in a memorial service, where Charlie Kirk is cast equally as a Christian martyr as he is a martyr of America.

And those who might have some objection to how Charlie Kirk is being remembered or how he’s being honored are deemed sort of un-American, and in some cases they’re having even their rights stripped away. So that’s a very different kind of look to how you manage religious and political views.

And so it starts to take form in policies, and so that’s a concern for a lot of us.

LAUREN GILGER: Is this Christian nationalism? Is that what we’re watching happen?

JOHN CARLSON: I think that’s a form or a manifestation of Christian nationalism, yes. The idea that you can display this, embrace this in and as part of your official duties as a government official, whether that’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth saying the Lord’s Prayer in a public gathering; or wearing his religion on his sleeve, so to speak, in his official capacity; or whether it’s all of the staffers — I was on a plane flying from D.C. to Phoenix the day before Charlie Kirk’s funeral, and that was filled with staffers and federal officials and very high ranking ones who were all coming out for the service.

That kind of thing is an overt manifestation and shows that it’s not just a sort of, you know, someone who might think a certain way or have some certain ideas about being a good Christian means being a good American and vice versa, that they’re more or less the same.

And an administration who’s avidly embracing that as part of its policy approach.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so then we have to talk about the implications of that, right? Because this is a country that, I think for a lot of folks, we’ve assumed there is a separation of church and state and also a celebration of diversity of religion, of freedom of religion, right? Like, you can be Muslim in this country and practice that faith freely. You can be Christian in this country and practice that faith freely. Will we lose that? Are we in danger of that, you think?

JOHN CARLSON: Well, it’s possible. I mean, there’s a number of different reasons for opposing Christian nationalism, one of which would be from a kind of strict constitutionalist point of view, which is to say anything that smacks of an established religion within the government is inherently unconstitutional. That’s not what the framers set out for. Now, you’d have to actually test that in the courts, because the separation of church and state, as it’s sometimes called, is really a legal battle that’s fought and waged case by case.

There’s a very different set of questions, however, when you get to start to thinking about, well, should religion be fused and intermingled so freely — certainly a particular kind of religion, like Christian nationalism — with political life? And for those who are not Christian, they might say, "No, absolutely not. This is exclusionary," or, "What about me? I serve in the military as well. You’re speaking as if you’re representing all of us, but you don’t."

And then there’s the other point of view, which is for a lot of Christians, Christian nationalism is not very Christian. It is not what they understand to be Christianity. They may say it’s idolatrous. This puts the nation over God. You can’t reconcile some of the claims and teachings of Jesus with what Christian nationalists argue.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s really interesting, pushback on both ends there. So let me ask you lastly, John, about where we go from here, in your opinion. Like, how do we find a place we can all live and work together and kind of have some kind of semblance of fundamental equality when it comes to religion, if in fact we are in this moment in which the government is more and more explicitly religious and one kind?

JOHN CARLSON: Well, one of the things that I would say that is a great attribute of the United States is that we have this kind of long standing — I’ll call it a democratic faith. Maybe others call it a civil religion. You can think of it in different ways. But whether it’s "In God We Trust" on our coins, or the inaugural prayers or words of a president as he or she is assuming the office, there’s a long, long history.

So there’s a way in which this kind of deep democratic faith, I mean faith in its full, rich sense of the term, is deeply American, goes back to the beginning and has always been part of us. And interestingly, as Christian nationalism suffuses the current administration, civil religion has receded in that.

And why that’s important is civil religion is a lot more inclusive and encompassing. It makes room for new voices to emerge. But to join a religion that can unite, or a civic creed that can unite, that’s not nationalistic. That’s actually, instead of closing down the borders or closing down the categories of who belongs — you know, sort of says ... "It’s not about those other features of who you are, including what party you are. It’s about what you believe."

And that’s, I think, really where religion and politics have a potential and a role to play in our current environment.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, we’ll leave it there. That is John Carlson, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at ASU, as well as associate professor of religious studies there. John, thank you for coming on. Appreciate it.

JOHN CARLSON: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: This year’s ballot will be another long one with lots of candidates running for lots of offices. That got us thinking about why people choose to run for office and why they choose not to. In 2024, I asked two veterans of Arizona politics about this: Fred DuVal and Kevin DeMenna. DuVal ran for governor in 2014 and has also served in behind-the-scenes political roles, including in the Clinton administration. He’s also a former regent. DeMenna is a longtime lobbyist and political observer. His firm is called DeMenna Public Affairs. We began our conversation with what prompted DuVal to run for office in the first place.

FRED DUVAL: If you, you know, if you care about the place that you live, you inevitably get drawn into the civic square and that manifests in a variety of different things, nonprofits, philanthropic groups, et cetera. But in the end, power resides with people who stand for public office.

If you believe in things and change and ideas, it’s the place where you go to, to make the changes that you envision for the world that you live in. And so it’s, it’s a very, very sort of attractive thing to grow up and live in a democracy where you can say, I’ve got something I want to say, here’s how you do it, you fill a form and you go run. It’s just getting increasingly difficult. It’s not that simple.

MARK BRODIE: Right. Well, and you’ve also been somebody who has been in, in the political world behind the scenes, not as an elected official, but helping people who have been elected. I’m curious how you see the difference between being the person upfront whose name is on the ballot and the person who’s maybe helping the person whose name was on the ballot.

FRED DUVAL: Mark, it’s a great point and question because I thought, having been in more campaign meetings then I can count, working for more politicians than I can count, local, presidential, et cetera. I thought, I know what this is going to be about. I’m ready for this.

It is fundamentally different. It’s your reputation that gets hit. It’s your social media blasts that get promoted. It’s your spending time on the telephone asking people for money. It’s intensely personal. It’s exhilarating. It was described to me as, as sort of, you know, being a Wallenda. There’s nothing quite like being on the rope, you know, dangling over the Grand Canyon. So it is ultimately exhilarating, but fundamentally different when it’s, it’s you, your family, your pocketbook and everything that comes with it.

MARK BRODIE: So, Kevin, you are somebody who has been in politics for a long time, but exclusively behind the scenes. Does what Fred is saying ring true to you in terms of maybe some of the reasons why people choose to maybe take your path as opposed to the putting your name on the ballot path?

KEVIN DEMENNA: It’s a difficult question to, you know, answer in, in sort of a just simple way. The fact is I lack the courage to knock on your door and discuss immigration with you. I, I have been consistently impressed with individuals that can do that and succeed. You know, that’s the granular side, but you’re putting yourself out there in a way that demonstrates your commitment.

But there is a part of our world where we all have an interest in doing good. And, and there are other ways that manifests itself for those of us that are political observers, civil servants, whatever you want to call it. But the folks on point, like my good friend Mr. Duval here, now have much more risk. It’s much more difficult. And, and so as a result, I expect them to be much more choosy about whether to take the plunge or not.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so Kevin, when prospective candidates come to you, maybe, especially those who haven’t run before, what do you tell them or how do you try to prepare them for what they can expect once they start running?

KEVIN DEMENNA: The first question is always tell me about your family. If you have four children under, you know, in school and you intend to engage at the legislative level, at state government level, it’s manageable. But the trips to Washington, that requires a different level of commitment and interest. All of these positions come with the word honorable permanently affixed to the front of your name. And, and so with so many people, that matters too much and that makes it worth spending the week in D.C. on matters that might seem more important than your children. But that’s not a decision I’ve ever been able to make. The first thing I say when I interview someone is just, talk, talk with me about the age of your family and your ability to sustain this.

MARK BRODIE: Fred, do you find that people who run for office? Like, are they doing it for the right reasons? Are they doing it because they really want to make a difference or they may be doing it because they like having the word honorable in front of their name?

FRED DUVAL: All the above. And sometimes it takes all of the above. You know, you got to believe in something. I think that is first and foremost the, the, the candidates who aren’t clear on their purpose and on their why get flushed out. You’ve got to sort of think through the hard work of why are you doing this and why are you putting everybody around you, to Kevin’s point about family, through what you’re about to do? So, the why is really, really important.

I think the good ones have to be fundamentally optimistic, whatever your ideology. I think you’ve got to believe that the efforts will manifest in something useful. And frankly, that’s increasingly hard because nothing gets done, particularly in Washington. You know, so much of politics has become sort of performance art as opposed to, to purpose and outcomes.

And then to Kevin’s point, he asks about family, which is appropriate. My second quick follow up is, can you afford it? It is an assault on your wallet in ways that folks don’t really appreciate.

MARK BRODIE: I gotta say the two of you are making running for office sound incredibly appealing. I mean, it’s, you’re talking about how expensive it is and how difficult it is and how, you know, you get trolled on social media and you get all sorts of nasty things said about you. Do you find, Kevin, that people are less willing now to go through all of that? Like, are we dealing with a dearth of, of quality candidates here?

KEVIN DEMENNA: It’s, it’s a fascinating thing because no, the cup runneth over. It’s just a completely different level of interest. And, and, and they’re kind of two interesting extremes. There are folks that are so put off by the principled side, the, the, the, the absence of dignity that that’s got them off the bench.

MARK BRODIE: Because it’s gotten so bad, they are drawn in to try to make it better?

KEVIN DEMENNA: Exactly. The other aspect is that money. This is my 44th year doing this. Money was absolutely the critical question. And now it’s not an afterthought but raising money and funding messaging at any level. State federal isn’t that hard. It’s, it’s, it’s too easy to access the money. And in fact, that allows things to happen that just shouldn’t happen.

FRED DUVAL: And let me pick up on that because I was going to say something similar. That’s exactly right. We have become so cause-oriented, so existential in our politics. The right and left considers the other side to be a threat to the existence of everything that we know and prize in our culture and our politics. That lends itself to the kind of fundraising that Kevin’s talking about. And it lends itself to an impossibility of ever working with the other side to try and solve problems. So it is an inducement to run and it is a dis-inducement to serve.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I was gonna say, it sounds like that kind of creates this vicious cycle where more people are drawn to run. But then as you both alluded to, it’s really hard to actually get anything done whether you’re at the state Capitol or the U.S. Capitol, which then at least for some politicians causes them to walk away in disgust.

FRED DUVAL: Well, yes.

KEVIN DEMENNA: Can we get Mitt Romney on the phone?

[LAUGHS]

FRED DUVAL: And actually, and Mitt Romney, I was reading an interview with, about him this morning, and he made two great points on this very topic. First, he said so much of what happens now in Washington is fake. And the second is he pointed out, which I had not realized that this is the highest number of resignations in the Congress that we’ve seen in a generation.

So people are hitting a wall and saying this is no longer satisfying, the cost-benefit of this is no longer positive and no longer an inducement to serve. Which is, which is a sad thing.

MARK BRODIE: That’s Fred DuVal as well as Kevin DeMenna. More of our conversation in just a moment.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Let’s return now to my 2024 conversation with former gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal and political observer Kevin DeMenna talking about why candidates choose to run for office and why they don’t. I asked DeMenna how prospective candidates choose which office to run for.

MARK BRODIE: Kevin, if candidates are inclined to run and interested in going through everything you two have described, how are those people choosing which office to run for?

KEVIN DEMENNA: The dynamic now, I have worked with the folks on school boards and their dedication is just amazing, the hours and then eventually their child graduates and goes on to college. And someone else takes that school board spot, but their interest, their passion. At the Legislature, water, you know, if you’ve been a rancher; emergency room doctors. You wanna change what you know needs to be changed.

The ability to monetize your position has changed that. The inducement to serve “noblesse oblige” and this public radio so I’m sure everyone knows what that means. But just in case, you know what it really means is as you are privileged, you pay it forward. You have this inherent hardwired obligation to serve those that have helped make your life so good.

Now, that’s what we should be looking for and relying upon. The model as it exists now is that you can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars out of state wherever state you are. And Arizona is the recipient of this. We have legislators that are filing 600-page donor reports. A couple of those pages are Arizona donations. And the money and the ability to move that is unrelated to what I would simply describe as “noblesse oblige.” It has become a lifestyle.

MARK BRODIE: So, Kevin, you mentioned that we are not having an issue with having enough people running for office and I’m not gonna ask you to name names or throw anybody under the bus here. But I’m curious, do we have the right kinds of people running for office? Like we have the quantity, do we have the quality?

KEVIN DEMENNA: : So it’s, it’s not a hard question to answer. By and large, we do. But here is the lens you have to evaluate this in a couple of stages. In January, they’ll get oriented after Thanksgiving. They’ll meet their assistant and they’ll begin legislating the day after. They don’t yet know where bills come from, the products. And they don’t have a good idea of the path ahead. So it makes it very difficult to be effective in the first regular session.

By the second regular session, they have discovered the location of the restrooms and all of this. So we have a challenge in terms of distinguishing those that can really cover ground and those that can’t. But I’ll tell you what is becoming much more clear: There is an interest in opening this up so that they can become that person.

FRED DUVAL: Let me build on that Mark. I admire people who run, I admire people who serve, and I have found that almost everyone who does so is a decent, well-intentioned, patriotic informed person doing it for good reasons. There are some exceptions … ideology sometimes gets in the way, but generally speaking, pretty terrific people who are then thrust into a set of incentives, which test who they are and how rooted they are and how, what kind of an elected official they wanna be.

The lure of how to raise money requires certain behavioral patterns. The lure of how to get along with your caucus requires certain choices, certain votes, et cetera. The incredibly destructive lure of social media. You, you, you create news with friction, not with solutions. And the lure towards friction drives money, it drives a whole bunch of things. So the incentive package. It is what it is, but it’s not conducive to collaborative behavior. And so folks get tested.

MARK BRODIE: So, Fred, do you think then that people maybe run for the right reasons, but it almost sounds like you’re saying the system into which they’re being thrust, maybe makes it hard to govern for the right reasons or govern in the, in the right way, maybe because of the need to, for example, constantly fundraise so that they can get re-elected or knock on, you know, go and knock on doors or deal with, you know, everything that’s being said about them online, things like that?

FRED DUVAL: It, it does make it harder. I’ll tell you a story. I ran for governor about 10 years ago, and I really wanted to try and be thoughtful and put a bunch of ideas forward and I had a bet with my consulting team. They said, look, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll do one direct mail piece your way.

You can talk about groundwater and education reform and you know, the future of the state Land Department, whatever you want to talk about and then we’ll do one where we’ll call the other side, evil people. Well, mine raised about $2,000; theirs raised about $20,000 you know. Ok, that’s a point made.

KEVIN DEMENNA: This is politics and no matter how we want to recast it, elevate it, throw around terms like noblesse oblige, it is politics. It’s not a corporate way of doing business. I think the point is the process itself needs to be more welcoming. This is not an easy thing to get into given where our parties are. The normal entry points are vanishing. And what that does by the way is make people who don’t work for the government more influential. The lobbying corps has disproportionate influence when the legislative corps steps back.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, we’ll have to leave it there, guys. Kevin DeMenna, Fred DuVal, thanks to you both for coming in. Thanks for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

FRED DUVAL: Thank you.

KEVIN DEMENNA: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger. The artist Ann Morton has made a career of upending traditional fiber art techniques. She’s made quilting and crochet and other textile arts, normally thought of as quiet hobbies belonging to our grandmothers’ generation, into radical statements of equality and perseverance.

For her 2020 project, “The Violet Protest,” participants were asked to create 8-inch squares of red and blue materials that symbolize the union of opposing U.S. political ideologies. KJZZ contributor Robert Pela spoke with Morton in 2023 about the project, which was the subject of a 2024 documentary.

ROBERT PELA: Ann, tell me about the inspiration for the Violet Project. This was January of 2020, is that right?

ANN MORTON: Yes. However, the idea for a project like this had been kind of brewing for a couple years before that. But really, for me, it really happened because of my concern about the growing divisiveness in the country. And maybe it’s simpleminded, but I thought, “Let’s go back to the basics. Let’s go back to the values that I’m sure every lawmaker wants their kids to grow up knowing and that we teach our children.”

And of course, as you know, I’ve done other projects where I ask lots of people to get involved. So, when the opportunity at the Phoenix Art Museum came along, it just seemed like all the pieces fell together of this project that had been kind of mulling around.

And so, I taught color for years, and I know that on the color wheel between red and blue is violet, and I love the word “Violet Protest” because at first glance, people thought it said violent.

ROBERT PELA: Is it safe to assume that you were surprised at the response?

ANN MORTON: You always hope when you have a project like this. You know, you set a number, but as the project went forward, of course as you know, it was launched in January of 2020. And life was different then. How different can life be?

So what surprised me was how this project really acted as a healing agent for so many people and gave them this outlet to voice their frustrations, their fears, their concerns at a time when we were all isolated.

So my pandemic experience was to receive packages every day from people all over the country with these beautiful textiles — and notes also, they would write me notes. So, I really had just this amazing experience during the pandemic.

ROBERT PELA: Two different local artists told me, independently of one another, that this was one of the things, one of the primary things that got them through the pandemic was working on squares for the Violet Project while they were locked down at home, while they were sheltering at home.

ANN MORTON: Well, that’s really gratifying to hear. I have gotten that kind of feedback from a lot of makers. And actually, you know, this is not — the Violet Protest is a another iteration of women coming together to use textiles for a cause that’s happened all through American history and has really allowed women to kind of stitch themselves into visibility.

ROBERT PELA: And then there was the iconography of the U.S.

ANN MORTON: Yes.

ROBERT PELA: It stood for United States, but it also stood for us. And it was about unity in that way.

ANN MORTON: That’s correct. Yeah, so, we all know the U.S. stands for the United States, but I also love the fact that it stands for us and that at the end of the exhibition was carrying over 10,000 squares just in those two letters. And plus what was on the wall, but yeah.

ROBERT PELA: And then you sent the squares to members of Congress.

ANN MORTON: That’s correct. Yes, each member of the Senate and the House got 25 squares. And so that’s 540 boxes.

ROBERT PELA: And it seems like the project is continuing. Now there’s a documentary being made.

ANN MORTON: That’s right. And I think really that is where our reach will happen. Because during the course of the exhibit, the new general manager of Arizona PBS visited the exhibition and she was so taken by it. She said, “We’ve just we’ve got to do a documentary about this.”

So we’ve been working on that for the last year and a half, and right as we speak, our videographer is in New York getting ready. Tomorrow we’ll be interviewing a historian and academic that has done lots of research on American protests through textiles.

ROBERT PELA: Where and when will we find the documentary?

ANN MORTON: Well, I think our goal is to do post-production over the summer and have it in the hands of Arizona PBS in the fall. And I think all of our goals is to have it on the air for the 2024 election season. So, we’ll see.

ROBERT PELA: What part of this project has surprised you?

ANN MORTON: I think first and foremost, the makers themselves and how you can just have this very earnest desire to to say something and put it out there and learn that there’s lots of people that feel that way and are willing and able to step up and and and join in and go along with it.

That’s just really gratifying as an artist. You know, my art is centered around textiles, so that’s my own personal art. But a big part of my practice is the orchestration of these large projects, and I get so much energy and inspiration from the people that participate.

LAUREN GILGER: That was KJZZ contributor Robert Pela speaking with artist Ann Morton in 2023 about her project, “The Violet Protest.”

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by John Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow. Thanks for listening.