KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the state GOP skipping an election night party, the fight over whether or not to release the list of names of voters affected by the MVD glitch and more, The Show sat down with Doug Cole of HighGround and Sam Richard of Consilium Consulting.
Conversation highlights
On the Arizona Republican Party canceling its election night party
MARK BRODIE: Doug, you’re going to have to find other plans for election night this year, huh?
DOUG COLE: Yeah, I was really looking forward to the balloon drop and all the celebration. You know, these parties have been part of Arizona Republican Party history since I’ve been involved in politics in the ’80s, but I got to tell you as late, there hasn’t been much to celebrate. So I can understand why they are not like they pulled the plug on the celebration this year.
In the last cycle, our former party chair, Kelli Ward, spent extravagantly on that party and was widely criticized. And to be honest with you, the party doesn’t have any money. So I think it really was the logical choice, and that money should be going into races.
BRODIE: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, because that’s the rationale that the new chair Gina Swoboda made, which is that we’re going to put the money into the campaign so we actually have things to celebrate. Sounds like you don’t think that’s necessarily the wrong choice here.
COLE: No, it’s it’s the proper choice, especially after what happened under Kelli Ward’s leadership of the party. I think it’s good for them to take a break and use the little resources that they do have to try to turn some of these really tight legislative races and some of these county races that are pretty tight.
BRODIE: And so Sam, the Democrats are going to have a party on election night, is it? I’m curious if you think, should the Democrats be putting more of their money into the actual races so they have maybe more to celebrate on election night?
SAM RICHARD: Yeah, I think that, as you can see if you have television anywhere within a 50-mile radius of your eyeballs, there hasn’t been that much of a difficulty raising money for the party that is well organized and well prepared for the fight that was ahead of them. And you’re seeing that happen and really express itself.
So I think that the Republican Party is seeing that there might not be as much to celebrate come Nov. 5, and there’s going to be less of a reason to have that party. And all systems go on the Democratic side.
And what I’m saying, in terms of the heavy fundraising is that you can do both. We are doing the equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time. We’re going to be able to celebrate on the evening of Nov. 5 while knocking well over millions of doors and making phone calls and sending text messages and making sure that we’re chasing those ballots appropriately.
BRODIE: Do you get input on the menu at the Democrats’ election night party?
RICHARD: No, I’m just enjoying the food and beverage.
COLE: The watered-down drinks.
RICHARD: That’s right.
BRODIE: Well, the open bar or the cash bar is always the big question, right?
On the fight to reveal names of voters affected by an MVD registration glitch
BRODIE: Doug, let me ask you about this fight now over whether or not the voters who were on this list — 200 some-odd thousand voters — who have been allowed to vote full ballots despite not having shown proof of citizenship, which is what state law requires, basically due to a glitch at the motor vehicle division.
There’s a conservative-leaning group that is trying to get the names of these voters. And Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is like, “Sure, you can have them, just not before the election.” There’s going to be a hearing coming up, pretty soon, where a judge is essentially saying to Fontes, “Prove to me why you shouldn’t release them now.” He is concerned that there’s going to be voter intimidation, that this group is going to use this list to go after or maybe harass these voters and make them prove maybe that they are allowed to vote. Do you buy his argument?
COLE: Well first of all, let’s let’s back up. This isn’t something that just happened in the last couple of months. These voters — it’s been going on as far as I can tell since the ’90s, when the Motor Voter laws came into effect. And so this is not a new situation. What’s new is it’s come to light because somebody noticed a coding error in the database.
Usually what happens in these type of cases, no major changes are made to voting procedures and anything to do with the votes. It’s the cool-off period because you don’t want this type of thing to be weaponized.
BRODIE: Especially as you get closer to the election.
COLE: Exactly, exactly. In fact, there’s a case going on right now in Virginia with Gov. (Glenn) Youngkin, that has some similar points that’s going on here in Arizona, just not as big of a number.
And so there really should be this pause around an election so it cannot be weaponized, and I think that’s what the secretary of state is trying to accomplish here because it’s going to be weaponized afterwards once it’s released anyway. But at least we should try to get through the election without that controversy, hanging over everybody’s head.
BRODIE: Sam, what do you think? These are, in theory at least, public records. Should should the group not have access to it?
RICHARD: I think that this group and others that are allied to it have shown a propensity to weaponize that information, to Doug’s point. And I think that, Secretary Fontes will have a very successful effort in defending the decision to not make that public until post-election.
BRODIE: Do either of you see this potentially — do you think that this could be weaponized in a sense, Doug? Like, do you think that there’s a danger that these voters could face some kind of harassment or some kind of issue that they otherwise wouldn’t? Especially because this is not something that they did. This is something that has nothing to do with the people involved. They did what they were supposed to be doing ,and it was a glitch somewhere else that caused this issue.
COLE: I agree with Sam that eventually this information is a public record, as the public registration rolls are, will be released. And I think what’s going to happen afterwards is because the elections are going to be close — and especially if the presidential race is really close, like it was last time, 10,000 and some-change votes — I think there will probably be some door knocking going on, going after these people in a very long legal drawn-out battle that, will last into the next presidential race.
So this is a lose-lose all the way around. It’s an unfortunate situation. It’s been going on for years, and we’ll just have to play through it. But I think the right thing right now is to take a pause, let the election happen and then and then go from there.
BRODIE: One of the things that’s particularly interesting about this, Sam, is that even as the state Republican Party has acknowledged, a good number of these voters are registered Republicans.
RICHARD: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that’s the piece here that really, if this becomes public record, there’s really no guarantee that the only folks that this group that was pushing this narrative is going to go after are all of those voters. So you can specifically target that. So I think that’s where the likelihood of that weaponization and harassment even goes higher.
Who are they going to knock on the doors of? Everyone on that list or a particular subset of that list?
COLE: And that’s why the Republicans initially, when the number was smaller, joined in with the secretary of state, where they were on the same side for once. But historically, it’s got to be more Republican because Republicans have had a huge majority, not not so much now, that started back in the ’90s. So historically, it has to be more Republican on that list.
RICHARD: Just by math.
COLE: Just by math. Right.
On Maricopa County races
BRODIE: So guys, we saw this week — and my colleague Wayne Schutsky was reporting this earlier this week — about the fundraising records broken in the Maricopa County recorder race.
The Democrat Tim Stringham has raised about $612,000, the Republican nominee Justin Heap has about $353,000. This used to be a race that, like, nobody cared about at all. And now it’s raising close to $1 million.
RICHARD: (Former) Recorder (Helen) Purcell had the office for quite a long time. So there wasn’t really any attention on the office. And once there was attention, I think you’re really seeing that Arizona just generally has matured as a politically astute place. So I think that you’re seeing some like numbers across all races are much higher than they ever have been.
But I think that this is an outsized increase, and I think it’s because of how important this position is, especially with the balance of the (Maricopa County Board of Supervisors) in question as well.
COLE: That’s right. And to Sam’s point, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for decades has been 4-1 Republican. And it could be 3-2 Republican or 3-2 Democrat, depending upon how districts 1 and 3 go in that race because they’re open seats.
So yeah, a lot of attention because the board shares election responsibilities with the recorder. And the board counts all the ballots and does Election Day work, and the recorder typically does early balloting, voter registration duties as part of the election process. So, I’m not surprised. Stringham is out there working really hard. He’s new to the scene. He’s a Navy vet. Justin Heap’s currently in the Legislature, part of the Freedom Caucus group.
So you have a real ideological difference between those two. And those are big fundraising numbers. You would never see that in the Helen Purcell days.
BRODIE: Is it surprising, especially for someone like Stringham — who, Doug, as you say, is brand new to politics — that he’s raised $600,000, twice what a sitting lawmaker has raised?
COLE: Right. Because there's a national focus on Maricopa County, as there will continue to be as we as as we continue to be a swing state. And yeah, there's national attention on this race.
BRODIE: I’m curious real quick before we go to break, how do you both see this race shaping up? Sam, what do you think?
RICHARD: I think that because of the attitude and the direction globally right now, I think that every Democrat up and down the county ballot has the edge.
COLE: I agree with Sam. I don’t think every Democrat has the edge, but I think that probably on the county races, this is probably the best Democrat looking year that they have had since the ’70s, the ’60s and the ’70s. I don’t think it will be a clean sweep. But I think there’s going to be some surprises in county land.
