KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the resolution of some outstanding races, new leadership at the state Capitol and more, The Show sat down with Daniel Scarpinato of Winged Victory Agency and Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Stacy, let’s start with the U.S. Senate race. Ruben Gallego, as we heard, declared victory. Kari Lake kind of conceded, I guess? She sent out a video that kind of acknowledged that she was going to move on to something else. This seems like it was kind of, if not the then the biggest bright spot for Democrats this election cycle.
STACY PEARSON: Oh, for sure. It was a very big bright spot. And I would say that concession speech sounded more like you told AI to write a concession speech. I mean, it was the strangest assembly of words a candidate could put together. And so I think Kari Lake, her defeat underscores how much the Arizona electorate doesn’t want to see her representing us.
BRODIE: Yeah. So Daniel, in that video she talked a little bit about what is next for her. We heard that. But she didn’t really say what is next for her. Is this the end of the electoral road for her, do you think, in Arizona?
DANIEL SCARPINATO: Possibly. I think that, I was one who felt that this cycle, she had a better campaign and a more disciplined message than the race in ’22 for governor. And at the end of the day, she actually stepped backward in terms of the final result here in a year that has ended up to be a Republican wave year.
So there were a number of factors on that. Clearly the weight of message — I mean, Ruben Gallego was up on television starting, I think, in April with a very positive message about himself. And she had some headwinds and challenges, including lack of support from the national level or people coming in late.
So yes. Look, running for office is difficult. She’s been doing this now for three and a half years. So I imagine there’ll be some self-reflection of, “What, now?” But there’s a lot of opportunities, I believe, for Republicans in this state in 2026. And I think people are going to be looking at some fresh faces out there.
BRODIE: Would you expect her to maybe try to run for governor again, or do you think maybe, maybe not?
SCARPINATO: I don’t know. That's up to her. I know that some folks said, “Oh, she didn’t concede” or whatever. I thought the tone of the video was a much more conciliatory and positive tone. And I got the sense that maybe she’s going to be looking at things other than running for office, was my takeaway.
BRODIE: Stacy, we saw over the last week and a half or so, Gallego was consistently on top, but the margins were sort of fluctuating. He was up by a lot. Lake sort of cut into that. She cut into it more. He was up by a lot.
I’m wondering if at the end of the day — and we still don’t have all the votes, we don’t have all the details yet — but do you think the result of this race says more about Ruben Gallego or Kari Lake?
PEARSON: So it says quite a bit about both. Which I know is kind of a dance-around answer. But the truth is, there are 100,000 fewer registered Democrats today than there were four years ago. So the fact that Ruben won by the margin that he did — or that it looks like he’s going to, which is just under 100,000 votes — is extraordinary. It means Republicans, independents broke for him over her.
And it that says a lot about the discipline of his campaign and his fundraising prowess, and the fact that he was able to define himself as a Marine. And that her stunts with the election denialism and that Capone’s vault stunt, where they were trying to unseal a divorce record that had absolutely nothing juicy in it, didn’t work. And the electorate saw through that. In large part, folks want to get back to the basics. And Ruben’s ability to tack to the center, certainly carried the state.
BRODIE: So, you know, you mentioned how Gallego won a number of Republicans and independents, and for so long we’ve been talking about this for Democrats as the Kyrsten Sinema playbook, the Mark Kelly playbook, to some extent the Katie Hobbs playbook. Do you think that Gallego really used that, or did he maybe adjust it somewhat? Because he was coming from a far more left leaning perspective than any of the other three, at least most recently.
PEARSON: Well, you look at some of the endorsements that he received that really underscore that he did exactly that, that tacked to the center, used that playbook. He got an Arizona Police Association endorsement. In years previous, there would have been Democrats that didn’t accept that endorsement. That obviously has evolved. And so endorsements like that matter when the margins are going to be as close as we knew they were going to be.
BRODIE: So Daniel, given that and given, as Stacy said, the Republicans’ registration advantage in Arizona going up, is this — I love asking people to wade into the internal politics of the other side. Does this sort of playbook, will this, do you think, continue to work and maybe be the way that Democrats have to run in Arizona — at least statewide or maybe countywide — in order to get elected?
SCARPINATO: Look, it has been the playbook. They’ve they’ve run as an independent voice. It’s all the same playbook. Now, I think what will be fascinating is, Ruben Gallego as a U.S. senator, because he is much more, at least recently, progressive than Kyrsten Sinema was, than Mark Kelly.
I think that’s who he is in his heart. And he is now following two, one-term U.S. senators who basically got railroaded by the politics of their party and of the moment.
BRODIE: Jeff Flake and Kyrsten Sinema.
SCARPINATO: Correct. And he is succeeding them. And I think it will be interesting to see, is he more like a Kyrsten Sinema? Is he more like a Ruben Gallego? And how can he navigate the politics of these next six years? And what does that look like?
I think that he in many ways was a very good candidate for the Democrats. He appealed across party lines. He raised a lot of money. There also were some cracks. I thought, in the debate, he didn’t perform off the charts. I also think if he’s wise, he will make himself available these next six years.
I’m a fan of Kyrsten Sinema in many ways. But I was always struck by the fact that both her and Jeff Flake didn’t really do any Arizona media, didn’t make the rounds, didn’t do town halls. And I think that that’s kind of what the public expects now is a level of accessibility. Why are you voting this way, etc., etc.
BRODIE: Do you think that with Gallego and the Democrats in the Senate in the minority, does that perhaps change the way he votes, change the way he acts than it would have been if Democrats had stayed in the majority?
PEARSON: It certainly does. Not only the Democrats being in the minority in the Senate, but in the House, having no control over the Supreme Court, having lost the white House. It’s going to have to be very deliberative, and Ruben has shown the ability to do that. I mean, he was allowed to be as progressive as he wants to be in a district that was as safe as the one that he came from in the House that is now being represented by the woman they painted as MAGA in a primary.
I think, the evolution of the Latino vote in Arizona, I think the loss of Democrats just in net registration, the growth of the Republican Party, the growth of the number of independents I think is going to put him in a position where if he wants to not go down in the same fate that his two predecessors have, he’s going to continue to represent the plurality of Arizona, not just the progressive.
SCARPINATO: And let’s not forget, which is why I think this will be so interesting to see what kind of U.S. senator. The reason Kyrsten Sinema won’t be a U.S. senator is because of him. He pushed her out, and he came in. And the whole debate about the filibuster was really what allowed him to catapult and block her out.
And so how does he navigate this? And how progressive will he be? How much will he be pushing back against some of those institutional guards that she was such a fan of?
BRODIE: Let me ask you before we go to break, Daniel: We got some resolution on two congressional races that were considered competitive, that were close for a while. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani both reelected. Were you surprised by either of these or the ultimate margins, which in the end don’t seem as close as maybe some people thought they could be?
SCARPINATO: I really wasn’t. I was very involved in Juan Ciscomani’s race. I live in David Schweikert district. Juan’s margin — which is at this point around three points, I think that’s where it’ll land — was exactly how we tracked things the last several weeks on that campaign.
And I think that in those races in particular — because there were some congressional races, the Democrats were able to flip across the country — I think it was a candidate quality issue, in both of those races. And also, there was so much advertising in Arizona. So the Democrats outraised and outspent Republicans pretty much across the board.
But there was so much clutter. And I often wondered those last few weeks, is anyone seeing this stuff? Is anyone hearing it? And I think the answer was really they really weren’t. It just became noise in Arizona because it was so overwhelming.
BRODIE: Stacy, what did you make of those?
PEARSON: I also live in Schweikert’s district. And I thought that the attack ads against Amish (Shah) were wildly effective. I mean, he had recent votes on public safety issues that didn’t align with a district that is freaked out about homelessness and crime writ large. Everybody’s got a Ring camera, phones are buzzing all the time because a random man’s walking down the street and my neighbors are freaking out.
So I thought that that was really effective. I didn’t see the same level of attack against Schweikert, against the incumbent. And not only did he have a number of bad votes when he was a state legislator, but he’s taken some weird positions at the federal level as well. And that just didn’t cut through, to Daniel’s point.
And maybe it was fundraising, maybe it was strategy, maybe I was just in the wrong house that wasn’t being targeted. But there was something missing, I think, in the level of communication with voters in the district after the primary, because Amish ran a really fantastic primary.
BRODIE: And a crowded primary, too.
PEARSON: Very crowded.
