KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about a settlement in the defamation lawsuit brought by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer against Kari Lake, speculation already starting about the 2026 elections and more, The Show sat down with Matthew Benson of Veridus and Sam Richard of Consilium Consulting.
Conversation highlights
On Stephen Richer's defamation case against Kari Lake
MARK BRODIE: Let's start with the defamation lawsuit. Stephen Richer had sued Kari Lake. She basically chose not to contest it. That was a little while back this week, there was a settlement in that case, we do not know the details of it.
Matt, do you have a sense of, I mean, none of us are lawyers so we'll throw that out there. But politically, what's, what's the benefit of, of settling this?
MATTHEW BENSON: Well, politically, the benefit for, for Kari Lake is discovery and all, all of the communications that she's had internally with her campaign regarding Stephen Richer and the county won't see the light of day. And I'm, I'm assuming there was a lot in there that she didn't want to share.
So it, it's really fascinating and, and it's become a, a pretty big mystery in Arizona politics because like you say, that the terms of that settlement are, are not disclosed.
BRODIE: What's the bigger mystery, what might have been in that communication or how much money she might be giving him?
BENSON: Well, how about both? OK. All right, because that's, yes, I think everybody, there's an assumption that Stephen Richer receives some sort of a payout here, but we don't know.
BRODIE: Right. Sam, what do, I mean, what do you make of the fact that this is how this is all ending?
RICHARD: I'm just happy that it's ending because I don't think there was a lot of question that, that what was alleged, you know, probably happened, right? It still isn't a right, but the, the concept that it's over and it's behind us, I think not just is, is very positive for the two individuals at, at the center of the, the conversation, but also the broader community. We can look past these personal squabbles and actually get back to talking about, you know, the work of, of the, the recorder.
BRODIE: Do you see, Sam, the settlement in some way maybe a continuation of what we saw recently from Kari Lake where she kind of sort of conceded, she put out a video kind of acknowledging she didn't win the race. Like, is this maybe part of that effort just to move beyond all the election denialism stuff?
RICHARD: I think it's absolutely an effort and a potential swing of the back to try to move beyond that in a very tidy way. But I'm not sure that if she does re-enter electoral politics that, that either her primary opponents or general election opponents are going to let her forget her behavior of the past four years.
BRODIE: Yeah. I mean, Matt, even though the stuff that was in that communication won't see the light of day. I mean, a lot of people kind of have a sense of what she had to say and what she thought about things.
BENSON: Yeah. Well, yes, there's no mystery of what Kari Lake thinks about things, I think. I mean, you, you referenced the, the video,, that she did following the, the Senate race here. And if, if you saw an acknowledgment in that video that she didn't win the race, I mean, you're smarter guy than I, because I didn't, I didn't see any sort of concession there. I thought it was more of a, a promotional video on her part.
BRODIE: It was more, maybe more a matter of not saying that she did win than acknowledging that she didn't.
BENSON: Sure. Half a point for her on that.
RICHARD: Yeah, I mean, putting your, putting your king down doesn't make it checkmate, but you still lost the match, right? So, I mean, I, I don't know, I'm, I'm with Matt on this.
BENSON: The real question is what, what is she gonna do now? And, you know, spinning this forward to, to 2026, does she, does she join the Trump administration in some capacity? Does she do something to kind of get her by because she does need a job of some sort, until the next cycle and then in that cycle, does she run for governor or something else? And you know, the only person who knows the answer to that is Kari Lake.
BRODIE: What do you think though? I, I want to ask both of you really quickly before we move on from this. Do you think she runs for office again in Arizona, Matt?
BENSON: I think she's done.
BRODIE: Sam, what do you think?
RICHARD: I hope so. I hope that she returns to private citizenship and that's the only place that she stays. I think that she's proven over a handful of cycles that she does not belong on a ballot and she is not a good steward of the public trust in any way.
On changes to Arizona election law
BRODIE: So, let's move to Maricopa County Supervisor Tom Galvin, somebody who did win his election this November. He's proposing some changes to election admit administration. The one that's sort of getting the biggest amount of attention is cutting off, an earlier cut off date for dropping off early ballots. That of course is one of the reasons why it takes so long here. People drop off their ballots on election day or right before election day, then those signatures have to be verified. It just takes a little while.
Is this something, Sam that you think there might be some amount of support for even among Democrats?
RICHARD: Yeah, I think that this definitely fits in the bucket of something that feels like a common sense solution. You know, we, we have a muscle memory now of early voting. So if you have that ballot, you, you maybe can understand philosophically the trade off if you get this ballot mailed to you, you, you, you have to return it before Election Day.
I also think that we now have an entire election cycle under our belts post-conspiracy theory that proved that, that democracy works. We had incredible turnout across the state of Arizona. Maricopa County returned complete results well ahead of its schedule that it, it, it put out. So I think that the conspiracy theories have a lot shorter of a stick now.
And, and I think that the, the conversations around common sense solutions should be centered around what Mr. Galvin has here.
BRODIE: Is this one of those that you think Gov. Hobbs will think is common sense because she's come out pretty hard and said, you know, look if anything restricts voting, I'm not, I'm not gonna support that.
RICHARD: Yeah, I think that, that there is not necessarily a portfolio that's going to come from Supervisor Galvin that Gov. Hobbs is going to be a full-throated supporter of, but I don't think that this is something that she's necessarily, or her administration is going to get in the way of either.
BRODIE: Matt, do you think that this is something that could get some momentum at the Legislature beyond just Republicans?
BENSON: Among Democrats, I think you'll find some handful anyway that will support something like this. And I think what will be interesting here is, you know, there may be an in between ground. Everybody talks about Florida. What they don't talk about is that Florida does have day-of mail in ballots that can be dropped off. You just can't do it anywhere.
In Arizona, you can drop off those ballots at any, any polling place, any vote center. In Florida, you can only do it at a handful of locations at the county clerk's offices themselves. So they get far fewer Election Day mail-in drop offs. Then, you know, we get hundreds of thousands typically in Maricopa County alone. And that is the, the biggest reason that you know, that that results end up delayed.
And so, you know, you could see sort of a compromised position here whether Gov. Hobbs goes along with that or not, I don't know. But I, I think that there's no question, there's a lot of momentum to try to reduce that period of time.
You know, Supervisor Galvin's talking about his goal is, is to have up to 95% of the vote counted by the end of election night.
BRODIE: Right.
BENSON: And so, you know, if, if that's what you had most races, we would, we would know kind of what that result was. There's always a handful that are too close and you're gonna have to wait to see in the days that follow. But most races you're gonna know by the end of Election Night.
BRODIE: I wonder Matt, how you see the conversation coming up starting in January at the Legislature about proposed changes to election administration, given as what Sam referenced, we're sort of not hearing a lot of the conspiracy theories, the canvas at the Maricopa County, like a lot of the supervisors commented about how there's almost nobody there and certainly nobody yelling at them and being angry with them for what happened. So I wonder if folks might be a little more amenable to making changes sort of outside the realm of people spew, spewing conspiracy theories?
BENSON: Yeah, I, I hope so. I, I think a lot of the anger has kind of dissipated. And I think the election denier crowd has become increasingly marginalized in, in this state. And, and, you know, even with Kari Lake losing this election, you're not hearing her vocalize that it was stolen. You're not really hearing many of her, you know, bigger supporters claiming the election was stolen.
There's always some voices that are going to be out there on the left and right in this, you know, saying that that something was up. But I think a lot of that energy has kind of has, has kind of dissipated and hopefully in the wake of that, we can find some, some solutions that, that build upon.
I mean, we have Arizona has an outstanding election process in this state. The counties do an outstanding job, but it's not perfect. It's never going to be perfect and there are always things that we can improve on and I think that's what Supervisor Galvan and other voices are trying to accomplish.
BRODIE: Yes, Sam, I wonder if it becomes easier to make some of these changes when you don't have people saying the election was rigged, the election was stolen more, a matter of the election went smoothly, we can make it go even more smoothly, maybe.
RICHARD: Absolutely. I mean, here we are 2.5 weeks, you know, plus or minus a few days after the election and we're talking about sensible reforms and, and starting the conversation kind of setting that frame and, and kudos to Supervisor Galvin for, you know, kind of using this space to, to launch into that.
We're not talking about sharpies, we're not talking about bamboo ballots. You know, we're, we're, we're really actually to Matt's point talking about on the margins of our already, you know, high bar setting standards in our county recorder's offices, what we, they can do to be even 1% better tomorrow.
BENSON: And last I heard California was still counting ballots.
BRODIE: They certainly are. And I mean, I guess, Matt, the, the big question is, do you, as Sam reference, do you think the changes that we might be looking at kind of around the margins as opposed to whole scale, you know, big big time changes?
BENSON: Well, I think the Legislature is going to go for bigger wholesale changes. If, if, for example, you cut off early voting on the Friday before the election and move to more of a Florida-style system, that would be a significant switch for hundreds of thousands of voters.
Arizona can do that. But you're gonna need a change in the law and you're gonna need the state to provide the counties the ability to get more voting locations, more polling locations on election day and more equipment because you're gonna need, if, if you're gonna say suddenly [200,000] or 300,000 people who've been dropping off their ballots on Election Day are now going to be voting in a line on Election Day. You're going to need a lot more locations so the polling places don't get overrun.
