KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To discuss Gov. Katie Hobbs’ new border task force, DEI changes at University of Arizona and more, The Show sat down with Doug Cole, a republican consultant with High Ground; and Sam Richard, a democratic strategist with Consilium Consulting.
Conversation highlights
LAUREN GILGER: I want to begin this morning at the border. We’re watching what the new Trump administration calls mass deportations play out here and across the country, which is really, it seems, what most Arizona voters voted for last year. They knew that was coming.
Also, we’re seeing the Democrats kind of shift in this new political reality. A good example this week from the governor. We saw the Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, announce a new task force, Operation Desert Guardian. This creates a state partnership on combating cartels with the Trump administration. So it’s sort of a partnership between the feds and the state.
And Doug, I want to start with you on this one, because there are practical results of this we could talk about, but let’s talk about the political calculation behind this first.
DOUG COLE: Sure. We all know that, especially here in Arizona, it’s border, border, border border. And then and then when you get finished talking about the border, you talk more about the border. So we have this new Operation Desert Guardian that the governor announced this week. And she disbanded the Ducey’s, task force back in 2023.
And also, for your listeners, there’s also a fund that the Legislature has funded all these years for border enforcement. I think there’s like $23 million left in that right now. But this task force, when asked, she said, “I’m going to focus on the four border counties. I’m going to focus on drug cartels.” Because drug cartels is a safe space for her, because she’s made it very clear she’s not going to go for Trump going to schools, going into churches; and is not going to go for bounty hunters, which has been a topic of discussion here in the state Legislature.
Yeah, but going after drug cartels, because they’re violent. They bring fentanyl across, they bring other bad drugs across. So that’s a good space for her to go after the independent voter, because she’s not going to get the far-right voter in her reelection.
GILGER: And she is thinking about reelection.
COLE: And remember, the Cook Report has her as one of the two most vulnerable governors. So she has to occupy some space in the border debate, and going after the cartel, I think, is a very safe space for her.
And I think that we had, the Cochise County sheriff, Sheriff Daniel, was on the radio and in other media applauding the governor for reaching out to him. And he’s a far right Republican reaching out to her and applauding her.
So the proof is going to be in the pudding and to see what comes out of this. But with her support of the Laken Riley Act — the first bill that Trump signed in his second term here — along with our two senators, I think she’s trying to thread the needle because the far left of her party is aghast by some of these things.
GILGER: Right. So, Sam, let’s talk to you about that because we saw our two Democratic senators — Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly — both vote for the Laken Riley Act as well. And I think Gallego was a co-sponsor of it. So all the Democrats seem to be trying to thread the needle on this.
Will it work? Can you separate the border and border security from immigration and people in your community?
SAM RICHARD: Lauren, I’m thinking back to a conversation that we had about four months ago, before the election on this very topic. And I think one of the things that Doug mentioned was that this, perhaps, is maybe a look to the election that is 613 days away — not anybody’s counting. But I think actually this posture has much more to do with the election that happened about 113 days ago, where voters in Arizona specifically, but really across the country, signaled that we can understand a difference between safety and security of the border to really define what our country is, and then an immigration policy that defines who our country is in terms of the humanity that we have for people who want to join the American way.
And I think that that is really what the governor and her allies are really trying to chart that course. And I think that with the support of Republicans that Doug mentioned, like the Cochise County sheriff, you’re seeing that come to bear, right? This is slowly becoming a space where there is room for post-partisan solutions to a topic that really has, for the last 30 to 40 years, been deeply, deeply partisan.
COLE: I should also mention, besides Sheriff Daniels down in Cochise County, Trump’s director of homeland security, former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, tweeted immediately out, praising Gov. Hobbs for this new task force.
RICHARD: Yes. And I think that there will be a lot of agreement, and obviously we saw that, right? I think abortion is a hot button issue. But Prop. 139 had roughly the same vote spread that Proposition 314, which was the border ballot initiative, had.
So I think that what we’re seeing is really this maybe realignment or this re-understanding of a difference between the safety and security of defining what our country is and the care and the humanity that requires of defining who our country is.
GILGER: Do you anticipate any backlash from the left, Sam?
RICHARD: I think that’s already happened, yeah. For sure. But I think that we’re at a moment right now where there’s a lot of things for the progressive left to focus on. And I think that you’re seeing the center left and the center right come together on really smart-headed solutions on what the path forward looks like.
GILGER: OK, let’s move on to another big issue of the moment that the left is also probably angry about: DEI. Diversity, equity and inclusion. Something of a third rail now in the Trump administration. They’re ordering universities to stop race-conscious and DEI based programs at the threat of losing federal funding.
We saw the University of Arizona, they’ve tweaked some things. They’re making some moves toward getting rid of some DEI initiatives and language. Now, just yesterday, the state Senate voted to slash state funding to public universities and community colleges that teach DEI ideology.
Doug, is this a popular issue with Republican voters? What do they think about that?
COLE: Absolutely.This is a base issue for Republican voters. And the Trump administration and other leaders such as our Senate President Warren Petersen, who sent a letter out to the universities a month ago on this exact same topic. And then we have the first day of President Trump’s being in office. He puts out the executive order and really, really raises this issue to front and center.
Why this is significant for public institutions such as the University of Arizona, because they get a lot of federal dollars. The University of Arizona is the premier research institution here in the state of Arizona. It’s a land grant college. You get one land grant college in every state. It’s Arizona’s land grant college. So it sucks up a lot of federal funding.
And we all know the University of Arizona has been having some funding issues here in the last eight months to a year. So the new president is taking this very seriously and is taking President Petersen’s letter seriously. He’s taking the Trump administration seriously.
And of course it’s going to cost some backlash. OK. But this is an institution of over 50,000 students. And we had a petition that was passed around that had 900 students out of the 1,500 that were on the initial petition. I don’t think that’s a big number, you know, working on campaigns.
But this debate’s going to continue. And I totally get what the new administration down in Tucson is doing.
GILGER: What do you think, Sam? Is there a calculation that these universities have to make? How do you anticipate the other major universities here having to respond to this?
RICHARD: Yeah, I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the other community colleges and universities after the UA response continues to take shape. But one point that Doug said, I think is absolutely right and something to point to, this is 100% the red meat equivalent of that base issue right now, on the anti-woke kind of mindset.
But I think one of the reasons why the right is pushing so hard on it is the exact reason that Doug’s talking about: There’s only 1,500 people in a university that’s just shy of 55,000 enrollment. That doesn’t count that maybe 5,000-7,500 faculty and staff. And top of that, that also had some signatures added to that list.
So I think what you’re seeing is really a lot of tired response to this anti-woke. And I think that the reality is that this university is not going away. It will always teach the history and the future. And when you can’t do either of those things without acknowledging — either through a land acknowledgment or policies that represent how diverse reality is.
So what we call it, how we approach it I think is always going to change. I think that we’ve seen that ever since the thieving 13th Legislature of Arizona’s territory granted the UA their status. And I think that that’s something that’ll be interesting to watch.
But this is mostly noise and, I think, mostly about the money that’s on the line for UA’s new president and the realities he’s facing.
