KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the field to replace the late Congressman Raúl Grijalva shaping up, a plan to ask voters to end some legislative immunity and more, The Show sat down with Marcus Dell’Artino of First Strategic and Democratic strategist Tony Cani.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Tony, are you surprised that Adrian Fontes, secretary of state, decided not to run for Congress?
TONY CANI: I am surprised but only because I convinced myself that he was going to run. Not for any other reason. He obviously has a very important job. I’m glad that now Democrats will have a secretary of state running for reelection. I think that puts us in a stronger position than if he had moved over to this other, congressional race.
And so, yeah, I’m glad that he made this decision because I do think it’s good just to have him in that office.
MARK BRODIE: Marcus, the secretary had said he was strongly considering it, and it was the conventional wisdom — which of course can be wrong — was that he was getting in. He was just waiting for the right moment to get in. And then this week he said, “Well, there’s this executive order from the white House on elections, election security. I need to stay in my current job and deal with that.”
MARCUS DELL’ARTINO: Well, what Republicans are wondering is why he hates his current job so much, because every time a position comes open, he floats his name out there that he’s running for it. So, I wasn’t surprised from this context. And that is: The fastest way to lose in a Pima County race — which this is largely Pima County, running all the way over to Yuma — is to be from Maricopa County.
And I think he was going to get labeled with that regardless of the fact that he grew up in Nogales and was at the Yuma Proving Grounds in the military. That just wasn’t going to be enough, I don’t think, at the end of the day to carry in Pima.
BRODIE: All right. So we do know this week that Daniel Hernandez — former state lawmaker, he ran for Congress, I believe, in the primary once before — he is getting into the race. How strong of a candidate is he?
CANI: I don’t want to be too critical of him because that’s unfair. But I don’t think he’s that strong of a candidate. He lost in the primary to Engel by a pretty wide margin.
BRODIE: Kirsten Engel, who then lost to Juan Ciscomani.
CANI: I think that Adelita Grijalva, who the assumption is is going to run, she has a history of winning elections down there. She has a track record. She’s done work. Plus she’s got the name ID just from her dad like she, you know, so it’s not like.
I just think that she’s a very strong candidate. Look, it’s a Democratic primary. It’s going to be low turnout, so anything can happen. But I wouldn’t put (Hernandez) as the favorite personally.
BRODIE: Would you put Grijalva as the favorite? Assuming she gets in, is she the favorite?
CANI: Yes, I would. I would.
BRODIE: Is that the race in terms of high profile candidates? Is it those two, do you think?
CANI: I think it’s probably going to be just those two.
BRODIE: Marcus, do you think Adelita Grijalva, the late congressman’s daughter, gets in?
DELL’ARTINO: I think that’s the conventional wisdom. And I think that the conventional wisdom is that she’s the strongest candidate. But I can’t help but sort of reflect back to — it reminds me a little bit of Ed Pastor and Laura Pastor.
I think that she, going into that race, everybody thought Laura had it hands down. And obviously she didn’t. And so I wonder if there’s going to be that sort of backlash down in Pima County. Or because that district’s different, maybe they welcome her with open arms.
BRODIE: And this is a very Democratic leaning district. So whoever wins the Democratic primary is almost certainly going to win the general election. I guess I’m curious, Marcus, are you surprised that there aren’t more high-profile people who have been involved in politics, maybe won elections before getting in. This is an open congressional seat. And again, conventional wisdom is whoever wins this can probably stay in that seat for as long as they want it.
DELL’ARTINO: Yeah. But the context I think that we’re missing here is that I think Raúl Grijalva spent years setting this up, sort of keep people out of the race when he passed or when he decided to step down so that he can hand it to his daughter. The only question is, is the electorate onto that and not happy with sort of what we would call nepotism and they want to move onto a different candidate? We don’t know.
CANI: I understand what you’re saying, but I do think this is a different situation in the sense that she has served very well at a school board level, county supervisor level. She has established herself. She has her own credentials, and she is well-liked. I think the reason people aren’t jumping in is because the strength of her candidacy. And it is a thing that you know, that just because you have the same last name as somebody else doesn’t mean that you are going to win.
The fact that people are not brave enough — that’s a weird way to say it — but are not making the decision to jump in is a sign of her strength. I think that if it was just this idea that it’s just the name, I think more people would be jumping in. But I think that she’s a strong candidate down there.
BRODIE: So you’re saying if she had said “I’m not running,” or if she wasn’t involved in politics, there would be more people involved?
CANI: Yes, I think that. Yeah.
BRODIE: OK. Marcus, let me ask you about a proposal at the Capitol to basically make it so that lawmakers who speed during session get ticketed and aren’t able to get out of it. This would have to go to the voters. It’s in the state constitution that legislators have immunity during session. There is a proposal to ask voters to do away with it — just for traffic violations — and it does not look like it’s going to be put to voters.
DELL’ARTINO: Yeah. Big shock. The context is obviously we’ve been through a couple high-profile stories about legislators speeding and getting out of their tickets. Largely, I think, the majority of those were in the Senate. And so a representative in the House of Representatives put forward a ballot measure that would go to voters that stripped that immunity away, and it made it through the House.
But as I predicted a couple of weeks ago I think, it was going to fall flat in the Senate. And certainly it has fallen flat in the Senate.
BRODIE: Optically, is that a problem for the people who are writing the laws to say, “We don’t want to ask voters if we should have to follow them”?
DELL’ARTINO: I sometimes think we give things more credit than the voters do. And I think in this particular case, they’re infuriated at the time it happens. And that infuriation lasts for a week or two.
But we need to get to the ballot and you’re consumed with economic issues or national security issues or whatever is the flavor of the day — maybe it’s education — that has a tendency to sort of drop off. You’re not thinking about legislative immunity half as much as how to put food on the table.
BRODIE: Tony, are you surprised that it kind of fell apart in the Senate?
CANI: Yeah, I’m surprised because a Republican put it forward. I thought that maybe that would help it get through. But there’s a lot of weird things that are happening in the Senate right now, decisions that don’t make sense. I don’t know exactly why this is.
I mean, I know why it’s not proceeding. It’s because people want to have this immunity. And Mark Finchem, one of the senators who basically said “I don’t have to pay for a ticket, my speeding ticket because I’m a legislator.” This is just ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. Like, clean it up. Don’t abuse this.
You’ve got the president of the Senate who clearly is just chasing Fox News headlines right now because he’s running for attorney general. He’s focusing on that stuff and not the simple, common-sense things. It would pass. The voters would approve it whether they’re upset or not, because it would be a very simple thing. They’d be like, “Oh yeah, I’m for this.” But they decided they didn’t want to put it before people, even though it’s widely popular with voters.
DELL’ARTINO: For context here, the president of the Senate did the job he’s supposed to do, which is assign it to a committee. And it’s up to the committee chairman what bills they’re going to hear and what they’re going to move forward. And just so happens in this particular case, it went to a committee where the chairman didn’t see eye to eye on that particular issue.
BRODIE: So something else going on at the Capitol: There’s been some fights over supplemental funding requests. Basically, the budget is passed for the beginning of the fiscal year. And then, in some cases, more money is needed for particular programs.
And in this case, there are two of them: one dealing with congregate care for the Division of Child Safety, one for a program for people with developmental disabilities. Gov. Hobbs this week, Tony, laid out some administrative changes she’s calling them to especially a program where parents are able to get paid to care for their kids who have developmental disabilities. This is a program that could run out of money like in the next month or so.
And this has turned into a really big fight at the Capitol, with Republicans accusing the governor of fiscal mismanagement, set up a whole ad hoc committee to try to look at this. The governor says, “OK, I’m going to put some new requirements in place, new restrictions in place. You guys need to pass the supplemental funding bill.” Doesn’t seem like that’s really on the offing at this point.
CANI: Look, maybe it’s good politics for the Republicans to hold this money up. I don’t know if it is. I think that it is a sign that there’s just a major lack of empathy in the decisions that they’re making. There are real people’s lives in the balance here.
And it’s not like they haven’t done these supplementals in the past, right? I hear them complaining about this, and if you don’t hear the context, people who heard it at the beginning of the show — are they talking about vouchers? Are they talking about ESAs, the way that “it’s just a blank check” and “we’re not budgeting for this”? And there’s been supplementals in the past to shore up the ESA situation.
And so I think they should just act on this. Look, you can still campaign — if you’re listening, Republicans — you can still campaign on this. Just help save people. Do the right thing and get this done.
BRODIE: Marcus, Republicans are saying they are happy to put money into this, but it has to be part of the overall budget package for the fiscal year that starts on July 1. The problem is this program is projected to run out of money much before that. And it doesn’t seem as though lawmakers and the governor are particularly close to passing a budget.
DELL’ARTINO: Let’s give this thing some context here. One, Tony’s right. We do supplementals all the time. So don’t get fooled by the word supplemental. Two, this is a program that, sort of during COVID, was implemented so that parents could take care of these kids — or these folks, I guess I should say.
And so the question is: It’s exploded in growth, as you can imagine. And so they’re set to run out of money. I do ultimately, at the end of the day, think there will be resolution. But from a Republican standpoint, all these budget proposals need to be taken into context with one another as we look at a whole budget.
And so, I know that there’s budget negotiations happening now. I am hopeful that we get done sooner rather than later. Although I’m hopeful but also realistic about where that’s headed. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I think that these folks will get taken care of and they will reach a resolution there.
