KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about new candidates getting into elections, a lawsuit challenging a voter-approved border security measure and more, The Show sat down with Daniel Scarpinato of Winged Victory Agency and former state lawmaker Aaron Lieberman.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: So Aaron, in perhaps the worst kept secret in Arizona politics this week, Adelita Grijalva — a now former Pima County supervisor — got into the race to succeed her late father, Raúl Grijalva. And she immediately got the endorsements of both of Arizona’s U.S. senators. Fair to say she is the frontrunner at this point?
AARON LIEBERMAN: Look, I think the last name alone probably puts her in that camp right when it matches the incumbent who passed away in office. I served with Daniel Hernandez. Full disclosure, I’m a Daniel Hernandez fan. We’ve done a lot of work together. It’ll be a very interesting race. I was surprised to see Sen. (Mark) Kelly go out that quickly and endorse giving Daniel’s connection to his wife and the deep connection there.
I thought if there were three people in that race, if (Arizona Secretary of State Adrian) Fontes was in it, it would probably really cement it for Grijalva. Two people in a race, you never know what’s going to happen, especially in a short primary. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.
BRODIE: How much, Daniel, does having the same last name mean the name? Grijalva has been on the ballot in southern Arizona for many years now.
DANIEL SCARPINATO: Decades, decades. Well, full disclosure: Born and raised proud Tucsonan. In two prior lives ago, I was a reporter for the Arizona Daily Star, and … I actually covered Grijalva’s first campaign for Congress in 2002 and then Gabby Giffords’ first race in 2006.
And a critical piece in that race for Gabby — it was a very tough primary — was that she got the endorsement of Rep. Grijalva, which was a signal to the progressive left that she was acceptable at the time that Eddie Basha wing was kind of the establishment wing. She already had that locked down.
So I think there’s some history here. Also, Daniel Hernandez is a friend. There’s always been word on the street that there was this dynamic of how things played out after the incident in Tucson and some bad blood about people going out and talking about it too much. So that may be at play.
Ultimately, what you’re seeing is there’s going to be a fight here between the Grijalva wing, which is now the political establishment in Pima County — it controls Pima County; it controls the mayor, who is a former Grijalva staffer — and the business community, which is actually getting in behind Daniel Hernandez, even though they’re typically with Republicans. And this will be the fight.
And I think there’s a view that if you can take down the Grijalva machine, then things will change dramatically in Pima County.
BRODIE: Do you see Adelita Grijalva as the frontrunner at this point, Daniel?
SCARPINATO: I think without a doubt she would be. But weird things can happen, especially in a special election. And we’re in unprecedented times, and people don’t like the political establishment. So I think there’s an opening for Daniel here, but it’s going to be an uphill battle with all these forces kind of working against him.
LIEBERMAN: He raised a lot of money initially. That really matters, too, and especially when you have a short time to spend it. And his sisters and him have been on the ballots there for going on a decade or pretty close to it right now, and that that means something to even in special election primaries. You have a lot of low information voters.
And the question is: Who picks out Hernandez versus Grijalva? Who understands who is who? They’re both names that have been on ballots and won a lot of elections down there.
BRODIE: That’s interesting. So guys, that election coming up — as you both reference, coming up this summer — there are elections also coming up next year. And we’re already starting to see candidates get into those. This week, State Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Scottsdale Republican, got into the race for secretary of state, supported and it was announced as support of the Freedom Caucus, of course, the more right-wing segment of the Arizona Legislature.
Daniel, does this clear the field in any way? I mean, it was seen as maybe a way to preempt, for example, state Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda from getting in. She’s talked about running for that seat as well.
SCARPINATO: I don’t think it clears the field. I think that there’s going to be — I’ve just come to the conclusion on the Republican side, fields don’t get cleared. Democrats do that really well. We have crowded primaries. I think there will be multiple other candidates in this race. And we’ll see what happens.
But I think ultimately this will be one of the harder races to win at the statewide level. And we need a good candidate —
BRODIE: Harder for Republicans, you mean?
SCARPINATO: I think it’s going to be harder for Republicans than some of the other statewide offices, like (attorney general) and governor.
BRODIE: How come?
SCARPINATO: I think Fontes won by a larger margin, a much larger margin than (Gov. Katie) Hobbs or (Attorney General Kris) Mayes. I did think he should have more quickly out the gate saying, “I’m not going to run for Congress. I’m running for secretary of state.” But ultimately, this will be a really tough race to win. And, and it doesn’t mean we can’t win it, but it’s going to be challenging.
LIEBERMAN: I’ll be a lot more plain. Arizonans don’t trust Republicans with elections because they’ve been saying crazy lies since 2018. It’s just totally nuts. And people see that. I mean, all of that. And it was interesting in the press conference, Kolodin didn’t want to say anything about ’20 or ’22, but that still continues to be where the base Republican primary voter is: caught up in lies that we know aren’t true.
Kolodin himself was sanctioned by the Arizona Bar just for representing the Cyber Ninjas. I mean, all of this is the same craziness. And, frankly, it’s great for Democrats that the fever hasn’t broken. I mean, I’m all for it, Kolodin. I hope he wins the primary. And Adrian will absolutely destroy him in a general election.
SCARPINATO: Well, I don’t completely agree, because we saw what happened last cycle. The toughest county and the most important county to win statewide in Arizona is Maricopa County. Maricopa County elected a Republican county recorder to run the elections over a pretty good Democratic candidate.
So, I do think that all of these races are going to be close in 2026. This is winnable. But a long, protracted primary isn’t helpful to the Republicans.
BRODIE: I’m curious, Daniel, about the fact that this move and Rep. Alexander Kolodin is being pushed forward by the Freedom Caucus. And we heard from state Sen. Jake Hoffman, who’s one of the leaders of the Freedom Caucus, said he’s also looking for a candidate to primary state (Superintendent of Public Instruction) Tom Horne.
Is this indicative of anything? We often talk about splits within parties, be it the Democrats or the Republicans. Is this an issue for Republicans that the Freedom Caucus is going to be putting forth candidates who aren’t maybe necessarily the “mainstream” GOP candidates?
SCARPINATO: I guess I go back to, there’s always splits in the Republican Party. We just have that. We’re not monolithic. We’re a much bigger, broader party. And so, yeah. I think you’re going to see a lot of primaries in these races. And may the best candidate win.
LIEBERMAN: Jake Hoffman is the greatest thing that has ever happened to Democrats in the state since Kari Lake, is the reality of the situation. People don’t understand some of these dynamics.
Down at the state House, when I was there, there wasn’t a single Democratic vote for the budget. The Republicans handled it all themselves and stuck together and passed every budget until Jake Hoffman organized a group of people to walk right off a cliff and say they’re not going to do anything.
Then Democrats could help negotiate. And that’s happened for the last three or four budgets, ever since, I think, 2022. So this is the same thing. When these far right — and this is not like the candidates that win statewide in Arizona. If a moderate Republican gets to the general election, it’s going to be very hard to beat. And that’s just the reality of where our state is and where our state leans.
But the reason we’ve been winning is because of candidates that are on the far right that win these primaries, very low turnout primaries, and then get to a general election and can’t get back to the middle and often don’t even try, which is really great.
The same thing with (U.S. Rep.) Andy Biggs. I’m all on the Andy Biggs for governor. That’s who we beat.
SCARPINATO: I gotta say here, first of all, I think Sen. Hoffman’s done an amazing job with this appointment committee in the Senate …
BRODIE: With the governor’s nominations to lead state agencies.
SCARPINATO: Yeah, so I love that you’re saying he’s the best thing to happen to Democrats …
LIBERMAN: You mean tying up? I mean, just imagine, Daniel, when you worked for (former Gov. Doug) Ducey, if they did one eighth of what they’ve done to Gov. [Katie] Hobbs to Gov. Ducey. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and they’re supposed to …
SCARPINATO: Well, what I think is interesting is that now, Gov. Hobbs is appointing Ducey appointees because her far left ones couldn’t get through.
LIBERMAN: I would disagree with the characterization of far left there. But that is a great example of using some very slim, narrow read, some deal you had to make with (Senate President) Warren Peterson to take advantage of the situation. That does not work well. It’s inside baseball.
SCARPINATO: It’s called separation of powers. It’s called the Constitution …
BRODIE: Hold on. Aaron, I do want to ask you: We talked and Daniel mentioned that there are often splits in parties. We’ve seen sort of on the national level, the more left leaning wing of the Democratic Party and the more sort of centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Are you expecting to see that with candidates?
It might be a little bit different for statewide offices because they’re held by Democratic incumbents, many of them already. But is there a danger for Democrats that that primaries could get messy next year?
LIEBERMAN: Look, it was funny to hear Daniel say that about the Republican Party. I mean, the famous quote is Will Rogers saying, “I’m not a member of an organized party. I’m a Democrat.” It was all Democrats then.
BRODIE: It was like a century ago he said that
SCARPINATO: There’s so few Democrats now that there’s not much to disagree over.
LIEBERMAN: Just don’t call it a comeback, Daniel. That’s all I have to say for that. We’ve got nowhere to go but up. And the reality is, you see this cycle. What do you think the odds are of Democrats winning control of Congress right now in the midterm elections, just like it’s happened?
You know, Biden flipped it. There is a cycle to this. The party gets elected, they overreach. It swings back. We’re seeing that right now. The $5 trillion of economic value wiped out by our current president is certainly adding fuel to that fire. But there really is a cycle to this stuff.
But the thing about Arizona state politics is we really are a down the middle state. We’ve got a lot of independents. I think they lean slightly Republican, truthfully, but they don’t like the crazy and what’s allowed. I mean, how do we have a Democratic governor, a Democratic secretary of state, a Democratic attorney general? The reason is the candidates getting through the primary on the other side.
SCARPINATO: Yeah, but here’s what I would just caution here is our elections are coin flips. And the reason that Gov. Hobbs and Secretary of State Fontes and AG Mayes won was they won Republican voters. Thirteen percent of Republicans voted for Katie Hobbs. If I were their teams, I’d be waking up every day saying, “What are we doing to win Republicans?”
I think they’re doing the opposite, which is they are alienating voters who are not far left progressive.
