KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap on the state of Arizona politics headed into the 2026 election

Earlier this year, The Show went onstage at Crescent Ballroom in downtown Phoenix. Of course, a Sunday evening version of the Friday NewsCap was included.

Host Mark Brodie spoke with political consultants Stacy Pearson and Chuck Coughlin, and it was a raucous conversation filled with analysis, predictions — and plenty of one-liners.

Stay tuned for more info about live Radio Heads events in 2026.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: How you guys doing?

STACY PEARSON: Good.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Little intimidating.

BRODIE: Usually when we do this —

COUGHLIN: These people can throw things at me.

BRODIE: When we do this we're usually in a padded room by ourselves.

COUGHLIN: Right.

PEARSON: 100%.

BRODIE: Like, the only danger is, like, one of the three of us is gonna, like, hit each other or something.

COUGHLIN: Well, that's happened on occasion.

BRODIE: Just with you, Chuck. Just with you.

COUGHLIN: Yeah. Sorry.

BRODIE: Alright, so let's start with sort of a broad a question. Stacy, I'll start with you. How would you describe the current state of politics in this state?

PEARSON: I mean, it's fine. I don't know why we're here. Everyone go home.

COUGHLIN: Could you ask for anything better?

PEARSON: Everyone go home.

No. We are in an environment where rage is monetized by our tech companies. And until we get a handle on that, these comments from our elected officials — not our president, mind you — but other elected officials who are telling folks to turn the temperature down — it's not going to happen.

It's rage now and then second to what sells is sex. I mean, rage sits above that, and it's not — until we figure out a way to get a handle on that through the tech companies, this is bad.

BRODIE: Chuck, what do you think?

COUGHLIN: Yeah, she's right. I mean, the currency of politics today is contempt. So the best thing we all can do about that is check our own at the door, right? And just try and treat, you know — the old admonition is still true today: love your neighbor as yourself. And we all got to check ourselves about that kind of stuff.

But that's how we'll begin to turn this around. And I've noted that most of these acts that are going on right now are perpetrated by younger people who have been socialized on the internet. And she's right about that. And so we have a challenge in our culture today on how to deal with that phenomena.

I don't know that it's going to go away anytime soon, but we all have to work hard at that. I thought Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, did a good job the other day in speaking to that issue. Next to (FBI Director) Kash Patel, he was like a long, cool drink of water on a hot summer day.

And so that was good. I enjoyed that. And we need more of that.

BRODIE: Well, so, short of, like, flooding TikTok with puppy and kitten videos, how do we do this? Because it seems to me you're probably not going to get the majority of people offline. People are not going to stop doomscrolling and looking at whatever social media they're looking at. They're not going to stop looking at YouTube.

So what do we do about this?

PEARSON: So an immeasurable failure of my party was assuming that the kids were always going to be with us. We left not a lane open for the Charlie Kirks of the world — we let a freeway open for them.

My daughter's 22. She doesn't remember a world where marriage equality didn't exist. Like, she doesn't remember — she was born after 9/11. Like, her dad's a cop. My husband, he's — so yeah, we've got a mixed, pretty wild political household. But he's also a Democrat and the president of his union, so you guys want to come to Thanksgiving? It's super fun with my MAGA in-laws. It's f-cking awesome.

COUGHLIN: She did it before me!

PEARSON: I did! I knew I was going to!

BRODIE: Stacy swearing first.

COUGHLIN: Awesome!

BRODIE: This was not on the bingo card.

PEARSON: For me to jump first?

But 22-year-olds don't remember. And the Democrats took these kids for granted.

And so we put them on video games. They're not playing volleyball. We charge families 300 bucks a month for their kids to play sports. And they are de-socialized, to Chuck's point, they are socialized on the internet.

And the Democrats, I don't know what we were doing. What were we doing?

BRODIE: Well so Chuck, this kind of raises the question because we've seen both here in Arizona and around the country, sort of a political realignment, right? Groups that have not been traditionally associated with one political party are moving in that direction and vice versa. Do you think this is a permanent thing or do you think it's sort of cyclical as it has seemed to have been in past decades?

COUGHLIN: So my colleague at work calls Donald Trump a one-headed unicorn because there's only one of him. And how that evolves after this cycle is going to be a critically important question. And how the Democrats evolve around that and how to respond to that. But for the time being, it is that.

And I don't recognize either party anymore. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dad was a corporate labor lawyer in Detroit. That was the conversation at the dinner table every night. Mom had opinions, and she was always right. And so that was the household I grew up in.

But it was pretty well fixed, even though my safety patrol was right next to the Ann Arbor Five house that they dug the bomb crater in front of the house for the Hanoi bomb crater.

But, you know, it was — I could get that. I don't get it anymore.

It's this culture of contempt that we live in right now. It's completely foreign to me. And my only response to that, go to church on Sunday, have my peace there, get inspired there by those admonitions that we encourage ourselves with. And that's where I get my peace.

BRODIE: Do you think the realignment that we've seen nationally is as significant in Arizona as we've seen in other places?

COUGHLIN: Well, we are Turning Point's home here in Arizona.

PEARSON: I would say worse, but Chuck goes first.

COUGHLIN: And so we are on the edge of that curve. We're on the leading edge of that curve. I said this the other day: We don't remember that Turning Point was responsible for beating Rusty Bowers.

BRODIE: Former Arizona House speaker.

COUGHLIN: Yeah. When he was speaker of the House. I've known Rusty for 30 years. Artist, coolest guy and Mormon, but awesomely cool guy. Very smart, very erudite.

Stephen Richer, you know, we like Stephen.

BRODIE: Former county recorder.

COUGHLIN: He liked having his hair up there. And both of them got taken out by Turning Point over election denialism. Turning Point has embraced that narrative. It's not how it started. It's not how Turning Point started, but they have embraced that narrative.

And so they're here. They've essentially taken over the Republican Party in Arizona by virtue of having ... Turning Point people becoming precinct committeemen. I've talked to former chairmen, and they're like, "These people are joining — they've never voted." These are their first time, they're coming into, and they're organized under the Republican banner.

Gina Swoboda, the chairman of the Republican Party, is getting pushed by the Turning Point people. She wanted to run for Secretary of State. She's worked for Katie Hobbs in the Secretary of State's office.

She's a very, very smart woman,

PEARSON: Very sane woman.

COUGHLIN: Yeah. Yeah. And she got pushed out because they're going to have a Turning Point guy run. And so that's the avant-garde place we're living in right now. And that's going to be this '26 cycle. And my suspicion is that the events of the last week will highly motivate those constituencies to the benefit of those folks.

BRODIE: Stacy, we've seen voter registration numbers in this state not go the way that you're —

PEARSON: They're fine. It's fine.

BRODIE: Totally fine.

PEARSON: Totally fine.

BRODIE: Yeah, nothing to see here.

How big of a problem is that for Democrats?

PEARSON: It's catastrophic. I mean, we — of all of the swing states, Arizona's lost more Democrats than any other swing state. And the folks that are moving here from California, Washington, Oregon are intentionally not registering as Democrats. And we as a party, we as a group have somehow just assumed everything's going to be OK.

"Oh, it's fine, everybody's going to come home, everything's great, it's fine."

It's not fine! Things are not fine. The house is on fire. And we continue to refuse to acknowledge that. And it's folks who — I always talk about my neighbors, I really hope — I scanned the crowd to make sure they weren't here — but I talk about them all the time.

They're two Stanford-educated folks, live in Arcadia. I'm so white. My west side is —

COUGHLIN: Privileged.

PEARSON: — is so not OK with this. But anyway, they went to Stanford, they moved in next door. They both registered as independents, and it was about homelessness. They moved from Southern California. They were super pissed off about the fact that there were folks, that they couldn't park at their beach park.

And as Democrats, we started to demonize, villainize that statement. They're pro-law enforcement. They want the guy screaming at the clouds to get help. And we changed words. We started to call folks "unsheltered neighbors." And they're like, "You know what? That's not my neighbor. That guy was barking at your dog through my fence, and I'm mad."

And it just — we detached in a way that is really unfortunate. And in Arizona, the numbers matter, man. I worked on the Penzone campaign in 2012. I ran it in '16 when he won, and we had to find a Trump-McCain, anti-Arpaio voter.

And the guy that employed me at the time was like, "You're insane."

Yeah, probably. But we're also going to do it. We're looking at those kind of numbers. We're looking at the state going back a decade and a half, two decades.

COUGHLIN: You're looking at a cycle — on a turnout cycle. So the last cycle, in the presidential cycle, we were anticipating a plus-three Republican turnout. So that's 3% more Republicans than Democrats and quite a bit more than independents because independents don't perform at their registration margins. But it was nine. So there was nine percentage more Republicans.

That was in a presidential cycle, which is often —

PEARSON: With an unpopular guy!

COUGHLIN: Yeah. Often younger, much younger. And so roll forward into the off-cycle, into the gubernatorial cycle where those numbers tend to double. So it's going to be a double-digit Republican turnout advantage on the statewide ballot, and that will make a significant difference. My problem is, she's just been talking about, is what are Democrats voting for?

I know what they're voting against. I know I can talk about that. But what are they voting for? And what are those things that bring independents and unaffiliated voters who generally want to be problem solvers — sort of fiscally conservative, a little bit more socially liberal — what are we doing to bring those people to the table?

And my fear is, in this cycle, that's not happening.

PEARSON: No, it's fine. It's great.

BRODIE: You just keep saying that, Stacy.

PEARSON: It's fine. It's fine.

BRODIE: It seems like you're trying to convince yourself.

COUGHLIN: It's her therapy.

PEARSON: It's fine.

BRODIE: Alright, so guys, I want to do a little fill in the blank. We have just a few minutes left, so I'm going to do a little fill in the blank for both of you. OK, ready? The race for blank will be the most expensive one in the state next year. Stacy, what do you think?

PEARSON: Man, next year we don't have a senate.

BRODIE: For the first time in, like, forever.

PEARSON: Right. I mean, the race for governor is going to be the most expensive that we've ever seen.

COUGHLIN: Yeah.

PEARSON: The forces, thankfully, nationally, the forces recognize that Arizona is getting redder. We are not purpler. We're definitely not blue. And so there's a scenario where every — given Chuck's voter registration statistics — every single statewide office is at risk. All five. So there's going to be so much money spent.

BRODIE: Chuck, do you agree with that?

COUGHLIN: I agree. I think the gubernatorial race will be expensive. The attorney general's race will be expensive. The secretary of state's race will be expensive.

I mean, we'll see what happens on the Corp Comm. Turning Point is trying to knock out the two Republicans in the primary. So we'll see what happens there.

But in the same thing, on the superintendent of public instruction, all those statewide races will see a lot of money spent.

BRODIE: Alright, so looking a little bit earlier, we're a little less than a year away from the primaries. The blank primary will be the ugliest next year. Chuck, I'll start with you. And I'm sorry to make you pick just one because I suspect that your answer would be all of them.

COUGHLIN: So you're looking for a specific race.

BRODIE: Just for the office. You don't have to name the candidates.

COUGHLIN: For the office.

BRODIE: For the office.

COUGHLIN: I mean, right off the top of my head — I'm just gonna go with it — is the Republican primary for governor is gonna be a knockdown. Karrin, I know Karrin. She used to be a client.

BRODIE: Karrin Taylor Robson.

COUGHLIN: Karrin Taylor Robson has a ton of money. Ed (Robson) has done well with his life. And so she's gonna spend, you know, clearly more than $10-15 million. And how she executes on that with Mr. Biggs is going to be incredibly important because Mr. Biggs is not Kari Lake. He's not going to make the stupid mistakes that she made.

He's going to execute on a much more disciplined, buttoned-down campaign, rolling around with his Turning Point friends and not being outrageous. He will try to check himself. It might be the first time that I ever witness him — I have a long history with the former congressman. We almost got in a fistfight.

BRODIE: Current congressman.

COUGHLIN: Yeah, yeah, we almost got in a fistfight in the legislature in 2014.

BRODIE: Oh, wow.

COUGHLIN: Oh no, it was 2003, when he was trying to sabotage the Prop 400, which was the next half-cent sales tax election back then, and he was trying to sabotage that, and Jake Flake had to break us up.

BRODIE: See what you all miss by not being at the Capitol on a daily basis?

Stacy, what do you think? What's going to be the ugliest primary next year?

PEARSON: The CD1 race. You know, we've got everybody who's ever registered as a Democrat in Arcadia, Scottsdale, Biltmore area running for that seat. Stupid. Like, what are you — like, can five of you figure out which three of you — like, I'm all about robust primaries, but what are we doing?

COUGHLIN: You're killing yourself.

PEARSON: I'm not even kidding. I think there are 11 people in that primary right now. Like, someone go sit down. Like, you go sit down. Like, you read — you know, when you go to your eye doctor and you have to read the things at distance — everyone stand here and read at a distance, and anyone who can't get through the sentence, go sit down.

Everyone in that primary needs to know how to download an app on their iPhone. I don't want IQ tests anymore. Like, I don't want acuity tests. I want someone to figure out my mother's remote.

BRODIE: So you're saying CD1 on the Democratic side.

PEARSON: Yeah, and it annoys me. Yeah, clearly. I don't know if I've mentioned that. I don't know if that's clear.

BRODIE: You'd never know. You'd never know.

PEARSON: Yeah, I know.

BRODIE: Alright, last one. We're about running out of time. So last, last fill in the blank. And I'll phrase it in a not-fill-in-the-blank form, but obviously both the Democratic and Republican parties in the state have had their share of turmoil over the last, let's say, six to eight months.

Which of the parties going into next year will be more unified and organized? Stacy?

PEARSON: That's cute. You actually made Chuck crack up.

BRODIE: Mission accomplished.

PEARSON: I mean, obviously we're going to get it together in 400 days. Like, we're going to be a unified group of people. The beautiful thing is we were never expected to be.

BRODIE: The bar is low, then, as you're saying.

PEARSON: Yeah.

COUGHLIN: You could shuffle over it.

PEARSON: Yeah, as Chuck mentioned earlier, you could shuffle over the bar the Democrats have set in terms of organization, unification. But the good news is the governor's team I know well, and they're very smart. And Secretary of State and the AG's office, they've just got gone right around it.

So they're like, "You know what, you fight amongst yourselves. You kids take it from here. In the meantime, let's go."

And so I'm hoping it's that we get our sh-t together, proverbial.

COUGHLIN: Yeah.

BRODIE: Chuck, what do you think?

COUGHLIN: Yeah, I think the Republicans will have their proprietary "stuff" together.

BRODIE: Different four letter word, thank you.

COUGHLIN: They'll have their things together better because there's less of a division there. There is a division, let's be clear. There's your Turning Point crowd that is the ground troops for MAGA. And then there's elements of the Republican Party that are still somewhat recognizable from the past that are around Gina and those folks.

But they unify around Trump. I mean, that is what they are unified around and, you know, without a counter narrative — and Trump's doing his best to create the counter narrative, I will give you that — but if that doesn't develop, then it's an easy walkthrough.

BRODIE: Al' right. Guys, we'll have to leave it there. Chuck Coughlin, Stacy Pearson, thanks to you both for being here. Thanks for taking part in this crazy experiment. Thank you.

PEARSON: Thanks.