KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about the latest in the saga between Sen. Mark Kelly, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; whether Arizona SNAP recipients could lose their benefits again; and more, The Show sat down with Christina Corieri with Consilium Consulting and Jeanne Woodbury with Creosote Partners.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Jeanne, let me start with you on what we’ve been seeing with (U.S. Sen.) Mark Kelly. Certainly after the video that he and others participated in telling members of the military that they do not have to and in fact should not follow illegal orders, he’s not been quiet about what folks have been saying about him or why he thinks that he was in the right to make this video.
I’m curious what you make of his strategy over the last couple of weeks in terms of really being out there talking about this.
JEANNE WOODBURY: You know, this is the most I’ve loved Mark Kelly since he’s been elected. What I’ve wanted from Democrats since Trump was reelected is to pick fights like this and not back down and to say if you get told to do something wrong or if you get told to do something illegal, you don’t actually have to do it.
And then once you make that stand, you stick to it, and you say “Whatever you say about me, I’m going to take that and I’m going to keep moving forward.”
BRODIE: Is there something about this particular fight, you think, that makes it a good one for Kelly? Because he’s certainly gotten criticism — and the others in the video — for not pointing out, have there been illegal orders? Or if there have been, what are they? Some on the right are saying, “Look, they’re just trying to stir the pot here.”
WOODBURY: Well, it’s a good point to make. It’s a good point to just say, “Here’s a very simple fact that you as a member of the military have this duty to not carry out illegal orders.” Now what we’re exploring is the illegality of orders that we have seen recently, especially with these boat strikes.
But the point of the video is not to determine that. That’s got to be determined in a more structured setting. The point of the video is just to say, you need to be evaluating this in the field when you’re faced with an illegal order.
BRODIE: Christina, I’m curious what you make of this. Like, is this a good fight for Kelly to be picking?
CHRISTINA CORIERI: Well, I think it depends on what your goal is. If his goal is to raise his profile nationally, then yeah, it’s good for him. If his goal is to have members of the military constantly questioning every single order, I don’t know that that’s good for the country.
So he made a statement that is factually accurate, that members of the military have a duty to not follow clearly illegal orders. But by doing it as a video with six elected Democrats, it becomes inherently political.
And it has the suggestion in there that there are perhaps many orders that have been issued that are illegal, rather than having that debate where it should be. If it was truly a nonpartisan reminder about what the military code is, you would be doing that video with retired members of the military, not with politicians.
BRODIE: How much do you think this has raised his profile nationally? I mean, obviously he was on the short list for vice president with Kamala Harris last year. He’s, as many people point out, a former astronaut. He’s raised a ton of money. Has this really raised his profile, do you think?
CORIERI: Oh, I absolutely think so. You cannot turn on any 24-hour news station and not see coverage of what’s going on. And that’s just going to continue as Trump strikes out at him and he strikes back.
BRODIE: Jeanne, obviously not getting into the motivation of anybody or looking at the, the policy that he was talking about, but from a purely political level, does this help Kelly if he, say, wants to run for president in three years?
WOODBURY: I think Mark Kelly could have won in this election. So what we’re looking at here is can he demonstrate continued leadership?
BRODIE: And how, how do you think that he would use this episode to try to do that?
WOODBURY: I don’t think that this is an instrumental action to get more political leverage. I mean, to the extent that everything is political, sure. But fundamentally, this is his background, this is his expertise and his career. And he’s saying that as a principled leader, all of these other people that are his colleagues have a similar duty to act on their principles.
BRODIE: Yeah, go ahead, Christina.
CORIERI: You know, I think there are Republicans who are asking legitimate questions about some of the current orders as it relates to the drug boats in the Caribbean, but they’re doing it in a fundamentally different way. (Sen.) Rand Paul, for instance, is out there raising questions about this action without congressional approval, but they’re not going out pretending it’s nonpartisan.
I think that video of the six Democratic members, they were pretending it was nonpartisan when it was inherently partisan.
BRODIE: Inherently partisan because they were all of the same party?
CORIERI: Because they were all elected Democrats. You have put six politicians in a video, right? If you wanted it to be nonpartisan, use nonpolitical figures.
BRODIE: Christina, let me stick with you and ask about a lawsuit that was filed this week by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission against Adrian Fontes, basically saying that the secretary of state should not have allowed what the party that used to be known as the No labels Party to become the Arizona Independent Party.
Essentially saying it’s confusing to voters, especially those who choose not to be a member of the party — who are often referred to as independents. What do you make of this?
CORIERI: It’s absolutely going to be confusing to a large majority of Arizonans because when we use the word independent, people use that colloquially. They don’t belong to the Republican Party or Democratic Party. "I’m independent."
Well, in Arizona previously, if you were independent, what you actually were party not (designated).
BRODIE: Doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
CORIERI: Doesn’t roll off the tongue. People who are steeped in politics like us and probably most of the listeners understand that that’s what PND is. That’s not necessarily what most of the people who register as that understand. So we have the second highest number of registrations in Arizona are PND — 1.5 million people. If even 10% of the people register as the Arizona Independent Party thinking that’s what it means, they are going to lose a significant number of constitutional rights that we hold dear.
The first being they’re not going to be able to vote in the primary election. Unless the Independent Party runs a primary.
BRODIE: They can’t vote for the Democrat or Republican primary.
CORIERI: They can’t vote for the Democrat or Republican. Right now, as a person who is a party not (designated) myself, I have the option to select a Republican ballot or a Democrat ballot.
I’m used to being able to do that. If I registered as an Arizona Independent Party, I would no longer have the ability to request that. I also couldn’t sign a nominating petition for somebody running as a Republican or Democrat for the Legislature or any other office Arizona. And I think people are not going to understand that, and they may understand that too late.
If you’re not registered 30 days in advance of an election, you are not going to be able to vote in that election.
BRODIE: Jeanne, do you buy into the argument that this might be confusing or would be confusing to party not designated voters?
WOODBURY: I think this is a terrible idea. I think that you’re going to end up with people being registered with a party they didn’t know existed. We have a system now that works for the people we would call independents people who register without a party. And that system is clearly popular because more people register that way than register as Democrats and close to the number of people who register as Republicans.
This is a system that works. If you want to change it, there’s ranked choice voting. Maybe that helps those voters.
But what we’ve seen with Paul Johnson, who’s behind this new idea, is that everything he does, he says, is in the service of people who aren’t part of the two major parties. But this is going to silence the voices of independent voters.
And what he did with Prop. 140, which was a sort of jungle primary, top-two, pseudo ranked choice system that was also going to bury the voices of independent voters. We need to stick with what we have or think about something that can actually help people.
BRODIE: Is it worthwhile to have, regardless of what it’s called? Because I guess the legal question is, could the secretary of state have stopped the name change?
And I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know. This will be litigated in court, and this will be for the courts to decide. But I guess is there, Jeanne, in theory ... an organizing place — maybe call it a party, maybe call it something else.
But for people who do not want to be members of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, is there a place for something like an independent party, if not called that, and maybe if not in the form that current organizers are putting it in?
WOODBURY: Well, I think what we’ve seen, unfortunately or not, is that it hasn’t worked out. The Green Party doesn’t fulfill that. The Libertarian Party doesn’t fulfill that. The No Labels Party — which is now the Arizona Independent Party — also didn’t fulfill that. So that isn’t working in our current structure. Maybe there’s room for it.
Like maybe that’s a good idea, but it’s not going to work with the structure we have now.
CORIERI: I would say there’s always opportunities for a third party. We have them in the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. They have remained small, but historically you’ve had third-party candidates that their ideas then get absorbed by one of the two major parties. The problem is not that there is an additional party on there. The problem is the name and the intent to — even if it’s not the intent to deceive, it will in practice deceive some number of people.
Also, I think the law specifically allows the secretary of state to recognize a new party. I don’t believe there’s actually a mechanism to allow the renaming of an existing party. And that’s what that lawsuit is about.
BRODIE: It will be interesting to see what the courts say.
