KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about a pair of ballot measures dealing with school vouchers, the newest member of the state Legislature and more, The Show sat down with Chuck Coughlin of HighGround and Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: So, Chuck, there’s a new ballot measure dealing with empowerment scholarship accounts (ESAs), otherwise known as school vouchers. And some of what these folks are doing are similar to the one that Save Our Schools Arizona, the teachers union are trying to put on the ballot, they’re collecting signatures for.
A big difference, though is that this new one does not have a cap, an income cap on who is eligible for vouchers, whereas the original one has a cap of $150,000.
I wonder if in some way this new initiative is like — would you see it as an acknowledgement maybe, by even voucher supporters, that some things have to change?
CHUCK COUGHLIN: God bless. It’s been a while because I’ve been saying this forever is like, it’s part of the matrix right now. It’s part of the way parents make decisions. Once (former Gov. Doug) Ducey did the universal voucher — remember the history on that, too. SOS put that on the ballot, and it was defeated.
STACY PEARSON: Referred it, yeah.
COUGHLIN: Yeah, they referred it to the ballot, and then (the Legislature) came back, and then they did it again. And then it passed.
The rule is once you give the public something, you can’t take it back. So you then have to accept the reality of that, and then you have to create transparency in how that’s done. And the Republicans now are stuck because they, they won’t do the Ronald Reagan thing of, “Hey, let’s defend the taxpayers money.”
I mean, Gina got in trouble with Turning Point.
BRODIE: Gina Swoboda.
COUGHLIN: Yeah. And it’s just nuts. So it’s a really good thing to put on the ballot because it can be aspirational. But as you say, they’re not tripping on themselves about deflecting to the left on their objections to these things.
BRODIE: So Stacy, forgive me for asking a cynical question here, but we are talking about politics. I mean, could one look at this as a way to get some of these reforms, changes into the law on vouchers without making Republicans in the Legislature do them?
PEARSON: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and there, there are some universal truths — which I know is almost impossible today in politics — but buying lingerie with tax dollars is bad.
BRODIE: And both of them would say that you can’t do that.
PEARSON: Right. Or luxury items, Jet Skis, trips to Disneyland, all of these things. The issue with the income cap is parents who were already going to send their kids, who had the means to send their kids to private school, church school, send them to Catholic church school — in particular, send them to Brophy, send them to Xavier.
BRODIE: Homeschool.
PEARSON: Homeschool. They shouldn’t get their tax dollars refunded. What I find so strange is if I decided tomorrow that, you know what? I really like going to the dump. I don’t want to use city of Phoenix’s trash service anymore. I would like the city of Phoenix to pay me, and I’ll take it to the dump.
You can’t do that because there’s a public safety risk. If I don’t keep up on it — just like if I don’t educate my kids well — we’ve got a problem in society. We’ll have rats in Arcadia. This is what we should be doing. We should not be pulling this money out of our public education system because it harms the kids that are stuck there.
COUGHLIN: Right. And I’ve found — I mean, we’ve done a lot of polling on this type of thing over a long time. One of the things we’ve found is that there is strong Republican support for a poverty weight for public funding, for education funding. I’m not clear about denying it to everybody, but I know there’s a, there is enthusiasm to create.
Because we all acknowledge it takes more money to teach a poor kid than a wealthy kid. Because you need more blackboard time, you need more after school time, you need all more time with that kid. And so it takes more money. I’ve always found an amazing amount of Republican support, like in the 60s, 65% to give more money to poor kids.
BRODIE: Well, Chuck, so let me ask you about some of the polling. This is so new, I’m sure you haven’t done polling on it yet, but the conventional wisdom has been in the past that if you have two competing ballot measures both of them go down because voters, they get confused.
They’re not sure. They don’t want to vote for the wrong one. Is there a danger that that would be the case on, on this?
COUGHLIN: Yeah, there’s going to be. I mean, what the Legislature’s doing is putting a bunch of stuff on the ballot. So how do you distinguish that? Voters get it. If you run a good campaign and you can raise money. That’s the big $100 million question because it cost $5 million to put something on the ballot.
And I did that in ’24 with a constitutional initiative. We needed 425,000 signatures to beat the odds, and we got it done. But man, that is super, super, super hard.
PEARSON: And I think this policy is so popular, both are going to pass. So what voters are really going to decide is whether or not they want an income cap at $150,000, whether or not they want wealthy folks to get additional stipends or not. I mean, it’s really going to become a class fight.
BRODIE: And if they both pass, the one with the most votes wins.
PEARSON: In conflicting policy, the one with the most votes wins.
BRODIE: Which is interesting. And as we’ve talked about, some of the provisions are very similar, if not the same in this new initiative versus the one from Save Our Schools Arizona. So it’d be interesting to see what the arguments are, Stacy, like in these campaigns.
Like, do supporters say, “Hey, vote for both, but make sure to vote for this one”?
PEARSON: Right. I mean, I think. What I think is going to happen is they’ll trot out families driving $500,000 cars and show that those folks do not need assistance to send their kids to Brophy.
BRODIE: The Save Our Schools folks. The initial initiative.
PEARSON: Yeah. They’re really going to show some of the highest household incomes that are taking advantage of the system in ways that include airfare to Europe. I would love that. Who wouldn’t want a history project to include the Louvre?
COUGHLIN: It’ll be an interesting question. ... My daughter went to private school. I paid for that. You know, I didn’t have this access to this then. I’m now in that upper tier of voters, older voters, and that’s well over 50% of the electorate is 55 and above.
And so if they’re like me, then they’ve never had the opportunity to use taxpayer dollars. And they may go, “Yeah, why are we doing that now?” And so it’ll be an interesting question to see how the voters, the electorate response to it.
BRODIE: Yeah, it certainly does seem interesting. Go ahead, Stacy.
PEARSON: One other flag: The second policy, the one that was dropped after the SOS policy, also does not have a use it or lose it provision. And so the money has to revert back according to the AEA and the SOS policy. The rest could be a slush fund. I mean, you get 7, 500 bucks.
You’re homeschooling your kid. You spend $1,000 on Cheez-Its and crayons. I don’t know.
BRODIE: That’s a lot of Cheez-Its.
PEARSON: And yeah, you’re teaching them how to write, color circles. Who knows? But then, but then the parents can keep that money.
BRODIE: Whereas in the, the, the Save Our Schools version, that goes back to the state’s general fund, correct?
PEARSON: Correct.
COUGHLIN: Clear as mud.
BRODIE: I think, to both your points, it’s going to be a really interesting campaign to see how the two sides, initiatives frame it, right?
COUGHLIN: Yeah. And it’s a big issue.
BRODIE: Yeah.
COUGHLIN: I mean, it’s a big, it’s a front and center issue. So people will dig into it, and it’ll be interesting to see how people look at it.
BRODIE: Among all the other things that are on the ballot this November.
Guys, the state Legislature got a new member. But really doesn’t seem like it changes that much, Chuck, (Rep. Cody) Reim from Rio Verde.
COUGHLIN: It was an interesting pick on the part of (Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas) Galvin because it’s his district.
BRODIE: Yeah.
COUGHLIN: So the other guy that was up was George Khalaf. He’s a nerd pollster guy and very conservative, very nice guy. I think he’s going to win the election. So I just reflexively thought, “Oh, they’ll appoint him.” Nope. Mr. Reim apparently has better social connections within the community, and he appears to be really nice guy.
A little bit different type of Republican than George.
PEARSON: (Former lawmaker) Michelle Ugenti-Rita, too.
COUGHLIN: Well, yeah, well, that was never gonna happen. That was never gonna be.
BRODIE: But both, both Reim and Khalaf are running for this in the fall, right?
COUGHLIN: Yeah. And like I said, my money would be on George in that race. So it’ll be interesting.
BRODIE: And Michelle — sorry, you mentioned Michelle Ugenti-Rita. Stacy, it doesn’t really change much at the Legislature. Cody Reim, a Republican, which he had to be because Joseph Chaplik was also a Republican who resigned to run for Congress, said he was joining the Freedom Caucus. So it doesn’t seem like all that much has changed at the Capitol, huh?
PEARSON: Yeah, I think it’s a push, and I do think it keeps George Khalaf ’s dance card clean to be running for reelection.
This is not going to be a fun budget process. It’s not going to be a fun couple of months. We’ve got a, a wrestling match going on at the state Capitol to see who’s going to get the best quotes in the mail piece against their opponent. I mean, we really do. It’s performative politics down there right now.
COUGHLIN: That’s all it is. And the question will be, you know, I think there’s a theory going on within the Republican caucus that, “Hey, we can just stay down here, and we can just ride this pony till the end of time.” And you’re like "Eh, sort of the end of June when the money runs out? That’s probably not going to work very well.”
And so it’ll be interesting to see who blinks first.
BRODIE: Well, it’s interesting, Stacy, to your point of the timing of this appointment. If you’re appointed now, you don’t get to introduce any bills. You don’t get to sort of say your priorities. You’re voting on other people’s bills and in many years taking difficult votes on a budget.
PEARSON: That’s exactly it. I mean, that’s a job. Be careful what you ask for in terms of that appointment. You’re coming in cold. You’re introducing yourself to members of your caucus. You are going through a budget document that is 300,000 pages long. They’re going to have to be quick on the uptake.
BRODIE: Yeah, that’ll be interesting to see.
