Racism accusations are popping up in AZ primary. This strategist says it's not going away soon

LAUREN GILGER: State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is calling out an attack ad against her that’s making the rounds of late, and that she says is racist and revolting.

SPEAKER ON AD: Meet Kimberly Yee. She’s the empress of DEI. Yee led a national shadow government of bureaucrats pushing an extreme diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. Kimberly Yee: too liberal for school superintendent.

Elections

Arizona superintendent candidate Kimberly Yee calls attack ad 'racist,' blames opponent Tom Horne

Camryn Sanchez

A new TV attack ad targets Arizona candidate for school superintendent Kimberly Yee and accuses her of being too liberal. Both Yee and her opponent call it racist.

Yee is running for superintendent of public instruction against incumbent Tom Horne in this month’s Republican primary election, and she has blamed her fellow GOP opponent for this ad, but Horne strongly denies any involvement.

But it’s not the only example of accusations of racism that are cropping up this primary election cycle.

Just last week on X, Turning Point USA COO Tyler Bowyer asked Arizona state Rep. Quang Nguyen, a Republican who is Turning Point-endorsed, "Can you speak English?" Nguyen is an immigrant who fled Vietnam at 12 years old.

In Tucson, state Senate candidate Alma Hernandez, a Democratic representative who is Jewish, had multiple campaign signs vandalized with what Jewish leaders are calling antisemitic and misogynistic slurs.

But is this vitriolic rhetoric new, or has politics always been this overt? To find out, I sat down with longtime Arizona political strategist Chuck Coughlin, president of HighGround.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: It’s changing. The nature of our communication is changed because it is a 24-hour news cycle, there’s so many different mediums in which we can listen to and be exposed to this information. That’s to begin with.

And then we have, you know, we’re in this period of time right now in our country where our social mores have devolved. And we are now at a very tipping point of overt racism being a sales tool, or overt hatred being a sales tool to divide people.

And that’s what our politics is today. It’s all about dividing us into partisan Democrats or partisan Republicans, because you run in a primary. Eighty percent of people get elected in a partisan primary, and so that’s all you got to win in a legislative contest or Congress.

You know, there’s only 20 seats, 30 seats in the country that are absolutely up for grabs on a routine basis. And so, if you win the primary, you’re in, you’re good to go.

LAUREN GILGER: And primary voters are going to be a very different audience.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: It’s a hugely different audience because it’s 15% of Democrats participate in Democratic primaries —

LAUREN GILGER: Fifteen percent, that’s it?

CHUCK COUGHLIN: That’s it.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: And 20% of Republicans participate in a Republican primary. And so, that’s of everybody, that’s the whole universe.

LAUREN GILGER: Sure.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: But that’s a very different audience from a general election audience where you have, you know, this fall, we’ll have 75% of the electorate will participate in the general election. And so, you know who your audience is. It’s not a general election audience in a primary. You’re just talking to a very narrow group of people who are all similarly motivated by certain ideas or prejudices. And so, that’s who you got to go recruit.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. But, I mean, so does that mean these kinds of overtly racist attacks are going to be more common in a primary?

CHUCK COUGHLIN: For the time being, yeah, until we shake ourselves out of this cycle, which I think will happen in ’28 or ’32. We’ll get back to some kind of normal narrative about, you know, that Judeo-Christian ethic of, why are we here? We’re here to help our neighbor. We’re here to —

LAUREN GILGER: What’s the purpose of government?

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Right. What is the purpose of governing?

LAUREN GILGER: Why do you run for office?

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Right. Am I just trying to prove myself right?

LAUREN GILGER: I mean, what did you make of this ad attacking Kimberly Yee, which is so overtly about her ethnicity?

CHUCK COUGHLIN: You know, it’s, I’m not surprised by it. I’m really not surprised, you know, that somebody would go to that length to out her, a statewide elected official, somebody who’s been elected statewide twice.

LAUREN GILGER: Right.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: And has had a — she was the majority whip, I think, in the state Senate. So, she’s had a long career. So, you know, I know her, but it doesn’t surprise me that somebody tries to use that in a way to exclude her from a normal discussion, particularly in a primary. I mean, it’s feeding that narrative.

LAUREN GILGER: So, if you were the candidate, or you’re advising the candidate, as I know you’ve done many times in the past, like, what should the response be? Because as you say, if the point is to exclude that candidate from the discussion about real issues, do you ignore it?

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Well, that’s why I don’t run candidate campaigns anymore, because I can’t do that. I can’t participate — it’s a violation of my own code, even though I’ve been guilty of it in the past, let’s be clear about that. But I just can’t do that anymore.

And so, my advice to a Yee would be to say, "This is completely unacceptable." I would go right at it and talk about my career, my background, my lineage. I would go right into that, and I’d use it to get back to my campaign. I mean, that’s the goal in a campaign. Every question you get asked should lead right back to why you are the best candidate. So, you’d bridge to that message.

LAUREN GILGER: Is that harder and harder to do today, Chuck, because so much of politics is bogged down in either, you know, racist attacks or personal attacks, or, you know, if it’s not about the real policy issues, it’s about, you know, talking points, it’s about culture wars issues, issues that often don’t even — the office you’re being elected to don’t have any impact on?

Gage Skidmore/CC BY 2.0

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Those have become the talking points.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, but if you want to run a campaign about issues, can you do it?

CHUCK COUGHLIN: You can’t. No, no. It’s done. I mean, that’s why you can’t do this anymore. I mean, we’ll have a general election this fall for governor. I wrote a blog about this the other day. With all these issues, hugely important issues on the table, none of them will be talked about. The public is not being served anymore by the narrative arcs of these partisan political campaigns.

LAUREN GILGER: But one of the things you point out, Chuck, is that the public does seem to care about those actual issues: education, water, healthcare. Why are those not hitting home for candidates, and why are candidates not focusing on those things? When you go to the voters directly, they will say, "Yes, we care about —"

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Yeah, right. We’ve done that, right? We’ve had four elections for Valleywise here in the Valley.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, like issues that end up on the ballot.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: That support that. Jan Brewer increased the sales tax to bail out the state in a deficit situation. We’ve had transportation elections here in Maricopa County that are hugely supported, you know, and win general elections.

But that’s not what this is about anymore. It’s not about those issues anymore. Those issues don’t get talked about because they don’t feed that narrative arc of a primary campaign. And as we’ve said, 80% of elected officials get elected in partisan primaries outright.

You don’t have a general election. So, the two parties, with the amount of money that’s involved in politics these days, the two parties — and the Supreme Court just augmented this in their decision the other day and said, "Hey, you can give as much money to the party as you want, and that party can actually coordinate your campaign, with your campaign, to coordinate your message."

LAUREN GILGER: I mean, there — so, let’s talk about, before I let you go, if there’s any coming back, right? You mentioned at the beginning that this might be cyclical, but it’s also obviously also about the brand of politics that President Trump has brought into the political spectrum in the last decade.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Right. Well, I think, I’m with you. I think most voters are being exhausted by this. I mean, we tried in the last cycle to run an open primary campaign, Proposition 140. We got 41% of the electorate to agree with that. So, there’s hope there, there’s people there that actually recognize what’s going on.

But, you know, 58% said, "No, we’re not going to do that." Those are the definite partisans that you’re up against. And then, then in the middle, says, "Oh, well, any system can get gamed."

That’s true. I’m not going to argue that, but why do we allow two parties to coordinate what our taxpayer dollars are using to fund an election? It’s crazy.

So, the ultimate change will come. It will happen over time, whether that’s institutional reform inside both political institutions, if there’s an ability to begin to message to the broader electorate and grow your party to represent a majority of Americans, that may happen, or the system will change. It has to.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Chuck Coughlin, president of HighGround, joining us. Chuck, thanks so much.

CHUCK COUGHLIN: Thanks, Lauren.

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