Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

With COVID-19 again on the rise in Arizona and the next legislative session looming, some in the Legislature are coming around to the idea of passing a so-called “skinny budget” that retains baseline spending levels from the previous fiscal year and ducking out early, just as lawmakers did last session.

Rae Chornenky – the former Maricopa County Republican chair whose resignation capped off an election season full of intra-party conflict – admits she probably should have seen it all coming. “Now that I stand back here and look, this has ...

People don’t know who their legislators are. At least, that’s the contention of Joel John, the Republican irrigation business owner who unseated Rep. Gerae Peten in Legislative District 4.

Former lawmaker Jerry Overton, a Republican who served in the Legislature for nine years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, passed away earlier this month, the Capitol Times has learned.

Several key races in the state House remain too close to call with the first batch of Election-Day ballots counted, though Democrats, as has been the trend for the last week, are leading in early votes.

In a letter sent to their colleagues in May, a group of conservative legislators fretted over the political cost if Gov. Doug Ducey didn’t reopen the state’s economy, lamented a lack of credit for their efforts to end the shutdown and justified their public criticism of the governor by pointing to a per diem increase that he vetoed.

Senate President Karen Fann has selected Douglas York, a Republican from Maricopa County, to serve on the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, the Senate GOP announced today.

House Minority Leader Charlene Fernandez this afternoon picked Democrat Shereen Lerner to serve on the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a decision that came only a few hours after a Maricopa County Superior Court judge denied a request from Democratic legislative leadership for a temporary restraining order to halt the nomination process.

The progression of the election season seems to have only encouraged candidates for the House in Legislative District 23 to continue accusing each other of criminal misdeeds.

Outside spending in legislative races has already trumped the 2018 election cycle with two-plus weeks still to go until Election Day, recent campaign finance reports show.