Recent Articles from Hank Stephenson
As more AZ independents vote in primaries, GOP eyes closing them
The number of independents voting in the partisan primary election on Aug. 26 is expected to surge this year. And with nearly all the primary election action concentrated on the Republican side, independents are overwhelmingly choosing to vote in the GOP primary.
Cheap but effective: Attack mailers once again are in season
For a dose of fear and loathing on the campaign trail, check your mailbox.
As early ballots started arriving by mail this week for the primary election, voters’ mailboxes are also filling up with another kind of election material — political attack ads.
Unfaithful primary candidates court the party faithful
As the primary election draws near, Democratic and Republican candidates for public office in Arizona are preaching the importance of voting in the primary election. It decides the fate of most of Arizona’s elected offices and designates the party’s representative for the general election in competitive races.
Election officials turn to yellow envelopes and electronic poll books to avoid repeat of 2012
With the protests over the high number of provisional ballots and delayed election results in 2012 still fresh in their minds, elections officials are taking steps to ensure the 2014 election is not a repeat.
Feisty debate: Democratic legislative candidates duke it out in central Phoenix bar
In downtown Phoenix’s Democratic stronghold of Legislative District 24, House Minority Leader Chad Campbell is stepping down from the post he has held for the past eight years as one of the district’s two representatives. That is creating a power vacuum and a bitter battle between two Democrats vying to replace him.
Republican fundraising in CD1 can’t keep up with Kirkpatrick’s
Democratic U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick’s fundraising for the past three months dwarfed that of the three Republicans vying for the chance to run against her in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District.
From New York to Los Angeles: Kwasman gaffe gets national attention
Republican congressional candidate Adam Kwasman is garnering all the wrong kind of national headlines after telling a TV news reporter yesterday that he saw “fear in (the) faces” of children who he thought were being bused to an immigration holding facility in Oracle.
National Dems see chance to flip AZ Senate blue, but local Dems are skeptical
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is saying that the Arizona Senate is ripe to flip from red to blue, and that the House of Representatives won’t be too far behind.
In crowded AZ LD20 House race, Seel is the favorite of precinct committeemen
At the state Capitol, Republican Rep. Carl Seel isn’t always treated with deference by his colleagues. Seel is the only Republican in the House who is not a freshman and does not hold a position in leadership or a committee chairmanship. He formerly was chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, but had that role was stripped from him in 2013.
Campaigning on a shoestring: Getting elected in AZ without spending big bucks
The Arizona Capitol Times asked some of the best, and cheapest, political consultants in the business about how to win a campaign for public office on a shoestring budget.
Brewer’s IE committee raised $742,000 to aid backers of Medicaid expansion
Candidates aren’t the only ones amassing money — an independent expenditure committee that Gov. Jan Brewer established last year to defend her legislative allies has raised nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.
Hallman outraises competitors in Treasurer’s race
In the race to become Arizona’s next state treasurer, one Republican candidate has already run his political committee into debt, while another is spending his money nearly as fast as it is arriving.