If you can’t beat them… Lawmakers shopping around for friendlier districts
If you can’t beat them, pack up and move to a new district.
That’s the lesson that a handful of legislators are taking with them as they prepare to run in the new districts drawn by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.
Paton to run in vast CD1, won’t seek Giffords’ seat
Former state legislator Jonathan Paton is making another run for a congressional seat, but he won’t be seeking to replace U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who resigned her seat today a year after she was shot in the head in an assassination attempt.
Supreme Court hears arguments on Tucson election law
In a rare personal appearance before the Arizona Supreme Court, Attorney General Tom Horne today argued that a 2009 law aimed at revamping the way Tucson elects city officials is of statewide importance because the city’s current system upsets an otherwise fair and even application of municipal elections in the state.
Capitol Quotes: Nov. 25, 2011
This week's most outstanding quips, jibes and utterances.
Measures on Clean Elections, merit selection, victims rights headed to ballot
The effort to put a Clean Elections repeal on the ballot overshadowed two other legislative referendums this year, and it promises to be the most contentiously fought of the measures in the upcoming 2012 election.
Clean Elections ban a cure-all for fringe politics? Really?
A “birther” bill here, a measure to allow guns on college campuses there. Arizona does produce more thoughtful and complex legislation, yet we still can’t shake the Donald Trump-levels of attention every time we do something that everybody else thinks is stupid.
But now the business community is launching an effort many believe will change all of that.
Voters get final choice on dismantling Clean Elections
After years of having nothing to show for their legislative efforts to dismantle Arizona’s public campaign financing system, state business leaders and other opponents of Clean Elections enlisted the help of an unlikely ally.
On April 18, the Senate refered SCR1025 to the 2012 ballot. The success of the measure, which would ask voters to effectively gut Arizona’s embattled 13-year-o[...]
Vacancy-filling proposal would chuck county supervisors
Filling legislative vacancies, which now ends up in the hands of boards of county supervisors, would become totally the responsibility of political party operatives if a bill proposed by Rep. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, becomes law.
Kelly expected to announce another bid for Congress
Republican Jesse Kelly, who failed to unseat U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last year, may be itching for a rematch.
Unassuming but rarely underestimated, Sen. Jorge Garcia dies
Senate Minority Leader Jorge Garcia had an aura of almost monkish austerity. You saw it in what he wore – earth-colored trousers and a drab polo shirt. And you saw it in how he spoke – plain and direct.
Giffords-Kelly race heats up
Political hostilities in southern Arizona ceased for a brief moment just before midnight on Aug. 24, when it became clear that Jesse Kelly trounced Jonathan Paton in the Republican contest in Arizona's 8th Congressional District.
9 big surprises in the primary election
A handful of the 304 races Aug. 24 ended in upsets. Whether it was a no-name beating a household name or a cash-poor candidate beating a well-funded one, these races deserve a second glance: