Christine Jones, candidate for Arizona’s Congressional District Five, has no intention of going gently into the good night. Her loss by nine votes in the primary election last week to Republican competitor Andy Biggs is so close, it’ll trigger an automatic recount — but Jones is already on the offensive. Jones and…
Aaron Flannery could be forgiven if he believed a seven-term county politician whose job includes overseeing county elections managed to pull a fast one on him. Flannery was the first Republican in 28 years to challenge Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell. After 309,179 Republicans cast their ballots in last week’s…
Back in November, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey publicly demanded that the federal government stop sending Syrian refugees to Arizona. But hundreds have arrived in the state since then — so many that Arizona now leads the nation in resettling the refugees. Millions of Syrians have been displaced from their homes since a brutal…
Donald Trump gave a large crowd of enthusiastic supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center the harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration they wanted to hear on Wednesday night. Forget any softening of the Republican presidential candidate’s message on the subject. Hours after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico…
John McCain and Joe Arpaio smashed their Republican competitors, Christine Jones and Paul Babeu appear headed for Washington, D.C., and Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell might be in trouble. That’s just some of the fallout from Arizona’s 2016 primary election on Tuesday, which featured contests that are being watched nationally…
No hackers, no hour-long lines and no real problems — that’s the message from the Maricopa County Elections Department so far today as state voters go to the polls for the primary election. If you haven’t voted yet, it should be smooth sailing. Polls close at 7 p.m. Locate your…
The FBI believes that the infiltration in late June of Arizona voter-registration databases may be linked to foreign hackers who stole data from an Illinois election site, Yahoo News reported on Monday. Michael Isikoff, Yahoo’s chief investigative correspondent, reported that he’d obtained an FBI warning about cyberattacks on elections databases…
Mexican-American civil rights activist Dolores Huerta visited Phoenix last week to encourage Latinos to turn out and vote against presidential nominee Donald Trump. At an August 26 press conference with several other Latino leaders, including including U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego and State Representative Rebecca Rios, Huerta called Trump “bizarre” and…
The campaign manager for a group trying to raise Arizona’s minimum wage said on Wednesday that the effort was helped considerably by his own timely loan of $100,000. Bill Scheel is one of three founding partners of the public-relations and political-strategy firm Javelina, which Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families hired to…
Talk about a win for science! The state of Arizona is finally backing out of its fight to require that doctors tell their patients that it’s possible to “reverse” a medication abortion. Also known as the “abortion pill,” a medication abortion terminates a pregnancy through the use of two drugs,…
Advocates of criminal-justice reform in Arizona enthusiastically praised the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement this week that it will phase out all federal private prison contracts. But proponents of privatization reached by New Times are equally quick to criticize the decision and to emphasize that it won’t affect state policy…
If you’re a Republican, you know things are bad when Democrats throw you a lifejacket by attacking your opponent. Democratic Congresswoman and U.S. Senate hopeful Ann Kirkpatrick and the über-liberal, pro-choice advocacy group Emily’s List recently stuck their noses in the Arizona GOP primary for Senate in support of Kelli…
Arizona Department of Economic Security Director Tim Jeffries has followed up controversy over his Lady of Lourdes e-mails by sending an e-mail to all DES staff calling out his “haters.” In an e-mail he sent out on Saturday to all 7,000-plus DES employees, the former businessman, whom Governor Doug Ducey…
Muslim-bashing conspiracy theorist John Guandolo must reckon that Arizona’s cop shops are lined with gold. In June, New Times reported that a 2014 visit to the Valley by Guandolo and a couple of fellow anti-Islam lecturers for a one-day “training” session hosted by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office cost the county about…
For a hardcore anti-immigrant like Sheriff Paul Babeu, who refers to the undocumented simply as “illegals,” the support of pro-“illegals” former Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe might seem odd. But Kolbe and Babeu share a great deal when it comes to their personal histories — far beyond the fact that both men…
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has given his blessing to the director of the state Department of Economic Security’s use of e-mail to send religious messages to employees. Paul Watkins, the chief counsel of Brnovich’s civil division, wrote in an August 10 e-mail to Madeline Ziegler of the Freedom From…
U.S. Senator John McCain’s GOP primary race against Kelli Ward resembles a sumo wrestler sitting on a walnut, with Ward in the role of walnut. McCain has out-fundraised Ward by more than eight to one. A recent poll by the Phoenix firm Data Orbital shows McCain with a commanding, 21-point…
Without officially saying, “Bring it on,” the Hillary Clinton campaign has essentially done just that by declaring Arizona a battleground state. The news broke today after campaign staffers called local Democratic Party leaders to tell them Arizona is officially in play, and that the national campaign will be investing a…
A right-wing Internet radio host and conspiracy theorist has released a recording purported to be a propaganda radio broadcast of U..S. Senator John McCain while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Rick Wiles, a Florida-based Christian minister who bills himself on his Internet webcast TruNews as the “end…
Campaigns for justice of the peace are about as “down ballot” as you get in politics, but the GOP primary race for Moon Valley JP will be one to keep an eye on, mainly because of the stark choice voters face in that district. On the one hand, there is…
As Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence swung through Phoenix on Tuesday, the fresh scum that had boiled to the top of the current news cycle included (but was not limited to) his running mate Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with a Pakistani-American couple whose son was killed while serving in Iraq; Trump’s failure to…
Standing among the vacant pews inside Shadow Rock United Church of Christ, 47-year-old Sixto Paz gazes through the glass walls at the desert landscape. “When I feel sad, I come here for the privacy,” he says. “Just to sit in silence and look at the view.” When he needs that…
