Coming up next on Arizona Horizon, it's the Journalists Roundtable.

We'll look at the week's top stories, including Trent Franks announcing that he's running for the congressional seat that he stepped down from amid controversy six years ago.

Journalists Roundtable is next on Arizona Horizon.

This hour of local news is made possible by contributions from the friends of PBS, members of your PBS station.

Thank you.

Good evening and welcome to arizona horizon.

I'm ted simons.

It's friday and that means it's time for the journalists roundtable.

And joining us tonight for a look at the week's top stories, Howie Fisher of Capital Media Services, Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Republic and AC Central dot com, and Cameron Sanchez of K, Jay Z radio panel.

Good to have you all here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Howie, we're starting with you.

Two words I never thought I would say again, Howie, Trent Franks, they never go away.

You know that.

Come on.

How long you been doing this show?

Look, as you know, as we pointed out, he was sort of forced out of the legisla last year and forced out of Congress for the point because the fact that it came to light that he had asked some staffers to have his surrogate baby.

They felt a little uncomfortable about that and the couple of million dollars he wanted to offer.

And so they complained.

The House speaker said, excuse me, you can either leave or we'll do an ethics investigation.

He chose to leave, saying, well, you know, that was easier on his family.

Like you, I thought that's the end of Trent Franks.

Maybe some appointments, some Republican administration.

All of a sudden Debbie Lesko is gone and everyone in their brother, including Trent Franks, who decided God is calling me.

And that's the irony, Larry, is that Debbie Lesko took over Trent Franks seat and now Trent Franks wants to take over.

He I mean, he was there for eight terms.

He was there for a good long time.

But that's you know, I think that he thinks that it's been six years.

You know, people have moved on.

I don't think that that's the kind of kind of allegation that it's that that you can wash away with time.

Now, I'm told by some people who are close to him that there is another side to this story, of course, and that that will come out and then it will all will be understood and he will be he will be vindicated or whatever the word would be.

So that so that everybody will understand what happened.

But I think that's a stretch to think that that can happen.

But, you know, why not?

Why not give it a try?

But we haven't heard a peep from him in the intervening to nothing.

You know, if this were basically a campaign announcement, which was very, very long and sort of very, very, very briefly referenced that issue, because obviously he knows it's going to be an issue in this campaign.

The you know, asking your female employees to be your surrogate issue.

But he just said that basically those were heavily sensationalized attacks and that he left to help his family and he wants to move on from that.

And now he's going forward to stop the woke liberal left agenda.

And he's being called by God and his constituents to do so.

I got to learn about a new interesting political figure this week.

You know, I'll tell you, look, I love how he says it's sensationalized.

How can you not sensationalize a member of Congress asking his staff to have a surrogate baby for money?

I mean, there's just no way around it.

Now, the funny thing is, as I covered Trent when he was in the legislature, he is among the nicest people.

I mean, in his own mind, I'm sure he thinks he did nothing wrong.

He was a guy I could go and question hard about his positions, about his votes.

And he would say at the end of it and God bless you, Howie.

So, again, I think in his own mind, he didn't think he did anything wrong.

I don't know that everyone and we have had him on the program over the years as well.

And he is he's he's a soft spoken, he's low keyed.

He's like a fire fire breathing dragon.

But but, Laurie, asking women staffers again, these are these are people who work for you.

Hey, I got an idea.

And and there have been other women who have who have talked about the creep factor with this guy.

I think that there was a woman who who was offered an internship by him or claims to have been offered an internship, and then he wanted to do an interview late at night at his home when his family was going, he he patently denied it when it came out at the time.

But after a while, you get enough of these stories going, and I think it's just very, very difficult to overcome the ick factor.

Yeah, and we're going to get to some of the other candidates as well.

But Cameron, does he have a chance in this race?

I would never discount anyone in in Arizona politics.

I mean, people have run for office who've done weird stuff and still gotten elected before.

But I don't think that we're ever going to forget about this, even if he does come back into the office, I think that that story's never going away.

But here's the problem.

As you say, we're going to talk about the the flotilla of candidates that has come out in this case.

Somebody with 20% in a Republican primary could walk away with it.

And once you're nominated in that heavily Republican district, absent something really unusual, blowing up, you're the candidate.

You're the congressman.

Let's talk about another one of the candidates that announced this very busy week for candidate announcement.

They were sedate.

Ben Thomas, speaker of the House, says, okay, I'm going to give it a shot.

Of course he is.

Well, first of all, he's gotten Debbie less goes endorsement, which is really important in that district.

What's funny is he is saying that he is a true conservative and yet the MAGA wing of the party insists he's not.

They put up a picture of him standing next to Katie Hobbs.

I mean, my God, he stood next to the governor.

And so that's going to be his problem is proving that he's radical enough for some of the folks in the district.

Well, that's going to be his real problem.

He's a traditional conservative Republican.

He is the legislator who shepherded through Governor Ducey's flat tax and the expansion of school vouchers to be universal.

Those are hardly what I call Katie Hobbs kind of stand.

He is a traditional Republican, which is, to his credit and also to his detriment in this particular race, because if you're not MAGA, it's very difficult in a Republican primary in 202 for to do well.

But he does he says, look at this, I can get things done.

I got things done.

Yes.

Well, that resonates, I think, with some people.

It definitely does.

He's one of the only candidates, actually, I think, who can say that.

And that's something that we talked before about.

The other candidates don't all have like Blake, M.J., accommodate that.

They they weren't elected, that they never gotten anything passed.

And he can say that he did.

And I think in his his announcement statement, he mentioned school vouchers twice and he lives in the district.

Oh, my God.

Or actually have somebody who lives in the district he wants to represent.

But is he high profile enough?

How he in that district for that race, he gets some name ID because of the fact that we're writing about the Senate leadership suing the governor.

It's Warren Peterson, Ben Thomas suing.

So there is some name ID, but I don't know that people associate him.

You know, those of us in the field know that he was involved with the vouchers.

I don't know that everyone out there sees him as the voucher champion.

He's going to need two things, in my opinion.

One is the endorsements of the key figures in that district.

He's already got Debbie Lesko.

If he could get the mayors of Surprise and Glendale and Peoria, that just emphasizes I'm not a carpetbagger, which that's his chief competition right there.

So that would be good.

And he needs money.

Some of this other candidates are going to be are going to be packed with money.

I'm not sure Ben Thomas has it.

This is where I'd be interested.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall, tapping Doug Ducey's phone to find out if Ben Tillman calls him and says, Hey, buddy, you owe me.

I helped you with your signature things here.

We know that the Doocy is a fundraising machine.

We know that D.C. does not particularly care for the MAGA machine.

So if he could come in and give him a little help with some money, that's how you build some name ID, the Lesko endorsement.

You mentioned that.

How big a deal is it in that?

It's a big deal.

She won.

I don't know the numbers last time, but it was a landslide.

Well, she I don't know.

She had opposition last time.

I mean, that that's how much the district is.

At a certain point in several of the races, the Democrats haven't even bothered to put someone up.

The Republicans have not even bothered to put someone up in the primary.

This shakes up the whole Northwest valley.

Karen.

He remains it sounds like he's going to remain as speaker.

It sounds that way to me.

And you never said anything about resigning to run.

And, you know, he can do both.

I mean, it does come into play with fundraising, but that's a beast for another day.

Well, what does that mean as far as his attention at the legislature next session?

I'm sure he'll say it doesn't matter.

I would expect, though, that in reality it's a heavy workload.

Yeah.

All right.

How he was.

I'll start with you again here or our next candidate for this week as we continue going down the aisle.

Anthony Kerr.

Oh, Lord.

Who is Anthony Kerr?

Oh, well, you mean other than the pictures of him at the January 6th riot, smiling at the camera saying, Hi, I'm here for my president.

Anthony Kern is a veteran lawmaker from Glendale.

And aside from getting a certain amount in knowing why he and Mark Finchem from being at the Capitol is also a former police officer who wound up on a Brady list for lying about some of his background.

It wasn't Brady, okay?

It was the Brady List.

He wasn't really code enforcement.

It was code.

And for excuse me, he he says he was a cop.

He was a code enforcement officer.

And thank you.

He is as conservative as they get.

Now, of course, in this particular primary field, I don't know how much further to the right you can go.

And he has some name ID having been elected from the area.

But how are you?

Forgot his key.

His key qualification here.

He's a fake elector.

He's one of the 11 fake electors who who ignored the will of the people in 2020 and put his name to the fact that he was duly elected to cast Arizona's ballot for Donald Trump.

And now he wants the will of the people to be to send him to Congress.

I think that's a problem for don't you see?

Yes.

Live in the district, which is you obviously have.

But the big lie that that Joe Biden won Arizona, this is the will of the people you know that that that those votes.

No that was all it And so he was doing the will of here's his problem he is America first but so are the other two the carpetbaggers that come into this race.

Blake Masters of Tucson and Abe Hamadeh of Scottsdale.

They each have some pretty hefty endorsements.

He so far I think we got the endorsement of of who did he get?

He got Barbara Parker of Mesa.

Well, he didn't get Lake and he didn't get Rogers because they're already taken.

Right.

He didn't get he hasn't gotten anything.

He's kind of I view him as sort of in the in the in the in the hierarchy of the America First movement.

He's kind of like the mini me.

He's underneath all the big players.

So I, I don't see him.

I would be willing to bet you that by the end of the year he'll be putting out a press release that the legislature really needs him to stay in the state Senate and he'll withdraw from the race.

What's his presence at the legislature?

How big a deal is he down there?

Well, Kern is part of the Freedom Caucus, which is the far right caucus had headed by Jake Hoffman.

And he's also the head of the Judiciary Committee.

So he has some roles, but he's not in leadership.

And he was only just elected for this new term last year.

So he wants to leave before that.

He lost before that, correct?

Yeah.

So he's around.

But I think Tomah, if you're talking lawmakers specifically, is more established in terms of MAGA in that district.

Let's just forget about MAGA overall.

But in that particular district, got lots of retired folks out there.

You got your West Side folks.

How big a let's go ahead and handicap the race.

How big a deal is it to be MAGA with a capital M I think is a very big deal.

I think in the party.

I mean, look at, you know, the folks who turn out in primaries and that's been the issue here tend to be the true believers and those tend to be the MAGA folks, unless somebody else gives them a reason to turn out something else.

You know, this isn't the general election where you may be turning out to look at school funding or abortion or something else.

And so that becomes crucial.

But again, as Garrett points out, who can out MAGA the other you know I'm more I'm more Trump Each of them is going to be digging out some some file photo of them with the president.

These will stand things with the president standing there with that stupid grin on his face and shaking hands or doing is one of these.

And look, I have a picture with the president, therefore I'm more maga does does that go ahead.

Will be interesting to see if Donald Trump comes out and endorses.

I mean I have heard both both that he'll follow Carrie Lake and do that do the endorsement of common Day because he's endorsed I think he endorsed Kern last time around for his state Senate race.

He endorsed how many any endorsed Masters so he could go for any of them.

I would think conventional wisdom would say he would follow Carrie Lake, his his key person.

But then I also hear that he's probably going to stay out of this one.

So but if he gets involved, that's going to be the nominee.

But if Masters Armada and Colonel stay and that might be the best thing for Bentley, because then the MAGA votes being split three ways versus the Toma vote, which is being not split at all.

And that's my next question.

My next question are there are so many people in this race that anyone at any time could sneak in?

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's the point.

I think people are going to be watching the polling.

They're going to say, okay, nobody's getting above 15%.

So is there room for me somewhere in here again?

You know, that's my 20% rule.

You know, the fact is that if you put more people in the race, the smaller the margin you need to actually pull out.

You need to just get that that plurality.

Yeah.

All right.

Speaking of polls, a new poll conducted by U.S. Senate Republicans on the Senate race here, interesting results, especially in terms of incumbent independent Kirsten Cinema and who she's taking votes from.

Yeah, I don't think it was a big surprise.

The poll showed that in a three way race, Ruben Gallego would lead, at least right now.

And remember, early polls are fairly meaningless, but he would lead Cory Lake by four percentage points.

I think it was 41 to 37 and then cinema was down there.

But this poll, what was interesting about the poll is that reportedly where Cory Lake loses votes, I mean, where where she loses votes are votes that are being sucked up by Kirsten Cinema.

So more Republicans and maybe conservative leaning independents who you who she might expect to come on to her campaign seem to be more attracted to the middle.

This is the at least the third poll that I've heard similar results and it makes sense because most people say we want bipartisan solutions.

We want people to work across the aisle.

We want to see things get done.

Well, what has Kirsten Cinema been all about these last few years?

Just that.

So it makes total sense to me.

It also makes sense that she would get no votes from Democrats because they've despised her even since before the curtsy when she cast her vote against the minimum wage being raised.

I think it goes beyond that, though.

It goes beyond the fact that there are a lot of Republicans who find Carrie Lake unacceptable, whether it's the whole MAGA thing, it's the whole denial thing, the whole question of is she electable?

You know, given that she she tells people, if you're not with me, go somewhere else.

So for a lot of moderate Republicans, okay, it's my choice.

I've got Ruben Gallego.

Oh, that's not going to happen.

Or I have Kyrsten Sinema who has said at least and shown some way she'll work bipartisan.

So what are their choices?

So, of course, they're going to go there.

What about moderate Democrats?

What about Democrats who are closer to the center and don't think ego is necessarily their cup of tea?

I mean, it doesn't sound like they are drifting from him at all.

I think, as Laurie said, they just cannot stand cinema now.

And I think that her move when she announced that she's an independent now, she's not a Democrat anymore, was to do just this, which is take a hit with some Democrats.

But mostly you don't lose that many because Democrats were already mad and you pick up a lot of independents and Republicans.

And so she has picked up some independents and Republicans, and that's a good thing for her.

I mean, she is powerful and she is, I mean, effective.

But this is a snapshot.

She has 17% compared to Gallegos 41.

It's a real problem.

I mean, for her to win.

What what I have heard is that she'd need something like 60% of independents, something close to 20 to 25% of Republicans, and some smaller number of Democrats, and a 15%, 17%, she's not getting there.

But on the other hand, she really hasn't announced that she's running and she hasn't really leaned into the thing.

I would imagine that she'll be able to raise a lot of money.

Not sure that the people she'll be raising the money from will be particularly helpful to her because of the nature of the money that it's going to be.

It's not going to be small dollar donations from average Arizonans, but we haven't really heard from her yet in this race.

So I would think her numbers would go up a bit.

But I don't you know, I used to think that she could pull this thing out, but I just don't.

And last question on this.

The Republican National Republican Senate Republicans, are they waiting to see what Kyrsten Sinema does of Kirsten Cinema stays in there?

Are they going to pour money into Carrie Lake?

If cinema bows out, are they then going to make that?

Well, I think if cinema if cinema bows out and it becomes Lake versus Gallego, I think they say this is a chance to pick up a seat.

But I think that if in a three way race there and you know, I mean the same thing, they'll look at Senator Chuck Schumer.

You know what?

What are you doing?

Why he's kissing up to the cinema?

Well, you take the person who brung it to the dance, if you will.

I think the national Republicans, this is an important seat given the makeup of the Senate.

Do you want to burn your money here or can you spend it better else?

Right.

Right.

Camera of the governor took credit for a tax rebate and raised a lot of eyebrows because she certainly wasn't pushing for this particular tax rebate during that.

What's going on here?

What I learned from covering this is that it's complicated.

So on the face of it, we had this bipartisan budget and there was this tax rebate included that Freedom Caucus members, far right members pulled their resources at least partly to pay for and they had a press conference about it.

It was their tax rebate.

It's a one time tax rebate for families with kids, and they included a provision in the bill that they passed that says the governors supposed to take credit for it.

Basically, if there's a letter that talks about the rebate, they can't have the governor's name on that letter.

So you would think that Hobbs had fought it tooth and nail and had to include it because of a bipartisan budget.

But what I've been finding is that there's no record of her saying anything against it.

And she had proposed a permanent child tax credit.

She said at a press conference this week that she's always been supportive of it, but people were criticizing her when she was celebrating it, saying, oh, well, you never wanted it.

She was like, Yeah, I did.

Oh, come on, I'm sorry.

Look, the budget negotiations were clear.

It was clear that the members of the Freedom Caucus, we're going to get their 260 million.

And if it hadn't gone to the rebate, it would have gone to some traffic circle somewhere or widening some highway.

So the money was going out anyway, and she recognized that.

But in terms of what she wanted, she want the $100 million for a earned income tax credit, if you will, a state equivalent of that for the needy with children.

She never said, I want to give every family with children the people making $5 million.

I want to give them back up to $750.

Now, did she ever say anything against that?

This was part of negotiations.

That's true.

But don't go and put out a video and a press release and and several states.

And then specifically as to this letter, the language in there and the Republicans sort of screwed themselves by not coming up with something better said the letter has to say, cannot say it is the not mention the governor's name.

This is a letter going to people get.

We cannot mention the governor's office.

Can I mention anything else?

She puts in the link in the letter?

If you want more information, go to AC.

Governor dot gov that takes you to a page with Katy smiling face which takes you to another page with more from Katy.

What?

You know, what do you want our Republicans responding.

Oh, they're they're they're mad about it.

They're furious about it.

They they threaten to take legal action and ultimately did send a cease and desist letter.

And she did agree to amend the Department of Revenue letter to take out the link to AOC gov.

But, you know, for all of they are angry about it, I don't recall them ever being angry when Republicans in Congress were taking credit for Bacon coming into their district as a result of the infrastructure bill that they that they opposed.

They were very happy to take credit in those in these cases.

I just think it's kind of one of those things that politicians do because they're politicians.

But but this state has franchise on on, you know, misleading voters.

But those laws didn't specifically say, don't you mislead voters?

Whereas this one.

Well, but again it was poorly worded.

Well yeah that's the only way to say Coffman's fault for not saying and you can't put up a video doing this and you can't do.

So what's often going to do about this?

Oh, well, other than, you know, you know, you know, threatening letter from Cory lying high for a lawsuit to follow the Department of Revenue director is liable for $20 million costs personally for having used state resources for political purposes.

And the fact that she's changed it.

The attorney general's not going to do anything about it.

If they sue, I think they're just going down a rabbit hole.

But look, they got actually, the funny thing is they actually got more publicity about their role in this because of the fact because you had the headlines, you had front page stories in the Lake Havasu paper.

Hobbs claims credit for tax rebates she never wanted.

All right.

Your headline, Howie.

Yes, I know.

Yeah, we got a lawmaker.

We get we're in a time here.

We got five minute, 4 minutes left or something along those lines.

And I got to get to this one because I don't quite understand this one.

There's a lawmaker out there who's posting a photo of a ballot, and it's it's a curious ballot.

Do you want to take this one?

Cameron?

I'll take a look at it.

So Senator Justine Ward, Zach, she's in the Tucson area and she posted a photo on Twitter that was of a ballot with some of the information is not revealed, but it's a ballot.

And she's basically saying, you know, go and vote and here's how you should.

And Dylan Smith, who's a reporter, responded and was like, whose ballot is that?

Because it's not yours?

And then there was a long Twitter argument that ensued where she was saying it was her ballot and he was saying it wasn't because there was clearly some confusion from her about, you know, what appears on the ballot based on where you are, because there was a school district question and she was saying, you know, as the person who lives in Tucson, I can vote on city issues, but school board issues are not the same as, you know, city wide issues.

So it differs.

So is Tucson School District Tucson Unified QUESTION But she lives in the Vale.

She's registered in the vote.

Yes.

Okay.

So what what what what's the trains aren't meeting here.

What's going well, there's there's two problems with this.

The Arizona mirror got a confirmation from the Pima County Recorder's office that she was sent her correct ballot, which would not have had the Tucson Unified School District bond election on it.

So it it appears that it's not her ballot, which would make it a violation of state law to put out a picture of somebody else's completed ballot on the Internet would be I think it's a class to Mr. Demeanor, but that's Ticketek stuff.

What interested me about this story was in her defense, as she said, yes, it is to my ballot.

It is to my ballot.

And any way I have a right to vote on this because I'm a city taxpayer, and if I didn't get to vote on it, it would be taxation without representation and blah, blah, blah.

But she didn't seem to understand that if you don't live within the boundaries of the Tucson Unified School District, you don't pay that tax and thus you don't vote on that.

This is concerning in that she this is a person who makes laws for the rest of us to follow, who passes multibillion dollar budgets.

And she doesn't seem to understand basic government and basic taxation.

I believe she's on the education committee, doesn't understand how school boards and school bonds work.

Yeah, this is relatively I would think it be pretty clear that if you live in the Vale School District region and you get a ballot that says, here's something going on in the Tucson Unified School District, something's wrong.

Well, this comes down to the question of either A, did the Pima County Election Department Cortez office screw up and send her the wrong ballot?

They insist they didn't.

Complicating factor is her husband lives in midtown Tucson, in the home they jointly own and is in fact entitled to vote in the Tuesday district.

She has this bedroom out in Vail so she can live in this legislative District 17, which obviously was more conducive to electing Republicans.

It was created to help Republicans get elected, in fact.

And so now we're down to did she is that just her husband's ballot?

Is this her ballot?

Was it sent wrongly?

Is this somebody else's ballot?

And again, to get back to Lori's point is, why did you even fight over this?

You know, I mean, look, you want to put up a ballot and say you should vote this way on a Tuesday bond issue, fine, but you don't live there.

This is and Cameron, this is a lawmaker that seems to enjoy a fight.

Oh, yeah.

On Twitter, Out of Twitter, right?

In real life.

Yes, she definitely does.

But she could I mean, the reporter in this case, Dylan, was asking respectfully legitimate questions of a state elected official.

And her response is to snap at him.

You're badgering me.

You're badger me.

It's like, don't you understand that you you have he has the right to question an official when there's a question about what it is that you do doesn't understand.

I have a whole string of text messages from her.

I think where she where she accuses me of things I cannot say in mixed company here.

And this is her go to position.

And we're not we're not going to let you say it because we're out of time.

How about big fella?

Panel, good to have you here.

Thanks for joining us.

That's it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us.

You have a great week.

You