The following is an AZPM original production.

From the radio studios of AZPM, welcome to the latest edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up, Pima County residents are a step closer to getting to decide whether to extend a regional transportation sales tax and a Tucson council recount is on hold after a candidate claims that some voters were disenfranchised.

A panel of journalists joins me discuss those stories and more next on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein, our panel of journalists today.

Caitlin Schmidt of the Tucson Spotlight, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Alisa Reznick of KJZZ and Steve Jess of AZPM News.

Welcome to everybody.

Thanks for being here.

So Jim, I think we thought we were done with the Tucson City Council primaries.

Very, very close in word three.

19 vote difference.

We were in the midst of a recount because it's an automatic recount when it's that close and now Sadie Shaw has gone ahead and filed suit.

What is she looking for here?

She's looking to throw out the election results and have a whole new election.

She says that the city clerk's office and the Pima County Recorder's office both messed up.

The county recorder gave the city of Tucson a list of voters with the wrong party preference.

And so ballots were sent out to folks who maybe wanted a Democratic ballot, but got a Republican ballot, or independents who maybe wanted a Democratic ballot.

And so she says some voters were disenfranchised.

As a result of this, we found out about it, I think about a week before the election, and the city and the county recorder both said they were reaching out to the affected voters.

I followed up last week to find out what happened to those affected voters and those ballots.

And the city said they're not gonna tell until they get it to court on Monday for hearing on this lawsuit.

So we will see where it goes from here, but I certainly have never seen a city council race as close as this one with just 19 votes.

Yeah, the 19 vote difference.

So she wants to start from scratch.

How many people were potentially affected that the city shot things were disenfranchised?

There's different numbers in the lawsuit.

And nothing could make a difference.

In the lawsuit, she's saying about 75 voters, and she subsequently said that further investigation has shown it goes over 100.

So we'll see what kind of evidence she has for that in court, and we'll see what the city says about whether any of those ballots were actually cast in the wrong primary.

Yeah, Caitlin, this is not the first time the Pima County Recorder's office has had some complaints.

Has that been a thing consistently?

Do you expect that to go anywhere, that, oh gosh, there's another mistake by the Pima County Recorder's office?

I mean, I certainly think that there is a specific audience that will bring this up every time something happens, but I don't think much will happen from it.

It will be interesting to see what happens if we hold a new election, because turnout really wasn't very good in this election.

So trying to get voters in Ward 3 to vote another time before the general election might be a tough ask.

Lisa, the city show is interesting.

I mean, a little bit different in terms of her candidacy.

And I don't know, I'm gonna ask all of you a little bit, anything that stood out in following the campaign or looking at it to see what actually made her different from Kevin Dahl, I would think in a primary race like that, people would agree on most of the issues.

I think they did.

I mean, I would say that her campaign was interesting.

She's out in the community a lot.

I've met her at various community events, whether it was a political event or any other type of event taking place in Tucson.

So I feel like she was definitely out there.

She's a school board member.

We've seen other politicians, local politicians and national take that track as well.

And I also think this was happening, obviously at the time where Project Blue was being discussed, Kevin Dahl was a huge, well, should say proponent of the action groups to do away with Project Blue.

He was early on, very critical of that project.

I think Sadie Shaw expressed similar views, but we just heard a lot from Kevin Dahl on that because of course he's on the council right now.

Yeah, Kayla, is there a generational difference there?

Obviously we talked a lot about Deja Fox and the congressional race.

Sadie Shaw, Kevin Dahl, any kind of comparison there?

Quite possibly, yeah.

I mean, she is significantly younger than him.

It's worth noting that Kevin Dahl's campaign manager is in his early 20s.

So he had a young team over there as well.

But I think the one thing that stood out for me about their tech campaign that was different was that she had the backing of the public power group and the Democratic Socialist of America Tucson branch.

They were backing both she and Miranda Schubert.

And so I think she got a lot of sway from them as well.

They were doing a lot of dual canvases together with the group.

So I think that maybe is what set her apart from Dahl a little bit.

- Jim, what do you think?

I think it's a really rare thing for an elected Democrat to lose a primary in the city of Tucson.

The last time it happened was in 1987.

So it has been decades since a race has been this close.

And Sadie clearly tapped into some discontent within that ward.

And one of her big issues was that Kevin Dahl was not having office hours in his ward office more than half a day.

And I think maybe that triggered some folks.

But it's hard to say because every voter has different priorities.

Yeah, Steve, anything else stand out about that for you as far as the differences between Dahl and Shaw?

No, I just, I really am awaiting the outcome of the recount if they get to it.

Because it would be interesting to see how accurate or inaccurate that count is that was so close.

Jim, final thing on this.

Shaw also filed a campaign finance complaint against Councilman Dahl.

Is that, what are the legs there?

Well, you know, the city council will explore it.

It seemed like, she's concerned that the amount of money he and his family gave to the campaign, which told about, I don't know, under $4,000 out of the 80,000 that he raised, combined with his failure to report in-kind contributions of signs that he reused, is a potential disqualification.

And I think that's probably, it's a pretty heavy duty penalty to come down on with something that seems more like a speeding infraction, if any kind of infraction at all.

Well, obviously this is a joke when I say this, but we know what a speeding infraction happened with Senator Watsack.

So we don't wanna make a joke about speeding violations.

Never, never know.

You're probably right about that.

So speaking of transportation, let's go to RTA next.

Been a big discussion about whether this sales tax extension will go to voters.

Is he gonna go to voters next spring?

Is he gonna go to voters next fall?

Will it ever get to voters?

I mean, some has to at some point.

And a decision was made by the Regional Transportation Authority.

So Jim, where are we heading for this at this point?

Yeah, I think you're right.

The wheels seem to be coming off this process over the most recent years for the city of Tucson being upset about the share of stuff that they were getting and being upset with the former executive director of the organization who was fired a few months back.

Former city manager Mike Ortega came in and seems to have, through the work of members of the RTA board and the staff at the RTA, developed a plan finally that will satisfy everyone, the Tucson City Council, for example, after saying that this whole thing was no good for the city voted unanimously this week to support the proposal in its more or less current form because they're still taking care of some details on it.

And that will emerge on Monday when the RTA board takes that vote.

They need to get it to the County Board of Supervisors by early September in order to actually get on the March ballot.

If they don't get it on the March ballot, the tax expires and then you gotta go out and convince people to raise their taxes rather than continue a tax.

And potentially if you're doing it in the November election, folks there are concerned that there'd be a lot of other politics mixing into it and they think it's better to have the straight up question and just continue it and continue collecting the revenue because then you'd have almost a year delay of not collecting revenue if you don't get it passed in March.

So it's definitely a situation where they've got a mix of transit, they've got roads, they're fixing the projects that they didn't finish in the first 20 years of RTA because of inflation and because of lower sales, tax collections and such.

So 2.7 billion is the potential total here.

Yes, 2.7 billion.

Which sounds like a lot.

In 20 years it might not feel like that much, right?

No, and they're saying that's the pessimistic estimate and if they collect more than that, then there's some of the, most of the money will flow to the city of Tucson, which I think was a sweetener as well for the mayor and council.

Caitlin, what stands out to you about this?

I think it feels like, and there's, I was saying before we started that it made me think a bit about Prop 414 though, this is very different, but it's also, this is a sales tax extension, not a new sales tax, et cetera.

Could there potentially be any sort of lingering dark cloud because of that vote?

Oh, sure, yeah.

I mean, anytime you're asking people to dish out more money amidst financial uncertainty, and this process has been so messy and the public is very aware because it's been playing out in their face from the firing to Matt Heinz coming and we have the two board members that have voted against this proposal.

So it's not a sure sale for voters when you can't even get the board that's backing it to fully agree that it's the right thing to do.

But I do agree it is probably much easier to ask people to continue to pay something than to pay something that to them at that point in time will feel new even though not really, so.

Jim.

I think you're, the one of the reasons the city's proposition went down was because you had really strong opposition from the business community, which was willing to spend more than six figures, well, six figures in an opposition campaign, and they'll be on the other side of this.

The business community is really gung ho to see this extended because of the, it will help us extend our infrastructure and it will create jobs.

So they're all on board on this.

So I don't know, there'll obviously be opposition.

There always is, but how loud that opposition will be remains to be seen.

Yeah, Steve, what are your thoughts on that?

Just that it's down to a question of approving an imperfect plan now or waiting longer and possibly see it voted down.

And so it may be a question of the perfect being the enemy of the good here.

They want to, they'll probably push to get the election in March.

And when you're talking about the RCTA, you have to say the wheels came off the bus.

That's the appropriate analogy.

So the wheels on the bus were not going around and around?

That's right.

That's what you're saying?

Well, at least one got stuck.

Lisa, we're gonna touch on Project Blue to some extent with this next topic.

Tucson City Council took action earlier this week to change how it deals with companies that want access to the city's water.

So there's this ordinance.

Certainly seems like a post-Project Blue ordinance, but explain this to us.

What do you make of it?

Well, I think it's pretty directly a Project Blue follow, I guess, when there was that unanimous vote for Mayor and City Council earlier this month to reject Project Blue and sort of sever communication with its developers.

One of the follows to that was creating regulation for large water users and creating regulation around, you know, updating zoning requirements specifically for data centers.

The zoning stuff is going to take a little more time, but this ordinance came up pretty quickly and it does change the city's code.

It also includes pretty specific changes, you know, to what is required of somebody who wants to, either existing customers that want to expand or new customers that want to tap in.

And, you know, it would require anything to come before a vote that the Mayor and City Council, also all of that information has to be public, a matter of public record.

They also have to apply and have sort of, you know, a plan for conservation.

All of these things are like direct answers to some of the concerns that were voiced very loudly by community members over the last month regarding Project Blue.

The city has said this is not like the ultimate ordinance and nothing else is going to change, but it's an emergency step to sort of fill an existing loophole that allowed things like Project Blue to come through.

Your story on kjzz.org had a quote from a U of A professor who's obviously been, also been an activist against Project Blue, but said something about the surprise that there weren't guardrails before.

And in a city the size of Tucson in a place where there's a lot of drought, it was somewhat surprising, I suppose.

Yeah, so the other end of that quote was him, you know, saying, well, in some ways it's surprising, in other ways it's not because the idea of data centers is fairly new over the last 20, 30 years.

We're trying to figure out how to do this, but Tucson has been a leader in water conservation.

We have a robust, we have a robust system for recharging rivers with our reclaimed water, very, you know, have had a lot of community education on saving water and potable water.

And of course we have the history of water contamination in the south side.

So water is like front and center for a lot of different reasons in Tucson.

So, you know, the city of Marana, for example, has regulations in place, which as Michael Bogan described, are the result of speaking with the city of Chandler to sort of get their take on like, hey, what do you wish was in place when these data centers came knocking at your door?

So Marana's is kind of focused on potable water.

Tucson's is, you know, coming a little bit later, maybe as the result of Project Blue, but yeah, a bit surprising, but also maybe not because of just the newness of this question.

Yeah, Steve what do you think?

There are alternate sites, as you've mentioned, for Project Blue, but it seems that even if, sorry, even if a location in Pima County is chosen, they will still have to use Tucson water, won't they?

And so we'll, or unless there's some other source, and I'm curious if this ordinance could affect that as well, even though it's outside city limits.

It's hard to say.

I mean, I don't know.

You know it better than I do.

Well, I actually also asked Michael Bogan that because, you know, there's that 3,000 acre data corridor that is also in consideration in Pinal County.

That would be before the Pinal County Board of Supervisors.

Obviously Pima County, Maricot, or the city of Tucson wouldn't really have much say in what happened there.

And our water is connected in a lot of ways to Santa Cruz River, you know, is connected with those two counties.

It doesn't, you know, just doesn't distinguish it between the two counties, so to speak.

There's also the question of active management areas with groundwater.

So because the city has passed it, it is a huge deal.

You're right, there's a lot of places where absolutely a project would require city water, but it's not a guarantee.

And there are other questions about, you know, different groundwater management situations that might not involve the county, I'm sorry, might not involve the city of say, they're further out into the county, something like that.

Caitlin, I think what's said to me, and I know what you think about this is, as Alisa mentioned, there was that mention of sort of proving water conservation.

And it reminds me of, I guess when ADWR came up with the 100 year water supply, if you're gonna develop something, you know, how can you prove a 100 year water supply?

What do you think about the conservation aspect of this?

Because it sounds good for a community like this.

And yet, how is a business that's gonna use a lot of your water again to prove its conservation?

Especially we heard about Project Blue saying, water positivity, which was a phrase that no one really understood.

Yeah, nobody really liked that term very much at all.

Yeah, that ruffled some feathers.

Yeah, I mean, it's a hypothetical plan, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's a hypothetical plan, right?

So it's hard to hold anyone to it.

Plus when we're talking about companies that are backed by Amazon, what's gonna happen if they don't stick to it?

We're gonna find them, they don't care.

That is no skin off their back.

I think we are seeing play out in real time what happens with the billionaire agenda.

And if this is what they want, is data centers in Southern Arizona, I don't think that we can do much to stop them.

I think we can delay them, but we have that state owned land, we have those privately owned plots, if they throw enough money around, somebody's gonna take that money.

Yeah, Jim, what do you think?

I think it was long, to learn about this loophole was very important for the city of Tucson, since Tucson Water is the big provider in the area.

There's all these other smaller companies, but they don't have the same kind of access to water as Tucson Water has.

So I definitely think it puts a crimp in the plans of anybody who wants to open a data center in this particular area.

So then that also brings up the question that keeps coming up as to whether Tucson is not being jobs positive enough, shall we say.

And obviously we've talked about this before in the program, that there were gonna be some construction jobs, that almost everyone agreed were real, a good thing, but very temporary.

And then after the fact, I mean, is this another thing that potentially for those who are on that side of the issue, as far as well, you're messing up with job creation, is that something that is Tucson shooting itself on the foot potentially here?

A lot of folks are thinking environment first, Tucson quality of life tied for first, but then what if there are no jobs for what could be a rough economy for the entire nation coming up?

Potentially shot itself in the foot.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, I think the whole thing rolled out very poorly because they did so much behind closed doors and then kind of sprang it on the community and said, oh, by the way, we're gonna be using a lot of your water.

And that's a trigger point for people.

Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting, right?

So they realized, I think that, I think the council realized they had been pulled into this thing a little too quickly.

And obviously the citizens were very upset about the notion of this.

And there was certainly the idea of using reclaimed water was a good one, saying it would take a couple of years to build the pipeline, which again, would have been good infrastructure.

It would have definitely brought some development out to that Southeast side of town where you don't have much going on beyond the county fairgrounds and a racetrack.

But I think that the whole approach to this was poorly done.

Yeah, at least a final thought on this one as far as the water situation.

Yeah, I mean, the potable water was a hard sell for people.

A lot of the testimony we heard from was also, like I said, from South Siders who were like, we know this story of a huge company, whether it's Raytheon or Sam Hughes coming in and promising a lot of jobs.

And in turn, we have water that's been poisoned for decades.

And then the idea of reclaimed water was also kind of a sticking point as Michael Bogan's reporting found, well, his investigation found that if Project Blue were to go through, it probably would have dried up a three to five mile stretch of the Santa Cruz River, which has spent, this city has spent a really long time building back up.

It's kind of like a riparian area.

It feels like a different place.

And for a long time, as Jim noted, it was really unclear where the reclaimed water would even come from.

The idea that it would take certainly two years was also a huge question because as we know, construction, large scale construction projects don't always go as planned.

Steve, let's move on to President Trump on one of his social media feeds.

I'm not sure which one.

He said he wants to give her to mail-in voting.

So we go back to a time when he was initially told mail-in voting was bad for Republicans.

Then I think he learned at some point it was good for Republicans.

Now he wants to get rid of it again as people get nervous about what happens in 2026.

So, Secretary of State Irian Fantis So, Secretary of State Irian Fantis had a strong response to that.

What do you have to say about that?

You want me to say it, don't you?

I do, I do.

It was the first time, I worked in radio since the mid 70s and it's the first time on a radio newscast where I've been privileged to use the phrase and I quote pound sand.

Which is exactly what Adrian Fantis said the president can do if he issues an executive order outlawing mail-in ballots.

Fantis is a believer in the mail-in ballot system as are election officials of both parties based on their experience.

And Trump's latest push to outlaw them seems to have come at least partly from his conversations with Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

At least that's what he says which I, you know, I wouldn't take election advice from Vladimir Putin under any circumstances.

Although he seems to win a lot.

He does.

Maybe for some special reason.

But it's not because of the paper the ballots are printed on.

It may be other things.

So Caitlin, how important has mail-in voting been in Arizona?

Pretty important.

Critically important, yeah.

I mean, and voter turnout still isn't that good.

So if we make it harder, if we make people have to go to the polls again, I don't think this is gonna be good for anyone, especially democracy.

You know, we're all supposed to get time off work to go to the polls.

Who knows how often that plays out.

But yeah, mail-in voting has been wildly popular in Arizona and especially in Southern Arizona.

Jim.

Yeah, 80% of the voters at this point are using their mail-in ballots.

It's convenient.

You can sit at home, you can research the candidates.

You don't have to wait in line at a polling place, which is very discouraging for voters.

You see those images in election time in other states where people are waiting in line for hours and hours and hours, which is, you know, I think there's a lot of people who would be like, I'm not doing that.

So, and the allegations of fraud and mail-in ballots are completely unsubstantiated.

We don't believe that there is, you know, bamboo ballots being snuck in by the Chinese or massive effort by political strategists to go out political strategists to go out and trade six packs of beers for people's ballots.

And I've heard the craziest stories from a lot of people about what they believe is happening here and none of it is true.

No, it's been proven not true over and over again.

So going back to what Steve had to say about Adrian Fontes, don't states have the right at this point with the help of Congress, if Congress steps in to actually carry out elections the way they would like?

Yes, states are under the constitution, which I think is still law of the land.

The states have the rights to design their own election system.

So I don't know how far this is gonna go.

I think even Trump backed off and said, well, maybe I'll just try to start some kind of political movement in order to do it rather than trying to ban it outright.

But, you know, Adrian Fontes, the Secretary of State has also said he's very concerned about elections being canceled.

And other sorts of tomfoolery when in the election time comes around for the midterms.

So definitely something to keep an eye on.

No question.

- So, yeah, go ahead, Steve.

President Trump is fond of finding emergencies where other people don't see them.

He said there was a policing emergency in Washington.

He said there was an immigration emergency along the border.

I'm waiting to see if he finds an election emergency sometime between now and November, 2026.

As long as he keeps saying it, many of his followers will believe it or choose to.

Unfortunately.

At least I'm sorry, we have like a minute and a half on this, but so let's talk a little bit about voting Prop 308 in 2022.

Majority of Arizona said, yes, we wanna give in-state tuition to DACA recipients, DREAMers for the most part.

And now we're seeing Chris Mays, the Attorney General, saying, yes, this does not somehow disconnect with federal law, and yet we have a couple of gubernatorial candidates who are saying, no, no, no, Chris Mays is wrong.

Can you give me a CliffsNotes version of what's going on there?

Yes, super CliffsNotes version.

This stems from an April executive order from Trump, essentially directing the DOJ and the Attorney General to investigate local laws that appear to favor immigrants.

He specifically called out laws around in-state tuition.

Now, it should be noted that as Mays has noted, Proposition 308 specifically does not do that.

It only opens up in-state tuition to people who have spent at least two years at an Arizona high school and graduated from Arizona high school, regardless of their immigration status.

So previously, DACA recipients are paying 150% undocumented, totally out-of-state tuition, so it's a huge barrier.

It's really changed a lot, and the argument economically also was so that if DACA recipients and DREAMers more broadly could stay here in the state, they would also stay to work here and boost the economy.

A lot of questions about what's happening next, but that was the basis for 308, and it was very popular, had bipartisan support back then.

And DREAMers at that point were popular in a bipartisan fashion.

Thank you all for being here.

Lisa Resnick of KJZZ, Steve Jess, AZPM News, Jim Nitzel, Tucson Sentinel, Caitlin Schmidt, Tucson Spotlight.

Thank you all for being here, and thank you all for being with us for this edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein, we'll be back next week.