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, we'll review some of the most impactful news stories of 2025 in Southern Arizona, from Project Blue to the special election victory of Representative Adelita Grijalva.

It's been quite a year.

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

(upbeat music) And welcome to this special year in review edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Our acclaimed journalist joining me today are Caitlin Schmidt of the Tucson Spotlight, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star, and John Washington of AZ Luminaria.

Thank you all for being here.

Just as it wouldn't be a Press Room without a discussion of Sheriff Nanos with Caitlin Schmidt, would not be a discussion without Project Blue and John Washington.

But as this is a year end, I wanna kind of do an overview, John.

So what, I mean, all of you have been reporters here for a long time.

What is the impact of this effort to build Project Blue kind of done to or for the community, specifically Tucson, but then out to Pima County a little bit?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think in one regard, it's certainly galvanized local residents who turned out and organized very quickly and were expressing their very valuable disapproval of how both the county and city negotiated and laid out this project, as well as what the actual environmental impacts would be.

So you have seen the resurgence and more than I've seen in many years of a really sort of organized resistance movement.

And they've been advocating not just against Project Blue, but they've gone up to Marana, they've focused on a couple other issues.

Meanwhile, on the political side, you saw a number of different moves.

I mean, you saw the city of Tucson sort of backtrack pretty quickly.

I mean, the difference between your early May when Tim Thomure, the city manager was, not officially, but in many people's eyes, really sort of laying out and advocating for the project to a unanimous rejection of it in city council.

And then on county side, you see that there have been sort of this division of three supporters for Project Blue and two of the supervisors who have been very passionately against it.

And so you see a division there.

And then there's been policy changes too, both around non-disclosure agreements and environmental and public health reviews.

So there's been a lot that has already happened and the fight is not over yet.

There's a lot still to come as well.

Yeah, Caitlin, what are your thoughts about the impact it's had here?

Yeah, I mean, I think definitely one of the biggest stories of the year, obviously that's why we're discussing it.

But I mean, it's spilling over into other topics now as well.

There is some discussion of a detention, an ICE detention facility going up in Marana.

And during public forums, Project Blue keeps coming up as another concern, but also as people are kind of becoming aware that once these wheels are in motion, you can organize, but there's very little you can do to stop it.

And perhaps the best thing to do is to get ahead of it and figure out ways to exercise oversight, mitigate potential damages.

So I think it's kind of changed the way people are approaching topics like this for certain.

I'm also curious, Tim, the quality of life concept, because that comes up a lot with protecting the environment.

And I think anyone living in the desert would think to themselves, yeah, protecting water, protecting energy, that would make sense.

And yet we've talked about this a lot in this program.

A lot of other people talk about other places.

Economic development, that's a struggle to some extent in Southern Arizona.

So what have we learned, if anything, about the balancing act?

Is it the same sort of arguments we've heard in Arizona for a long time, economic development versus protecting the environment and quality of life?

Has Project Blue evolved that in some way?

Well, I would say, yeah, it has taken this to a new level in a way, because we're talking about societal issues that are not unique to Tucson or even to the United States.

There's this big, big money behind building AI data centers and cloud computing data centers, as Project Blue is expected to be.

And so it also kind of embodies a clash between big money and just the people on the ground, the grassroots.

And that's happening everywhere.

You're seeing projects really hit a wall in countries all over the world.

Yeah.

You mentioned expected to be a cloud data center, a cloud computing data center.

I think that's interesting because we don't actually know.

I mean, there's a lot that has been said by both county city officials and the developers themselves that have then changed.

So there's so many questions that remain, including, going back to the community side, what their next steps will be.

It doesn't seem like, oh, if the land sale closes by Christmas, they're just gonna go home and let this proceed.

There are a number of other unknowns too, including whether or not this will actually be built, who the end user will be.

It's not Amazon.

We now have a number of people saying that's not gonna be Meta.

Who will it be?

Can they actually keep it cool enough with air cooling technology?

We don't know that.

Beale hasn't built a data center yet and their parent company right now is facing a class action lawsuit.

So there's a lot still on the table.

Jim, I want you to weigh in on all of this, but one thing in particular, since you're my political lean-on guy in Southern Arizona, you have been for a long time.

Does this lead to political changes at some point?

John mentioned the contentiousness on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

There have been threats of recalls.

How do you see that?

Well, a recall is a very, very challenging thing to undertake.

I don't know that we'll see that, but I would say that depending on where things go from here, the Democrats who have supported this on the Pima County Board of Supervisors may find themselves facing primary challenges in a few years, depending on how big an issue this still is at that point.

I think everybody here has made great points about this issue, and I think the one thing that I think our politicians should take away from this is that the level of secrecy that was behind this whole thing and the long process behind closed doors of developing it was probably a miscalculation on their part, and they should be more open with the public about what they're doing.

Yeah.

And interestingly, I think that hurts us economically because in the end, the city ended up doing a 180.

I mean, they were encouraging this, and then suddenly they were holding these forums with the company where people were shouting them down and stuff, and nobody, no outside companies gonna pay kindly to coming in and facing a forum and being shouted down.

So with more openness, they likely would have encountered the opposition before getting that far down the road and not have made themselves, that is the city of Tucson, look bad to outside investors.

Yeah, would that have been helpful?

I think absolutely it would have been helpful.

I don't know if that would have won over the city and the people who are against it.

One thing that I thought really underscored this whole fight that happened in late December at the last supervisors meeting was Andres Cano, who pointed out Tucson and Southern Arizona's history with big development projects that have had very adverse impacts on people.

He actually cited his grandmother who died from beryllium poisoning from the brushworks, I think it was called-- Brush Wellman.

Brush Wellman factory.

And of course, we have other instances of the Davis-Monthan or the airport.

And so I think one thing that going to the secrecy is just there have been a lot of people who want the community and the public officials to slow down and lay out and let the community really see both sides of it for longer.

Caitlin, wrap us up on this one.

What are your thoughts about the secrecy impact and how it could lead to other projects or not other projects.

Tim's point is interesting.

Do you want to come and get shouted down?

Well, you do if you think you're gonna make billions of dollars, I suppose.

Right, well, we did see Amazon back out pretty quickly though.

I mean, I think both the board of supervisors and the Tucson City Council learned some really hard lessons in this about how to do things and how not to do things.

But I mean, the one common thing was that they were too secretive along the way and nobody takes kindly to that.

This had been in the works for years and we had them scratching their heads and acting like, oh, I don't know what's really happening.

I mean, as the Luminaria found out, what, 2023?

I mean, literal years.

So hopefully, hopefully they'll be a little more transparent about these things.

Yeah, so Jim 2025 also saw the passing of Congressman Raúl Grijalva, which led to this special election, which I'll get to.

But obviously in the week that followed his death, we talked a little bit about, just give people a Cliffs Notes version why he was so important to Southern Arizona.

50 years, half a century here.

And when I mentioned that number to him in my last interview with him, he said, we should really find a better way of talking about that, because it made him feel very ancient.

But he was a presence on the education front, on the environmental front, on the Native American rights front.

Really important impact over the years for those issues and others in this community.

And you saw that with the outpouring of, at his funeral at St.

Augustine's Chapel, which was totally full.

And you had people like Nancy Pelosi and AOC coming in to deliver eulogies for him.

And I just think his impact is still being felt, given that his daughter is the one who went on to replace him in Congress.

Which we'll certainly talk about in a moment.

But Tim, one thing that, and I don't know if everyone at this table said it, but whenever we talked about it, it was just how accessible a congressman, especially even though he became a famous politician, was when reporters or journalists called, he would want to talk to them.

Did you find that through the case?

Yeah, he loved to talk.

Yeah, it was great.

He loved to sit down and there were people who would try to get him not to talk.

But yeah, that was very nice.

So let's talk about the impact of Adelita Grijalva being his successor.

I don't think we were surprised, but there was talk for a while that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was gonna get in the race, decided against it, probably good for his career to have not done that.

But Caitlin, what did you think about the campaign itself?

It ended up turning out to be Adelita very safely, but we heard Deja Foxx was having this impact.

I don't know if that was national reporters saying that or not, but what did you make of the campaign itself and ultimately the fact that she won?

That was a big story in 2025.

Yeah, I mean, I thought she walked a fine line of not leaning too heavily into her family history and her father's legacy and really trying to carve out what this would mean for her as a politician, as a leader, as a member of this community.

I was definitely surprised that Deja Foxx pulled out as much of the Democratic vote as she did, which is certainly very telling, but not a surprise that Adelita beat Daniel Butierez in the end.

And I think we've seen her come out really strong out of the gates already once she finally was sworn in after a lengthy wait.

She was the final deciding vote to release the Epstein files.

She squared off against ICE earlier this month in some very compelling scene and something quite chilling, honestly.

I mean, to identify yourself as a sitting member of Congress and still be fired upon, I think we'll be hearing about that from a long time, for a long time.

John, the 50-day wait is interesting to me too, because the situation where we have no idea how long she'll be in office, we expect this to be a safe seat, probably for as long as she would like to be there, as long as nothing scandalous happens.

But the fact she had to wait so long, I mean, this is a tough question to ask, what are we gonna think about in a year or two?

Oh, wow, how long she had to wait, and that's the headline.

Or is it gonna be that she succeeded her dad and she's had some impact?

I think definitely the latter.

There was a lot of talk as she entered the race about her not being able to grow outside of the shadow of her father.

And I think what we've seen is very much that that hasn't happened.

I mean, she is, obviously her own person is now very clearly forging her own political path.

And at the same time, leaning into the legacy or learning from the legacy of her father, I mean, what happened with that 50 day wait was it cast a national spotlight on her immediately.

And she used it, she didn't shy away, she stepped up, she talked about the Epstein files, she talked about ACA credits, the healthcare credits.

And then as soon as she was sworn in, I think it was the first moves were really interesting.

She went to the Rally for the Valley and showed up in a remote part of Southern Arizona.

That's hard to get to.

San Rafael Valley.

San Rafael Valley.

And she was supporting the people who were against the border wall.

And then as Caitlin, you mentioned, she was out there on the streets facing down armed agents, getting pepper sprayed, trying to stop an arrest and getting in the mix.

I mean, she has really had a monumental year.

And I think she's so far really shown that she stepped up to it.

Yeah, and Jim, she's shown herself to be a very comfortable communicator.

We had her on the show right after she won.

And having seen her in the debates and having been part of the debates, but really one-on-one, I thought that she showed a more of a comfort level and that may serve her well in Congress too.

And accessibility as her father was accessible.

If you reach out to Juan Ciscomani's office these days, it's generally crickets.

You don't hear back, especially if it's a contentious issue involving veteran cuts or something like that.

You're not gonna hear back from Juan Ciscomani.

But I do think that Adelita is definitely somebody, you can text her directly.

You don't have to go through layers and you get a response.

So I think, yes, definitely a much more accessible and comfortable with speaking with the press than a lot of members of Congress are.

Now you opened up Pandora's box.

It is a year in review show.

I did not tell you guys who was gonna do this, but it just struck me.

CD6, Juan Ciscomani.

I mean, we're not taping this for anything, so no one's gonna know.

You don't have to say he's gonna win or lose.

Tim, odds that Juan Ciscomani retains his seat.

Based on what we've seen across the rest of the country, where a lot of races that were surprising for Democrats ended up, I mean, could this be a seat that has actually flipped?

I mean, we hear it, I know CD1 and the Phoenix area, oh, we're gonna flip it.

Is this, is there momentum for Juan Ciscomani?

Because he's been trying to play both sides, it seems.

Yeah, I mean, if I had to guess, I would say maybe 40% odds that he retains the seat.

Okay.

I mean, I think it's very likely that he loses it.

However, I think he's also got a good chance of, you know, things change.

Sure, absolutely, that's true.

And so who knows?

This is a fair question, but yeah.

Yeah, but right now, if it were to happen now, that's what I would say.

And it really comes down to the healthcare positions he's taken versus the votes he's taken and the distinction between the two.

I do promise, it's the only prediction of this program.

What do you think?

I agree with him, I think it's a close miss.

I think it also really depends on the field of candidates.

It's already getting crowded.

There've already been several people that have announced their intention.

So I think it's gonna be a pretty crowded race.

And if we have somebody that has some name recognition, that has a good base, I think they could pretty easily overtake him.

John?

No, I think that the more interesting question is who is gonna sort of back someone to really try to take him down?

And how are they gonna do that?

And also how much the Republicans are gonna try to support him.

I mean, if Tim's right and it's around 40%, they might really not try to throw down and keep him in office if it's gonna be a potentially losing battle.

But what is gonna be the community response and who are they gonna back?

And we have a Marine veteran who's sort of the top choice right now for the Democrats.

And she sort of checks a lot of the boxes, but I think it's gonna be a tight race.

Yeah, all right, Jim.

Yeah, Joanna Mendoza, the candidate that John's talking about has raised nearly $2 million as of the end of September for this race.

She's a very serious candidate.

And if you look at the other races that have occurred, the special elections that you mentioned earlier, the average swing in those districts was 14 percentage points.

Juan Ciscomani has won his races by less than three percentage points, the two races that he's had.

So he can only afford to lose three percentage points.

If it goes further than that, he's not going back to Congress.

Okay, I'm gonna put those in a envelope.

Commitments.

I will call all of you in about 11 months and we'll figure this out.

Okay, John, next big thing I wanna discuss is the impact of the Trump administration immigration policies.

We've seen obviously over the past few months actions at popular restaurants.

We've seen ICE raids leading to a reporter and a congressperson being pepper sprayed.

Will what's going on with enforcement, do you think bring the community as a whole more together?

Will it further divide us into camps of right versus left?

What do you think?

I mean, we haven't seen the level of enforcement in Tucson as we have elsewhere, LA, Chicago, Charlotte, now New Orleans.

And I think what we've seen in those cities is that it has brought the community together and hasn't been divisive.

In fact, it's been sort of energizing to both politicians and regular community members.

And they have really stood up and they have tried to push back, they've tried to circle around and protect their neighbors from immigration enforcement.

It's almost surprising that we haven't seen something like that here.

I mean, something like the enforcement, you know, the raid that happened a few weeks ago, we've already mentioned where Grijalva got pepper sprayed.

That was, you know, maybe a harbinger of what's to come.

But I think if it does, given all we've talked about, including around Project Blue and other issues, I imagine that community will not be divided, but we'll actually step up to try to resist that.

Okay, Caitlin, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, this community has stood pretty firmly against immigration actions like this for quite a while now.

I mean, several years ago, we were debating the use of stone garden funds by law enforcement to assist in, you know, immigration operations.

And the community threw down hard on that.

And Pima County supervisors backed off.

So I mean, I think this has been a rallying point for Pima County, Tucson for quite a long time.

And I don't think that's gonna change.

I think we're gonna see it galvanize that more.

One other thing to mention is, you know, the history of Tucson, I mean, this is where the sanctuary movement in the 1980s began and became a national movement.

And a lot of those people are still here.

Of course, they've aged a bit, but they've sort of passed on to the next generation.

Some of that sort of pro-immigrant support and advocacy that has been enforced and it has been responding.

I mean, No More Deaths to Samaritans groups, et cetera.

And apparently there's a book coming out in 2026.

Should we know about, are you working on a book?

Yeah, about immigration detention and how communities have resisted immigration detention.

Okay, Tim, yeah, go ahead.

No, oh, yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, I don't wanna overstate, I don't wanna be too reductive about what the community is because the fact is the community is very diverse.

And so like when Mayor Romero the other day announced that there was an immigration enforcement action taking place, I think it was on Miracle Mile, there was a lot of pushback from people for her apparent encouragement of resistance to that.

And so while there is a strong activist community, I would say maybe a majority sentiment in support or in opposition to ICE sweeps and that sort of thing, there's also a lot of people who swing the other way.

Jim, I wanna bring you into this, I'm gonna sort of lump all these things in together.

So protests related to ICE enforcement, no King's Day, there was a lot of activity in Tucson in 2025 there.

Obviously Project Blue, we've talked about that as far as the activism there.

Is this like a new era of activism, even a place that has been active in this before, are we seeing this race to a different level because of what happened in '25?

You know, you saw those Tesla protests as well, and those were some of the largest in the country from what I understand.

And so I do think people are definitely galvanized, to use John's term earlier, to get out and protest When they're upset about what they're seeing from the Trump administration, which is another problem for Juan Ciscomani going into 2026, the degree, I mean, they're protesting outside his office every week.

He's having to build a wall around his office just so he doesn't have to deal with the protestors.

So you're seeing, you're definitely seeing a lot of energy in the anti-Trump area for sure.

So that's where the energy's coming from?

I think so.

I mean, in addition to protesting Ciscomani's office, we also have groups that are organizing and protesting Jim Click as one of his donors.

So it's extending beyond just protesting the people we don't like, but also the people who are supporting the people that we don't like.

And this campus, I mean, this campus was a hotbed for protests multiple times this year.

So I mean, I think we're seeing a generation come up that's not gonna sit quietly as these things happen.

Yeah, Tim, what do you think?

Yeah, the only thing I would say about this is that it's all rather polite.

It's all been very polite ever since, I guess since that Palestinian camp, pro-Palestinian camp was broken up at the University of Arizona a couple of years ago.

And it's kind of expected in our politics today that there not be violence, that there not be conflict within a protest.

And at some point, I wonder if that doesn't, if that sort of conflict isn't inherent in the situation we're in, and if the, so to speak, gloves aren't going to come off at some point.

And if they don't come off, does that mean there's no impact?

Or if they do come off, does that mean it's a negative impact?

I mean, these are the things I think about.

I mean, we're less than a year into the Trump administration, and a lot of the policies that have been put in place were not yet seeing the full effect of them.

And I think especially with healthcare, especially with the economy, I mean, we're obviously starting to see both, but we're gonna really, I think, face different kind of changes in 2026 as administration continues.

And again, immigration enforcement that could come to Arizona in a way that we haven't seen in a while.

So I expect a turbulent 2026.

I hope it stays polite enough or without violence, but I mean, there is a lot of tension, I think.

And not just about national issues.

I mean, we've seen a lot of this sort of simmering issues in Tucson and Pima County as well.

Just to clarify one point, the Kavanaugh ruling in the Supreme Court basically legalized racial profiling for immigration, or detentions and such.

And I mean, I think you just can't overlook how significant that is.

That means they can come in and stop you because you look Latino, let's say, or brown, let's say, to be more specific.

And that can be, you know, if, and also we have a border patrol station here that employs, or sector here, that employs, I think, well over 3,000 agents, if they were to want to use those agents, not on the border, but more internally.

And if they were to do this sort of racial profiling, that's a dicey prospect.

Just a couple of minutes left.

Caitlin, I did want to give you a chance to comment on Sheriff Nanos.

From the context of this, when things like this happen, and he has said he does not want his deputies to be immigration enforcement agents, how does that, without feeling sorry for him per se, what does that do to law enforcement itself when they're being told things by the feds that local council members and local citizens really don't want them participating in?

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't put them in a good position.

It could potentially put them in quite a dangerous position.

And we saw people were really upset at Tucson Police Department for coming and assisting with crowd control, saying that they should be arresting ICE agents and whatnot.

I mean, so there really is a lack of understanding of what they are obligated to do and what they can and cannot do, and I don't think it's good for them.

Yeah, Jim, I didn't give us much time to talk about this, Jim, but how does all that fit into the mayor trying to do the Safe City Initiative and whatnot?

I mean, again, we've got about two minutes left.

What are your thoughts on that?

I think there's separate issues, but I think that that is one of the biggest stories that I've ever seen in the last year of the year is the general community frustration with petty crime, with homelessness, and with fentanyl abuse.

And I think all of those things are not easily solved challenges.

And so I'm afraid that that issue's going to only fester more going into the new year, and housing affordability is a major issue, but there's no easy solution.

So I don't know how the politicians are going to be able to handle that issue over the next year.

And Tim, briefly, is perception becoming reality?

Is Tucson effectively a more dangerous place, or are people just thinking it is?

I believe it is not necessarily so much in violent crime rates, but in terms of the persistent everyday, well, the other day I had a column about shoplifting, brazen shoplifting.

That's not a crime that generally affects the other customers, but it's the kind of thing that people see that reminds them of the disorder they don't like that's happening all over the place.

Caitlin, very briefly?

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want to be a local elected official in 2026.

They got their work cut out for them.

John, about 10 seconds.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the issues are not completely separate either.

I mean, the number, if you think of the hammer-nail dynamic and the way that if you're going to give law enforcement a tool to crack down, that's usually what happens.

And that, I think, is one way a lot of people are seeing the Safe City Initiative right now.

Okay, that brings this Year- In-Review edition of The Press Room to a close.

Thank you, Caitlin Schmidt of the Tucson Spotlight, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star, John Washington of AZ Luminaria.

Thank you all, and thank you all for your help over the course of 2025.

It's been great to have conversations with you.

Thank you so much for joining us on this edition of The Press Room.

Back next week with a new episode.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

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