Every election cycle, a lot of attention is paid to elected officials attempting to move up a level.
Look at the amount of coverage that Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords received during their moves from the state lege to the U.S. Congress in 2006, or that Ann Kirkpatrick received while making the same move in 2008. Even this year, some of the most covered candidates are those like Jonathan Paton, Pam Gorman, Jim Waring, and Sam Crump, all of whom are attempting the same move. In addition, due to term limits (both in the lege and in statewide offices), a number of legislators (and other "big names" politically) are trying to move to statewide offices - Verschoor, Huppenthal, Leff, Thomas, Lujan, Garcia and more.
Perhaps lost in the clutter this year is the number of legislators looking to step "down" a level (though to be fair, many observers think that the AZ lege is so low, any move away from it is a step "up").
- State Sen. Jay Tibshraeny (R) is running for mayor of Chandler
- Rep. Ben Miranda (D) (or someone with the same name at the same address) is running for constable in the South Mountain Justice Precinct
- former State Rep. Mark Anderson (R) is running for Justice of the Peace in West Mesa
- State Sen. Meg Burton Cahill (D) is running for Justice of the Peace in the University Lakes justice precinct (aka - East Tempe)
- State Sen. Ken Cheuvront (D) is running for Justice of the Peace in the Encanto Justice Precinct
- Radio and internet talk show host Jeff Farias is running for Justice of the Peace in the Downtown Justice Precinct
- And in a blast from the recent past (non-lege genus), Daniel Washburn, the pro-tem Justice of the Peace who gave John Huppenthal, then a state senator and now a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, a complete walk on political sign tampering and misdemeanor theft charges is running for a Superior Court judge position in Pinal County. Reading his campaign finance reports should be interesting. Fun, even, especially if the name "Huppenthal" (or anyone affiliated with Huppenthal) appears on his list of contributors.
This should be an interesting year with some interesting stories, and not just in the high profile races. Stay tuned...
Most candidate status info courtesy the unofficial list of candidates published by the Maricopa County Recorder's Office; more info gathered from the list of candidates published by the Pinal County Recorder's Office. Many (but not all) of the other counties in Arizona have similar lists up, but I didn't notice any really familiar names on those.
3 comments:
Farias is running for the Downtown Justice Precinct.
Thanks for spotting the mistake. It's been corrected.
In your intro bio, you wish that more Dems would move here in favor of taking back the state legislature. That's not really necessary. Voter turnout here is quite abysmal, so that a coalition of Dems and Indeps showing up in a high turnout could easily defeat the Reps at their usual low turnout. Rresiennt Obama inspired the voters on his side to go to the polls. That should be the strategy for AZ dems.
xanthian.
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