Just a mish-mash of stuff that doesn't really fit into its own post. For now anyway...
...Republican former legislator Mark Thompson is looking for a return to elected office; he's filed to run for the justice of the peace seat in the University Lakes district (east Tempe).
...Rumors are running rampant that Democratic Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema is mulling the option of leaving her current CD9 (a competitive district) for a run at the CD7 seat (a safe D district) that will be vacated by the about-to-retire Ed Pastor. I don't think that it's a good idea, and don't think that ultimately she'll do it, but whatever she does, she needs to make the decision quickly - being a carpetbagger is only slightly worse than looking like a carpetbagger-wannabe.
...Rumors are also swirling that Shana Ellis, member of the Tempe City Council and nominally a Democrat, has hired HighGround Public Affairs as a consultant to her reelection campaign. This is significant for two reasons:
1. HighGround is arguably the most influential consulting/lobbying firm in Arizona (for good reason), but it is also unabashedly Republican. Having said that, consulting firms are modern politics' version of hired guns, and candidates care primarily about winning. And the city council race is non-partisan. The rumor is as yet unconfirmed, but the relationship, assuming it exists, should be an amicable one. So long Ellis wins and her checks don't bounce. Which brings us to...
2. HighGround ain't cheap. Either she expects to spend a serious amount of time fundraising, or she already has someone in mind, ready to pick up the tab for HighGround's services.
...Republican former legislator and former candidate for Congress Rusty Bowers has filed for a return to the legislature. He's seeking one of the Republican nominations for a House seat in LD25.
...Republican state representative John Kavanagh may have learned a lesson the hard way, one that many politicos before him have learned, also the hard way.
Don't tell jokes, especially those that make fun of anybody but the joke teller.
Video of him surfaced, video of his performance at a "roast" of his friend and ally, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
His jokes were putatively about Arpaio, but they all seemed to put down Latinos and other groups that have been targeted by Arpaio (and Kavanagh, and Russell Pearce, and many other current and former members of the anti-breathing while brown caucus of the AZGOP).
The Southern Poverty Law Center has more here.
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