Online sigs v. in person sigs

This list was pulled from a .pdf that's available on the website of the Arizona Secretary of State.

Caveats:

"Arizona Independent Party" is now "No Labels".

I added the percentage (%) column.

Legislative races were not examined.  I'll wait until all challenges are dispositioned (one already has been)

Prediction: My guess is that while online nominating sigs are almost unchallengeable (at least according to Arizona Agenda), the Democratic candidates who lead their primary opponents in paper sigs will have a leg up in those primaries.  Assuming those sigs are legitimate, that means that doors were knocked and voters talked to (I make no such prediction in the primary contests for other parties.  With them, I'm usually wrong. ☺)

Nominating signatures are in! Ballots are almost set.

I say "almost" because there will be (inevitably) legal challenges to some candidacies and some candidate withdrawals.

Legal challenges and withdrawals are here.

TJ L'Heureux, writing for Arizona Agenda, has a solid primer on challenges here.

I will add something about challenges -challenges usually (but not always) come from primary opponents, but not from a candidate directly..  Usually, a proxy is used.  One challenge is from Steve Slaton, a 2024 candidate in LD7.  He's filed one against Rep. Walt Blackman.

L'Heureux writes about possible hard feelings between the two stemming from Slaton's loss in 2024.

However, Slaton and State Sen. Wendy Rogers are staunch allies, and Rogers and Blackman don't like each other.  As such, while there are almost certainly some hard feelings, Slaton almost as certainly is acting as a surrogate for Rogers.

A few definitions/caveats about the following list:

Under "Party", the abbreviation indicates the party of the candidate that is listed on the website of the Arizona Secretary of State - "Rep" = Republican, "Dem" = Democrat; "Grn" = Green; "NL" = No Labels, though some folks may have signed petitions for candidates of the Arizona Independent Party; and "Lbt" = Libertarian.

Risa Lombardo is listed as a Green Party candidate, though she's a Green the same way I'm a Yankees fan (I'm not).

The listing order in each grouping of candidates (statewide and Congressional) was decided by the AZSOS. 

Also, I didn't include legislative races in the list; there were just too many candidates.

A few observations:

In a surprise that isn't really much of surprise, Gina Swoboda, a former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, turned in enough sigs to be on the ballot and mount a primary challenge to Alexander Kolodin, currently a state legislator.  It was a bit of a surprise because she jumped into that race in early February (I think).

Nick Mansour has a primary opponent in the R primary for AZ Treasurer in the person of Katherine Haley.  For the longest time, he was alone in race and it looked like he would buy the nomination unopposed.

In the "I truly expected this primary to be bigger" category is R primary in CD5.  The only two Rs in that race are Daniel Keenan and Mark Lamb.  Cheeto has endorsed Lamb, and that may have scared off some other potential candidates (it scared Jay Feely into the CD1 race, which in turn scared Swoboda into the AZSOS race); however, openings in "safe" Congressional seats are rare and usually attract more candidates, Cheeto notwithstanding.

In the "back for more?" category is Republican Daniel Francis Butierez, Sr. in CD7.  In 2025, he lost/was thoroughly trounced  by Adelita Grijalva.

List:

Will Republican David Schweikert (AZCD1) run for governor?

Part of my Sunday morning routine is to watch Sunday Square Off at 8 a.m. on KPNX (Phoenix channel 12), with Brahm Resnick.

Today, they reported a rumor that current CD1 Congressman, David Schweikert, is looking at running for AZ Governor..  The rumor was originally floated by Schweikert and later confirmed by his camp.

My guess is that it's not going to happen - if he differentiates himself by running as MAGA-lite, he'll be smoked in the MAGA-dominated R primary, and if he embraces his inner MAGAt, the MAGA types won't believe him and will vote for Karrin Taylor Robson or Andy Biggs anyway, both being endorsed by Cheeto.

Having said all that, I agree with the R member of the panel on the show, who opined the Schweikert may have sending a message to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

The message being that they'll need to spend some money in order to retain the seat.

More interesting was the speculation that he may retire completely - while he's thought of as vulnerable, he's been in one office or another since 1991 and he's 63 - he may simply not to want to deal with hassle of running for office.

He personally is considered to be vulnerable (he has some ethical issues), the district, while not overwhelmingly R, isn't actually that competitive.

From the website of the Arizona Secretary of State -

Arizona is well on its way to adding another town - San Tan Valley

Yesterday, San Tan Valley, an unincorporated area in northern Pinal County (but in the Phoenix metro area) voted on incorporation.

The results are still unofficial, but the ballot question appears to have passed resoundingly.

From Pinal County Elections -

There are 18 precincts in San Tan Valley; 16 have reported and two have not (as of this writing), but I'm guessing that there aren't enough voters in those two precincts to overcome the current 2-1 margin in favor.

According to Google, San Tan Valley has approximately 100K people in it -

While incorporation would probably make it the largest "town" in Pinal County but not the largest town in AZ.

Gilbert, with slightly under 300K folks, has that title.  There are political costs and benefits to designations of "town" or "city."

And Gilbert has decided to remain a town.

Betrayal - it may hurt Eli Crane the most

Yesterday, I wrote a post about how AZ's delegation voted on Cheeto's budget bill, crafted to devastate society by taking from the poor and giving to the wealthy.

Summary: the R members supported the scheme; the Ds opposed it.

Today, I compared district size (based on number of registered voters) and the number of AHCCCS enrollees in that district (AHCCCS is the acronym for "Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System", which is what Medicaid is called in AZ) -

Voter registration figures are as of January 2025 and courtesy the Arizona Secretary of State.

AHCCCS enrollee figures are as of January 2025 and courtesy AHCCCS.

(Pic below)

I wanted to include district median household income figures from the US Census Bureau, but while they indicate their data was from a couple of their 2023 surveys, they didn't put an actual date on the data, so I didn't use it here.

Member with the most registered voters in their district?  Eli Crane of CD2.

Member with the most AHCCCS enrollees in their district?  Yassamin Ansari of CD3.

Note: AHCCCS enrollees may NOT be registered voters.  Many are too young to vote.

Member with the highest ratio of AHCCCS enrollees to registered voters in their district?  Ansari.

Member with the lowest ratio?  Andy Biggs of CD5.

Democrat with the highest ratio?  Ansari.

Republican with highest ratio?  Crane.

As promised, the pic from the AHCCCS report -

Numbers for January 20. 2025

I don't know what these numbers will look like on January 20, 2029, so bookmark this post.

Summary:

Unemployment rate - 4.1%

Gas prices - $3.125 (national average)

Crime Rate - down

Inflation rate - 2.9%

Egg Prices - down

Mortality rate - 798.8 deaths per 100000

Covid rates - down

All numbers are the latest available from the sources; they may not be for December 2024.

Unemployment rate - 4.1%

From the BLS -

Gas prices - $3.125 (national average)

Crime Rate - down

Full report here.

Inflation rate - 2.9%

Full BLS report here.

Egg Prices - down

From the USDA -

USDA report on egg markets here.

Mortality rate - 798.8 deaths per 100000

From the CDC -

Covid rates - down

Also from the CDC -

My guess is that most or all of these metrics will be worse once Cheeto's term is done, though he and acolytes may lie about the data they control.

Election Results 2024

When the Arizona Secretary of State and the Maricopa County Recorder post initial results, I'll post some of them here.  Those initial results will only be early ballots, and unless the total overwhelmingly favors one side, races won't be called by the MSM.

A few caveats:

1. They'll be AZ results only.

2. The list of races covered will NOT be comprehensive.  If readers want one added, particularly statewide or in Maricopa County, please leave a comment.

3. No state legislative races will be covered, but that may change as listed races go clearly in one direction or the and drop off my list.

4. My intent is to do an initial report and at or just after 9 (if totals change significantly) and the go to bed and pick it up tomorrow.

5. Reality may intercede and change any of this.

Cash on hand numbers are in - Statewide edition

Courtesy the Arizona Secretary of State -

* = incumbent

Only major party ballot candidates are included.

And this only includes numbers reported by the candidates themselves and doesn't include spending by PACs and dark money groups, of which their has been a lot of already.

Cash on hand numbers are in - Federal edition

Courtesy the FEC -

* = incumbent

Only major party ballot candidates are included.

And this only includes numbers reported by the candidates themselves and doesn't include spending by PACs and dark money groups, of which their has been a lot of already.

Sinema's number is included just for giggles - she isn't up for re-election this time.

Arizona"s R members of Congress don't really give a damn about Arizona

At least based on their bill proposals, they don't.  They *do* hate immigrants, government/society, choice, Covid mitigation measures, democracy/election, and, of course, Joe Biden.

From my spreadsheet, data source Congress.gov -

While the total number of bills proposed by each member was easy to determine (than you. Congress.gov); categorization less so, since that was all me.

They proposed only six Arizona-specific bills between them (with Paul Gosar leading the way, but he made up for it) they all hate immigrants with 13 bill proposals between them.

However, that number is next to nothing when compared to their anti-government/society proposals, with 44 of those.

Additionally, they each like Covid, or at least have offered proposals against Covid mitigation measures.

Lastly, it's no surprise that Gosar and Biggs, two of Congress' leading collaborators of the January 6th insurrection have offered bills that are anti-elections/democracy.

Even the fifth, unofficial, Republican member of the Arizona delegation to Congress, Kyrsten Sinema, did better than that -

There is some hope here

Maricopa County, Arizona is getting bluer.  That's significant because Maricopa County dominates everything, including politics, in Arizona.   It has a little less than 62% of the state's population, and a little less than 61% of the state's registered voters. (61.81% of population; 60.96% of voters)

Someone smarter than me might have some insight into the gap, but I consider the percentages to be (roughly) equal.

The rest of the state is purple - while there were Blue and Red areas, they roughly balanced out; however, Maricopa County was so Red and so dominated Arizona that the whole state was considered to be a Red one.  That has changed.

From the Census Bureau -

From the website of the Arizona Secretary of State -

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From my own spreadsheet, but the source for the data in it is the AZ SOS -

Roughly 1/3 of county voters are "other" (mostly 'party unaffiliated') and that has basically decreased through the years.

On the other hand, in Maricopa County, Democratic registration has risen from 41.78% of the total in August of 2012 to 46.65% in October of 2021, and it appears that most of the increase came from "Other" voters

To be sure, the gap closes in presidential election years like 2020 and widens in non-presidential election years, but the overall trend is unmistakable.