Arizona’s 2005 law that makes smuggling undocumented immigrants a state crime has been struck down by a federal judge. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton declared that the law was “preempted by federal law and is permanently enjoined” in an order released late Friday. Bolton’s order has the effect of…
An insidious ad campaign in key Republican races “depressed” Arizona Democratic voters in order to keep them at home on Tuesday, says losing candidate Terry Goddard. We ran into Goddard and Sandra Kennedy at Phoenix’s Giant Coffee this morning and stole some of their time for a few election post-mortem…
There’s a line from Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, after Lucifer falls into the pit, that summarizes the predicament of Democrats in Arizona. “Fall’n Cherub,” the Dark Prince tells a cohort, “to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering.” Hard on the heels of Tuesday’s Election Day massacre for the…
Several races from Tuesday’s general election remained too close to call on Wednesday afternoon. The southern Arizona Congressional race between incumbent Democrat Ron Barber and Republican Martha McSally was one of them. However, McSally was retaining a slight lead over Barber and some were predicting he’d have trouble overcoming it…
As you now know, Tuesday night was a stunning upset for Democrats across the country. In a burst of mid-term politician fatigue, Americans put majority power in the hands of the U.S. Senate and firmed up the GOP stronghold in the House. Arizona’s Republican victory shouldn’t have been as shocking…
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery seems to enjoy playing Let’s Make a Deal, even if he gets burned now and then. In his latest move of seeming leniency, Montgomery’s letting AR-15-toting brain scientist Peter Steinmetz escape serious penalties as long as he promises to, among other things, keep his weapons…
By the time you read this Wednesday morning, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Ducey will be Arizona’s governor-elect. In October, The Center for Investigative Reporting and Phoenix New Times collaborated on an article revealing Ducey to be the scion of an infamous Ohio organized-crime family named Scott, whose illegal deeds have…
Some Democrats thought the party was on its way to taking back control of the Arizona Legislature from the Republican majority. In 2012, Arizona Democrats won enough seats to break up the super-majority that Republicans had won in 2010. But in 2014, it’s possible that zero Republican seats flip to…
At midnight on Election Day, there were no surprise winners for Arizona’s major political offices. Republicans held on to most offices — Doug Ducey is the new governor-elect, Jeff DeWit was elected treasurer, Michele Reagan is projected to be the new secretary of state, Mark Brnovich is on pace to…
Republican Doug Ducey will be the next governor of Arizona, having beaten Democratic candiate Fred DuVal soundly in unofficial results Tuesday evening. It was a landslide, with the ice cream mogul beating the Democratic lobbyist by about 12 points…
Democrat and former state lawmaker Kyrsten Sinema has kept her seat in Congress, easily besting her Republican competitor, Air Force vet Wendy Rogers. Sinema’s victory in Arizona’s CD9 flew against the prevailing winds nationally in a heavily Republican election night. So did the apparent victory of Ann Kirkpatrick in CD1…
Republican Mark Brnovich led the race for attorney general by more than 70,000 votes about 11 p.m. tonight, but Democrat Felecia Rotellini didn’t throw in the towel. Rotellini acknowledged that she was not prepared to concede, wanting to wait for more votes to trickle in. At the time of this…
Terminally ill patients will have the “right to try” experimental drugs and treatments under an Arizona ballot proposition that won in a landslide on Tuesday. Proposition 300 seems like common sense to some, but it’s a remarkable proposal in some ways: If a patient, doctor and experimental drug maker agree…
Update, 8:30 a.m.: With 96.9 percent of precincts reporting, Garcia still trails Douglas by more than two points–over 25,000 votes–in the race for Superintendent. In the Secretary of State race, Reagan is ahead of Goddard by almost five points, representing almost 55,000 votes. With over 70 percent of precincts reporting,…
New Times reporters are all around the Phoenix area covering today’s election. Below, find a live Twitter feed of race results and reactions:…
Fred DuVal was forced to distance his campaign from a local Democratic gay-rights group last month after the leader called a Democratic lawmaker a “cunt.” Robert Rowley of the Stonewall Democrats of Arizona had put the dreaded c-word under a Facebook picture of State Representative (and soon to be State…
The State Bar of Arizona has created a short video to remind Tuesday’s general-election voters not to blow off the decisions on all those judges on the ballot. The “Finish the Ballot” cartoon (below) comes at a time when at least two judges in Arizona, including one in Maricopa County,…
News on Friday that the election for president of the Navajo Nation will be postponed was clearly not what Democrats in northern Arizona wanted to hear. Poor turnout in Tuesday’s election by Navajos would likely impact the close race between Congressional District One candidates Ann Kirkpatrick and Andy Tobin…
A coalition of Latino voter-outreach groups are projecting that Arizona’s Latino voters will clearly have more of an influence on this year’s election than they have in past years. People representing the dozen groups in One Arizona are estimating that Latino voters will account for 14 percent of the vote…
Canvassers from a community-engagement group falsely accused of voter fraud staged a large-scale drop-off of ballots yesterday. About 30 canvassers from Citizens for a Better Arizona brought more than 300 completed ballots to the Maricopa County Recorder and Elections Office late yesterday afternoon. The move was a direct response to…
A Red Mountain Tea Party event headlined by notorious anti-Islamic speaker Pamela Geller went on as planned last night despite a Muslim civil-liberties organization’s call for the event’s cancellation. The Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on East Valley High School in Mesa, which hosts the Red…
The Arizona chapter of America’s largest Muslim civil liberties group is calling for the cancellation of an event tonight at a Mesa high school. Pamela Geller is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. at East Valley High School in Mesa at an event planned by the Red Mountain Tea Party,…
