The following is an AZPM original production.

(Upbeat Music) Welcome to this latest edition of The Press Room from the radio studios of AZPM.

I'm your host, Steve Goldstein.

Coming up here in a few minutes, a panel of journalists joins me to talk about the week's news, including the passing of Congressman Raul Grijalva.

But first, we turn to Proposition 414, which would have raised Tucson sales tax to increase funding for police, fire, and affordable housing plans, but it was defeated by nearly 40 points.

Here with me to discuss some of that is Michael Guymon, president and CEO of the Tucson Metro Chamber, which was opposed to Proposition 414.

Michael, welcome to the Press Room Thank you, Steve.

Happy to be here.

I wanna get into some of the details again of why the Chamber was opposed and what might be next.

But first of all, 40 points.

When people were thinking about this, I don't think anyone imagined it would win or lose by 40 points.

What do you make of that?

- Yeah, we didn't even there, Steve, quite frankly.

We were doing some back of the napkin type of math, seeing the returns come in every day and the number of Democrats, number of Republicans, number of Independents, and that back of the napkin math kind of put us at closer to four to 10 points, not 40.

But I think that really just demonstrates that it doesn't matter what your philosophy is or what you are focused on, you didn't like this.

Democrats, Independents, Republicans, all must have been against it.

They all must have been against it, exactly.

And I think what we'll also find out is that it probably failed in every single ward as well.

We'll probably get some of those numbers next week, but it probably also failed in every single, all six wards.

So a few weeks ago, we had a pro and a con discussing Prop 414, and there were some things brought up, but remind our viewers and our listeners why the Chamber was opposed to it in this form.

Yeah, sure, Steve.

So up until the council decided to place this on the ballot, we were having conversations with them.

We asked them actually a number of questions about, we knew that this was kind of coming down the pike, so we asked them questions about budgeting, about priorities, about what this would mean, and we've always had those conversations with them.

But once they made the decision to place this on the ballot, then our members came to us and said, "Okay, enough is enough.

"This would take us to the highest sales tax of any major community in the state of Arizona.

This is a really regressive tax that would be placed on the burdens and the shoulders "of seniors and low-income individuals in the state."

And this also, in their opinion, in our members' opinion, and ultimately our board's opinion and the Chamber's opinion as a whole, a lot of this was focused on police.

So 65% was focused on funding police.

And the conversations that we were having were, look, the police is a charter-mandated priority.

We should have been addressing these already.

And those were the conversations that we were having.

I mean, I could show you the letters and the conversations that we were having about making sure that we address police before we take actions like this.

Have you heard from either representative for the Mayor or representatives of the council to say, "Hey, we may not admit that this did not go the way we wanted to, but we really need stakeholders to come to the table on this and figure out what needs to be done next?"

Because whether the police are in the charter or not, police, fire, affordable housing, unhoused planning.

These are things that, if in fact there's money for it, and who knows if there is at this point, those are things that the public probably thinks are priority.

So how do you get the groups together again to lick their wounds and say, "Hey, listen, we need to move forward on this?"

I think that's the appropriate next step, Steve, because we've always wanted to have a conversation.

We've had the conversation in the past.

In fact, it's kind of funny, the Chamber back in 2016 had a budget committee and met quarterly with the city manager to talk about the budget.

And we're one constituent group, and we recognize that.

So they're gonna be hearing from a lot of different interests on this, especially after post-414.

And there's gonna be a lot of different conversations about what maybe the priority should be.

When it comes to affordable housing and homelessness, I actually think that's more of a regional conversation.

Those decisions and those positions and those issues don't stop at the border.

Police and fire, you could make an argument that it kind of does, right?

The city has a police and fire department.

That does stop at the city limits.

But homelessness, housing affordability, those are regional issues, and we need to make sure that we have regional conversations to come up with the right solutions.

So about a minute and a half left.

So I saved kind of a big question for last.

As we're seeing the uncertainty that comes with the Trump administration at this point, whether it's holding back on grants or whether it's, they're obviously not big fans of big government, let's put it that way.

Does that concern you going forward in terms of what Tucson and the metro area are gonna have to deal with after a no vote on something like this?

Because one would think that less money will be coming from the federal government for any sort of projects.

Does that make it even more incumbent upon the Tucson community and groups like the Chamber to get together and say, okay, this doesn't mean we're gonna spend willy-nilly, but it means we may have to prioritize how we spend because we're not gonna get as much money as we have been getting.

Yeah, and look, who really knows what is gonna happen?

Right, fair.

There's obviously a lot of conversations.

We're actually going to DC to talk with our representati and our senators next month to have those conversations, to get a better understanding of the differences between what could happen at the Congress level, what is happening at the Trump administration level, how that would ultimately affect Tucson.

I mean, we wanna have conversation about the future of those dollars.

So we're going to engage in those conversations.

But as it relates to Tucson, yes, we certainly want to make sure that with a $2.4 billion budget at the city, a very similar budget at the county, finding the dollars within those budgets to make sure that we're addressing our priorities, which in the city's case, it's public safety, it's transportation infrastructure, and it's parks and recreation.

Okay, Michael Guymon, President of the Tucson Metro Chamber.

Thanks for joining us on The Press Room.

Thank you so much, Steve.

Appreciate it.

And The Press Room continues after this.

See the AZPM special Death Behind Bars at a free screening on Tuesday, March 18.

Join AZPM News and AZ Luminaria at 5:30 in the Modern Languages Building on the U of A campus.

For the free screening, followed by a panel discussion with the journalists and producers about the systemic failures, human stories, and what's being done about the deaths at the Pima County Jail.

For more information and to reserve your spot, visit azpm.org slash Death Behind Bars.

And welcome back to The Press Room.

I'm your host, Steve Goldstein.

You're on my distinguished panel of journalists, Paul Ingram of the Tucson Sentinel, Steve Jess of AZPM, and Natalie Robbins of the Tucson Sentinel.

Thank you all for being here.

So until Friday-- I'm sorry, until Thursday afternoon, I wasn't exactly sure we were going to start with.

And then, unfortunately, Congressman Raul Grijalva passed away.

He'd been fighting cancer for at least a year at this point.

And hadn't been spending much time in Congress.

We're going to leave politics mostly out of this conversation.

We might get to it near the end of this part.

But Natalie, let me ask you.

I'm going to sort of go generationally and people who've dealt with Congressman Raul either as a human or from a journalistic level.

How important a figure, ultimately, was he in Southern Arizona, not just over the past couple of decades in Congress, but all the things he did in this community?

he's an icon, you know?

I remember going to visit him in Washington when I was a little girl, and he was very gracious.

And that mustache and those glasses were just iconic.

I mean, he had it on his campaign signs.

He really was such a figure of good in the community and somebody that everybody knew and everybody kind of trusted.

I think he leaves behind a really incredible legacy.

Paul, what comes to mind for you generally with him?

Well, I mean, he was great.

I mean, I remember being very, you know, new to journalism, and I needed to talk to a congressman, and I reached out to his office, and he was like, "Yeah, sure."

And we sat in a conference room with a Historic Y, and he let me pepper him with questions for a long time.

And one of his aides actually came in and was like, "Congressman, we need to go."

He's like, "Give me a minute.

I need to finish with Paul here."

And he was really great about that.

He was great to talk to and always easy to get into touch with and to talk about stuff.

And he was really important to local owners in the politics.

He was involved in so many things that are really important that are still ongoing.

Yeah.

So Steve, first memory is to come to mind about Congressman Grijalva.

Less than a week after Donald Trump was sworn into office the first time watching him on, I think, C-SPAN, trying to introduce a resolution of impeachment for Donald Trump.

He wasn't necessarily wrong, but he was certainly early.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So I think he was the first Democrat to call for Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race, was he not?

Yeah, he was early.

After the debate performance, yeah.

So Paul, let's talk specifically about ...

I'm going to throw a few topics out specifically.

How about environmentalism?

He really seemed to be someone who was such a leader.

We know, obviously, leading a committee in Congress, but how much of an impact did he have as a leader as far as protecting lands and whether it comes to mind or other things?

Sure.

I mean, he was really, really integral to the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan when he was working with the Pima County Supervisors.

He was the one who built it.

That's something that's really saved thousands and thousands of acres of land, has made Tucson's development smarter, has allowed for development without actually just completely tearing through all the desert that we really love and care for.

And then, yeah, I mean, we really have to acknowledge how much he did as the head of the Natural Resources Committee.

Natural Resources Committee, yeah.

Thank you.

He spent a lot of time there doing a lot to protect public lands, doing a lot to protect public lands.

And I'll also think about, like on border stuff, I mean, he was somebody who was very integral in trying to challenge the Trump administration about how they built the border wall and how much they used federal lands to just quickly develop as much as they could.

So he always tried to protect public lands and it did a lot of good.

Yeah.

Steve, I've spent a lot of my life in Maricopa County.

When I think of Southern Arizona and someone who really is the epitome of Southern Arizona politics, I always think of Congressman Grijalva.

Is that how you think of him as well?

Well, of course, being in Tucson, you have a lot more people to choose from since we have a whole city government.

But yeah, Raul Grijalva was also, I think, the voice, the articulate and very fierce voice of a branch of politics that doesn't get taken seriously, which is the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

And it's often dismissed as wing nuts, lefties, people who are out in left field, et cetera, to name your phrase, but people had to take Raul Grijalva seriously.

Yeah.

Natalie, that's an interesting point too.

He was such a leader in that and he was not some, I mean, I suppose maybe earlier in his career, he could be characterized as a bomb thrower.

He certainly was not over the past 15 to 20 years.

He was someone who really got things done for that side of the aisle.

Totally.

He was, I think he was the first Democrat in Congress to endorse Bernie Sanders for president in 2015.

I mean, he was a real progressive, really stood up for the working man, I think.

And in that way, he represented his district perfectly, I think.

So what's the, you know, we sort of talked about legacy for a few minutes.

Paul, when you think of what is the gap, what is the loss there, whether it's actually being in Congress or just mentorship, I want to think of a better term than coattails, but folks who are kind of following in his tradition.

Is there such a tradition that will be followed?

I mean, I think there is.

There's lots of people who spent a lot of time under his wing who are now really involved in local politics.

I mean, you have, of course, his daughter, Adelita Grijalva, who's in the Pima County supervisors.

You've also got like Cam Juarez, who we quoted in our story.

He was somebody who worked at, you know, who was in charge of TUSD for a bit for their board.

You know, you see lots of people and you always see one of the things that sort of struck me in the comments that we got yesterday was how many people did talk about him being a mentor of him reaching out, connecting with people, helping them and really encouraging them to do work in local politics.

Lane Santa Cruz for Tucson being another great example.

So you see a whole generation, almost actually almost two generations at this point of people who grew up with the idea that, you know, showing how to how to work in local politics.

And you even see somebody like Juan Ciscomani who talked about how much, you know, that role helped him, you know, to become, you know, Arizona's new Congressman.

So I think it's I think it's a real loss.

But I think there are a lot of people who will understand the lessons that he taught and are going to do that for the next generation.

Yeah.

Steve, let's spend a couple of minutes on the politics of this.

That district is not going to be represented for several months now because of the special election.

There are certain rules.

We're going to have to wait for that.

Do you expect because of the way these things work and because House seats, depending on redistricting, can someone can hold that seat for a very long time?

Do you expect this to be a kind of a bloody battle for the Democratic nomination in a few months?

It could very well be.

Two of the names that have come up as potential replacements are, of course, Raul's daughter, Adelita, and the current Mayor of Tucson, Regina Romero.

You know, the two of them could could very well battle this battle for the seat.

And there may be others as well who try to get the Democratic nomination.

I'm sure there will be a Republican nominee.

There always is.

And in fact, it may be the Republicans best shot.

Not saying they'll win it, but it may be the Republicans best shot in years to grab that congressional seat.

Natalie, it's it's idle speculation, but let's say that because of the way this district is drawn, that it does end up being a Democratic seat.

Would you think it's going to be someone who is sort of under from the from the Grijalva tree of some sort?

Or could it be another Democrat who comes from a different perspective?

I'm not saying she's going to run, but of course, Alma Hernandez made a lot of noise and she's from a slightly different wing of the Democratic Party in Southern Arizona.

Right.

I mean, it's tough to say I I don't know that Tucson has gotten maybe more conservative over time or if it's gotten more progressive.

I think, you know, I think that somebody who kind of had Grijalva's unofficial stamp of approval probably has a huge advantage already in the campaign.

Paul final thoughts on that?

Yeah, actually, I think that's a great point.

I mean, I think that somebody who is already kind of under the as people say, the Grijalvista wing probably is going to do a lot better in those politics.

They're going to have a lot more support.

They're going to have people who really wanting to help them retain Rauls seat.

So I think that's going to be that'd be a major advantage.

And I see that that that person doing pretty well.

So we started the program, my conversation with Michael Guymon at the Tucson Metro Chamber about Prop 414.

So so what what happened there, Natalie?

It's one of those things where I think initially I'm saying this to someone who's here a couple of days a week.

So I'm not some expert.

It seemed like early on in the campaign, maybe maybe yes, would win by a little bit.

Let's I'm going to say five to seven points.

Then it started to think things were swinging a bit.

OK, maybe no is going to win by a few points by 40 points.

So what do you make of the folks you've talked to why this happened?

I know it was kind of a stunning defeat.

And I think that this proposition did something that's incredibly difficult, which is unite a ton of different factions of people.

I mean, the Pima County Republican Party, the Tucson Democratic Socialists of America, the Green Party, you know, the the Chamber of Commerce all came out against this.

And that's probably the first time in history that they've all agreed on something which is I think, you know, I spoke with I heard Paul Cunningham on election night saying that people are just tired of opening their wallets.

And I think that, you know, when it comes down to it.

The economy, I mean, people's people are financially really not in a great place.

A lot of people.

And I think that this ask was just too great.

And I think that, you know, what was it, Prop 411 in 2022 was the the street to fix the streets.

And I that passed overwhelmingly by like 70 percent.

Yes.

And I think that is an example of, you know, people want change that they can see.

They want they drive the streets every day and they see the potholes and they're willing to, you know, shell out for that.

But I mean, how often do you do you call the police?

How often do you use 911?

You know, so Steve, I want to go back a minute or so to what Natalie started with was that we all know the phrase politics make strange bedfellows.

So say what you're going to say.

But I think that's interesting to the idea that let's all gather together and hate this altogether.

Yeah.

It was something for the whole family.

On one hand, on one hand, it's a tax increase.

You've lost a lot of voters right there.

On the other hand, most of it went not to, let's say, services for the homeless or anything like that, but but to public safety items, which a lot of people, I think wrongly lumped together as police, which is not necessarily the case, but nevertheless, it's a tax increase and it buys the police department a new helicopter.

You know, I don't I can understand why people would vote no on it.

Paul, what's next?

I asked Michael Guymon about let's our stakeholders going to get together again.

Are people going to lick their wounds?

I mean, do you see the council business leaders and folks saying, you know, this is a priority.

Let's find something other than sales tax or no.

I mean, I think that's a tough thing.

I mean, you if you can't really raise this with the sales tax, then your next choice is either do it by a bond or you start taking more money out of the budget.

The budget's constrained and the budget is going to become more constrained because the state is going to send less money here as well.

So that situation is actually just going to get worse.

So the question is like, what if if Tucson, one of the things about for Tucson police department is they only got really stuck on the new helicopter.

Everyone got stuck on the airplane, which we're kind of to to ask from the department.

But the department also wanted to spend a significant chunk of change on buying new vehicles.

They have a lot of vehicles that have, you know, they're way over their mileage.

They're getting to the point where some of them are dangerous.

And that's a problem that the TPD is going to have to figure out how to fix.

And that's going to cost a significant chunk of money.

So something is going to have to get cut or something, you know, somebody is going to lose on this unless somehow they can convince the public to maybe do a more maybe more defined bill.

Maybe that's one that's just targeted specifically for TPD.

That would be, I think, really hard at this point because the voters have said no.

Unfortunately, I think Natalie's right.

Economic issues, the price of almost everything has gone up.

And we also see that we probably are going to get independent recession at this point.

And I think people are really nervous.

And the idea of suddenly having things cost a little bit more money, just that was it.

It just it died in the crib the minutes people realize it was a sales tax.

Yeah.

See, from a political standpoint, does this hurt Mayor Romero in any way?

She was very much out front on this.

She may have congressional ambitions as well.

The fact that there's a 40 point defeat is this doesn't hurt her as mayor, but does it hurt political ambitions potentially?

Quite likely.

I mean, she'll have this hanging around her neck if she announces for a higher office.

The it's all speculation at this point.

But, yeah, the fact that she couldn't push this past the 51 percent mark is going to be on her record.

Absolutely.

Natalie, what do you think about that?

never know.

And obviously she's still quite popular.

But I wonder if you have something like that around your neck.

It's not helpful.

Right.

I mean, yeah, I think she certainly lost points with, you know, the progressive action of her party.

But I mean, she said on election night, I'm ready to go back to the drawing board this week.

You know, we're going to start drafting another piece of legislation, perhaps.

So I mean, we'll see how that plays out.

She said, I'm willing to hear from you.

You know, she said, if you said no, I want to hear your solution.

So OK.

So, Paul, you wrote this week in the Sentinel that the Department of Homeland Security is withholding funding from Pima County related to operating migrant shelters.

So correct me if I'm wrong, I thought from reading your piece that this actually got started during the Trump administration, the first Trump administration.

So what what's the reasoning behind this change right now?

so we'll go back to a little history.

So 2019, Congress passed the thing called the Shelters and Services Program.

It had another name to it, but it's essentially the same thing.

And Congress has funded that again and again and again.

And the idea is is that when migrants are released by Customs and Border Protection, they are, you know, Customs and Border Protection just drops them off and they they sort of stop being their custody.

And the problem, of course, is you end up with, you know, a few hundred migrants who have nowhere to go and all of a sudden dropped off on the street.

And so, you know, Congress didn't want to see that happen.

So they created this program.

And so the localities could actually pay for shelter and services to protect people.

And they kept doing this year after year after year.

County got involved, heavily involved in this program and created their own shelter through Casa Alitas and Catholic Community Services and actually started really running this.

So now we're here in January.

The county decided to shutter the because there weren't enough people showing up.

And Jan Lesher, who's the Pima County Administrator, essentially said we're worried about whether or not we'll be paid for these future bills because the Trump administration has said that they probably won't pay for these things.

So we should stop spending money.

Now, what's clear what happened now is that the county has actually asked the government to pay for the money that has already been spent.

So it's a reimbursement.

And the government is refusing to pay those bills.

The government then said essentially that they accuse the county of maybe potentially engaging harboring people, migrants, which would be, of course, a federal crime.

Any evidence to suggest that?

Well, it's it's about the way the system works.

These are, again, people who are legally processed by Customs and Border Protection who released on their own recognizance so that they could seek asylum.

So the question, of course, is is that harboring?

No, of course, that's not harboring.

It's not illegal to do that.

That's something that Customs was doing because they fundamentally did not have the space to hold the people that they were processing.

So they're releasing them as part of the price, part of the federal process.

This is all a legal process that's built in this system.

And it's been something that's actually been going on for a lot longer.

I mean, it happened much during the Trump administration.

It happened during the Obama administration, too, just a significantly lower level of people.

So, Steve, it sounds like sort of the Trump administration hyperbole.

And we also had that on tariffs or having all sorts of stuff.

A lot of fun with uncertainty.

Yeah.

And it sounds like somebody who made this decision has been reading from the Great Replacement Theory playbook because they're literally accusing Pima County of attracting undocumented immigrants to the country.

The theory being that they could become new Democratic voters.

I don't know.

Even though that doesn't happen, there are people who believe this.

Elon Musk spelled it out last week, in fact, in an interview.

And there are people who take that seriously.

And some of them apparently want to take a look at Pima County's expenses thinking that the Great Replacement Theory was at work here in the way the county ran those shelters.

Yeah, Paul, there is a complicated dynamic here, right?

Because you have to have people who are doing practical things on a daily basis and yet they're hearing this hyperbolic stuff everywhere.

Yeah.

And you know, it comes down to it.

I mean, you the person who actually submitted the letters as a FEMA administrator is somebody who ran for Congress in Virginia, who's you know, was somebody who ran and I secure the border platform.

So the idea that now they're sort of accusing the county of encouraging people to come.

The other thing I mean, as I've been covering the border for 12 years.

And one thing that's very clear is that migrants don't really understand the processes that they're coming into.

And the other thing too is there were people at the shelter.

There was one gentleman who was on the phone with with with a friend of his and he turned to me and he said, hey, can I ask you something real quick?

And I said, sure.

He goes, where am I?

And I go, oh, you're in Pima County.

You're in Tucson.

And he goes, what state is that?

I said, you're in Arizona.

He goes, he had crossed through Texas.

CBP transported him to Tucson because they had too many people being in El Paso.

So they brought him to Tucson.

So the idea that Pima County drew this guy here because of the shelter that they had.

It's just false.

It's just not how the system works.

And everyone who is involved in these things understands this and understands the process with what was involved.

It's really important to note.

This is something that's been going on for more than a decade.

This is something that happened.

It was designed or the Trump administration.

It ran for four years in the Trump administration.

It ran under the Biden administration.

And now FEMA is saying they're going to investigate whether this was illegal or not.

But the one thing that's important is that this means that Pima County taxpayers right now have a 10 million dollar bill sitting there that the federal government is just not paying.

Yeah.

All right.

We have less than a minute to go.

I'm going to switch it up very quickly because you mentioned Elon Musk's seat.

What did you make of him calling Senator Mark Kelly a traitor this week and then Kelly bouncing back at him.

Breaking news.

Mark Kelly is now going to be trading in his Tesla.

And we've I suggested half half jokingly only half jokingly that people should take up a collection to buy the Tesla and fire it into the Grand Canyon or something.

But I'm sure the National Park Service what's left of it would not appreciate that.

What's left of it.

Well that's what's okay.

Well it's interesting to see Mark Kelly going in.

A lot of people are now saying maybe he's a presidential candidate in 2028.

I don't want to get us off on that track too early though.

So sorry about that folks.

Natalie Robbins the Tucson Sentinel.

Thank you Paul Ingram the Tucson Sentinel.

Thank you Steve Jess of AZPM.

Thank you all for being here today, very much appreciate it.

And thank you for watching, thank you for listening to this edition of the Press Room.

We'll be back with you next week.

I'm Steve Goldstein, enjoy the rest of your evening.

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