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♪ UPBEAT RHYTHMIC BRASS MUSIC ♪ Welcome to this latest edition of The Press Room from the radio studios of AZPM.

I'm your host, Steve Goldstein.

A lot of topics to discuss this week, including the aftermath of the failure of Proposition 414 and who might succeed the late Congressman Raul Grijalva.

Panel of journalists this week, John Washington of AZ Luminaria, Tony Perkins of AZPM, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel and Sarah Lapidus of the Arizona Republic and Report for America.

Thank you all for being here.

Jim, let's start off with the aftermath of Prop 414.

You did some little bit of data dive and found that only one precinct actually approved it and by a narrow margin.

So that lines up with a 70 to 30 defeat.

- Yeah, I don't know if we're using the word, soundly defeated, overwhelmingly defeated, but I think we're contractually obligated to mention that.

(Steve) Are there landslides in Tucson?

Can we do that or?

- Anti landslide.

(Steve) Okay.

I-I think it's pretty clear nobody liked this proposition very much and I think that had, I think when you're trying to get a sales tax passed in the city of Tucson, it really helps if you don't have someone spending heavily against it, which you did in this case with the business community in previous ones that had been more successful with road work or public safety or even a raise for the mayor and council, you had the Metro Chamber supporting those things and in this case, you had them opposing it and spending more than $100,000 on an effort to tell people to vote no.

So I think that played a huge role in this thing failing and you also had folks on the left who are unhappy about the police funding that was in here.

So yeah, it was a significant defeat for this proposition.

- And John before we get to what is next, or what could be next, obviously, sales tax is regressive.

People don't wanna raise their taxes.

They didn't want Tucson to be the most highly taxed city with a population of over 75,000.

All of these played into it.

So this seems like a major miscalculation by the mayor and council members.

- Yeah, I wonder exactly how we got here.

Is this a little bit about complacency, one party rule?

There's a lot of presuppositions that went into this.

They said that they did outreach before putting this on the ballot, but I guess that outreach wasn't very good.

I mean, it got walloped.

One of the other interesting things here is that both Tucson Police Chief Kasmar and City Manager told me that there is no plan B and yet here we are planning for plan B at this point.

You know, I think that they're going to have to figure out something.

They state that the sky isn't gonna fall this year, but might it next year or the services that this was supposed to fund gonna be unavailable pretty soon and they're gonna have to put something else on the ballot rather quickly.

- Tony, what stood out to you on this?

- Well, a couple of things were really interesting.

First of all, the degree of people who were arrayed against this proposition.

When just looking at the road signs in the city, you saw so many signs about against 414 and for different reasons.

And the second thing is that we're going to see over the next six or eight months or however long it's gonna take for the city to try to re-energize this issue again is issues that affect everybody in Tucson like housing.

You know, uh, people want more money spent on affordable housing than they want for police security in Tucson.

That was one of the big issues that came up in this campaign and it's probably gonna be a big issue next time.

- Sarah, you did some reporting on what could come next.

You talked with the city manager.

What did he have to say about what John says, no plan B, does he agree or disagree with that?

- Yeah well, he's said both things.

After he has said they are working on a plan B now, because I just interviewed him this past week, so it was pretty recent.

He said they have to fit some of the needs that would have been addressed in this proposition.

They have to find funding for it.

So I think he said it was originally a 13 million deficit and now they have to add 15 million dollars on top of that for increased Police and Fire and growing areas of Tucson.

So he has a very short window to figure out how to fund those needs.

(Steve) Now you're not a psychiatrist, but in talking with him, did you pick up on anything?

Did he seem extra frustrated?

Did he hide that well?

- Well, like you said, John, he said the sky isn't falling yet, so he didn't seem too concerned.

Before the vote, it sounded more urgent, and then now it sounds a little bit less.

It's unclear.

[ LAUGHS ] (John) I think it's interesting to consider what the political ramifications are of this.

I mean, we have city elections coming up very soon.

Later this year, as this endless election cycle on the federal level, midterms are basically around the corner.

How do the Democrats who put all eggs in one basket on this convince voters that they can still be trusted to take care of the problems with lack of affordable housing, some of these interesting political dynamics where they're being sort of squeezed in from both sides on this?

I think they have an uphill battle to convince people that they can be trusted with this.

- Again, like you said before, no plan B. I was surprised to hear that they put all their eggs in one basket.

And now they've got to sort of start from scratch.

Well, it'll be interesting to see what they do come up with.

- I think the challenge at this point is the city's gonna be losing state funding because of the flat tax that was passed by the Arizona legislature.

It's gonna be losing a lot of federal funding because of the Trump administration.

I think both of those are safe bets.

That gives the city less money to spend on priorities like public safety.

There's a lot in here that was capital improvements, building new fire stations and police stations.

That's probably not gonna happen in the near future.

The other huge thing on the horizon is the RTA next, which is another half cent sales tax that the business community that just opposed this proposition wants to get passed.

And I don't know that you're gonna find the city council really supportive of the RTA next.

They've already been tearing it down a lot by saying they're not getting their fair share.

So that, if the city does to the RTA what the business community did to 414 and comes out and says, "Don't vote for this thing," then your sales tax go down by half a cent.

And then the city can conceivably come back and say, "Hey, go ahead, city residents.

You just got a sales tax break.

Let's do a half cent, but we'll put it towards transportation and public safety and housing."

And that's really bad for the region in terms of transportation funding, but it may be the route the city goes.

- Well, Jim, in hindsight, should the city, should city leaders and people who supported 414 have been clear with that message about, we don't wanna have a regressive tax increase.

We don't wanna do that, but we are gonna lose money from the state and we probably will lose money from the federal government.

So if you want to maintain some of these things in Tucson, what else are we gonna do?

- Well, that was the message that the mayor was putting out there.

And again, I think it had a lot to do with the opposition can't pay.

When you're spending six figures against a sales tax increase, it's not that hard to defeat a sales tax increase.

And when you're spending that much money, in terms of the regressive tax, yes, the sales tax is a regressive tax, but about a third of it, economists say, it's not like they check people's address when they buy something, but about a third of it's paid from people from outside the city.

So that somewhat offsets the regressive nature of the sales tax, plus you don't tax groceries and rent, which is what people on the lower end of the economic spectrum spend most of their disposable income on, if you wanna consider rent and groceries to be disposable income, which I'm not sure you do.

However, that said, it certainly is a tax that hurts the lower end.

The city doesn't have the opportunity to do a progressive income tax though.

And they're pretty much at the top of what they can charge in property taxes.

So a sales tax is really the only mechanism they have.

- Yeah, Tony, massive and sad news late last week when Representative Raul Grijalva passed away after battling cancer.

Uh, and in last week's program, we talked a lot about his legacy, and we can spend a little bit of time on that, but I wanna ask you about the politics of this, because we're hearing the idea, and I wouldn't be shocked if next week, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announces he is gonna run for this seat.

How do you look at the, there are a lot of people who may be interested, how are you looking at it right now when you hear some names?

- Well, we're looking at Fontes who is, you know, an absolutely a heavy hitter in Arizona politics, and we're looking at Adelita Grijalva with the family connection.

It may be between those two.

However, there's a ton of people who really are interested in this seat.

And they have the clocks ticking.

They don't have that much time to file papers and information and that kind of thing.

Adelita says this is time to grieve, and maybe she may announce next week or a week after that.

But again, there's a lot of people who are interested in Raul's seat and not a lot of time for them to get going ahead of the special election.

- And John, I think it's kind of interesting though, potentially when we look at a statewide vote, which this will not be, this is a specific congressional district vote, that people might think, "Oh, Adrian Fontes is gonna clear the field.

But as Tony said, that's not gonna be the case, we don't think.

- No, I don't think so.

I think a lot of voters in the district have a reflex of seeing Grijalva's name and leaning in and filling in the circle.

So what I think that makes for is an interesting potential campaign.

So Fontes right now, I think is gonna be having to do a little bit of a delicate dance, given I think community-wide and certainly family grieving.

So how much is he gonna really be going on the offensive against - if Adelita Grijalva enters the race?

And what that potentially could herald is a campaign that's run on issues, which would be really refreshing, I think.

(Steve) You're so naive.

[ BOTH LAUGH ] - I think there's a chance we could go there.

I think there's probably, it seems, I don't know their relationship exactly, but if they're both in the race, they seem to both be focused on issues to have respect and practice political decorum.

So I think we could see a productive race here.

I think it's also worth mentioning that, of course, as I already said too, Grijalva has the name power, but she has also her own legacy and her own path that she is forging.

I think it's important to remember that.

It's not just the family connection as well.

- Yeah, Jim?

- This is a district, of course, it's 40% Democrat and about 20% Republican.

So I think it's a very tough race for a Republican to win.

So we are seeing some names on that side.

We're seeing names on the Democratic side.

Most of them are what I would call vanity candidates who are throwing their names out there, but they may or may not even be able to get the signatures to get on the ballot.

That said, a congressional seat is a very attractive thing to a lot of politicals.

It's like the big brass ring of politics, right?

Although I think it's maybe a little less glamorous than it used to be.

That said, yeah, Fontes, Adelita, and then I think I'm hearing Daniel Hernandez is making phone calls.

Former state lawmaker is making phone calls about looking for endorsements as well.

I would say those would be the top three candidates.

And I think it will be a tough race for those three to try to get through that primary.

And it's a sprint to the, early voting starts very quickly in this race and I think mid-June.

So we're gonna see a very fast campaign.

- Sarah, what stood out to you on this?

Actually, another thing that just popped in my head as Jim said, it's gonna come quickly and it will for those running.

This district will not have a representative for probably three months or more than that.

Actually nearly six, I think.

So what are you thinking about the whole Grijalva, Fontes, et cetera?

- Well, what's interesting is that I was listening to some reporters that the Arizona Republic talk about this.

I think Grijalva missed, um, numerous votes towards the end there and so it's kind of what we've been seeing.

So I guess time will tell.

- Yeah, and so you didn't have a chance to cover Grijalva but as someone who had such an impact on the state, anything you've read or heard that really stood out to you, because for me, he really represented the progressive side of the party.

He also was such a great representative for the environment in Arizona.

So I don't know if you have any thoughts on having covered him specifically about things you've heard, things you've read.

- Yeah, I mean, people are really noting this loss.

He's been a big fighter for a lot of progressive issues and a lot of great leaders, local leaders have come out of that.

I mean, Adelita Grijalva and Romero, Mayor Romero.

So he's definitely made his mark in the community.

- Jim, you had a chance to talk with the late congressmen.

Last October, I think it was, had a chance to sit down with them.

Any good stories you weren't able to use that you could tell us?

- You know, Raul has been a mighty force, as we've all said, over the last 50 years in Arizona.

And you mentioned 50 years to him.

He's like, "I don't really like the sound of that."

[ LAUGHING ] Long and distinguished career, he felt old.

However, you know, I think he was definitely a champion for environmental issues, also environmental justice.

He was very proud that the Native communities really came up into the environmental movement.

He had played a huge role in the expansion of the Grand Canyon under the Biden administration.

And education was really important to him as well in workforce development.

Those were big issues, but he was also an extraordinarily accessible Congressperson.

You could call him on his cell phone and ask him what was going on.

He loved to give tips to reporters.

He was a man of the people without a doubt.

And he did have a huge influence for the political machine that he built here in Southern Arizona.

- Yeah, Tony, any thoughts?

(Tony) The next person to take that seat will have to fill some big shoes and may have to continue that reputation of progressivism, environmental justice, social justice.

And it's gonna be a big question of whether or not Adrian Fontes will be able to do that better than his competitors.

- John?

- Yeah, just, you know, hard to recap 50 years in office.

One of the many things that I was recalling was when Grijalva called for a federal investigation when Macho B, the jaguar, was killed.

You know, just like, I think an example of a Congressman sort of putting his neck out there, stepping up for the environment, as we've all said.

He was really focused on maintaining wildlife corridors as well, fighting against the border wall.

These are all extraordinarily pressing issues right now.

So whoever does fill those shoes is gonna have a fight on their hands immediately.

- Well, and Jim, briefly on this too, just from a more general standpoint, we know what happened, again, regardless of the politics of this, when John McCain passed, there's just on the political front of things, a state like Arizona loses a lot of seniority.

This district loses a lot of seniority.

How much could that affect things going forward?

We know what the Trump administration's unpredictable, but just generally to lose someone in Congress, like from a practical standpoint.

- Well, I don't know how much influence he would have had, while -- (Steve) Right now, the minority.

- current Republican administration is running the show, but certainly under the Biden administration, we saw a lot of money flowing back into the city of Tucson through federal grants.

And then that probably was partly because Congressman Grijalva's district director, Ruben, Ruben was married to Regina Romero.

So I think there was a connection there that helped the city out quite a bit.

Now, whether a lot of those grants are gonna get clawed back in the next few years remains to be seen, but there's money for a 22nd Street bridge that's on the line.

There's money for the rehabilitation of Tucson House.

That's a $200 million project that the feds are supposed to be kicking $50 million into that is on the line now.

-Yeah, uh, Sarah, someone who wouldn't actually fit into the box of being a successor of Raul, is Senator Ruben Gallego, though, who was a powerhouse in the House and now is trying to do some of the things in the Senate.

You covered a town hall he had in Sierra Vista with some veterans.

What's your first reaction then?

What's the takeaway from the meeting?

- It was really interesting.

I mean, veterans in Sierra Vista seemed really mad at what's been going on.

A lot of the mass layoffs that have been going on and the 80,000 people that are slated to be laid off in the VA and they're feeling really kind of pushed aside and ignored.

And so Gallego was there to listen and to kind of tell them what he's been trying to do.

But they really want, they asked him to fight.

They're like, "Can you fight more?

Get the Democrats to unite and fight more?"

They use some very strong language that I can't say on the radio about it.

But yeah, they really wanted him to fight for them.

- Did he have much of a reaction or did he put a lot of blame on the Trump administration?

"There's not much I can do" or did he agree with the aspect of fighting?

- He did, um.

He said that he's putting a bill forward with others called, I think it's Save the Veterans Act.

He-he asked them to call him and to talk to his office um, if they need help, because there was very specific issues.

So he did put blame on the Trump administration and called it a gross abuse of what was going on, but he also took charge and was like, "Yeah, we're gonna fight."

(Steve) One of the things I appreciate about your reporting is that at least a couple of people expressed the fact that they were happy that he was there just because no one comes to rural Arizona, basically, is what the message was.

- Exactly.

Everyone was... A lot of people were telling me that they were surprised that he came.

And no matter what he said, it was good to see that, have that contact.

And they said more people should be doing that as well.

More, at least, this person, the woman that talked to me, said Democratic leaders should be coming to these rural places.

They're already coming to Tucson and Phoenix, but they should also be coming to rural Arizona.

Yeah, John, what did you observe about what happened there?

- I mean, so that was the same sort of junket that he went to Douglas, too.

And I think, leaning back into something that you said, Jim, about the need, the pressing need for representation in southern Arizona right now, I mean, a lot of the federal funds are getting clawed back.

There's huge changes in potential mining that's happening here.

In all of this, I think we need to have some sort of a representative around.

I mean, in Douglas itself, Douglas, I think, interestingly, called the state of emergency very early on in the Trump administration.

A lot of people were like,"Whoa, that's a little premature."

And now the Douglas, new Douglas port of entry, pulling funds from that.

And that was just one of the many examples of who's there to stand up for some of these projects going forward or for some of these communities that wanna see these projects go forward.

-Yeah.

Tony?

- Yeah, the people in Douglas and those in Sierra Vista who attended those sessions, we're talking to the Democrats to do something, to do something.

And Democrats in Washington seem to be just looking for an opening.

And they may have found that opening with the veterans issue and with rural voters.

And they're searching for a place to start against the push by the Trump administration, pushing those limits for executive power.

They may have found that at place with the veterans issues.

And again, like Sarah was saying, to talk to rural voters, to the people who are not in the big cities and the impact that the cuts are having on them.

- Yeah, I think, we talked a couple times today already about Democrats sort of being on their back foot.

I think it's interesting to recall that Senator Sanders and Senator Ocasio-Cortez are gonna be in town very recently.

And Sanders has also recently reminded people that he's not officially Democrat.

And they could look to other parties or to registering or running with a third party.

And I think people are fed up with the Democrats for not being able to, I mean, locally pass some of this legislation, pass some of these propositions that need to fund basic services.

Or nationally, I mean, just getting creamed in the recent elections.

- Well, yeah, the two of them were gonna be in Tucson on Saturday.

They were in the Tempe Phoenix area on Thursday sending that message out.

That's interesting.

Let's spend a couple of minutes on the Tucson council related to sleeping in washes.

John, can I start with you on this?

What message is the council sending by deciding narrowly to not criminalize sleeping in washes?

Are there mixed messages going on here?

- Yeah, so I think it's important to remember the backstory a little bit here.

This all has to do with Prop 312, which was passed last year, and it allows residents or property owners rather who see that local jurisdictions are not doing enough to stop issues around homelessness.

And we did some reporting on this at Arizona-Luminaria, and we found that actually there's a lot of jurisdictions in Southern Arizona that cannot be on the hook because they're unincorporated.

Or in the case of Tucson, Tucson doesn't charge very much in property tax.

It's like a 2% of their entire budget is property tax, maybe even less than that.

And so, supposedly this ordinance, and there was a number of other ones proposed about stopping people from sleeping in washes.

The only one that got passed was stopping people in the medians, was to sort of deflect any potential lawsuit, saying that, "look, we are trying to do something."

But I think the issue is that doing something is not necessarily solving the problem.

And so maybe they can be seen as trying to do something, but what are the costs of further criminalizing people in the medians?

I think that's an important question I didn't see raised, that the booking fees, if they'r and sent to jail, have increased recently.

It's about $500 at least.

And then if there's gonna be further time spent in the jail, that's gonna increase.

And so is it gonna be a net win for them?

And at the end, they're just further criminalizing a lot of people who are down and out and have nowhere to go.

- Yeah, well Jim, that's where I say mixed messaging.

It seems like the council was trying to have, I might say both ways, multiple ways.

- Well, a lot of this is driven by the city attorney's office, which is concerned about liabilities, and lawyers are gonna lawyer, right?

I think you had an interesting split when it came to the camping in washes, and we don't know if it would have passed or not because Councilman Fimbres, who's retiring this year, was sort of checked out, and it wasn't clear whether he voted or not on this particular thing.

And the meeting, to be fair, went till 11 o'clock on Tuesday night.

So it went on for a long time.

I think Councilman Cunningham brought up a good point when he said that, "Look, if you say they can't be in washes, they're gonna come up into neighborhoods and alleyways, and that's gonna create unintended consequences.

And so I expect there'll maybe another vote on this.

There's some, it could come back, and we don't know which way Councilman Fimbres will go on it.

But certainly the homeless issue is significant in our community.

It used to be a very cheap place to live.

Prices have really gone up.

It's harder for people to find a place to squat and live, and it's just a super challenging thing, not only in Tucson, but across the country, in terms of handling the issues related to homelessness.

And I think the failure of 414 certainly makes it more challenging for the city as well as the reduction in funds they're gonna see.

- Yeah, so related to that, what did Mayor Romero what sort of vibe was she sending out with this?

- I mean, she said multiple times, "I don't know what voters want.

They say they want these solutions, but then they pass Prop 312, and they don't pass Prop 414."

So she, yeah, she's not sure what voters want, she says.

But a lot of speakers did come out to talk about how they want to not criminalize homelessness.

And so they're kind of in a hard place.

But Council member Dahl made a good point.

He didn't support it because he said they are doing stuff for it, like they have the protocols, the different levels that an encampment is in, and it requires different solutions and responses.

- John, final thoughts, you got about 30 seconds.

- Yeah, I mean, I think that maybe is this another, at least temporarily, another swing and a miss on trying to solve these problems?

And when they're coming with the stick primarily is when I think a lot of both community members, more widely, and then people who would be directly affected, really start pushing back.

And one of the things that the no on 414 campaign sort of accused the city of not having is a political imagination.

I think they're looking for different sorts of solutions right now, and we haven't been seeing them coming out.

Okay, that's all for this edition of The Press Room, thanks to my terrific panel.

Tony Perkins of AZPM, Sarah Lapidus of the Arizona Republic and Report for America, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, and John Washington of AZ Luminaria.

Thank you all as always, appreciate it.

And thank you very much for watching.

Thank you very much for listening to this edition of The Press Room.

We'll be back next week with another edition.

I'm Steve Goldstein.