My notes on the coming Democratic primary.
AFAIK Bal's the only other Arizona guy here; Bal, my notes on local stuff won't be of any use to you, but maybe some of these links will be useful if you're still doing research on statewide candidates.
The
azcentral.com voters guide is an excellent resource for viewing and comparing candidates. Enter your address and party and it'll show you who the candidates on your ballot are; you can compare their answers to various interview questions. (I haven't audited the source code but their privacy policy claims everything runs client-side and they don't have any way of storing your information.)
The US House, Secretary of State, AG, Treasurer, and Mine Inspector each have only one Democratic candidate running.
My legislative district has 2 candidates running for 2 seats.
US Senate: I'm voting for civil rights attorney Deedra Abboud.
Sinema is the clear favorite, and I expect to vote for her in November. But I can't support her in the primary.
She votes with Trump 61% of the time, which is more often than almost any other Democrat in Congress, and cast some
troubling votes on immigration even before he was president. You could argue that she's just doing what she has to do to get elected in Arizona, and that's fair, but it doesn't explain why
she hasn't supported net neutrality even though
81% of Arizonans favor it and she claims to be in favor of it too.
Sinema's likelier to beat McSally in November than Abboud is, and I can understand that as a reason to vote for her in the primary. I'll support her in November. But Abboud is far more inline with my own values, and she's who I'll be voting for in August.
Governor:
We watched two gubernatorial debates with confusingly similar URLs:
Democratic gubernatorial debateDemocratic candidates running for governor debate the issuesWe thought all three candidates were good.
Garcia is the clear favorite and is significantly outpolling the other two. He's also polling well against Ducey. He's pledged not to accept lobbyist money; it was recently discovered that he
had accepted $7,000 from lobbyists, but once this was reported he
pledged to return it.
Farley is the most experienced of the three, currently serving in the state senate.
Fryer is was the one who had the most impressive things to say about social justice and human rights. I think I'm probably leaning towards her on those grounds.
Garcia and Fryer are both teachers (Garcia is an ASU professor, Fryer is a board member and teacher at UofA). While Garcia is best-known for making education policy the center of his campaign, all three candidates seem strong on education.
State Senate: Juan Mendez (incumbent), Debbie Nez Manuel
Both candidates' answers are basically identical; I don't see any significant policy differences.
Nez Manuel is a member of the Dine tribe and seems more in touch with tribal issues; her answers to questions on border crime involve more coordination with tribal governments.
Mendez is younger (age 33); his answers seem a little more aggressive and confrontational than Nez Manuel's. My reaction was that his answers also seemed more practiced and polished -- and it turns out that this may be because
some of them are plagiarized.
As political scandals go, plagiarism is a pretty minor one. I wouldn't have any problem supporting Mendez in the general, but I'm leaning Nez Manuel in the primary.
Superintendent: Schapira or Hoffman
PBS debateArizona Republic debateSchapira is fairly well-known in Tempe; he's a longtime local politician and has served on the city council.
There was some recent controversy in this race; Hoffman's campaign released an
ad which included a recording of a telephone conversation between the two of them. Schapira referred to some opposition research he'd done where he learned some (unspecified) information that could harm Hoffman's candidacy; Hoffman took this as a threat and a bullying tactic to get her to quit the race, while Schapira contends that he had no intention of revealing the information himself but was warning her that her general-election opponent is likely to find out about it and use it against her. Both candidates have said they want to move past this controversy.
Schapira is clearly the more experienced of the two, and he's a better speaker. There's an argument to be made that he'll be stronger in the general, though I think both candidates have a pretty good chance; education is going to be big this year and pro-education voters are going to break in favor of the Democrats. Douglas is very unpopular; it's unclear whether she'll make it through the primary, and whoever the Republican nominee is will likely be at a disadvantage.
I liked what Hoffman had to say about vulnerable and underserved student populations like the LGBT community and English language learners. I think I'm leaning towards her.
Corporation Commission: 2 seats open, 3 candidates running: Kennedy, Mundell, Sears
PBS debateMundell and Kennedy have already served as commissioners; Mundell used to be chair. The two of them are running together. Sears has worked for the commission.
I'm inclined to go for Mundell and Kennedy because they have the most experience. Sears would be acceptable in the general but I don't think she did as good a job answering questions in the debate.