Donald Trump gave a large crowd of enthusiastic supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center the harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration they wanted to hear on Wednesday night. Forget any softening of the Republican presidential candidate’s message on the subject. Hours after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico…
John McCain and Joe Arpaio smashed their Republican competitors, Christine Jones and Paul Babeu appear headed for Washington, D.C., and Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell might be in trouble. That’s just some of the fallout from Arizona’s 2016 primary election on Tuesday, which featured contests that are being watched nationally…
No hackers, no hour-long lines and no real problems — that’s the message from the Maricopa County Elections Department so far today as state voters go to the polls for the primary election. If you haven’t voted yet, it should be smooth sailing. Polls close at 7 p.m. Locate your…
The FBI believes that the infiltration in late June of Arizona voter-registration databases may be linked to foreign hackers who stole data from an Illinois election site, Yahoo News reported on Monday. Michael Isikoff, Yahoo’s chief investigative correspondent, reported that he’d obtained an FBI warning about cyberattacks on elections databases…
Mexican-American civil rights activist Dolores Huerta visited Phoenix last week to encourage Latinos to turn out and vote against presidential nominee Donald Trump. At an August 26 press conference with several other Latino leaders, including including U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego and State Representative Rebecca Rios, Huerta called Trump “bizarre” and…
The campaign manager for a group trying to raise Arizona’s minimum wage said on Wednesday that the effort was helped considerably by his own timely loan of $100,000. Bill Scheel is one of three founding partners of the public-relations and political-strategy firm Javelina, which Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families hired to…
Talk about a win for science! The state of Arizona is finally backing out of its fight to require that doctors tell their patients that it’s possible to “reverse” a medication abortion. Also known as the “abortion pill,” a medication abortion terminates a pregnancy through the use of two drugs,…
Advocates of criminal-justice reform in Arizona enthusiastically praised the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement this week that it will phase out all federal private prison contracts. But proponents of privatization reached by New Times are equally quick to criticize the decision and to emphasize that it won’t affect state policy…
If you’re a Republican, you know things are bad when Democrats throw you a lifejacket by attacking your opponent. Democratic Congresswoman and U.S. Senate hopeful Ann Kirkpatrick and the über-liberal, pro-choice advocacy group Emily’s List recently stuck their noses in the Arizona GOP primary for Senate in support of Kelli…
Arizona Department of Economic Security Director Tim Jeffries has followed up controversy over his Lady of Lourdes e-mails by sending an e-mail to all DES staff calling out his “haters.” In an e-mail he sent out on Saturday to all 7,000-plus DES employees, the former businessman, whom Governor Doug Ducey…
Muslim-bashing conspiracy theorist John Guandolo must reckon that Arizona’s cop shops are lined with gold. In June, New Times reported that a 2014 visit to the Valley by Guandolo and a couple of fellow anti-Islam lecturers for a one-day “training” session hosted by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office cost the county about…
For a hardcore anti-immigrant like Sheriff Paul Babeu, who refers to the undocumented simply as “illegals,” the support of pro-“illegals” former Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe might seem odd. But Kolbe and Babeu share a great deal when it comes to their personal histories — far beyond the fact that both men…
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has given his blessing to the director of the state Department of Economic Security’s use of e-mail to send religious messages to employees. Paul Watkins, the chief counsel of Brnovich’s civil division, wrote in an August 10 e-mail to Madeline Ziegler of the Freedom From…
U.S. Senator John McCain’s GOP primary race against Kelli Ward resembles a sumo wrestler sitting on a walnut, with Ward in the role of walnut. McCain has out-fundraised Ward by more than eight to one. A recent poll by the Phoenix firm Data Orbital shows McCain with a commanding, 21-point…
Without officially saying, “Bring it on,” the Hillary Clinton campaign has essentially done just that by declaring Arizona a battleground state. The news broke today after campaign staffers called local Democratic Party leaders to tell them Arizona is officially in play, and that the national campaign will be investing a…
A right-wing Internet radio host and conspiracy theorist has released a recording purported to be a propaganda radio broadcast of U..S. Senator John McCain while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Rick Wiles, a Florida-based Christian minister who bills himself on his Internet webcast TruNews as the “end…
Campaigns for justice of the peace are about as “down ballot” as you get in politics, but the GOP primary race for Moon Valley JP will be one to keep an eye on, mainly because of the stark choice voters face in that district. On the one hand, there is…
As Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence swung through Phoenix on Tuesday, the fresh scum that had boiled to the top of the current news cycle included (but was not limited to) his running mate Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with a Pakistani-American couple whose son was killed while serving in Iraq; Trump’s failure to…
Standing among the vacant pews inside Shadow Rock United Church of Christ, 47-year-old Sixto Paz gazes through the glass walls at the desert landscape. “When I feel sad, I come here for the privacy,” he says. “Just to sit in silence and look at the view.” When he needs that…
In the latest episode of that uniquely Arizona political soap opera, The Shameless and the Stupid, and hot off her “Someone Please Pay Attention to Me” tour of the media tents at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has endorsed Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu in the…
Andy Biggs probably wishes he never stopped by a recent Legislative District 16 meeting in Mesa, where he reportedly picked a fight with his fellow Republican state legislator, Rep. Kelly Townsend. The fallout from their verbal donnybrook has encouraged others to go public with grievances against the departing state senate president,…
On the eve of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the Democratic National Committee was rocked by the release of an archive of nearly 20,000 internal e-mails — the result of a hack many believe was orchestrated by the Russian government. Amid the slew of documents the website WikiLeaks…
