A state grand jury has indicted Arizona Democratic lawmaker Cecilia “Ceci” Velasquez for allegedly ripping off the federal food-stamp program. Unsealed on Wednesday but signed on May 23, the indictment charges Velasquez, 42, with one felony count each of fraudulent schemes and practices, unlawful use of food stamps, and theft…
Given the amount of love and attention Donald Trump has heaped on Arizona in the past year, you’d think he’d have the state in the bag come November. Turns out, that just might not be the case. A new poll released this week by OH Strategic Communications and MBQF Consulting…
If there’s one thing Ann Kirkpatrick doesn’t want to talk about, it’s John McCain. On a recent Thursday afternoon, the congresswoman is seated at a long wooden table in a boardroom in Tucson. She’s just finished a round-table discussion with 20 men and women who work with veterans, and managed…
You know what they say: Fourth time’s…a bust? Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix was perhaps most notable for being nothing special. With promises of protesters and biker-gang militias patrolling the parking lot, the afternoon event seemed poised to become yet another headline-grabbing Arizona…
Social Media 101: If you’re a politician and you say something dumb, Twitter will pitilessly mock you for it. Case in point: U.S. Senator John McCain. While answering questions from reporters Thursday morning, McCain literally blamed President Barack Obama for the horrific events at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando…
Arizona’s most liberal Congressman, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, is now endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. Grijalva made headlines this past October when he became the first national politician to endorse Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and since then, the Tucson Congressman has been a vocal supporter and surrogate for his candidate: going…
U.S. Representative Paul Gosar, Tea Party Republican and professional tooth puller, is using the largesse of big government to assure his constituents that he’s, um, fighting big government. Granted, it’s a hard trick to pull off, but ol’ Doc Gosar is nothing if not baldfaced about it. He has been…
For more than a week, 47-year-old Sixto Paz has been living in a small room in the back of a Phoenix church. If he steps off the property, he risks being deported to Mexico, which would mean abandoning his family and the life he has had built in Arizona over…
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich today announced the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Secretary of State Michele Reagan’s failure to send out hundreds of thousands of “publicity pamphlets” to voters regarding a recent statewide special election as required by law. In a letter to Reagan dated June 2,…
You know things are heating up in Arizona when a) the mercury edges toward 120 degrees, or b) politicians start squawking about chemtrails. Try c) both of the above. Last month, Senator John McCain’s campaign released a series of attack ads linking his main GOP primary rival, physician and former…
Faster than a spinning lobbyist, more powerful than a strike-all amendment — it’s AZ Powergirl, celebrity cosplay model, swooping in to save the Arizona Legislature! Or so voters of Tempe’s Legislative District 26 can imagine, now that Cara Nicole Trujillo is officially in the race for the Arizona House of Representatives…
Just north of the Arizona border in San Juan County, Utah, copies of phony documents have been turning up at gas stations and post offices, aimed at local Native American tribes. The bogus handouts are filled with false information related to an actual pending proposal to establish a 1.9-million-acre national monument around…
A 12-year-old from Phoenix has been selected to compete on La Voz Kids, the Spanish-language version of NBC’s reality singing series, The Voice. Dulce Perez wowed the coaches during the blind auditions, when singers are chosen for teams based solely on vocal talent. Having made it through a pre-audition in…
A coalition of Arizona-based environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit this week against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for issuing a permit for a massive development project near the city of Benson that the groups say will devastate the San Pedro River…
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirms that there are four cases of chickenpox among the detainee population at the Eloy Detention Center, but immigrant rights advocates say there could be more. “We personally don’t believe that it’s only four,” Francisca Porchas, organizing director of the immigrant-rights group Puente Arizona,…
Seven Arizona lawmakers are asking the attorneys general of Arizona and Nevada to file a civil-rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice over the handling of the shooting death of 54-year-old Arizona resident Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, one of the men who occupied a wildlife refuge in Oregon earlier this…
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich waded into the nation’s tumultuous transgender-bathroom fray, announcing Wednesday that Arizona is one of 11 states with public officials suing the Obama administration regarding recent guidelines on how public schools should treat transgender students. The lawsuit, brought in U.S. District Court in Texas, claims the…
Some readers of the Arizona Capitol Times are calling a recent article about the Democratic primary race (subscription required) in Tempe’s Legislative District 26 sexist, if not outright misogynistic, for the way it repeatedly refers to the one of the candidates as the girlfriend of one of the other candidates. The story,…
Paradise Valley kept its photo-enforcement cameras on after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued his legal opinion in March — and now the town’s so backed up with tickets, it can’t process them all. The upscale Phoenix suburb is mailing violation notices to some of those offenders before statutory deadlines…
Governor Doug Ducey has declared Proposition 123 a winner. The school-funding measure, which was pushed by Ducey, had held a very narrow lead since the special election held Tuesday, May 17. Two days later, election officials in Maricopa County hadn’t quite finished counting ballots, but the latest results showed that Prop…
The fate of an Arizona ballot measure that would give more money to schools won’t be known until tomorrow afternoon or evening, election officials now say. Proposition 123, pushed by Governor Doug Ducey and put on the ballot by a referendum approved by the State Legislature, was winning by just 8,806…
Asked to handicap the upcoming political throwdown between GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and the Democrats’ inevitable pick, Hillary Clinton, porn titan Larry Flynt delivers a wry one-liner in that inimitable, gravely voice of his: “Hillary could beat Trump from jail.” Flynt, who’ll turn 74 this fall, will be in…
