The Daily Agenda: Handing out civic gold stars
Pima County just had a ton of local elections ... How did we stack up to other counties? ... Big choice coming up in District 3.
Now that the dust is settling on the primary elections, let’s nerd out a bit and see how Pima County compared to the other 14 counties in Arizona.
We went through every county’s election results, with an eye for who earned a gold star and who needs a little more work. Think of it as a type of civic report card.
Before we start handing out gold stars, take a look at the massive scale of Arizona’s primary elections: Nearly 900 candidates ran for about 500 offices at counties, cities, and towns. Here in Pima County, 62 candidates ran for 36 offices.
Showing up to vote
Voters gave a solid showing in Pima County, where the turnout rate was right around the statewide average of 31%.
But the gold star goes to voters in Yavapai County, which had a 46% rate, the highest in the state. Gila County voters were right behind them at 43%. The lowest rates were in Yuma County, 21%, and Apache County, 25%.
Running for office
We’re giving gold stars to Pima County and 11 other counties for having at least one candidate for every big county office.
That might sound like a low bar, but Cochise, Greenlee, and Santa Cruz counties all had races without any candidates from the major parties.
Still, Pima County had three big races with just one candidate (District 5 county supervisor, superintendent of schools, and assessor), which isn’t great for fostering public debate and forcing tough issues out into the open.
Statewide, there were 131 races with only one candidate, which comes to about one-fourth of all the seats that were up for grabs in the primary elections.
Those single-candidate races are over, but there are plenty of other races on the ballot this November. Upgrade to a paid subscription and help us stay on top of them!
Democrats and Republicans
When it comes to fielding enough candidates, we can’t bring ourselves to hand out gold stars to either major political party.
Democrats couldn’t come up with a candidate for 90 county-level races and Republicans couldn’t do it for more than 50 races.
As you might imagine in a Democrat-dominated area like Pima County, Democrats fielded at least one candidate for nearly every office on the ballot. The two exceptions were constable races.
Republicans, on the other hand, didn’t have a candidate for 10 races in Pima County, including for high-profile offices like county attorney and assessor.
You can see the reverse in Republican-dominated areas. Yavapai County had 15 races without a Democrat. Gila and Pinal counties each had 10.
Transparency
We’ve got several gold stars to hand out for “Best Presentation of Election Results,” but unfortunately none for Pima County.
There’s nothing particularly bad about how Pima County presents election results. They post a PDF with the candidate names and figures on the county website. They also put elections results on the Arizona Secretary of State website, which is fine (even if it’s a little too hard to find the link to county results).
But we have to hand it to Pinal, Greenlee, and Yuma counties. They use sleek data dashboards that show detailed results of each race, voter turnout, and number of ballots cast, among many other data points.
If you want to dig deeper, the dashboards have vote totals for each candidate in each precinct and links to other detailed data. It just goes on and on.
That’s the type of pro-active transparency we like to see from officials.
Polar opposites: Voters in Pima County’s District 3 have a big choice to make in November, with two candidates vying for the seat previously held by Sharon Bronson, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel writes. Democrat Jen Allen, who won her four-way primary with 53% of the vote, said she was inspired to run after she realized the many ways that county government can touch people’s lives. Republican Janet “JL” Wittenbraker took 32% of the vote in her run for Tucson mayor last year and says she’s worried the county is spending too much money.
Breaking it down: The Arizona Daily Star’s Ellie Wolfe breaks down how the University of Arizona was able to recruit and hire new President Suresh Garimella less than five months after outgoing President Dr. Robert C. Robbins announced his intent to resign. Wolfe provides a detailed timeline of the process of forming a search committee, seeking public input, advertising the position and the vote by the Arizona Board of Regents to interview Garimella as the lone finalist.
Bowled over: Pima County supervisors are set to vote tomorrow on a plan to provide $27,500 in funding to help market the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl Presented by Gin and Juice by Dre and Snoop, the Sentinel’s Blake Morlock writes. The funding is a standard-issue expenditure to an outside organization, but Morlock explores how bowl sponsorships have evolved over the years from celebrations of a city’s cultural traditions to flashy marketing gimmicks.
Moving on: The Nogales City Council voted to terminate Nogales Fire Chief Jeff Sargent’s employment last week, about four months after he was placed on leave pending an investigation, the Nogales International’s Daisy Zavala Magaña writes. The decision came at the end of a lengthy executive session to discuss two separate issues, including Sargent’s dismissal. When the counsel resumed its regular meeting, members approved the measure with little discussion.
Big bucks: Newly opened apartment complex Ari on 4th is charging more than $3,500 a month in rent, the Star’s Gabriela Rico writes. The Fourth Avenue apartment complex is 13 stories high and includes 323 units with 748 beds in one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom models. Unlike traditional student housing that allows residents to rent by the bed, the Ari must be rented by the unit. Rico writes that apartment complexes across Tucson are adding amenities, including gated dog parks, private studios for work-from-home meetings, electric-vehicle charging stations and more, to try to attract renters.
Vacant no more: Downtown’s Hotel Arizona is set to become a Hyatt Regency, after the city council approved a new lease agreement and tax breaks last week, the Arizona Luminaria’s Carolina Cuellar reports. The agreement and tax break for the hotel and a residential housing project on Stone Avenue is a renewal of an agreement from 2019 that expired in 2021 because no work had been completed on the project. Hotel Arizona has been vacant for more than a decade.
48 million: The number of voters in the United States who got their 2020 election-night results from SOE Software, the company behind the data dashboards for Pinal, Greenlee, and Yuma counties.