The Daily Agenda: It still doesn't make sense

Tucson’s new (not really) elected officials … The city's hybrid system is so weird … Somebody get Crosby a lawyer.

Our apologies to the voters in Wards 1, 2, and 4.

The Tucsonans who don’t live in your wards played an outsize role in choosing your council members. Again.

We hear a lot about Tucson’s hybrid election system, where you vote for candidates in your ward in the primaries, and then everybody in the city chooses among all the candidates in the general election. 

It’s kind of a bizarre system and when you look at how it plays out, you can see how wildly it distorts the wishes of the residents of some wards.

Let’s take two snapshots, one on Monday showing the ballots returned in each ward before election day and another on Tuesday evening when the first official citywide results came in.

Monday ballots

“Ooooh, boy, that Ward 4 race is looking pretty tight,” you might’ve thought on Monday.

Democrats had returned just 111 more ballots than Republicans in Ward 4, according to statistics from Uplift Campaigns, which tracks voting results in Arizona. 

If Tucson had a more traditional system, it’d seem like Councilwoman Nikki Lee was going to need some help to beat Republican challenger Ross Kaplowitch.

“The Ward 2 race isn’t as close, but I’m going to keep an eye on that one,” you might’ve said on Monday.

Democrats returned about 20% more ballots than Republicans in Ward 2. That gave Councilman Paul Cunningham a decent lead over Republican Ernie Shack, but you could easily say “it’s still early” and wait to see what happened.

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“Good lord, the Ward 1 race is a landslide.”

Councilmember Lane Santa Cruz had a healthy lead over Republican Victoria Lem in Ward 1. Democrats had returned 6,800 ballots, while Republicans had returned 1,600.

“It’s all going to come down to the independent voters, right?” you might ask yourself. “Or maybe the people who voted on election day will swing it?”

Nope. In Tucson’s hybrid system, none of that really matters.

What matters is the tidal wave of 19,000 Democratic voters who live in wards where their council seat isn’t even on the ballot this year, along with Democrats from wards where they dominate.

Tuesday evening results

That tiny 111-vote Democratic lead in Ward 4 ballot returns exploded when the early official results showed the citywide vote on Tuesday evening.

Lee had nearly 50,000 citywide votes. That’s a lot more than the 5,611 Democratic ballots in Ward 4 returned by Monday. She ended up with 66% of the vote, to Kaplowitch’s 34%.

Like Lee, Cunningham saw his lead skyrocket on Tuesday, thanks to the citywide vote. His nearly 50,000 votes, or 64% of the vote, more than doubled the votes for Shack.

Santa Cruz’s early lead in Ward 1 also jumped when the initial citywide results came in on Tuesday, from 6,800 Democratic ballots in Ward 1 on Monday to 48,300 citywide votes on Tuesday. Santa Cruz came away with about 63% of the vote in Ward 1, compared to Lem’s 37%.

The mayoral race is only citywide and those voters gave Mayor Regina Romero a 61% to 31% lead on Tuesday evening over Republican challenger Janet Wittenbraker. Independent candidate Ed Ackerley had just under 7%.

All this leaves Democratic voters feeling confident and Republican voters feeling like they don’t have a shot at winning a seat on the council.

But that’s the way it is. It doesn’t seem fair, but virtually every avenue has been pursued to get rid of the hybrid system.

The legal arguments have already been hashed out. The courts say Tucson’s system can stay. 

A group of Tucsonans tried to get a proposition going this year that would do it, but they couldn’t get enough signatures. Even if they did, Tucsonans voted down measures in the past that would have gotten rid of the system.

So when the next city elections roll around in 2025, chances are we’ll be offering our apologies to voters in Wards 3, 5, and 6 after the citywide vote sweeps through.

Other elections: The Vail incorporation effort failed and the vote on whether to raise the salaries of Tucson’s mayor and council was still too close to call, the Tucson Sentinel staff report. Voters approved the Tucson Unified School District’s $480 million bond, the Sahuarita Unified School District’s $50 million bond, and the Sunnyside Unified School District’s budget override requests, the Arizona Daily Star’s Jessica Votipka reports.

The people’s court: Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby has set up a crowdfunding campaign to help raise money for legal fees, days after Votebeat reported that he was subpoenaed by a grand jury, Arizona Public Media’s Summer Hom reports. Crosby told Horn he set up the GiveSendGo fundraiser with the goal of raising $100,000. The Arizona Attorney General’s Office declined to answer questions about the subpoena, saying it’s against the law to discuss grand jury proceedings. As of Tuesday afternoon, he’d raised $1,847.

Crisis looming: The University of Arizona has only 97 days’ worth of cash on hand, the lowest since fiscal year 2013, and is cutting budgets and considering a hiring freeze to address the situation, the Arizona Daily Star’s Ellie Wolfe reports. The UA told the Arizona Board of Regents about its current financial state last week and must provide a plan to restore its cash liquidity levels by Dec. 15. The cash flow issues are largely the result of the university’s ambitious strategic investments towards financial aid and research.

"This is going to require some draconian cuts," UA President Robert C. Robbins told faculty during a Monday meeting. “One of the solutions that I think we need to focus on is to make the tough decision to decrease the amount of financial aid that we're giving to students.”

Campus crime trends: The UA released its annual Security and Fire Safety Report for 2023 last month, breaking down campus crime statistics and ongoing efforts to improve safety, while also pointing students towards available resources, the Daily Wildcat’s Sam Parker writes. The report includes statistics from crimes reported on the UA campus and in university-owned off-campus properties and shows that motor vehicle thefts across campus doubled between 2021 and 2022, increasing from 14 to 29.

Building connections: Pima JTED has created and filled a new position, with Merrill Kemp-Wilcox signing on as the program’s director of research and development, the Star’s Jessica Votipka reports. The Joint Technical Education District works with 14 member public school districts in Pima County to provide career and technical education programs to roughly 22,000 sophomore, junior and senior high schoolers each year. Kemp-Wilcox hopes to strengthen connections between students and industries including mining, optics, health care, tech and the trades.

91: The high temperature on Tuesday, which was yet another record-breaking day in Tucson.