​​The Daily Agenda: Keeping it simple

Having a hard time keeping track of all these candidates? … Don’t worry, we made flashcards for you … Officials are raising money any way they can.

Primary election season is over. Now it’s time to figure out what the deal is with all the people running in the general election. 

There are a bunch of them. And a lot of them ran unopposed in their primaries, so you probably didn’t hear much about them over the past few months.

So we’re taking a page from our fifth-grade textbooks and putting together flashcards.

Today, we’re talking about the Pima County supervisor race in District 4, where incumbent Republican Supervisor Steve Christy faces Democratic challenger Vanessa Bechtol.  

They both ran unopposed in their primaries, so their races mostly stayed under the radar this summer. But this is one of the key races that will decide the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors. 

Right now, Christy is the lone Republican on the board, where he serves up conservative critiques of county spending or support for asylum seekers, and generally tries to dull the edge of the board’s liberal majority.

Going forward, he says he wants to keep the county’s focus on its core mission, like funding the legal system, infrastructure and economic development.

His campaign finance reports show the bulk of the money he’s raised so far came from executives at the private equity and real estate firm Diamond Ventures, like $3,000 from David Goldstein and $1,750 from Bill Kelley. He also scored a $1,000 donation from the Southwest Gas Arizona political action committee.

Bechtol is a political newcomer. She works at Visit Tucson, where she deals with a variety of businesses and tries to keep a collaborative attitude front and center. She also has a background in land-use planning, which she says is key in an area like District 4 that has so much growth potential. 

So far, she has outraised Christy on the campaign trail, thanks in part to $13,300 from longtime Democratic donors Alice and Bill Roe and $5,000 from Christina and Douglas McVie. 

She also got $1,000 donations from former lawmaker Demion Clinco and real estate investor Thomas Warne, among others. She has smaller-scale financial backing from Tucson City Councilman Kevin Dahl, former Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, and state Sen. Priya Sundareshan. 

We’re going to dig into the race a lot more in the coming weeks. For now, if you want to learn more about Christy and Bechtol, you can watch a debate hosted by the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson last month or their interviews with the Tucson Metro Chamber. 

Lines are drawn: The U.S.-Mexico border and abortion rights loomed large in a debate last week between U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a first-term Republican in Congressional District 6, and Democratic challenger Kirsten Engel, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel reports.

Another round: The federal government awarded Pima County another $19 million to support asylum seekers, County Administrator Jan Lesher wrote in a memo. Fewer asylum seekers have been coming through Tucson in recent months, so if the pattern holds the money should last “well into 2025.” Another $1.8 million went to a local organization, Borderlands Resource Initiative, that Lesher said might start helping the county’s efforts with asylum seekers.

On a roll: The Tucson City Council is trying to build on recent successes as they propose a new half-cent sales tax, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. But the timing of the vote in March is a little complicated, since voters are going to consider a separate sales tax hike next year to fund the next iteration of the Regional Transportation Authority.

Alternate routes: Voters generally don’t support bonds for Pima County infrastructure, so the county supervisors are going to decide whether to raise $94 million by issuing certificates of participation and sewer system revenue bonds, Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock writes. The money would go toward the medical examiner’s office, the Superior Court building, a substation for the sheriff’s department, and the sewer system.

Trend reversal: Evictions jumped in Pima County as a Superior Court ruling took effect, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. Eviction notices were trending downward this year, but about 1,100 were filed in July, nearly twice as many as the 582 in June. That’s partly due to a February court ruling that changed how much notice landlords have to give to certain tenants before they can evict them.

Taking care of parents: The Tucson Unified School District may offer its employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave, the Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. District officials have discussed the idea with the Tucson Education Association since the spring. If the policy is adopted as expected in about a month, TUSD would be the first district in the state to offer 12 weeks.

3: The number of library branches Pima County officials might close by the end of the year.