The Daily Agenda: No love lost in county attorney race
Conover and Jette's camps have been battling it out in the opinion pages ... The tension was palpable during last week's candidate forum ... Prevailing wage ordinance hits a wall.
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover and her Democratic challenger Mike Jette have been battling it out in the press for the past few months, through a barrage of interviews and op-eds highlighting their successes and failures.
Last week, former Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall penned an opinion piece in the Tucson Sentinel, calling her “factually unhinged” and yesterday, Conover fired back against what she called LaWall’s “‘unhinged’ opinion” and urged voters to not get distracted from the priorities of flipping the legislature and avoiding another Donald Trump presidency.
And don’t forget about the dueling opinion pieces in the Arizona Daily Star, with former Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson saying she regretted voting for Conover and current Supervisor Adelita Grijalva voicing her support for the county’s top prosecutor.
While it’s become heated in the press, it’s also getting heated in-person and there was no love lost between the two candidates at last week’s sheriff and county attorney forum, hosted by the NAACP Tucson Branch, League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson, Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the Tucson Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta.
During a tense and nearly hourlong question and answer session, Conover took the opportunity to defend her record to the crowd of nearly 200 community members, focusing on her achievements and talking about the important work still to be done.
Jette went on the offensive, calling out Conover more than once for what he says are her shortcomings, including her handling of domestic violence and other types of high-profile cases and the office’s tumultuous staffing situation over the past four years.
The candidates fielded a dozen questions. Here are some of the key takeaways:
Racial disparities in the criminal justice system
Conover talked about Pima County’s first-in-the-nation pre-charge drug court (but didn’t mention until later in the forum that it was planned and created by LaWall’s administration,) saying that prosecutors have to stop felonizing substance use and mental health issues.
She said that because of programs like STEPs Court and her office’s belief that prior convictions should not deprive people of the chances they need now, there has been a significant drop in felony convictions under her tenure.
“Before I arrived, Pima County hit an all-time record again with 7,000 felony convictions,” she said. ”I’ve been holding steady at 5,000 felonies using my precious resources to go after violent and victim crime and returning substance use disorder to where it should be, in the medical realm.”
Jette said this campaign has been an opportunity to learn about implicit bias in the criminal justice system, encouraging the sheriff candidates to take such a training. Jette said that the system needs to change its view on crimes involving drugs and how the system views people with addictions.
“We don’t need to criminalize, we need to treat them,” he said.
Transparency in domestic violence and firearm-related crime
Conover said domestic violence cases are “top order” in her office, adding that the unit is fully staffed and partners with 28 different local groups that provide services to victims, calling these cases very difficult to prosecute. She said the key to gaining transparency is through communications, pointing towards her work to modernize the office, including becoming the first agency in the state to send live text messages to victims.
Jette quickly disagreed with Conover, saying that she has not done an adequate job in these areas, pointing towards “myriad examples” of victims not being heard or taken care of by advocates. He said that gun cases are often shifted to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and recommended a public-facing dashboard that includes the number of cases charged and prosecuted, and information on their outcomes, which elicited loud applause from the audience.
Staffing and leadership experience
Jette cited his 17-year career as a prosecutor and supervisor at the local, state and federal level and talked about the office in Pakistan that he helped get up and running, saying that his management experience comes from “watching and learning and doing.”
In 2017, Conover was appointed to help oversee the 400 contract attorneys who work across the state in federal courts. She said this experience gave her the confidence to run, and since taking office, she’s managed a staff of 350 employees and 200 volunteers, a $42 million budget and implemented several major changes.
“As a COVID-born administrator. I think I‘ve earned my stripes,” she said.
Pima County’s most pressing issues
Conover conceded that everyone has their own opinion about what constitutes the biggest problem in Tucson, but said that from her vantage point, managing the homicide backlog and violent crime spike “took everything we had to get through.” She said violent and victim crime are down 43% from two years ago, but that the work is far from done.
“We congratulate ourselves for like half a second, then nimbly, quickly move into the need for the day, where we are staffing up and better resourcing into community needs,” she said.
Jette clapped back, saying that Conover’s characterization of a crime spike isn’t entirely accurate. He said that while homicides are down, other serious crimes are “running amok,” saying that leadership at the top of the county attorney’s office is the biggest problem in Pima County.
“You hired a defense attorney, I am a prosecutor,” he said. “I am a just prosecutor. I learn as I go, and I believe in diversion.”
Conover left the forum before the candidates for sheriff began answering questions, saying that because she represents the sheriff, she’s trying to “keep the race at arm’s length.”
Jette stuck around, which afforded him the opportunity to make a closing statement at the end of the event and weigh in on the case of a Pima County corrections officer arrested in connection with nearly two-dozen shoplifting incidents.
Jose Monreal Jr. was ultimately charged with 18 misdemeanor counts of theft, nearly six months after his arrest, but Conover has come under fire for her handling of the case.
“The job of a county attorney is to hold officers accountable. When you do wear a badge, you are held to a higher standard,” Jette said. “Ethics and the optics of what we do here matters.”
With no Republican challenger, the winner of the race will be decided during the July 30 primary. You can watch a recording of the event here.
This story was supported by the Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona, a fund of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona.
Red light for prevailing wage: A judge ruled Monday that Tucson’s prevailing wage ordinance was illegal, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reported. The Tucson City Council approved the ordinance in January for large public works contracts and their counterparts in Phoenix passed a similar ordinance. Tucson officials said the state’s voter-approved minimum wage law allowed them to require a prevailing wage, but Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bradley Astrowsky agreed with the Goldwater Institute’s arguments and ruled the minimum wage law was “substantially different” from the Tucson and Phoenix ordinances. The Tucson ordinance was set to take effect July 1, so no city contracts included the prevailing wage yet. Tucson City Attorney Mike Rankin said the city will review their appeal options.
Asking about asylum: After President Biden’s executive order restricting asylum, border officials aren’t asking migrants whether they have a credible fear of returning to their home country, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel reports. Instead, the burden shifted to migrants, who now have to proactively tell officials they have a credible fear. That shift is angering local rights advocates, who say vulnerable asylum seekers with legitimate claims are ending up deported to the streets of cities in northern Mexico.
Water words: Two Tucson-area legislators called out GOP leadership in the state Legislature over water bills in an op-ed in the Arizona Republic. State Sen. Priya Sundareshan and Rep. Christopher Mathis, who are the ranking Democrats on the Senate and House natural resources committees, went point-by-point through the “ag-to-urban” proposal and rural groundwater management, among others.
“Where we differed in these meetings is that Democrats are trying to protect rural residents from losing their wells and small, longtime farmers’ ability to keep their family operations going. Republican proposals, on the other hand, would privilege the large corporate pumpers that have arrived within the last decade,” Sundareshan and Mathis wrote.
That’s a lot of late fees: Two dozen political organizations in Maricopa County haven’t followed campaign finance reporting laws and owe at least $4.4 million in fines, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka reports. For at least the past four election cycles, the county’s recorder’s office chose not to send those violations to the county attorney’s office for prosecution. Here in Pima County, elections officials said 18 political committees owe a combined total of $15,000 since 2022.
Join in: If you’re interested in the future of First Avenue, you can attend a public meeting Thursday for the 1st Avenue Improvement Project, the city said in a news release. The city plans to build a new bridge over the Rillito River, re-make the four-lane road between Grant and River, add sidewalks and bicycle facilities, and upgrade traffic signals, among other measures. The meeting of the 1st Avenue Citizens’ Corridor Planning Task Force will include a call-to-the-public.
Every vote counts: The election for a seat on the Pascua Yaqui Tribal Council came down to a flip of a coin when the two candidates tied, Arizona Public Media’s Paola Rodriguez reports. Luck sided with Francisco Munoz and he became one of the 11 people elected to the council after he and Elvia Bustamante tied at 639 votes each.
$189,549.: The amount of money raised by Laura Conover and Mike Jette’s campaigns as of March 31, according to campaign finance reports.
My 2 cents: I moved to Tucson in 2018, and so I missed most of the LaWall years in Pima County, but people whose judgment I trust have told me about the unfair practices of the county attorney's office during that time. From what this non-attorney can see, Laura Conover has always acted with integrity and has greatly improved that office, and since I’m naturally suspicious of someone who has recently registered as a Democrat in order to seek office in an overwhelmingly Democratic county (as her opponent allegedly has), I intend to vote for Ms. Conover.
Sounds like LaWall & Conover could use some new hinges:)