The Sunday Agenda: Election fever is upon us
We've got big plans for next year and we want you to help guide us.
The deadline to mail in ballot is days away and we’ve been featuring wall-to-wall coverage of contested races and those that will be decided in the primary election.
We’ve been digging deep into the candidates on your ballots and the issues behind the races. Last week we featured stories about races in Oro Valley and Marana, fact-checked candidates’ statements about the border and explored misinformation and endorsements in the critical race for Pima County Attorney.
We’ll continue a steady stream of election coverage up until the big day, and if you don’t want to make a last-minute trip to the polls (like Caitlin inevitably will), make sure to drop your ballot in the mail by Tuesday.
Monday: “Four Oro Valley candidates vying for three council seats.” Our contributor Samantha dives into the mix of rookies and veterans seeking seats on the Oro Valley Town Council. Samantha reached out to all four candidates, but only the newcomers responded to her inquiries so Samantha did some digging into the background of the two incumbent candidates, one of whom has a colorful history of “poor behavior in the community.” The race will be decided in the July 30 primary.
Tuesday: “County attorney candidates correct the record.” The race for Pima County Attorney is the hottest in town, and it will all be over and done with in just a few weeks. But with plenty of misinformation about both candidates making the rounds in the local opinion pages and public conversation, we wanted to give both Laura Conover and Mike Jette the opportunity to clear up the three pieces of false information that irk them the most.
Last week, “Young activists take the stage,” written by our intern Angelina, nudged out “The company they keep” as Tucson Agenda readers’ favorite story. It’s important to us that we offer paid opportunities to young journalists, and we need your support to keep that up.
Wednesday: “In Marana, all roads lead to roads.” Marana residents are about to elect two town council members and a mayor on July 30. When our contributor Angelina checked in with the candidates about their priorities, the topic that came up more than any other was roads. But this should come as no surprise, considering town officials are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on roads, bridges and other infrastructure in the next five years.
Thursday: “Fact-checking border soundbites.” The border is a major discussion point every election season, and this year is no different. Susan has spent the past few weeks digging into statements made by a pair of local candidates that linked the increase in unhoused people in Tucson to immigration. Spoiler alert: She found no subjective or objective evidence to support these statements, with local experts telling her that for the most part, migrants stay in Tucson for a very short time before moving onto their final destination.
Friday: “The people behind the prosecutors.” It’s a battle between the Democratic establishment and legal community in the race for Pima County Attorney, at least according to the endorsements. There are plenty of big names among the more than 120 people and groups who have signed on to support Conover or Jette, but it’s more interesting than that. While Conover’s list includes staples of the local Democratic establishment, Jette’s includes more than two dozen judges and attorneys, showing strong support from the legal community.
Last weekend’s birthday bash is still fresh in our minds. It was such a pleasure to talk to readers about local races, national politics, and Tucson life in general as we celebrated our first full year of publishing the Tucson Agenda.
We’ll be celebrating our birthday for the rest of the month, so stay tuned Monday for a fun giveaway and next weekend, we’ll be looking back at our favorite moments from our first year in business.
As Year Two dawns, we have a ton of ideas about what we’d like to do in the coming months. We have plans to increase our coverage and a new semester at the University of Arizona School of Journalism means we’ll be bringing on some fresh, new voices in the fall.
But it seems wise to check in with our readers and ask you what you’d like to see before we hammer out the details.
Back in March, we designed a survey to learn about our readers and find out what you think we could do better.
The response was great! We heard from 230 people who shared all sorts of insights with us. We took a lot of them to heart and those suggestions helped guide the past few months in ways big and small.
Besides the practical feedback we got from you, it also was just nice to hear what you had to say.
So we designed another reader survey to help guide our decision-making for the general election season and beyond. Please take a minute or two and fill it out. It’s just five questions, so it should be quick.
Any thoughts you might have, no matter how big, small, positive, negative, or in between, are valuable.
Thursday is the last meeting of Caitlin’s solutions-focused community book club until November! Come join the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, Tucson Tome Gnome and other book-loving community members at 5:30 p.m. to discuss True Biz by Sara Nović.
As a complement to our last book club read (Disability Visibility), this novel follows several students at the River Valley School for the Deaf who “just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy.“
This is the eighth meeting of our book club, but if you haven’t been to a meeting before, don’t worry! Now is the perfect time to start. The event is free to attend, but please RSVP in advance.
