Top 5 takeaways, GOP debate
CD7 debate gets ugly … Posts from the Dem debate … And Juan saves the day, again.
This may come as no surprise, but all three Republicans running for former U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva’s seat in Tucson’s deep-blue district are die-hard Donald Trump supporters.
In Monday night’s debate, each expressed support for the constantly changing tariffs, endorsed Trump’s decision to nationalize the California National Guard to quell protests in Los Angeles, backed mining in Oak Flat — a sacred site for the San Carlos Apache Tribe — and said they’d protect people who “deserve” Medicaid/Medicare, though none offered much detail.
We’re not going to do a point-by-point analysis or anything so formal, but here are some overall thoughts, a quick fact-check, some funny moments, and more than a little Republican-on-Republican mudslinging from the debate.
The takeaways
We’re pretty sure that Daniel Butierez and Jorge Rivas hate each other. The two business owners debated just two weeks ago, and it’s clear they’ve been sharpening their knives since then.
A third candidate, Jimmy Rodriguez, mostly stayed out of the fight.
Butierez lobbed fresh attacks — calling Rivas both a coward and a liar (more on that in a second) — but the deepest cut came at the end of Monday’s debate, when he apologized for Rivas’ unhinged indirect attack against former Congressman Raúl Grijalva.
In his closing statement at the last debate, Rivas had said voters shouldn’t support his rival because he lost last year.
“He ran last time against a gentleman - the ex congressman - who couldn't walk, would couldn't read and who couldn't talk and he finally passed away. He ran unopposed and still only got a small percentage of the vote,” Rivas said.
Butierez said Grijalva deserved respect for his public service.
“I didn't agree with Grijalva on probably anything, but he did serve this community for 50 years and he deserves respect for that,” Butierez said in one of his final statements.
Butierez also called Rivas a coward, saying that a 17-year-old Rivas fled El Salvador in the 1980s with his family. Butierez's daughter enlisted in the military at age 17 and was deployed to Afghanistan, he bragged.
A visibly enraged Rivas, a naturalized citizen, shot back that Butierez should get his facts straight and noted that his uncles died in the Salvadoran Civil War.
Butierez said he was simply repeating what Rivas told him.
Rivas later told reporters after the debate that he was 16 years old when he left El Salvador.
At the end of the debate, Rivas1 reminded the audience that Butierez spent a decade in prison and was once a drug addict. Rivas’ attack may have sounded scandalous to some, but Butierez — who now owns two local painting companies — has been transparent about his past.
His campaign website even includes the 1992 marijuana possession that landed him in prison, though it also notes that the initial conviction was dismissed in a 2020 ruling.
Well, maybe not 900
Fact check: Butierez claimed there are 900 homeless encampments within Tucson city limits.
City officials on Tuesday said that number is significantly off, depending largely on how encampments are defined. For example: Do two people sleeping behind a building count?
While the city and county do receive hundreds of calls a month about homelessness, the figure doesn’t translate to a one-to-one ratio of calls to encampments. Some encampments generate multiple complaints, and officials say some residents call repeatedly about the same individuals on the same day.
Butierez confirmed that he still supports placing homeless individuals in empty jails or rehabilitation centers — but does not support using medications like methadone to help people kick opioid addiction — and wants to enroll them in programs to help them get clean and find work.
“I hire the homeless," at his painting business, he said. "I give them an opportunity. I help them get on their feet. And giving them an opportunity to work, to earn their self esteem gives them an opportunity to leave that life that they're at right now behind."
Winning the drug war - by killing smugglers
Rivas wants to bring back the death penalty for those convicted of drug smuggling. When he says “bring back,” he is probably referring to 21 U.S.C. § 848(e), a now-repealed federal law that once allowed the death penalty for major drug traffickers — but only if their crimes involved intentional killings. Rivas recalled a conversation between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who told Trump that China doesn’t have a drug problem because they execute smugglers. However, the U.S. federal government has never used the death penalty for someone convicted solely of drug smuggling.
As he did in the last debate, Rivas repeatedly blamed the Biden administration for various problems, while also accusing the previous administration of being full of liars. He promoted a conspiracy theory that the Biden administration allowed millions of asylum seekers into the U.S. to boost Democratic voter registration.
If elected, Rivas said he would offer Dreamers — children brought to the U.S. by their parents — the ability to obtain green cards, but not permanent citizenship.
Rodriguez wants a different representative
Rodriguez, who previously said he was motivated to enter politics by the death of his son, occasionally broke from the hardline positions of his opponents during the debate.
“In 2022, I lost my son to a horrific incident. And for the last three years, I've been fighting the federal government for answers,” he said. “And I'm running to be the representative that I needed at that time in my life to represent the people and make real change.”
On the topic of Dreamers, Rodriguez said they shouldn’t live in fear of deportation.
“They were brought over a long time ago, through many presidents ago, and they've been here this entire time, created families, careers, businesses, some and their needs. They don't need to be living in fear that they're going to be doing deported and kicked out,” he said.
He also said the Republican Party needs a sensible guest worker program, pointing to Arizona’s reliance on foreign labor, especially in Yuma.
“I think the pathway to some citizenship here would be possibly to do a temporary work visa for the people that are here that are working legally, paying taxes because 25% of our construction workers are undocumented, 48% are in the farm industry. And we pulled all of those people out. It would devastate Arizona. It really would,” he said.
Ballots for the July 15 special election go out next week, with early voting beginning on June 18.
Daniel Butierez, Jorge Rivas, and Jimmy Rodriguez.
One of these five Democrats is almost certainly going to be a new member of Congress — not because the race is wide open, but because this district is so blue it might as well be a Smurf colony.
Raúl Grijalva held this seat for 22 years, coasting to re-election every cycle to the point he barely campaigned. To be clear, there were campaigns — but they were mostly celebrations used to boost other Democratic candidates running that election cycle. (Remember when his campaign sold these “Dump Trump” signs in 2016?)
The five Democrats — Deja Foxx, Adelita Grijalva, Daniel Hernandez, Patrick Harris, and Jose Malvido — are ramping up their attacks on each other for the chance to represent the district.
Last night, they all squeezed onto a stage for a debate on Arizona Public Media to argue why they deserve to represent Congressional District 7.
Lucky for you, Joe live-blogged the whole thing (so you didn’t have to endure it) on Bluesky.
Ice hurts: Former Pima County Supervisor Sylvia Lee was charged with assault and banned from University of Arizona property after throwing her drink at the court and hitting three people during a February basketball game between UA and BYU, the Green Valley News’ Dan Shearer reports. Lee told police she didn’t mean to throw the cup, but she told Shearer that one of the BYU players made “an obscene gesture at the end of the game to my daughter and I threw the remnants of my ice at him and missed and hit the coach.” She’s banned from campus property for a year and banned from all sports games for an unknown amount of time.
Small dollars and big names: Congressional District 7 Democratic candidate Deja Foxx launched her first TV ad on Tuesday, announcing she raised $400,000 since kicking off her campaign roughly three months ago. In a press release, Foxx said she has gotten more than 12,000 contributions to her campaign, but 99% of her supporters gave $200 or less.2 Meanwhile, Adelita Grijalva announced she had nabbed the endorsement of New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Not an advocate: A half-dozen Native University of Arizona professors sent a letter demanding the university president fire assistant vice provost for the Office of Native American Initiatives, Tessa L. Dysart, saying she “is actively causing and has caused severe harm to the UA Native American community,” the Arizona Mirror’s Shondiin Silversmith writes. They say she lacks the qualifications to hold the job, and more than that, she has not supported student-led academic work on the Land Back movement, and she took the microphone away from a student at a tribal leaders’ summit. About 100 other people endorsed the letter.
“We find Dysart’s actions to be unprofessional, misaligned with the interests of students, and, at times, clear attempts at intimidation — behavior that is unbecoming of a senior administrator who claims to advocate for Native American students,” the letter states.
One step forward: A federal judge in Washington has granted a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from withholding public housing and transportation infrastructure funds in more than 30 jurisdictions, including here in Pima County. Pima County Attorney Laura Conover announced the decision on Tuesday, saying the injunction was a “new, positive step forward.” The Trump Administration is appealing the decision to the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Good news for once: Pima Community College’s new budget, which the board unanimously adopted, doesn’t raise tuition rates and yet provides small raises for faculty and employees. And the district lowered its property tax rate, the Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports.
More good news: We are also not raising rates! Help educate the Tucson community by upgrading to a paid subscription today!
They’re outnumbered: The union representing corrections officers is sounding the alarm over staffing shortages that have led to a rise in violence and murders, including a recent murder in a Tucson prison, KVOA reports. Barry DeFeo, Executive President of the Arizona Corrections Association, wants lawmakers and the governor to increase funding and salaries for corrections officers, accusing them of “pointing fingers over their grotesque negligence” to fund prisons.
Guns keep us safe: The Tucson Pink Pistols, which teaches the LGBTQ+ community how to responsibly arm itself, meets once a month in Kevin Dahl’s Ward 3 office, the Tucson Sentinel’s Mia Kortright writes in a fun profile of the group, whose national motto is “armed gays don't get bashed.”
"Guns are the great equalizer," member Kate Brown said. “This certainly empowers the queer community and our allies.”
More than 100 people poured into downtown Tucson on Tuesday night, protesting the Trump administration’s decision to send in 700 U.S. Marines and to nationalize the California National Guard to break up protests in Los Angeles.
Organizers worked with the Tucson Police Department, but the handful of police officers stayed off to the side of the bridge over Broadway Boulevard used by the protesters.
We spoke to a young man who identified himself as “Chef” who arrived hours early to the protest, wearing a special belt to carry a massive American flag.
“I don’t like to see the country divided,” he said, noting his parents protested when they were his age.
In his boldest move yet to stand up to the Trump administration and the “big, beautiful bill,” Tucson Congressman Juan Ciscomani signed a letter.
Yeah. As the bill faces a tough fight in the Senate and even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she has some regrets about the bill, Ciscomani was one of 13 Republicans who signed a letter last week asking their Senate colleagues to … checks notes … add back in the energy tax cuts.
The Tucson Republican was roasted pretty hard by the New York Times last week, which said he chose to side with Trump on the bill, even though it would hurt a major employer in his district, Lucid Motors in Casa Grande.
Given how effective his last letter was (you know — the one claiming he and other Republicans “cannot and will not” support any legislation that reduces Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations), we don’t have a lot of confidence this is going to change anything.
Fun fact: Rivas owns Sammy’s Mexican Grill with his wife. The pair was singled out after Trump mentioned them during a Tucson visit, which Joe wrote about while working at the Arizona Daily Star. Yelp gives the restaurant a 3.7 rating, but there are a few 1-star reviews saying they came for a burrito, not a barrage of political signs.
We will be checking into her campaign finance report next week, when all of the FEC reports should become available.
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