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Elections have consequences ... What will a Trump presidency mean for Southern Arizona? ... Local ballots still being counted.
Well, that was a shock. Trump is going to be president again.
At the Tucson Agenda, we’re trying to game out how a second term for Trump would affect local government and quality of life in Southern Arizona, and how we should cover it.
He’ll have all kinds of sway over who sits on the Supreme Court, big pieces of federal legislation, and the tone of the national political conversation. But he won’t decide whether Grant Road gets widened. That’s up to local officials.
Still, presidential administrations can pull all sorts of strings that affect local government, like the $6 million grant from the Department of Justice that the Tucson City Council is going to discuss at their meeting today.
The grant would allow Tucson officials to hire 50 more police officers to focus on gun violence. It’s far from the only federal grant that keeps departments and programs running in the city and Pima County.
How will the Trump administration view grants to local governments to deal with gun violence?
What about funding science research at the University of Arizona? Or whether the U.S. Air Force should clean up PFAS chemicals in water supplies near Davis-Monthan?
And, of course, presidents decide how the Arizona-Mexico border is managed, which includes funds for local governments to support asylum seekers. Pima County has leaned on millions of federal dollars over the past few years as they helped out asylum seekers.
It’s unlikely the Trump administration will want to keep funding those efforts. What does that mean for local taxpayers?
These are the types of things we see when we look around at what impact the Trump administration could have on Southern Arizona.
But we’re aware that even though we keep our eye on the ball as much as possible, we can’t see everything that you, our 4,700 subscribers, can see.
We also want to understand our audience better in such a critical moment. Are you freaked out right now? Are you over the moon? Indifferent?
So we put together a survey and we’re asking you to take a minute to fill it out. We kept it short. Just five questions, mostly multiple choice.
We’ve sent out reader surveys in the past and we take your responses seriously. There are a lot of things we stopped doing, or decided to start doing, after we heard from our readers.
Ultimately, it’s our responsibility to decide what we should cover. But it’s extraordinarily helpful to understand what our audience cares about and what they want to know more about.
So please, take a moment and fill out the survey. We would be forever grateful.
The survey is only open to paid subscribers. If you want to be part of this conversation, you can upgrade to paid.
Election results are still coming in, and will keep coming in for the next few days. Here’s the latest:
Legislative District 17: Democrat John McLean’s lead over Republican Vince Leach shrank to 763 votes in the race for the district’s Senate seat. This is a race Democrats need to win if they want to control the state Legislature, as are the races for the two House seats in the district. Democrat Kevin Volk maintained a lead over first-term Republican Rep. Rachel Jones in the House races, while fellow first-term Republican Rep. Cory McGarr trailed them both.
Congressional District 6: First-term Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani erased Democratic challenger Kirsten Engel’s early lead and is now ahead by 1,600 votes. This is one of the key races in the country as the two parties battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Tucson Unified School District: The three incumbents trying to keep their seats on the TUSD governing board maintained big leads. Natalie Luna Rose, Sadie Shaw, and Ravi Shah all are headed toward re-election.
Pima Community College: Two incumbents are on their way out. Governing board candidate Kristen Randall is way ahead of incumbent Maria Garcia in the race for the District 3 seat. Karla Morales also has a big lead over incumbent Luis Gonzales in the race for the District 5 seat.
School bonds: Budget overrides and bonds at the Marana and Amphitheater school districts were headed toward approval. But a budget override in the Continental school district was still pretty close.
Cities and towns: Despite a big publicity campaign, it looks like voters in Sahuarita are going to reject a $66 million bond package. Voters in South Tucson are giving the green light to a bond for the fire department and a budget override.
229: The number of responses we got from a reader survey earlier this year. Let’s top that with today’s survey!
Still 20K ballots sitting at the Recorders Office in Cochise County.