The AZ Political Podcast takes a look at the latest news and state of politics in Arizona. KTAR News' Jim Sharpe, also host of Arizona's Morning News, speaks with newsmakers each week plus gives his insight.
Johnathan Nez, CD2 candidate and former President of the Navajo Nation
Democrat Jonathan Nez told me on this week’s AZ Political Podcast that a lot has changed since the fall of 2024. I’m pretty sure Nez is hoping that a lot of that change took place in the minds of Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District (CD2) voters.
2024 is the first time that Nez, the former president of the Navajo Nation, ran to replace Republican Congressman Eli Crane in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. Since the outcome of that election saw Crane win by a 54.5% to 45.5% margin, I’ll bet Nez is hoping 2024 will be the first — and the last — time he loses.
Some numbers are certainly favoring Nez more this year: According to a late August poll by Democratic firm GBAO Strategies, Crane only has a two-point advantage (46% to 44%) over Nez — putting them in a statistical tie.
However, other numbers don’t break Nez’s way, like party registration. CD2 is 39% Republican, 27% Democrat and 31% independent (no party designated). But, that GBAO poll shows Nez with a 22-point advantage amongst independents.
Nez told me about another thing that’s changed. “In the last cycle, I didn’t get any party support; it was grassroots,” but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has come through with ad support this year.
Good thing for Nez, too, because the Federal Elections Commission report filed just before the Primary Election showed that Crane had raised almost $9.5 million — putting him at #14 among all House candidates nationwide. Meanwhile, Nez’s $3.5 ranked him at 125th.
That’s not a lot of money to cover a lot of ground — which CD2 has in spades. The 10th largest congressional district in the country, CD2 covers the entirety of five counties and parts of four others — and is more than 300 miles long from top to bottom.
And since we are on the topic of money, let’s finish there — because money is what Nez is banking on to be the top-of-mind topic for voters. And the issue that could create a different outcome in this election cycle. Because Nez believes the difference in affordability of living life now, versus two years ago (when he lost to Crane), will make all the difference in his race versus Crane this time around.
7 Oct 2026
Susan Winder, John Crow and Ryan Caracciolo, Maricopa Community College Board candidates
I’m glad that my guests this week on the AZ Political Podcast didn’t take offense when I told them that, normally, I wouldn’t have you people on the podcast.
Not very PC — but what I meant was that John Crow, Ryan Carraciolo and Susan Winder are not candidates for an office that would normally rise to the level of awareness for most voters. In fact, their races are so downballot they are almost on the floor.
Listed after local school district bond measures on the ballot and barely above where you vote on about 5000 judges are the candidates running for… the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) Board.
I made an exception for these candidates because Crow, Carraciolo and Winder are doing things a bit differently: they’re running as a team — and their number one platform is the desire to bring the team sport of football back to the Valley’s junior colleges.
And they are running a sophisticated ad campaign (https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18eqzhHzjG/?mibextid=wwXIfr) featuring Super Bowl-winning quarterback Donovan McNabb and ASU Head Coach Kenny Dillingham to convince people to “bring it back.”
Football went bye-bye as a school sport at Phoenix College, Scottsdale Community College, Mesa Community College and Glendale Community College after the 2018 season.
Not only do they think that’s wrong, they think the way junior college football was eliminated was wrong: They say the MCCCD board never voted on it — the decision was made by the district’s chancellor and individual school presidents.
Crow, who is an executive for a family of companies specializing mostly in real estate, credits playing football at Phoenix College as changing the trajectory of his life.
“I got out of high school and I had no direction… no idea what I wanted to be and thank goodness there was a junior college program for football because that’s the one thing I knew and liked. I went to play for Phoenix College.
“It gave me two years to be around good men with lots of discipline and a team environment and just gave me that time I needed to really develop to see who I could become.”
Crow, Carraciolo and Winder aren’t solely focused on football — that’s just the angle that gets them in the door with voters. They also want to “aggressively expand training for healthcare careers” to fill what they say are the annual 4,800 registered nurse openings, 3,600 openings for medical assistants, and nearly 15,000 openings for home health and personal care aides in Arizona.
And in order to help fill 20,000 new construction and trades jobs by 2030, they want to expand MCCCD’s two-year degrees, industry certifications, apprenticeships and accelerated specialized training.
Let’s see if they can get all that over the goal line — using football as the lure to draw voters in.
1 Oct 2026
Alexander Kolodin, candidate for Secretary of State
During the AZ Political Podcast, Alexander Kolodin, the Republican nominee for Arizona Secretary of State, doubled down on the most contentious claim made in his debate with Democratic incumbent Adrain Fontes: that Fontes was a “lawyer for the Sinaloa drug cartel.”
Here are the facts: In 2011, Fontes represented Manuel Celis-Acosta as a defense attorney after Celis-Acosta was accused of selling firearms to Mexican drug cartels — one of the cases that stemmed from Operation Fast and Furious, a botched federal law enforcement action attempting to follow straw gun purchases into Mexico.
While Celis-Acosta certainly did business with cartel associates, he wasn’t considered a cartel member by the ATF, the DEA or federal prosecutors.
But I digress — because Arizona’s Secretary of State doesn’t focus on cartels or gun purchases — but it certainly does a lot with elections. And in that regard, Kolodin and I talked a lot about that topic, especially early and mail-in voting.
Problem is, I never found out how he really feels about mailing in your ballot.
He told me he wants to replace signature verification of mail-in ballots with an “objective standard” because the current process is "bordering on a constitutional issue" — viewing it as a disadvantage to voters whose signatures change over time.
Instead, Kolodin would like to see residents issued an early-voter ID number — specifically for early voters.
I don’t know if his desire to reform mail-in voting is a sign that he’s in favor of keeping it, but he didn’t answer me directly about whether he'd like to see mail-in voting eliminated, as President Trump has said he wants.
Instead, he mentioned a law (he takes credit for) that let early voters returning their ballots in person show ID in order to bypass the signature verification process. Something he credits for faster primary results.
He also wouldn't say whether he believed the 2020 election fraud claims he presented in court as an election attorney. Claims that got him in trouble with the State Bar and the state Supreme Court.
When I read the lawsuit's claim that Democrat Katie Hobbs (who was secretary of state at the time) and Republican Doug Ducey (Arizona’s governor in 2020) "engaged in massive election fraud for the purpose of… manipulating the vote count to manufacture an election of Joe Biden", Kolodin claimed “that's not what we said.”
When I simplified my question to, “OK, but did you believe that?” He said again, “That's not what we said. What we wanted to do is make sure that every lawful Arizonan had their vote counted.”
When it comes to counting, I hope you feel like you can count on me to ask the questions. I just wish you could also count on me to guarantee you an answer. But that one is out of my control.
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