Political Notebook: 80,000 Pima voters to get reprinted ID cards

The Pima County Recorder’s Office is reprinting and resending more than 80,000 new identification cards to registered voters, about a month after sending out the original batch of 615,000 new cards.

Two problems cropped up in the first batch, necessitating replacement of about 13% of the original cards, Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said in a memo.

One was that the Pima County Board of Supervisors approved new supervisorial districts on May 3, but the cards had already been printed showing the old district numbers, and some voters now reside in new districts. About 45,000 new cards will be printed with the corrected supervisorial district, she wrote.

The other was that Oro Valley residents received cards that listed their address as being in “Tucson,” a function of the United States postal codes used by the county’s GIS department.

“Although those cards were accurate and made no changes to voting access, we asked county GIS Department to restore the familiar Oro Valley addresses for voters’ peace of mind,” Cázares-Kelly wrote.

Pima County Supervisor Steve Christy questioned the mistakes at Tuesday’s board meeting, but nobody was there from the office to answer.

Specifically, he asked why the Recorder’s Office needed to print new cards before the supervisors’ new districts were set.

Michael Truelsen, a spokesman for Cázares-Kelly, explained Thursday: “The new district boundaries had not yet been approved by the Board, and legally they could have waited until July 1 to make that decision. With early voting starting on July 6, there was no way we could wait that long.”

Cázares-Kelly could not attend because of the ramping up of preparations for the Aug. 2 primary.

CD6 candidates clash

The leading GOP candidates in Congressional District 6 finally met at a debate Monday night that attendees described as fruitful.

Unfortunately it was closed to the public and not recorded.

The North West Republicans hosted all five GOP candidates for the nomination in the new district that covers the southeastern corner of Arizona but runs all the way up to Casa Grande.

Juan Ciscomani, Lucretia Free, Brandon Martin, Young Mayberry and Kathleen Winn all attended. It was the first time that Martin and Ciscomani, thought to be the leading candidates, had debated.

Bill Maynard, president of the association, said the ground rules included: No news media allowed, no recordings and no transcripts. Only members of the North West Republicans group, their guests, candidates and their guests were allowed to attend. About 225 people showed up, he said.

The debate ended with a disagreement between Ciscomani and Martin, who pointed out that Ciscomani had worked in the office of two congressional Democrats, Reps. Ed Pastor and Loretta Sanchez.

Ciscomani, who is best known as a longtime close aide to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, responded that it was no secret he had been an intern for Pastor right out of Pima Community College.

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“They’re trying to bring it up as a gotcha moment, as if it hadn’t been public. But it’s always been public,” he said Thursday, noting he interned for Pastor in 2003 and worked for Sanchez in 2005.

“It’s not something I’ve been hiding, and it’s not something that really matters in the big scheme of things,” he added.

Martin noted that he and all the other candidates but Ciscomani showed up for a debate conducted by Arizona PBS in Phoenix in May that was televised, but this debate would only be accessible to the relative few who attended. “It was a sham, it was a setup,” Martin said Thursday of Monday’s debate. “I’ve been calling for a public debate. I want to have a public debate.”

GOP chair taking sides

The chair of the Arizona GOP has continued taking sides in contested primaries, in a break from tradition.

Over the years, party officials have normally maintained neutrality in contested primaries.

Fellow Republicans have called out Kelli Ward for openly siding with gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake over competitors such as Matt Salmon and Karrin Taylor Robson.

On Tuesday, Ward condemned Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers over his testimony to the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

In tweets, she referred to him as “Rusty Bowels” and encouraged Republicans to “#VoteFarnsworth.” David Farnsworth is Bowers’ primary opponent in a race for state Senate in Legislative District 10.

‘Tuscon’ goes on

You may remember the chuckles earlier this year when the campaigns of both U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon and Arizona attorney general candidate Rodney Glassman misspelled our city’s name as ‘Tuscon.’

Well, they haven’t all learned their spelling lesson yet.

On Thursday, a gubernatorial campaign sent an advisory about an upcoming “Kari Lake in Tuscon Rally.” To be fair, the press release also spelled Tucson correctly twice.

(By the way, it’s at 6 p.m. July 12, at the Maverick King of Clubs, 6622 E. Tanque Verde Road.)