Joey Rodolfoโs tirade sounded at first like the jolt that Tucsonโs political opposition needs, now that the city election is underway.
At Tuesdayโs City Council meeting, Rodolfo announced he is no longer planning to move his clothing design company, Wow Studios, from Seattle to Tucson. Speaking at the call to the audience, he blamed Mayor Regina Romero, the incumbent Democrat who is up for re-election, citing her support of a Black Lives Matter founder at a recent event.
โHonestly, Iโve decided to keep my company in Seattle because of whatโs going on here in Tucson,โ Rodolfo said. โItโs awful whatโs going on here in Tucson. This is the blueprint, mayor, of what exactly happened in Seattle.โ
This week, Rodolfo has been celebrated on conservative talk radio, his 2 1/2-minute harangue played and replayed, and passed along on social media by candidates and activists. It caught on because he captured the frustrations that conservatives and some other residents feel about the city government under Romero.
But in political terms it was just a distraction that wonโt help put a Republican or independent in local office.
The built-in advantages for candidates like Romero and her all-Democratic City Council colleagues are big now. Itโs not just the left-leaning voting tendencies of the cityโs residents, but also the attendant fundraising advantage and, of course, our โhybridโ election system that lets everyone vote in every wardโs City Council race in the general election.
We need a competitive political opposition to question the group-think that can take over a council whose members largely agree with each other. To be competitive, though, the Republicans, independents, Greens and Libertarians need to be hyper pragmatic and focused on our obvious issues โ crime, housing, addiction, good jobs.
Itโs important not to get sucked into MAGA rhetoric and logic that doesnโt sell in Tucson. But thatโs what Rodolfo is offering.
He decided long ago
For one thing, his announcement Tuesday about not moving his business to Tucson appears to be retrofitting new reasoning onto an old choice.
In October 2020, Rio Nuevo, Sun Corridor and the Arizona Commerce Authority announced Rodolfo had decided to move his Wow Studios to Tucson. Rio Nuevo offered $500,000 in incentives for him to move into the old warehouse at 1 E. Toole Ave.
From there, the story got weird. Patricia Schwabe, who manages that property, told me she gave him the keys while they were still negotiating a lease, as a favor, and he moved materials in for a short period. Rodolfo did not respond to my interview requests.
โHe came through Tucson and made a big splash, said he had all these companies and had been so successful,โ Schwabe said. โAt some point, he just disappeared.โ
Rio Nuevo Chair Fletcher McCusker and Sun Corridor spokeswoman Laura Shaw noted Rodolfoโs company never received any money for his move.
โHe was fit to be tied with Seattle,โ Rio Nuevo board chair Fletcher McCusker recalled. โHe wanted to relocate his design firm. He offered to relocate other design firms to Tucson.
โThen one day he called and said he had changed his mind. That was within two weeks of him moving his stuff in there. He never opened.โ
MAGA Twitter troll
Rodolfoโs timing and logic are also strange when you think about them. He said Thursday in an interview with conservative radio host Garret Lewis on KNST radio, 790 AM, that his store in downtown Seattle was ransacked โby Black Lives Matter and Antifaโ in May 2020.
In June 2020, Romero had a Black Lives Matter banner flown from the top of Tucson City Hall. Four months later, the man so angry with Seattle announced he was fleeing to Tucson.
If you leaf through his timeline on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, youโll get a steady dose of standard right-wing bile, some of it similarly nonsensical.
On April 28 this year, Rodolfo posted, โFolks itโs time to get Tucson voters to take the red pill & not let Tucson become another Seattle or Portland. I moved here to get away from political hacks like Romero.โ
It defies logic that a person would move his company to Tucson to get away from politicians like the woman who had been mayor of Tucson for years.
His Twitter feed also has been low and ugly at times, often against Romero and her mentor, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva. He said of Romero โyour parents must of drop you on your head @ birth,โ that she โknows more about the Mexican constitution than our ownโ and said of her, โyouโre now committing treason & youโre an enemy of our state.โ
In other words, Rodolfo never moved his business to Tucson, but he did establish himself as a local MAGA troll on Twitter.
An unfortunate alliance
Thereโs a place for MAGA trolls, I suppose, but itโs not on the winning side of elections in Tucson.
Unfortunately, Republican mayoral candidate Janet Wittenbraker latched onto Rodolfoโs critique. She and Rodolfo called out Romero for hosting Alicia Garza, a Black Lives Matter founder who has been accused of antisemitism, at Leo Rich Theater on Monday night.
I have read the posts that underlie the antisemitism claim, and to me they are not at all conclusive. Even Rodolfo implicitly acknowledged in the radio interview that Garza said nothing antisemitic at the Monday event: โReading through every tea leaf there, she is so against Israel,โ he claimed.
Itโs unfortunate to me that Wittenbraker latched onto Rodolfo, because she seems a competent opposition candidate, but one who may only have a chance if she sticks to her core message โ โa cleaner, safer Tucsonโ as the signs sayโ and treats MAGA messaging as taboo. (In this race, she also seems doomed by the existence of two other opposition candidates.)
For me, the most encouraging opposition candidate in this yearโs election is Victoria Lem, the Republican running for City Council in Ward 1 against incumbent Democrat Lane Santa Cruz. In forums and conversation, she has shown a nativeโs deep understanding of Tucson as well as an instinctive tendency away from extremism, qualities the other opposition candidates for council donโt have.
When asked at a League of Women Votersโ forum about Prop. 412, the failed renewal of the Tucson Electric Power franchise agreement, other candidates went off on weird tangents, some of them right-wing conspiracies, but Lem went succinctly to the point: It was a proposal that benefited few but was paid for by all.
When asked about โ15-minute citiesโ a hot button issue on the right wing, other candidates went down conspiracist rabbit holes. Lem not only knew what the concept is โ that residents should live within 15 minutes of work, school and shopping โ but explained in pragmatic terms why she opposes it: It wonโt work in Tucson because the city is so spread out.
Quality candidates, ideas needed
Candidates like Lem and platforms like โa cleaner, safer Tucsonโ strike me as having a chance to take a council seat or even a mayorโs race in left-leaning Tucson once in a while.
Inchoate rage against the sitting mayor and administration isnโt going to convince anyone. Conspiracism about 15-minute cities or Black Lives Matter isnโt going to win enough votes within Tucson city limits to make a difference, even if it gets listeners or clicks in the broader metro area.
The issues are crime, housing, addiction, good jobs. Anything or anyone that distracts an opposition candidate from those fundamentals and leads them into right-wing talking points takes them on a path to certain defeat.
