Habitual candidate, ex-Tucson councilman Rodney Glassman announces next run

PHOENIX — He’s been a Democrat and a Republican.

And he’s run for U.S. Senate, corporation commission, Maricopa County assessor and attorney general. All those efforts came up short.

But Phoenix attorney Rodney Glassman, whose last successful campaign outing was his 2007 election to the Tucson City Council, figures that the timing is right now for his latest political foray.

And he’s giving it a jump start, already in the 2026 race for state attorney general, even before the results of the 2024 election all are counted.

This time, he figures he’s got an easier target: Democrat Kris Mayes.

She won the 2022 race by just 280 votes. But that was against Abe Hamadeh — who defeated Glassman in the Republican primary.

What’s also different is there was no incumbent seeking re-election two years ago, with Mark Brnovich leaving to make his own bid for Congress. This time, Glassman said Mayes now has a record, something he believes he can attack.

Still, that didn’t work out so well for him in 2010 when, as a Democrat, he sought to unseat incumbent Sen. John McCain, criticizing his policies and his refusal to pursue “pork barrel projects’’ for Arizona. Glassman got just 34% of the vote.

Glassman, however, told Capitol Media Services this time, it’s different because he believes Mayes is vulnerable.

On one side, he claimed, she is doing things she should not, like what he said is an improper attempt at rent control.

“I believe that private property owners, like people that own apartment buildings, should be able to charge the rent that they want to charge,’’ he said.

But the lawsuit against landlords actually is not over how much they charged but that they colluded with RealPage, a software company that offers services to landlord, to artificially raise rents and conceal that plan from the public. That, her office contends, violates anti-trust and consumer fraud laws and led to inflated rental prices in the Tucson and Phoenix areas.

Glassman was undeterred.

“The question is whether or not the attorney for the state is supposed to be championing economic development or going after business,’’ he said.

The GOP contender also questioned Mayes taking a role in efforts to halt the merger of the Albertsons and Kroger grocery chains.

Joining with the Federal Trade Commission, she argued that would reduce competition and drive up prices. The FTC eventually blocked the move.

Glassman said that he does believe the attorney general has a role in consumer protection. But he said Mayes is “doing it in a cavalier way, doing it in a predatory way.’’

Glassman would not comment specifically on the indictment of the 11 “fake electors,’’ Republicans who signed documents saying that Trump had won the 2020 popular vote in Arizona — he had not — and they were the people authorized to cast the state’s 11 electoral votes for him. But he said Mayes has shown her willingness to use her office for political purposes.

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He noted Mayes opened an inquiry into whether Donald Trump had threatened the life of former Wyoming Sen. Liz Cheney at an Oct. 31 political rally in Glendale. That was based on comments by the former president about what Cheney, armed with a rifle, would feel like “with nine barrels shooting at her.’’

The inquiry didn’t last when it became clear that it was part of a larger quote about Cheney being “a radical war hawk.’’

“You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Ah, gee, let’s send 10,000 troops into the mouth of the enemy,’ ‘’ the full quote ran. Mayes said she eventually concluded that, based on the First Amendment, the comments could not be considered a threat.

Where Glassman may be on able to gather more traction are things that Mayes has admitted she is not doing.

“We’ve got an attorney general right now in Kris Mayes who won’t enforce transgender laws to say that a boy can wake up on any given day and go and compete against my daughters,’’ Glassman said.

That relates to challenges to a 2022 law, dubbed the Save Women’s Sports Act, which requires public schools and any private schools that compete against them to designate their interscholastic or intramural sports strictly as male, female or coed.

It specifically says that teams designed for women or girls “may not be open to students of the male sex.’’ And by “sex,’’ the law means the one assigned at birth based on a baby’s sex organs.

Mayes acknowledged she declined to defend the law, telling Capitol Media Services that it was clear her view on the statute did not align with state schools chief Tom Horne, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. But she did allow Horne to hire his own attorney.

“The Democrats were able to elect her with that way of thinking,’’ Glassman said. “I just disagree.’’

A federal judge already has sided against the state, saying that two transgender girls who sued, neither of whom have gone through puberty, can participate in girls’ sports. But there has never been a ruling on whether the entire law is unconstitutional.

Mayes also said earlier this year she would not enforce the 1864 ban on abortion if the Arizona Supreme Court ruled it was still in effect. She said she believed the right to terminate a pregnancy is protected by a privacy clause in the Arizona Constitution.

While the justices did vote to reinstate the law, her vow and legal theory never was tested as state lawmakers rescinded the old law. And voters have since approved a new constitutional amendment creating a fundamental right to abortion.

Mayes did not immediately respond to multiple messages seeking comment about Glassman hoping to challenge her in the next election.

Glassman’s history of running — and losing — goes beyond his 2010 loss to McCain.

After becoming a Republican in 2015 — he says that happened the same day Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his bid for the presidency — Glassman was off and running again.

There was that 2018 race where he sought to be a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission. He was one of the two GOP nominees for the two open seats along with Justin Olson. But voters chose Olson and Democrat Sandra Kennedy.

Two years later, he attempted to take out Maricopa County Assessor Eddie Cook in the GOP primary. He lost by about five points.

And then there was the 2022 six-way Republican primary for attorney general, where he came in 10 points behind Hamadeh.