Arizona Morning Briefing, 9-3: Republicans Produce New Sunshine Witness, Clean Elections Resurfaces Heap, USPS Ballot Reform Math, and More

The upcoming elections have everyone jittery. Everyone who’s paying attention, that is. How does the old saying go: If you’re not alarmed, you’re not paying attention?Actually, we’re paying attention but aren’t particularly alarmed. It’s not that alarming things aren’t happening, it’s just that we’re drinking weaker coffee than usual. In any case, here’s what we’re following today:

•Senate Republican President pro tempore T.J. Shope surfaced a letter from a new witness in the ongoing Governor Katie Hobbs/Sunshine Homes saga. Shalom Jacobs, a former official at the Department of Child Safety, says she doesn’tbelieve there was justification for Sunshine’s May 2023 out-of-cycle rate increase. Jacobs says Sunshine was then housing 14%–16% fewer children than the prior year, which she estimated was costing the company roughly $2.5 million–$3 million annually. Republicans argue that Sunshine Homes had undue influence over DCS. But they still don’t have any evidence linking Hobbs to anything involving the case. Maybe she made a TikTok?

•Tammy Patrick, Maricopa County’s former federal compliance officer for elections and the current chief program officer for the National Association of Election Officials, said that the Postal Service’s new ballot-certification rules, if applied to Maricopa County, would take nearly five years of “continuous scanning” to complete for complete Maricopa County’s roughly 2.6 million-ballot initial mailing. Given that it took ChatGPT 20 seconds last night to tell my wife that she’s a “soft summer” for clothing options, this feels a bit technologically behind the times. USPS also acknowledged this week that it’s still finalizing the Federal Ballot Mail Portal. We’re sure it’ll all be wrapped up by Friday.

•Corporation Commission Candidate Ralph Heap renewed his request to leave the Clean Elections public-funding program on Wednesday. Heap has already returned the roughly $147,000 he received for the primary after a sign-printing controversy, though he has not returned his general-election allocation. But the Clean Elections Commissioners denied his request. That means he remains a Clean Elections candidate, cannot raise outside money, and the existing investigation into his campaign-sign spending continues. His lawyer Tim La Sota accused the commission of “trying to put its thumb on the scale.”

“We’d like to have this in our rearview mirror,” his lawyer, Tim La Sota, told the commission. “We’d like to have the commission in our rearview mirror, frankly, at every level.” That’s the problem with watchdogs. Sometimes, they bite.