Arizona Morning Politics Briefing: Mendoza’s Property-Tax Credits, a Gubernatorial Spat Over Sales Tax, Ralph Heap In Another Heap of Trouble…And More

“Politics ain’t beanbag,” the late Chicago mayor Harold Washington once said, but sometimes it does feel a bit like beanbag, or like weasels in a sack fighting over a scrap of meat. Here are some of the dramas playing out across the state that we’re watching.

•In Pima County, JoAnna Mendoza, the Democratic nominee to unseat Rep. Juan Ciscomani in CD6, acknowledged that she improperly received Arizona’s State Aid to Education property-tax credit on two homes simultaneously after moving from her Tucson property to Red Rock and renting the Tucson house. The savings were $404.29 in 2024 and $415.87 in 2025, amounts of money that aren’t nothing but are also, as Yelena Belova of the New Avengers would say, “small potatoes.” If we got a bill of that size at the mechanic, for instance, we’d breathe a sigh of relief. Our professional prediction is that this will blow through faster than a dust devil.

•Ralph Heap’s sign-gate, on the other hand, continues to gather moss as it rolls downhill. The Republican Corporation Commission nominee is now in hot water with the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.  Executive Director Thomas Collins is recommending that commissioners continue withholding Heap’s public campaign money, saying Heap incurred campaign-sign debt beyond his cash on hand and failed to report the transaction. Heap finally signed the required funding affidavit Aug. 12; his lawyer, Timothy La Sota, says Mesa Sign Shop lawfully extended the campaign credit and disputes Collins’ interpretation. The commission has called a special meeting for 10:30 a.m. Arizona time today to decide what happens next. At stake: $370,000 in funding. That’s larger potatoes.

•Secretary of State Adrian Fontes picked up a legal win yesterday when Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Adele Ponce rejected America First Legal’s challenge to Fontes’ description of Prop. 144, the Republican election-law measure authored by his GOP opponent Alexander Kolodin. Fontes said the proposition “may make it harder to challenge election laws.” Judge Ponce ruled that the plaintiffs in America First Legal’s suit had too narrow a case to truly carry the day. “This is not a distinct or palpable injury, but a generalized harm that is shared by all or a large class of citizens, insufficient to provide standing,” she wrote. The checks and balances are in the mail.

•Does Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs want a sales tax or not? Governor Katie Hobbs, in a TV ad, says that Biggs is calling for a 23% sales tax. The Biggs campaign struck back yesterday saying it wants a tax-system overhaul, not a tax hike. “I will never raise taxes on Arizonas,” Biggs told ABC-15. Never say never, Rep. Biggs, but that’s one promise everyone wants you to keep.