Arizona Morning Briefing, 10-12: Corporation Commission Kills Transcript, Giles Kills Traffic Tickets, Republican PAC Targets The Wrong Navajo, and More

• CORPORATION COMMISSION TRIES TO ERASE ITS OWN MEETING—The Arizona Corporation Commission voted unanimously to retroactively redact portions of a public meeting transcript and video after commissioners discussed the firing of Laurie Woodall, an aide to Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson, the Arizona Mirror reported Friday. Executive Director Doug Clark had fired Woodall without notifying Márquez Peterson. During Wednesday’s meeting, commissioners publicly debated who actually possesses the authority to fire commission employees. General counsel Tom Van Flein subsequently suggested that the discussion should have occurred behind closed doors and recommended redacting references to Woodall.  “It is a personnel matter,” the Corporation Commission’s general counsel said.

•RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT–The Arizona Independent highlighted FOIA Arizona findings Friday that John Giles, the favorite to become Arizona’s first lieutenant governor, racked up $600 in traffic tickets while Mayor of Mesa, thanks to a photo-radar and red-light camera system for which he advocated. Two of the citations were for running a red light, and three were for speeding. The city dismissed the red light violations because it failed to serve a summons. Chappaquiddick, this is not.

•THE WRONG NAVAJO–A Trump-aligned super PAC produced an attack ad against Democratic congressional candidate Jonathan Nez featuring photographs of an entirely different Navajo politician. The No Going Back PAC, supporting Republican Congressman Eli Crane in CD2, twice displayed photographs of former Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer while identifying him as Nez. Lizer is a Republican, a Trump supporter and a speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention. The PAC acknowledged the mistake and corrected the advertisement.

•ARIZONA’S DR. DEATH–NPR reported last week that the man who presided over Tennessee’s infamous botched execution last week was none other than prison commissioner Frank Strada, who resigned in disgrace October 3. Strada previously oversaw three executions while deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry. NPR interviewed retired judge David Duncan, appointed by Governor Katie Hobbs to investigate Strada. Of one bad batch of phenobarbital, Duncan said, “It was in a locked refrigerator in a jar at the Florence prison. And the jar had no label of any kind on it. I said to the person who showed it to me, ‘That could be my mother’s minestrone soup.'”

•STATE OF DENIAL–Politico featured Arizona Republicans yesterday, and not in a good way. It painted a picture of a state GOP party still obsessed with 2020 election results, running a slate of candidates who were involved in the fake electors scandal and still refuse to admit that President Trump might have lost. Curiously, though, the piece doesn’t actually feature any quotes from current Republican candidates about the matter, only anodyne stuff from current Congressional candidate Jay Feely about how it’s “time to focus on the future.” One damning piece of evidence, apparently, was that former governor Doug Ducey had his ringtone set to “Hail to the Chief” when President Trump called him…in 2020. The horror!