Guests - Grant Krueger, Betsy Smith, Elijah Norton, Joanie Hammond, Joel Strabala
Kathleen Winn came into Monday's show off a weekend that captured the two halves of her season-long argument at once: a new downtown restaurant she treats as proof Tucson can be revived, and a packed Andy Biggs rally she treats as proof the state can be turned. The broadcast moved from a restaurateur to a police-association voice on women's sports, to the Republican nominee for state treasurer, to a pro-life advocate, to her elections chairman — five guests, one throughline. As Winn put it, the next few months would be spent "breaking down the real differences between the Republican Party and what is morphing into the socialism party."
Grant Krueger: A New Anchor for Downtown
Grant Krueger, the restaurateur behind Union Public House and Reforma, called in on the soft opening of his newest venture — Block A Sports Bar and Grill, at 345 East Congress, on the corner of Congress and Fourth Avenue, across from the Rialto and Hotel Congress, with its first full day of business set for that afternoon.
Krueger described taking over the former Hi-Fi kitchen and cocktail space and reworking it from nightclub toward pub — bringing the scratch food from Union Public House downtown. "This isn't going to be just frozen Sysco chicken nuggets horked into the deep fryer," he said, but "a reasonably upscale dining experience with a great sports viewing profile." He detailed two LED walls, including a 24-foot curved screen, a jumbotron over the bar, a full slate of sports packages, and a patio that seats 250 — aiming to be "one of the best sports viewing experiences in downtown, and probably Tucson as a whole."
Winn, who attended the soft open with Dave and Betsy Smith, praised the attentive staff, the vibe, and the Detroit-style pizza. But the part of the conversation that fit the show's larger theme was Krueger's account of civic improvement by attrition. His "whining and complaining," he said, got the city to fix a host of broken streetlights around the property; the Downtown Tucson Partnership, through Crystal Moore, planted new flowers and promised to pressure-wash the sidewalks. Acknowledging the tragic downtown shooting weeks earlier, Krueger argued that opening more establishments makes downtown "lighter, brighter, more engaging" — and therefore safer. "That's how you improve a city. Brick by brick, piece by piece. No broken windows, no boarded-up businesses, no dark corners." Winn recommended Block A for football-season pregame and thanked him for the soft-open invitation. The two, who tape together regularly, needled the city's transit priorities — "no free parking downtown, just free buses."
Betsy Brantner Smith: 'Girls Sports Should Be for Girls'
Betsy Brantner Smith, spokesperson for the National Police Association, followed with a segment she teed off the sports-bar theme. The controversy: two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, declared for the 2027 WNBA draft, with Freedom arguing that if the league's eligibility rules allow transgender women, the rules should be applied equally to all. Smith read it as a deliberate challenge to what she called the WNBA's vague eligibility language. "I don't think these two gentlemen want to play," she said. "They played for the NBA. They know the difference." She said the league's commissioner had responded only by announcing meetings "to talk about what a woman really is."
Smith — who said she lives with a "WNBA-obsessed man" in Dave Smith, watching, in her words, the way people watch the Kardashians — argued the league is animated by resentment of straight, white, Christian stars like Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham. She stressed that Cunningham's statement said nothing disparaging about transgender people: "All she is saying is that girls' sports should be for girls." Smith tied it to Title IX and the generation that first won women's sports: "I did not have girls' sports in high school until I was a senior... for some reason, the women of the new generation, they want to erase us."
Both women turned to Clark's brief, quickly-overturned one-game suspension for an eighth technical after bumping a referee, and to what Smith described as opponents trying to injure her. Winn floated a recurring "losing our minds" segment to capture the WNBA storyline alongside the socialism theme, and argued the point should be simple: "I don't care what their sexual orientation is. I want to see them. This is a sport... who cares if they're good at their sport." The two closed on plans to watch the next Clark–Cunningham game at Block A — and, joking, not to "ride the free bus home."
Elijah Norton: The Treasurer's Race, and a Contrast of Records
Elijah Norton, the Republican nominee for state treasurer, joined for his first appearance since winning what he called a hard primary. The office, he noted, will mark 60 years of Republican control in January 2027, and he framed the stakes as keeping "fiscally conservative leadership" over the state's roughly $32 billion in assets under management — the treasurer being Arizona's chief banking and investment officer.
Norton laid out his own background: a multi-line insurance company he started at 21, now, at 36, a half-billion-dollar-a-year business with more than 400 employees and over five million customers, holding more than $100 million in claims reserves he must invest under NAIC guidelines — including, he said, a recently underwritten $70 million policy on a state power grid. "That uniquely qualifies me to do the job."
Much of the segment was a detailed contrast with his Democratic opponent, Nick Mansour, drawn — as Norton presented it — from public records. He said Mansour's first business, a waste-management venture begun in the late 1990s, raised millions from investors and went defunct within about three years without returning capital. He then described Mansour as an executive — head of the business development unit — at a medical-supply company selling sleep-apnea devices that, Norton said, was fined $15.4 million by the U.S. Department of Justice for Medicare fraud tied to a kickback scheme, with the original whistleblower appearing to be one of Mansour's own employees. Norton was careful about the legal posture: the fine fell on the corporation, not Mansour personally, though Norton argued the penalty was large relative to the company's roughly $60 million in annual revenue. Winn asked directly whether that shielded him because it was a business; Norton said the liability was technically the corporation's and that he didn't know the settlement's specifics.
Norton continued that Mansour then founded the for-profit Arizona College of Nursing, which he said was dogged by allegations of low graduation rates and, in 2024, a federal class action in which 22 nurses alleged fraud and the misappropriation of COVID relief money meant for students — money that, "according to this complaint," was pocketed. He said the state placed the college on probation in May 2022, after which Mansour departed, and has since run a private investment firm. "Everywhere this man has gone, failure has followed," Norton said, noting the college now has new leadership and its controversy appears to have died down.
On policy — which Norton stressed matters more than personalities — he warned that Mansour wants to shift the Permanent Land Endowment Trust Fund's asset mix from the current 60% stocks / 40% bonds to 80% stocks, exposing the roughly $11 billion education-linked fund to far more volatility. "The last thing we need to do is go gamble... and not only gamble, but have someone with a record of failure at the head of the gamble," he said, citing the fund's steady ~9% return and its role weathering 2008. He also faulted Mansour for saying he'd divest the state from fossil-fuel companies and for casting himself as a centrist while, in Norton's view, being anything but. Norton drew his own line on investing: against DEI and what he called "racist" ideology, and against openly anti-Semitic companies, on the principle that "this is not my money — this is the people's money."
Norton's own agenda, he said, is measured: minor tweaks to the safer local-government and state-agency investment pools — a forthcoming policy paper, he joked, "for anyone who wants to nerd out" — that he estimated could raise returns on that $22 billion by a quarter to a half percent, or about $100 million a year, guided by a policy advisor who worked under Doug Ducey, whom both Norton and Winn praised as an exceptional treasurer. His larger idea is to professionalize and accelerate the sale and lease of Arizona's roughly nine million remaining acres of state trust land — a bipartisan approach he said even Andy Biggs supports — to grow the endowment's principal and thereby increase education funding without raising taxes or taking on more market risk. He pledged that on day one he would convene a committee of financial experts to build a roadmap for reforming Prop 123, which distributed 6.9% of the trust fund to education annually before expiring this year, and which Hobbs and some Democrats want to raise to 8 or 9% — a level Norton warned could eat into the fund's principal.
Joanie Hammond: Life, and a Target on a Pregnancy Center
Joanie Hammond of Hands of Hope Tucson — whom Winn calls "one of my heroes in Pima County" — joined to promote her organization's September 11th gala at La Paloma and to reflect on the Biggs rally, which she said was the first political rally she'd ever attended. She described herself as a one-issue voter and recounted asking Biggs directly whether he'd act on the online distribution of the abortion pill; he said absolutely. Winn noted Biggs is a lawyer by profession, which she argued matters for someone shaping legislation.
Hammond's sharpest passage concerned Attorney General Kris Mayes, who she said issued a consumer alert against pregnancy centers — an action Hammond found ironic "since we don't sell anything. Everything we do is free." She said Mayes wants to force centers like hers to stop offering abortion-pill reversal, which Hammond described as progesterone, and to post signage referring clients to Planned Parenthood — which sits across the street. Hammond said she immediately contacted Alliance Defending Freedom, which reviewed her clinic's documents, and invited Mayes to inspect the facility, contending Hands of Hope is "way more medically professional" than Planned Parenthood, with a medical director, a nurse practitioner, and licensed nurses on staff. Winn framed the effort to regulate a nonprofit's speech as "socialism," and both connected it to Mayes's record of suing President Trump — Winn's count was 45 times — as her chief occupation.
Turning to why pregnancies are down, Hammond cited fewer marriages and, among young people, the effects of pornography and isolation during COVID. She said the clients Hands of Hope sees, typically 19 to 35, cite finances or pressure from a boyfriend or parents, and that many were misled by the messaging around Prop 139, which she said falsely cast abortion as ordinary health care. Both lamented declining population growth and urged marriage and family; Winn noted her own family — 19 grandchildren with a 20th on the way — and that Biggs and his wife are raising three grandchildren after losing a daughter.
The segment closed on a broader cultural note: a surge of young men returning to church, which Hammond partly credited to the Charlie Kirk effect, and a corresponding absence of young women, whom she urged to "get back on fire for God, back on fire for family." She called raising her four children and ten grandchildren the most important thing she has done — "there's no loyalty in corporate America, but there's loyalty in family." Hammond directed listeners to Hands of Hope Tucson, across from Tucson Medical Center, and to its gala registration at hands of hope tucson dot org slash gala, promising an update on the abortion pill, a talk from a Dr. Miller, and music from the performer Josiah. "We don't judge anyone. We don't shame anyone," she said. "Nine times out of ten, if we can show that sonogram, they will change their mind."
Joel Strabala: Check Your Registration, and the Road to November
Joel Strabala — LD17 chair and a member of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission — closed the show with the practical machinery of the general election. His lead message was one Winn has hammered for weeks: check your voter registration now. An interaction with the Motor Vehicle Division, he warned, may have changed a voter's party without their knowledge, and voters who assume they're on the active early voting list may need to re-enroll. The Pima County Recorder's webpage, he said, lets anyone verify their registration and early-voting status with name, date of birth, and a driver's license or Social Security number. "We can't afford that mistake in November."
Strabala said the general election will need roughly 850 observer shifts of four to five hours each — covering early voting sites, signature verification, ballot processing, tabulation, election-day vote centers, and the closing hand-count audit — after what both called a strong observer turnout in the primary. On the mobile voting center, he said the schedule typically publishes about 40 days out and requires Board of Supervisors approval, likely in September.
On the ballot itself, Strabala walked through LD17: Chris King for state Senate, and incumbent Rachel Keshel with newcomer John Winchester for the two House seats. His key point was about the under-vote — that many voters cast only one of their two allowed House votes. "Recommend you vote for the Republicans, Rachel and John," he said, and King for Senate, to hold both chambers so a Governor Biggs could undo what Winn calls Hobbs's record of more than 400 vetoes. He confirmed he's preparing slides to brief his LD on Proposition 425 at the September 12th meeting — the day after the Hands of Hope gala.
Both reflected on the Friday Biggs rally, which drew a full church on four days' notice, with Sine Kerr, Eli Crane, and Warren Petersen present. Strabala said he was impressed by Kerr's "elegance," knowledge, and "Arizona patriotism." Winn detailed Kerr's record — a lifelong Buckeye native and third-generation farmer on a 40-year family dairy, married to her husband Bill since her late teens, author of the Arizona Women's Bill of Rights protecting female sports "before it was fashionable," with four children and Hispanic roots — and contrasted her with Hobbs's expected running mate, former Mesa mayor John Giles, whom Winn again identified as an independent who backed Kamala Harris and other Democrats. Winn noted her own Tucson mayor, Regina Romero, had been passed over for the job.
Strabala's closing assessment was that the Republican slate "is getting stronger," and that with the Democratic Party's leftward turn, Arizona has "a very good chance of turning red again" — verifying, he added, "that we never really turned blue if they stole it from us in 2020." Winn tied it to a story she said was resurfacing: FBI records indicating a hacker took 633,000 Maricopa voter files before the 2020 election, with prosecutors declining to file charges. "Why not?" she asked. She sent listeners out with the refrain that has closed the show all season: "You go to the dentist twice a year — just check your voter registration."