Guests - Ava Chen, Alex Kolodin, Jeff Rhodes, Joel Strabala, Yvette Serino
China Watch on YouTube
The morning after Arizona's primary, Kathleen Winn opened with the scoreboard and moved quickly to the harder question: what the results mean, and what still has to be fixed before November. Andy Biggs took the Republican nomination for governor with something north of 70 percent, setting up a general election against Katie Hobbs, who had no primary opponent. "Two very different forms of leadership and government," Winn said. "Katie Hobbs is running as the candidate for all Arizonans. I would argue that Andy Biggs is that person — but they're going to have to make their case to the people of Arizona."
Down the ballot, Alex Kolodin advanced to face Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a matchup Winn expects to be "one of the most contentious and interesting races that we have in the state," noting the two have met in court repeatedly with Kolodin coming out ahead. Elijah Norton won the Republican nod for state treasurer, the seat Kimberly Yee is vacating, and will face an unopposed Democratic nominee. Yee, meanwhile, appears to have defeated Tom Horne for superintendent of public instruction, setting up a race between two women — with the future of Arizona's ESA program riding on it. And Senate President Warren Petersen will take on Attorney General Kris Mayes, who Winn argued "has pretty much spent her whole four years suing Donald Trump. I don't think there's an appetite for just that."
The Republican registration advantage is real, Winn said, but it doesn't help if those voters stay home — which made the rest of the morning a post-mortem on why some of them couldn't.
Ava Chen: What Came Out on July 16
Ava Chen of the New Federal State of China joined for the show's standing China Watch Wednesday segment, and she wanted to start with a date. July 16, she said, marked a turning point for the whistleblowing movement she belongs to.
The day began with a ministerial-level meeting on political terrorism addressed to leaders from more than sixty nations, with senior administration officials speaking on counterintelligence and terrorism. It ended, at 9 p.m., with a roughly half-hour press conference at the White House in which Chen said the president confirmed intelligence-community findings on how the Chinese Communist Party influenced the 2020 election outcome. For Chen, the significance was personal as much as political: "This has been something off our chest for so long as a member of the whistleblowers."
Winn's reaction was vindication rather than surprise. "I've been involved with this for so long that it's just kind of a vindication," she said. She pointed to Arizona's own record — a secretary of state she accuses of shielding voter data from federal review, and a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors that spent $15 million on new machines for the recorder rather than turn over the existing ones when a judge gave them the option. "We knew that back in 2020, but we were called election deniers and told our claims were unbased."
Chen's emphasis, though, was on a different failure. The revelation that mattered most to her wasn't what the CCP did — it was what America's own institutions did with the knowledge. "It's another thing to know that your system, designed to protect you, to protect the republic, basically joined it and helped cover it," she said. Negative intelligence on the CCP, in her account, was blocked from reaching the president's briefing. "When the president does not know, how would you expect your president to make the decision that's in the best interest of the people in this country?"
She connected that to the June disclosure by the Director of National Intelligence regarding early-pandemic intelligence out of Wuhan, arguing a pattern: "There's always a counter answer for the truth." Winn finished the thought: "They give you another narrative and they guide you away from what is really the truth."
The line Chen kept returning to came from Miles Guo, the movement's imprisoned founder: the battlefield in the conflict with the Chinese Communist Party "is not in Beijing, it is in America." Her reading of it is literal. If the intelligence services, media, Wall Street, and Hollywood don't tell Americans what the CCP has done, "you have no way of finding it — doesn't matter whether you are president or not." And a regime never held accountable is a regime that escalates: "Once you have not been held accountable for any of the things you've done, you're emboldened."
Ava Chen: The 13579 Claim and the Whistleblower Record
Chen spent a long stretch laying out what she calls the movement's foundational intelligence, and it's worth setting out as she presented it — as claims made by Guo and, she says, authenticated by the FBI, rather than as established fact.
In 2017, Chen said, Guo gave the FBI documents describing a program coded 13579. Her decoding: 1 for the creation of a single bioweapon; 3 for release within three years, putting it at 2020; 5 for ensuring the virus retained effect on society for five years, which she said explains the sequence of variant strains; 7 for the seven target economies — the Five Eyes intelligence alliance plus Japan and India; and 9 for launching a vaccine as the solution, shifting global dependency onto China. The endgame, in her telling, was economic: "Their goal is shifting the supply chain, the demand, and everything to China, so they can weaken the dollar." Winn, who says she watches numbers and patterns, asked whether the odd-number sequence itself meant anything. Chen said she didn't know why they chose it — only that it was planned.
Chen described Guo's October 5, 2017 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, where she said he circulated documents to attendees and invited verification. Mainstream journalists were invited; most, she said, didn't come. The 13579 material itself, she said, wasn't made public until September 5, 2020, in a livestream interview with Steve Bannon — an episode she noted remains archived. That's the reason for the movement's format: "Live streaming is the only way to prevent the media fudging your narrative."
Winn couldn't resist. "Journalists would never do that," she deadpanned. "You never see that happen with mainstream media. Oh, wait — that's what they do."
Chen tied the media argument to the president's first term, recalling his February 2017 posts calling the press the enemy of the American people, and Guo making the same argument in his own livestreams: that media is "a nuclear power" turned against the public through deliberate confusion. Winn's addition was about the audience rather than the outlets. "People have gotten lazy, because we have all this input coming into our world each day. And then you don't have to discern anymore — someone's thinking for you. When you don't do your own homework and you don't think for yourself, you buy the lie."
Both women applied that to COVID and the vaccine, and here the article should be clear about what was said and by whom. Chen described her movement's platform — first an app removed from Apple's store, then GTV — as the only outlet carrying its message, which she summarized as: the virus was a bioweapon, don't take the vaccine, and effective alternative treatments exist. She said the movement was censored, smeared, and attacked for it. Winn said she had declined the vaccine on her doctor's advice because of a preexisting condition, and described people she knows who she believes suffered vaccine injuries. Neither claim was accompanied by evidence on air, and readers weighing medical decisions should take them up with a physician rather than a radio segment.
The other thing worth stating plainly: Guo is in federal prison following a fraud conviction. Chen acknowledged that directly — "my uncle is still actually sitting in prison for the fraud" — while disputing its legitimacy, arguing that the SEC and FBI "turned against us" and that the prosecution reflects the same institutional capture Guo spent years describing. Winn framed him as an advocate who "has been 100 percent correct" and now "sits in a prison cell." That is the movement's position on its founder's case, and readers should understand it as such: a contested framing of a jury verdict, not an account of one.
Ava Chen: Iran, Oil, and the Road to 2028
Chen's most urgent argument concerned Iran — specifically, what she says China is doing behind it.
The window to strike hard, she argued, has closed. "You kind of dragged it too long, and what happened is your enemy has already prepared." The negotiating pauses, in her account, were stockpiling periods: food, weapons, and above all drones supplied by the CCP. Her numbers were blunt. The drones run roughly $30,000 apiece and Iran has them by the thousand, with production continuing. "If Iran has a thousand drones, or even ten thousand drones from China — look at the damage they're causing just using drones. They have already killed your service members. They have destroyed your military base in Qatar." As long as Xi Jinping is behind them, she said, they'll keep fighting. "You have to focus on not the symptom, but the foundation. Who is fueling the Middle East crisis and sucking up your resources?"
Winn extended the argument to American capacity. Central Command had just confirmed a fourth service member killed, she noted, alongside economic losses in the billions. The deeper problem is inventory: "We are lowering our supply as we do this, which makes us weak. Forget Iran — if you're trying to weaken the U.S., we're doing it to ourselves by continuing this conflict." Meanwhile, she said, Congress is pushing the president toward a smaller defense budget. "We're at a very dangerous position if we're not paying attention."
Chen's framework for why China would want exactly this returns to 13579. "The CCP is not looking at killing all Americans. They're looking at a destroyed economy," she said. "Do you know how many people will die if your economy falls flat?" She contrasted the strategic petroleum reserve drawn down under the previous administration with what she describes as China's two-year oil stockpile, the largest on earth. Energy is the transmission mechanism: crude climbs, gasoline follows, groceries follow that, and every company in the country absorbs it. "It affects the United States the most, because everything you run is on your energy cost."
The timeline she laid out runs to 2028. Chen said the movement's intelligence indicates Xi has ordered a sequence of crises timed to the midterms and the next presidential cycle, using North Korea and Iran as proxies "to the maximum they can create trouble for you," while betting on inflation as the decisive weapon. "Voters will vote him out, and they will be complaining about the Trump economy." Pair that with export bans on cheap goods American consumers depend on and an energy war in the Middle East, and "all the conditions are not looking good for this administration prior to 2028." The distraction has a purpose: "They move on Taiwan because you were distracted."
Winn's addition was domestic. "They've got allies inside our own country," she said — elected officials "betting on Donald Trump failing," which she argued is functionally betting on America failing. She named New York's mayor as the clearest case, describing residents leaving in droves and the city being led "off a cliff." She also flagged the other actors in the queue: "We haven't heard from North Korea in quite some time, but they are perched to go," plus Russia and the stalled peace efforts around it. "We are at a very fragile — not that we're fragile as a country, but if we don't execute almost perfectly what we need to get done, it's complex. And we are fickle as a people."
Ava Chen: What the Party Is Afraid Of
Chen closed with the view from inside the CCP, drawn from what she says are supporters within the party apparatus feeding information to the movement.
The prevailing fear among high-ranking officials, she said, is sanctions — because sanctions land personally. "All of them stock stolen assets from Chinese people overseas," she said. Targeted designations mean companies, investments, and holdings frozen or seized by executive order or Treasury action. "They're going to feel pain."
Underneath that is a fear of eventual reckoning over the pandemic itself. Since the DNI disclosure, Chen said, cadre members have begun positioning: it wasn't me, it was the president; I don't have the authority to order this; it's the commander in chief, Xi Jinping, who should pay for this. "So among the CCP cadre, they already start talking about who they feel needs to answer when the call arrives one day."
That, she warned, is precisely what makes the moment dangerous. "Xi Jinping released the virus once," she said. "Once the world turns on him, then he will likely release another bioweapon."
Winn's closing note on the segment was about the cost of speaking. "You haven't been deterred by the legalistic gymnastics," she told Chen. "There's a lot of people that just take their ball and go home, or don't want to challenge authority, or don't want to risk whatever they have. But if you don't, you risk everything."
Alex Kolodin: 'This Campaign Is About Protecting Every Vote'
Alex Kolodin called in the morning after winning the Republican nomination for secretary of state, sounding roughly as tired as his host. "It was not a particularly late night when it came to the results, but it still was hard to get to sleep," he said. "I'm very excited to take on Mr. Fontes in the general and share our vision of making our elections secure, transparent, honest and lawful with all Arizonans of every party."
On foreign influence in elections — the thread from the show's first hour — Kolodin's argument was about a specific ballot measure. He put a provision before voters that would prohibit foreign funding of Arizona elections, "an issue that all Arizonans, regardless of party, seem to agree on, except for Mr. Fontes," who Kolodin said has spent most of the past year and a half opposing it. "He's very far outside of the mainstream of Arizona in this regard."
Winn brought him Tuesday's problems: 62 documented incident reports in Pima County, some minor, some not — wrong paper stock used to print ballots, the PND reclassifications, equipment failures. Kolodin put the blame squarely on the office he's running for. "The election procedures are set by Adrian Fontes. He sets the elections procedures that every county has to follow," he said. "Because he's not an elections expert, he has failed to set the proper testing procedures, the proper procedures for making sure that you have the right equipment paired together, the right paper paired with the right equipment. And because of that, Arizonans continue to experience frustration in the voting process. That's not the way it should be. It's the way it is because of Adrian Fontes."
His counterexample was Maricopa County, and he told the story as a contrast in governing style rather than a partisan claim. In 2024 he wrote a bill allowing voters dropping off an early ballot at a polling location to show ID and bypass signature verification. Getting it signed required, as he put it, twisting Governor Hobbs's arm — Fontes was opposed. Winn interjected: "Isn't it nice that they don't get along?" The result, Kolodin said, was the fastest election results he can remember: Recorder Justin Heap used the new tool and finished signature verification by that morning. Even longtime critics acknowledged it worked, he noted, citing analyst Garrett Archer. "That is the way that conservative Republicans run elections — because we run them for every voter, regardless of party. What we want is for every voter to have a voting process that is seamless, and we know how to deliver it."
Asked whether he worried about leaving the legislature, Kolodin pointed to who's arriving. The attorney who served as lead counsel representing Heap won his primary, which Kolodin called both reassuring and mildly inconvenient: "My only regret about the fact that he won is that I can't now hire him to be my general counsel as secretary of state. He's one of the best lawyers I've ever worked with." Add his incoming LD3 seatmate, he said, and "it's in good hands. We've left it better than we found it. That's all you can possibly ask for in your career."
His pitch for November was arithmetic and shoe leather. "We've got to have three times our primary turnout for the general down in Pima County," he said, encouraging listeners to get involved with Turning Point or any group chasing ballots. "This primary proved the power of individual people. We won a historic landslide victory having spent less money than it takes to win a state house race." The mechanism was ordinary voters deciding the system wasn't working and pulling in friends and neighbors. "We won 60-40 because people were willing to put in the shoe leather."
He was careful about what 60-40 does and doesn't mean. "It's a landslide victory. But it's not everybody," he said. "Whether you voted for me or my opponent, whether you're a McCain Republican or a Trump Republican or a Goldwater Democrat — this campaign is about protecting every vote." He drew the distinction he wants to run on: "I'm not out there to make criminals out of critics. I think criticism is an important part of our politics. If you didn't vote for me, I respect that immensely, and I want to earn your vote going into this general election." On Fontes, his sharpest charge came with a citation attached: "He's threatened to take away the votes from entire counties. And that's according to a federal judge, not according to me. A federal judge put that in an opinion."
Asked about the New Jersey case involving non-citizen voting, Kolodin declined to opine on a story he'd only seen headlines about — he had, he noted dryly, been otherwise occupied. "Once I do, I'm sure I'll be prepared to more intelligently comment."
Winn's own framing of the Fontes record was blunter: fired from Maricopa County, then elevated statewide. "Peter principle," she said. Her standard for the office is one she repeated all morning: "The secretary of state shouldn't matter whether you're Republican or Democrat. We just want the laws enforced, and we want to know that when we vote, our vote counts." She offered evidence that the demand crosses party lines — when Pima County restored election observers, she said, Democrats called to thank her, "and I'm not exaggerating."
Kolodin's closing was addressed to Pima County directly. "We won Pima County by more than we won any large county in this state," he said, but the turnout work mattered more to him than the margin. "When we fix legitimate problems with the system, we can increase turnout. People are more willing to participate in their process." His campaign site is alexforaz.com.
Jeff Rhodes: A Write-In Campaign Waiting on a Count
Jeff Rhodes ran as a write-in for Pima County Supervisor District 5 — a long shot by construction, needing 143 write-in votes to reach the November ballot.
As of the broadcast, the count was unofficial but encouraging. "The last word I got was there are 552 write-in votes total," Rhodes said, with 113 confirmed for him the night before and roughly 400 more unverified. Winn had promised a steak dinner at 500. "You said a thousand," Rhodes reminded her, "so I tried to get you down to 500." She conceded she'd probably buy it regardless.
On what separates him from the incumbent, Rhodes drew a distinction he clearly cares about. "I'm here to serve all of Pima County, not just specific groups. I'm not an activist. I'm a leader. And that's what Pima County needs — leaders who are going to take things seriously and put the people of Pima County first."
His central issue is cost, and specifically where the cost sits. "We've got to stop the increases in taxes and get the spending under control," he said. Pressed by Winn on whether the county has a spending problem, he was precise: "We have an administrative cost problem. It's not about the services being provided. It's about the administrative costs." The figure he offered: the top four appointed administrators in Pima County make almost $1.5 million combined. "When our county manager makes more than the president of the United States, that's a problem."
Winn used the moment to thank him for running at all. When Rhodes first came to see her, she said, he wasn't planning to run until 2028. "I'm glad it worked out in our favor, and that I was convincing, and that you listened and that you stepped forward."
Joel Strabala: The Count, the Gaps, and the Reclassification Problem
Joel Strabala — the LD17 chair Winn calls both her right and left hand — gave the operational picture, and he was still counting.
Where the ballots stand. Roughly 6,000 early ballots were dropped off Tuesday, plus a little over 6,000 ID-verified early ballots — about 12,000 countywide. Strabala expected the ID-verified batch to be tabulated that afternoon, with the remainder still facing signature verification along with whatever came in from the post office and drop boxes. His estimate for what's left: "We may have 20,000-ish ballots left to be tabulated."
The partisan split. The Election Day numbers told the story Winn wanted told. Republicans cast 13,600 in-person ballots; Democrats cast 5,152. "We were better than two to one, Republicans to Democrats," Strabala said. "But we like to vote on Election Day. That's our thing."
The incidents. Of the issues Strabala was personally aware of, all four were resolved — two with his involvement, two already handled by the time he engaged. Everything was documented regardless.
The mobile voting center. This is where Strabala's data was thinnest and Winn's frustration highest. He had no countywide totals, only his own observation from a shift: six drop-offs and one in-person voter over a five-hour day, plus a few before he arrived — "a dozen or so ballots, based on my unofficial, informal count." The unit wasn't active on Election Day at all, though an observer reported it was busy on Monday the 20th.
For Winn, that's the argument. Green Valley lost ten polling sites, and the mobile center — which by design moves around, making it hard for any voter to know where it is — was never used to compensate. "It would have been more effective to have put that mobile voting center there and leave it there for a few days ahead of the election," she said. "To have some kind of way to replace ten polling sites — that's a lot." The people affected, she noted, skew retired and older, "and consistency matters to them." Strabala's observation sharpened it: if the unit drew traffic on Monday, it would have drawn traffic on Tuesday. Winn's structural objection was about discretion itself: "When things are not defined and it's at the whim of the recorder, it's not fair to the voter."
The registration problem, and the fix. This was the segment's most actionable material. Winn reported voters reclassified in multiple directions — Republicans moved to party-not-declared, some to "no labels," and some, she said, reclassified as Democrats. She described a Foothills voter who had always been Republican, came home from traveling to find no early ballot and a PND designation, voted, then re-registered afterward to correct it. "That's a lot of effort."
Strabala gave listeners two specific instructions for the week ahead. Check your voter registration and confirm you're registered for the correct party. Then separately check your Active Early Voting List status — "because we have reports that both party and AEVL eligibility was changed somehow for some voters this year." Winn's advice was to wait about a week for the dust to settle, then run a countywide education campaign. "The general election is going to be so critical to Pima County and to the state."
Her closing assessment of the operation was measured. "We had many, many volunteers. We had a couple of hiccups. But we did what we were supposed to do, and we followed the law." What she wants understood statewide is that the county is no longer a foregone conclusion: "Pima County can be the difference in the state election, and we need it to be. We want to make sure that it's not reliably blue."
Yvette Serino: Training the Next Hundred Days
Yvette Serino of the Leadership Institute closed the show with the thing Winn argues has to happen next: training.
The Institute is hosting a Catalyst for Change workshop on August 6, 6 to 9 p.m. in Tucson, free with promo code WIN26 — spelled, Winn stressed, with one N. "My people get confused and they always add an extra N."
Serino's pitch was about who it's for, which is broader than candidates. "Campaign staff, volunteers, PCs, LD chairs — anybody that's interested in furthering, getting more educated," she said. The Institute is a 501(c)(3), so anyone may attend. The curriculum covers strategy top to bottom: relationship building, volunteer recruitment, coalition growth, building strong local organizations, and member retention. "Maybe you're having some trouble, maybe you don't know what to do, or you might have some questions. This workshop is going to provide everything." Dinner is included, and a guest trainer is coming in from Washington.
"Everybody learns something new every day," Serino said. "Even though we might think we know everything, there's still things we can learn." Her stated goal was capacity: "Training as many people as we can so that they're well informed on how to handle their campaigns and volunteerism — so that we can be successful."
Winn's endorsement was about method rather than content. "What I love about the Leadership Institute is it does train leaders on how to be leaders," she said. "We have to be authentically who we are, and we have to talk truth, and we have to demonstrate our leadership — not tell people what they need to think or how they need to be."
The Lieutenant Governor Question
A caller named Doug interrupted the final segment with a question nobody had raised on air yet: with the nomination settled, Biggs now has to pick a lieutenant governor — the first time in state history the office will be filled. Doug had a suggestion. Kathleen Winn.
She took it gracefully and didn't entirely wave it off. "I had not considered it, but several people texted me last night," she said. "I'm going to trust that Andy Biggs will pick whoever he thinks is best for the state." Then, thinking out loud about what the ticket actually needs: "We have to analyze what Andy brings to the party, and somebody who can complement him for things that he doesn't have, things that are missing. My opinion is he needs to go with a woman who's from the rural part of the state." A beat, and then: "And gee, I wonder who that would be. I do check those boxes. I am a woman — I identify as one, and have seven kids and 20 grandkids to prove it." She promised to take it under advisement, "like the judges do."
Kathleen Winn: 'You Don't Have to Love Everyone Who Won'
Winn's closing argument was about the hundred days between the primary and November, and about what a primary is actually for.
Her first point was to the people who lost. "Thank you for stepping into the arena," she said. "Even if you lost, you made a great impact and a lot of effort. It's hard to lose. We like to win — it doesn't make you a loser. I think people say that. I think that's nasty." What matters now, she argued, is what candidates do next: "What you do, whether you won or lost, now will define whether you're a leader or not. You're not necessarily a leader because you won a primary."
Her second point was to voters, and it was uncompromising. "You don't have to love everyone that won. You just have to understand the significance of what those seats are, and we have to hold them." Her instruction for the general: vote every Republican up and down the line. "You do not have an identity crisis during the general election."
She flagged one specific risk from Tuesday's numbers: the under-vote in uncontested races. Congressman Juan Ciscomani had no primary opponent, and Winn suspects voters skipped the line assuming he'd advance regardless. The Democrats didn't do that — "they showed up behind JoAnna Mendoza, and she did significantly better in Pima County." CD6 leans Republican even though the county doesn't. "We cannot concede the seat."
On the LD17 Senate race, which she acknowledged "got really ugly — I'll just say it out loud; lies were said," she congratulated Chris King and turned immediately to the House side, where John Winchester and Rachel Keshel will face two Democrats including incumbent Kevin Volk. The district is R+8 and the largest in the county. "It is very important that we don't leave him in that seat."
She closed on the local case for urgency, which is also the case she's been making all year. "Look at Pima County right now. It is under the control of a lot of people who don't understand that you can't overpay your administrators, that you can't not deal with problems like homelessness and crime, that you can't underfund your police in order to have a thriving city. We are not the blueprint for a thriving city."
"The next hundred days," she said, "are the most important, not only to Pima County, but to the state of Arizona."