Guests - Art Del Cueto, Alex Kolodin, Warren Peterson
Art Del Cueto: Andy Biggs, the Border, and the Cost of Primary Grudges
Art Del Cueto joined the show fresh off a Latinos for Biggs event in Santa Cruz and Pima County the night before, where Congressman Andy Biggs drew a strong turnout from the Hispanic community ahead of his run for governor. Del Cueto opened with a sobering detail from the event: a family in attendance had lost their son to drug poisoning — not fentanyl, but something they were told was five to ten times more lethal, with the drug traced back to China. For Del Cueto, the story underscored a point he's made consistently. "We still are being attacked by outside forces," he said, agreeing with Winn's framing. "The drug cartels, the human smugglers, the sex traffickers — they're not going to go moonlight and find something else to do."
Del Cueto credited the Trump administration with a meaningful decline in border crossings and drug flow compared to recent years, while cautioning against complacency. He pointed to Texas as proof that effective border enforcement is achievable even under hostile federal conditions, crediting the state's own leadership for maintaining pressure even during the Biden administration. "We can lose what we've gained," he warned, framing Arizona's upcoming governor's race as a pivotal opportunity either to build on that progress or squeeze it away.
His endorsement of Biggs was personal as much as political. Del Cueto described a decade-plus friendship, noting Biggs was the first and only state senator to reach out proactively when border issues first became apparent to him, "well over a decade ago." He emphasized Biggs's Arizona roots — born and raised in Tucson, educated through high school and at the University of Arizona — and his record fighting alongside Del Cueto's own family. Winn added her own history with the candidate, noting that her husband, a retired Boeing vice president, worked directly with Biggs to save the Apache helicopter program — and the roughly 5,000 jobs tied to it — not once but twice during his time in Congress.
Del Cueto was sharply critical of intra-party infighting, a recurring theme throughout the broadcast. "If you have a microphone, use that microphone to better the state," he said, criticizing candidates and commentators who attack fellow Republicans during primary season rather than focusing fire on Governor Katie Hobbs. He drew a hard line on the term "RINO," arguing it gets weaponized backwards: "Those are the real RINOs — where they say they care about the state, they say they care about the party, but then they go off and attack every candidate that they can think of," leaving voters with no good options and depressing turnout in the general. His message for the post-primary period was unambiguous: "We need to get a thousand percent behind the right candidate, whoever wins, because this division is what will destroy us." He cited his own history of fully supporting Juan Ciscomani after backing a different candidate in an earlier primary as the model to follow.
On policy specifics, Del Cueto rejected the idea that immigration enforcement is a race-based issue. "Illegal is not a race," he said, describing conversations he's had directly with Arizona's Spanish-speaking community making the same point. He argued Hobbs has failed Latino constituents just as she's failed the rest of the state, contrasting that with Biggs's family ties to the Hispanic community and his consistent, decade-long engagement on border issues — engagement Del Cueto said some of Biggs's primary rivals have simply never shown up for. "I've never had them reach out to actually see what's going on at the border," he said of other candidates in the race, adding quickly that he wasn't trying to throw shade, just stating what he'd personally observed.
Del Cueto also addressed the federal lawsuit Winn is pursuing against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes over provisions that would bar uniformed law enforcement and military personnel from voting in uniform on election day. He framed the policy as a practical impossibility for officers working long shifts who can't simply leave a duty belt or uniform unattended in a vehicle without risking termination for failing to safeguard department equipment. "These are the same people that are upset about voter ID and saying that's suppressing the vote," he said, "but they're sending a clear message that they don't want law enforcement to go vote" — a policy he characterized as the real voter suppression, motivated by the state's loss of confidence among law enforcement.
Alex Kolodin: The Save Act, a Competing Ballot Measure, and a Three-Year Win Streak Against Fontes
Alex Kolodin, the state senator and Secretary of State candidate, used his segment to walk through the mechanics of the Arizona Secure Elections Act — informally known as the Save Act or Fast Act — which voters will see on their November ballot after the legislature succeeded in referring it directly, bypassing Governor Hobbs entirely. "We accomplished something that in D.C. they were unable to do," Kolodin said, framing the measure as a direct response to what he described as California's accelerating election dysfunction, including same-day registration, no-ID voting, and ballots still being counted weeks after election day. He cited a Department of Justice finding that California's lack of government-issued voter ID requirements was a contributing factor in that state's election problems, and argued Arizona's current law has similar gaps. "Over 80% of Arizonans agree you should have to present government-issued ID no matter how you vote," he said.
Kolodin disclosed a previously unreported wrinkle: in direct response to the Save Act's passage, Fontes and allied Democrats — including, Kolodin said, an appearance by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez alongside several Arizona Democratic congressmen — are pushing a competing ballot initiative designed to mandate same-day voter registration statewide, which Kolodin warned would functionally "Californiaize" Arizona's elections and likely push the state toward all-mail voting. He said the measure's name has been deliberately chosen to confuse voters into thinking it's connected to the Save Act, possibly branded something like the "Secure Arizona Act." His advice to listeners: don't sign any citizen-initiative petition related to election law this cycle. "If it would be good to have on the ballot, the legislature will put it on," he said, arguing that Arizona's Republican legislature renders the initiative process unnecessary for any genuinely beneficial reform, while the radical left uses citizen initiatives specifically to circumvent legislative Republicans.
Kolodin also detailed a 2024 bill of his own that allows voters to bypass signature verification entirely by showing physical ID at the polls when dropping off an early ballot — a measure he said will simultaneously speed up election results and avoid disenfranchising voters whose handwriting has changed with age, citing his wife's experience teaching students whose signatures shift dramatically between ages 17 and 19. "Signature verification is subjective. It's a matter of opinion. Whereas ID — either you have the ID or you don't," he said, framing the move toward objective verification as a win for both election security and voter accessibility, particularly for the young and elderly.
On the subject of dirty voter rolls, Kolodin confirmed reports of suspicious mail arriving at Arizona households urging unregistered occupants to register to vote — mail he said originates from out of state and represents a deliberate effort to inflate voter rolls. He noted this year's Republican budget delivered $1.4 billion in tax cuts but fell short of including a provision barring the Secretary of State's office from using taxpayer funds for what Kolodin characterized as partisan voter-registration activity — a gap he's running to close by replacing Fontes outright.
Asked to tally his legal record against the sitting Secretary of State, Kolodin offered a count with the candor of someone keeping score: a win in the Arizona Supreme Court, a win in federal court, and an assist from outside counsel in a Ninth Circuit case — "three and oh," though he noted he's sued Fontes so many times that an exact tally is difficult to maintain with confidence. He addressed an ongoing dispute between newly elected Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and that county's Board of Supervisors, which Kolodin described as an attempted power grab engineered by the outgoing recorder and board before Heap took office — an agreement designed to strip the elected recorder's authority over early voting and hand it to the board instead. Heap won at the trial court level, Kolodin said, but the Arizona Court of Appeals stayed that ruling ahead of the primary without actually finding Heap wrong on the merits — a delay Kolodin called "incredibly unfortunate" given that voters specifically elected Heap to administer the county's elections. "We have our own deep state here in Arizona," he said, describing permanent county staff as fighting harder to retain unelected control over election administration than he's ever seen bureaucrats fight for anything.
Kolodin closed with a warning about Arizona's Colorado River negotiating position, describing Hobbs and Fontes — who, he reminded listeners, also serves as lieutenant governor — as having so badly mismanaged the state's water negotiations that Arizona risks losing up to 72% of its Colorado River water allocation to the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. He connected the failure directly to utility bills he said are already climbing and will continue to do so absent better leadership. Listeners interested in supporting his campaign were directed to AlexForAZ.com ahead of the July 21st primary.
Warren Peterson: A Crowded Attorney General's Race and a Rebuttal Tour
Senate President Warren Peterson, running for Arizona Attorney General, opened by crediting the legislature's full-session effort to deliver Trump-aligned tax cuts — legislation Governor Hobbs vetoed three times before finally signing on the fourth attempt, only to later claim credit for it publicly. Peterson compared the sequence to a familiar refrain — vetoed once, vetoed twice, vetoed a third time, and only then signed — drawing a parallel to Biggs's own framing of the same pattern the night before. "Then she turns around and takes credit for it," Peterson said, calling the behavior part of what makes Hobbs's political style dangerous: a willingness to claim ownership of outcomes she actively opposed, amplified by what he described as favorable mainstream media coverage that rarely challenges the inconsistency.
Much of Peterson's segment was devoted to directly rebutting attack ads from his primary opponent, Rodney Glassman. Peterson said one ad falsely claims his opponent has 18 years of prosecutorial experience while simultaneously claiming Peterson has prosecuted zero cases — both claims he called demonstrably false based on public records. "I've prosecuted nine trials, which is more trials than he has prosecuted," Peterson said, adding that the same ad accuses him of having funded Attorney General Chris Mays's campaign, even though Peterson said he successfully sued Mays in court over funding cuts to her office and she was ordered to pay his side $40,000 in attorney's fees.
Peterson also addressed an opinion piece — previously discussed elsewhere on the show — arguing he doesn't meet a statutory ten-year practice requirement for the Attorney General's office. Peterson dismissed the argument on three separate grounds: the underlying statute was already struck down as unconstitutional because it improperly attempted to override the Arizona Constitution's own qualifications language; the legal deadline to challenge his candidacy on eligibility grounds, April 6th, has already passed; and, most pointedly, if the claim had any legal merit, his opponent could have moved to disqualify him from the ballot for roughly $10,000 in legal fees rather than spending an estimated $4 million attacking him through advertising. "Why is he spending $4 million to beat me if he could spend $10,000 to knock me off right now?" Peterson asked, characterizing the article as bad legal advice from an animal-law attorney with no standing expertise in election law, and noting his opponent has run for various offices over 15 years, lost six consecutive races, and switched political parties four times.
On substantive priorities, Peterson said his top focus as Attorney General would be public safety, framed explicitly around the constitutional oath to defend Arizonans' individual rights. He criticized incumbent Kris Mayes for prioritizing what he called environmental radicalism over law enforcement — pointing to her past tenure on the Arizona Corporation Commission, where she advanced Green New Deal-style policy, and arguing she's now using the Attorney General's office to block efforts to unwind those same prior commitments. "She should have just stayed at the Corp Comm," Peterson said. He pledged to walk in on day one and reset the office's culture among its roughly 400 attorneys around a single mission: fighting crime, defending the Constitution, and rooting out government waste and fraud. Drawing on his experience managing legislative staff as Senate president, Peterson said he understands that "personnel is policy" — if staff don't share the office's mission, they'll either choose to leave or be dismissed.
Peterson connected Arizona's rising drug death rate — which he noted is bucking a national decline — to the unintended consequence of more effective border enforcement under President Trump: with the border less porous than in past years, drug cartels are increasingly concentrating supply through Arizona as one of the few remaining viable corridors, intensifying the problem locally even as national totals improve. He committed to entering a 287(g) agreement with the federal government on his first day in office, enabling state-level enforcement of federal immigration law as a tool against cartel activity, and argued that many of the state's enforcement gaps aren't the product of missing laws but of laws that already exist but simply aren't being enforced.
On his legislative legacy, Peterson cited consistent top-three rankings from the American Conservative Union across his 14 years at the legislature — a distinction he said a former ACU staffer told him was unusual to maintain after moving into Senate leadership — along with a record of cutting taxes every year he's served as Senate president, directly rebutting another opposing ad that claims he raised taxes. He described his decision to enter the race as originating with a former assistant attorney general who approached him directly, and noted he's secured endorsements from four conservative state attorneys general and four conservative county attorneys who also met with his primary opponent before choosing to back Peterson instead.
Asked whether the Attorney General's office could function as a less politicized institution than it's become under Mayes, Peterson pointed to his record managing divided government for four and a half years as Senate president — including this year's Trump-aligned tax cut package, passed in cooperation with a Democratic governor despite the partisan divide — as evidence he can deliver conservative outcomes regardless of who holds the executive branch. "The AG's office was never designed to be political," he said. "It was designed to uphold the Constitution, uphold the laws."
Closing Notes: Ballots, Down-Ballot Races, and a Write-In Worth Watching
Winn closed the show with a rundown of what voters should expect as ballots begin arriving by mail. She urged listeners to watch for ballots mistakenly delivered to registered voters who no longer live at that address — a known symptom of Pima County's persistently dirty voter rolls — and to make sure any misdirected ballots are not cast. She flagged confusion likely to arise from down-ballot city council races in Oro Valley and Marana that won't appear again until November, alongside school board races that follow a different cycle entirely.
On the governor's race, Winn said she felt comfortable predicting Andy Biggs will win the Republican primary given his substantial polling lead, while criticizing what she described as a pattern of financial mismanagement under the Hobbs administration — likening Arizona's situation to dynamics she's observed in Minnesota, California, and Chicago, where public funds are alleged to flow toward politically connected interests rather than their intended purposes. She also flagged the Arizona State Treasurer's race as a contest worth following, expressing confidence in candidate Elijah Norton's combination of financial resources and relevant experience.
Winn closed with an appeal to flood every contested legislative district — listing LD16, LD17, LD18, LD19, LD20, LD21, and LD23 specifically — with straight-ticket Republican support, and spotlighted an under-the-radar special election for the Pima County Board of Supervisors District 5 seat. The seat opened when Adelita Grijalva left to run for Congress and was temporarily filled by appointee Andrés Cano, who Winn noted has never held elected office. The only Republican path onto the ballot is a write-in campaign for local candidate Jeff Rhodes, a political newcomer with no prior office-seeking ambitions, in a district Winn joked "looks like a drunken cow drew" the boundaries. She connected the case for showing up even in a heavily Democratic county to a point the late Charlie Kirk made to her directly: Pima County Republicans don't need to outright win the county, just close the registration and turnout gap enough to offset Maricopa County's larger population, since the two counties together represent roughly 80% of the state's total population.
Winn closed by noting Thursday's show will feature a rescheduled court date discussion after her federal hearing against Mayes and Fontes was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday, with Wednesday's broadcast airing as a rerun of the previous week's show while she's in Phoenix.