Guests - Seth Keshel, Joel Strabala, Jay Tolkoff
Seth Keshel: Reading the Midterm Map
Seth Keshel, best-selling author of The American War on Election Corruption and self-described "first gentleman of LD17," opened the conversation with a corrective to the doom-and-gloom narrative circulating around the midterms. His approach, he explained, is grounded entirely in historical data rather than emotion. "It's all about willing and acceptable collateral damage," Keshel said, describing how Democratic socialist victories in cities like New York, Boston, and parts of Los Angeles function as a polarizing trade-off that ultimately benefits the broader American political landscape. "It's way better, because it's a polarizing factor that makes them completely unelectable when it comes to states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan."
Keshel attributed the rise of candidates like New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to three converging factors: mass immigration creating a demographic base receptive to socialist appeals, urban malaise opening the door for sweeping populist promises reminiscent of FDR-era politics, and — in his estimation, the most important factor — the total absence of a competitive Republican party in cities like New York for the past century. "How can we sit here and beg and beg New Yorkers to elect someone other than that guy," he said, "when for 100 years they've been doing the opposite of the steps that would be required to prevent somebody like that."
On the national picture, Keshel laid out his statistical framework for the U.S. House. Historically, the president's party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 23 midterm elections since 1934, with an average loss of 27 seats. But Keshel's own seat-by-seat analysis tells a different story for 2026: 203 safely Republican seats, 187 safely Democrat, 22 leaning seats, and 23 genuinely decisive seats — meaning roughly 11% of all House seats are truly competitive. "Even with $9 gas," he said, "the Republicans should have at least 203 House seats" — a baseline that, combined with the 218 needed for a majority, leaves Republicans within striking distance even in a difficult environment.
Arizona factors prominently into that decisive category, with two congressional seats Keshel identified as genuine toss-ups: the seat being vacated by David Schweikert, where he and Winn both support Joe Chaplin, and Congressman Juan Ciscomani's seat, which Keshel called "as close to the tipping point as you're going to find." He pointed to specific erosion in Saddlebrook and Oro Valley precincts that voted for Trump by double digits in 2016 but by single points — in one case, just one point — by 2024, part of a broader leftward drift across northern Pima County and southern Pinal County that has intensified in midterm cycles. Despite Ciscomani's voting record aligning closely with the president's agenda, Keshel predicted both Ciscomani and his Democratic opponent, Joanne Mendoza — neither of whom faces a primary — will likely finish within a few points of each other, with a floor around 47% for each candidate. "I don't see anybody winning by more than six points," he said.
On the broader national landscape, Keshel pushed back on the idea that Texas is becoming politically vulnerable due to in-migration from blue states. "That is a massive miscalculation," he said, arguing that incoming transplants to Texas — unlike the pattern seen in Colorado — are disproportionately conservative-leaning homebuyers fleeing higher-tax, higher-cost states, while the state's growing Latino vote is trending Republican rather than Democrat. He cited household income data showing the inflection point for Latino voters shifting toward the GOP has moved from roughly $50,000 to around $70,000 in 2012 dollars, with rising income correlating with suburban migration and voting patterns that increasingly mirror white suburban voters. "I think the Latino vote is going to become basically what the Italian vote was," he said. "Italians used to be seen as a minority group with their own ethnic issues, and now they're just more white vote." He extended the same logic to the U.S. Senate race in Texas, expressing skepticism that Senator John Cornyn's seat is genuinely vulnerable despite Democratic optimism stemming from Ted Cruz's narrow 2.6% margin in 2018, arguing that Florida's rightward shift since that cycle — and Texas's own status as a magnet for conservative transplants — undercuts the comparison.
Locally, Keshel turned to LD17, calling it the only one of Arizona's 30 legislative districts where Trump ran to the left of his own 2020 performance in 2024, despite the district's nominal Republican registration advantage. He attributed his wife Rachel Keshel's representative seat being at risk to a previous cycle's loss by fellow Republican Cory McGarr to Democrat Kevin Volk, a result he linked to Republicans double-shotting the ballot — splitting votes across two candidates — in a district where a coordinated single-shot strategy would have been safer. With Democrats now also running two candidates rather than one, Keshel expressed optimism. "It almost ensures that we'll have one Republican seat," he said of the double-shot risk in past cycles, "but I think it gives a really good chance to have two Republican seats at this rate" if Republicans vote a straight ticket.
A caller named Douglas pressed Keshel further on what issue could mobilize voters to oust Volk in November. Keshel's answer centered on coordination rather than messaging: with no contested primary this cycle between Rachel Keshel and running mate John Winchester, Republicans avoid the intra-party "bloodletting" that fractured turnout in the past. He cited precinct-level data from 2024 showing specific areas — particularly Saddlebrook and northeast Oro Valley — where ballots were cast for only one Republican candidate rather than both, undermining the party's full potential in a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats by roughly 18,000 registered voters. "It's still a very hard district for us," Keshel cautioned, noting the district's boundaries were drawn based on party registration rather than actual voting trends.
On election administration, Keshel voiced strong support for what he called Arizona's "Save Act" — officially the Arizona Secure Elections Act — championed by State Senator Alex Kolodin after an earlier version died in committee the prior session, an effort Keshel said was actively undermined at the time by then-Senate staffer Gina Swoboda. While Keshel noted the final law falls short of Florida's stricter requirement that voters request and re-verify mail ballots each cycle, he praised its voter ID provisions for mail ballots and its funding for expedited high-speed tabulation, which he framed as critical to rebuilding public trust in election outcomes. "Not having to sit through ten days of elections while we watch the vote drip is going to be a very important thing," he said.
Keshel closed by weighing in on the contested Republican primary for the LD17 Senate seat between Anthony and Chris King, urging both camps to keep the contest focused on records and qualifications rather than personal attacks. "This is what a primary is for," he said. "It's the sanctioned means of disagreeing over who the party should nominate." He pointed to both candidates' military and leadership backgrounds as legitimate points of comparison, distinguishing that from the more openly hostile tone he said has characterized the statewide Attorney General primary.
Joel Strabala: Observers, Early Ballots, and the Mechanics That Matter
Joel Strabala, chairman of the LD17 Republican committee and a member of Pima County's Election Integrity Commission, joined the show to explain why poll observers and ballot-timing habits matter more than most voters realize. Observers, he explained, are authorized under state law specifically to give political parties — not just Republicans, but Democrats, Libertarians, and the Green Party as well — direct visibility into how elections are administered. "Just by being there, they help ensure that poll workers and election workers are following the law and doing things right," Strabala said, describing the role as providing informal audit capability rather than direct intervention. "You can't jump on them and say, ah, you're doing it wrong. It's done with decorum, but you are the eyes and ears for the whole voting community."
Strabala reported nearly 850 observer shifts have been organized for the Republican Party alone across the roughly month-long window between early voting's start on June 24th and final tabulation around July 26th. He's actively recruiting more volunteers, including for a Wednesday Zoom training session that had attracted eleven sign-ups as of the broadcast, and emphasized that understanding how the modern voting process actually works — which he said has changed substantially, "some for the better, some for the worse," over the past four years — is itself valuable independent of formal observer duty.
On voter behavior, Strabala offered direct, practical guidance. Roughly 70% of Pima County voters are on the county's permanent early voting list and will receive mail ballots automatically. His recommendation: vote and return the ballot as early as possible rather than holding onto it. "The more people that hang onto their ballot and turn it in at the last minute, the longer the election processing takes," he said, noting that ballots mailed after the Friday before election day typically don't arrive until the Monday or Tuesday following the election and aren't tabulated until later that week — and, in some cases, may not be counted at all if they arrive after county-designated cutoff collection times at post offices on election day itself. Bringing a mail ballot to a polling location on election day creates the same delay. Strabala's advice was unambiguous: vote early, return it promptly, and avoid both practices.
He also flagged ongoing recruitment for paid election work — $400 for a 15-hour shift as an inspector or marshal on election day, $300 with training for first-time clerks and judges — as both a financial opportunity and an educational one. "By watching it, you can see what's really happening and what's not," he said. "There's a lot of conjecture. There's a lot of stories." Strabala closed by noting today marked the final day to register to vote in the upcoming primary, encouraging in-person registration at the County Recorder's main office at 240 North Stone in downtown Tucson, and reminding listeners that ballots begin arriving by mail on Wednesday.
Jay Tolkoff: Tucson's Budget, the Rainy Day Fund, and TUSD's Enrollment Collapse
Jay Tolkoff, a longtime Tucson civic figure and Winn's former employer dating back more than five decades, walked through what he characterized as a fundamentally dishonest framing of the city's newly approved budget. "In my world, a balanced budget means that the amount of money you're spending on your bills is equal to the amount of money you're bringing in," Tolkoff said. "Not the amount you're bringing in and your credit cards."
Tolkoff cited city budget presentation slides showing an available fund balance of $80.4 million heading into fiscal year 2026 — comfortably above the city's policy-mandated rainy day reserve of roughly $75 million, set at 10% of the roughly $750 million general fund. By the projected end of fiscal year 2027, that balance is set to drop to $19.2 million, representing a $61.2 million drawdown from reserves to cover what the city is calling a balanced budget. "It's not even close" to actually balanced, Tolkoff said.
He connected the underlying fiscal pressure to one-time pandemic-era federal funding — COVID relief, Build Back Better, bipartisan infrastructure money, and ARPA funds — that the city used to build permanent organizational structures and ongoing staffing commitments rather than one-time expenditures, despite an internal city policy explicitly prohibiting that practice. "We actually have a policy within the city that says one-time money should be used for one-time purposes, not to set up new organizational structures which have ongoing expenses," he said. "That's exactly what they did."
Tolkoff pushed back directly on city officials' public explanations for the shortfall, which have included blaming reduced state-shared revenue tied to Doug Ducey's flat tax and broader effects of federal immigration and tariff policy. He said the claim about state-shared revenue is "a simple deception of the facts": while the income-tax component of that revenue has declined, the broader category — which also includes highway user fund gas tax receipts, vehicle license tax, and state-shared sales tax — has actually grown from roughly $170 million annually in 2018 to over $250 million today. "We're not losing state-shared revenues," he said. "But they say it because the income tax portion is down."
The city, in Tolkoff's framing, treated several years of pandemic-era windfall funding as a permanent raise rather than a one-time bonus. "You have a job and a certain salary, and you get a $10,000 bonus. That's not your new salary," he said. "We got a lot of bonuses over the last few years because of grants and all that, but that's gone now. And we can't keep living like we're getting a bonus if we're not getting it." He noted that even council member Paul Cunningham — who is running for mayor against incumbent Regina Romero — acknowledged during a study session that the city needs to find $100 million in savings, a recommendation Tolkoff said was simply ignored by the rest of the council.
On the city's free bus program, Tolkoff estimated the service generates roughly $13 million in fare-equivalent value in a good year against actual operating costs closer to $80 million. He cited reporting on increased shoplifting and other crime connected to the program, including secondhand accounts of retail theft facilitated by fare-free transit, while noting Tucson's new police chief, Chief Monica Prieto, told him directly that no causal link between the fare-free policy and rising crime has been established. Tolkoff also flagged a newly approved $3 monthly water bill surcharge intended to fund homeless cleanup efforts, calling it another example of city spending priorities he disagrees with, alongside a touted pipeline of 1,248 affordable housing units that he juxtaposed against an estimated homeless population of around 2,500 — a count he noted had only dropped by 80 from the prior year's tally despite likely undercounting in both directions. He was particularly critical of metrics used to claim success in homeless outreach, noting that accepting a bottle of water from outreach workers reportedly counts as "accepting services" in the city's reported acceptance-rate statistics, which have risen from roughly 10% five years ago to nearly 50% today. "Success looks like people who are able to put a roof over their head and take care of themselves," he said, "not just that we took people off the street and put them into a project that costs us half a million dollars to build and fifty thousand dollars a year to maintain after that."
Tolkoff shifted to Tucson Unified School District, where he serves on a committee evaluating school closures and consolidation ahead of a vote expected in early December. He cited a startling internal statistic: TUSD employs approximately 8,000 people to serve roughly 37,000 students — a ratio of one staff member for every 4.6 students, compared to a national public-school average of roughly one employee for every eight students, and a notably leaner 6.4-to-1 ratio in nearby Vail Unified School District. "We have almost twice the number of people working" relative to enrollment, Tolkoff said. He noted TUSD's enrollment has fallen from a historic peak of roughly 80,000 students to today's 37,000, driven by falling regional birth rates and demographic shift — east-of-Swan neighborhoods are now overwhelmingly populated by residents 55 and older — while growth has concentrated in the southeast part of the district, creating a geographic mismatch between where school buildings exist and where students actually live.
He cited Santa Rita High School, built to accommodate more than 2,000 students but currently serving fewer than 400, as a case study in the district's reluctance to consolidate despite the financial logic favoring closure. Even as the school's future remains uncertain, the district approved $350,000 in administrative-building renovations there this summer and is actively recruiting families to enroll their children at the school. "It's kind of like if your husband's been cheating on you and you go get all this plastic surgery and he leaves you anyway," Tolkoff said. He estimated that Education Savings Accounts — the school-choice program facing political attacks from opponents who frame it as a subsidy for wealthy families — account for only about 2,300 of the students who have left TUSD in recent years, a relatively modest figure compared to the broader decline driven by demographics and competition from charter and private schools. Tolkoff offered a reframe of the ESA debate that he said cuts against the usual partisan alignment: "What it really is, is pro-choice for schools," he said, noting the apparent contradiction of opponents who support reproductive choice but resist parental choice in education.
Tolkoff closed by turning to a local special election with outsized stakes: the Pima County Board of Supervisors' District 5 seat, vacated when Adelita Grijalva resigned to run for Congress and temporarily filled by appointee Andrés Cano, whom Tolkoff described as coming out of the broader Grijalva political network. Because Cano was appointed rather than elected, the seat is up for a special election this November — and the window for ballot-petition candidates has already closed. The only path onto the ballot now is a write-in campaign for Jeff Rhodes, a local business owner and process server who needs approximately 146 to 148 verified signatures from registered Republicans in District 5 to formally qualify. "Spelling is important," Tolkoff said, spelling the candidate's name letter by letter — R-H-O-D-E-S — and noting roughly 18,000 registered Republicans live in the district, meaning organized volunteer outreach could plausibly secure the needed signatures. He described Rhodes as a longtime business owner whose wife encouraged him for years to run for office, and contrasted his professional depth favorably against Cano's political resume, which Tolkoff characterized as largely confined to legislative staff work and Grijalva-aligned political appointments. "We need people that are equipped for the job," Tolkoff said. "We elected you. Why aren't you competent enough to make the decisions?"
He extended the same critique to two other contested Democratic primaries he's been following: Phoenix-area Representative Alma Hernandez, who Tolkoff said has been targeted by her own party's primary challenger, Rocky Perez, largely because she has broken from Democratic Party-line votes roughly 38 times during her tenure, and a parallel situation involving Representative Lydia Hernandez — no relation — in Maryvale, who Tolkoff said is being primaried for her pro-life position and her advocacy for school-safety measures, including police presence in schools, following a shooting at a Maryvale-area school. "They don't want school safety. They want thuggery," Tolkoff said of the opposition campaign against her, noting the district itself has no realistic path to electing a Republican, making the intra-party fight the only meaningful contest. He closed with a broader argument that voters — and the Republican Party specifically — need to do a better job recruiting candidates with genuine professional depth rather than settling for whoever volunteers. "We've got to do a better job of recruiting the next generation of candidates," he said. "Jeff Rhodes is a perfect one."
Closing Notes: Federal Court, Observers, and What's Ahead
Winn closed the show by previewing her own return to federal court the following Wednesday, continuing litigation against Attorney General Chris Mays and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes over what she described as overreaching provisions in Arizona's Elections Procedures Manual — including a 75-foot protest-distance limit and restrictions on uniformed law enforcement and military personnel voting in uniform, justified by state officials as preventing voter disenfranchisement. The case, brought by the national Oversight Project, was deliberately filed in Pima County rather than Maricopa County, Winn noted, specifically because of the county's history of conceding ground on election-administration fights. "Everything that we've conceded, we're not going to concede anymore," she said, pointing to the more than 800 observer slots now available countywide — including, for the first time, observer access to Pima County's mobile voting center, the only one of its kind in the state. Winn closed the broadcast by previewing the next day's lineup, including an appearance from Attorney General candidate Warren Peterson.