Guests - Alex Kolodin, Dave Smith, Stephen Mundt
A day after America First Legal sued Arizona's Secretary of State over ballot language, Kathleen Winn spent Tuesday's show connecting a single thread across three very different guests: the fight over how measures and candidates are described to voters, and what she argues is at stake if the descriptions win. The Republican nominee for Secretary of State explained the lawsuit. A former county chair turned to the sheriff, the courts, and Proposition 425. And a retired brigadier general widened the lens to Iran, the munitions supply, and the economics that, in his telling, socialism never accounts for.
Alex Kolodin: The Lawsuit Over the SAVE Act's Ballot Language
Alex Kolodin — currently the LD3 representative and the Republican nominee for Secretary of State — joined to explain the America First Legal suit against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, which concerns the ballot description of the Arizona SAVE Act, the citizenship-to-vote measure Kolodin referred to the November ballot.
Kolodin's charge was that Fontes is deliberately misleading voters about a one-page measure. The suit alleges two omissions. First, the description hides the measure's lead provision — that a person must be a citizen to register to vote, and that the government cannot count votes cast by non-citizens. "He could have easily pretty much just copied and pasted it. It's so short," Kolodin said, arguing the measure was intentionally kept brief so the public could read it. "Adrian Fontes is counting on people not doing that." Second, he said Fontes tells voters the measure's ban on foreign funding merely duplicates existing federal law — which Kolodin disputes, because the measure makes the prohibition enforceable by the state and, unlike federal law, extends it to foreign funding of ballot measures.
The dispute over wording, Kolodin argued, is not about his preference but about a neutral description. "It's about what's a neutral and factual description of the measure." He framed Fontes's approach as a political strategy that has already backfired by drawing attention: "He tried to run a competing ballot initiative and failed. He failed to get the signatures because there's no support for his radical Mamdani-like views." Kolodin said his own polling before referring the measure found 80 to 90 percent of Arizonans agree citizenship should be required to register — even as Fontes is before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to dismantle that requirement in existing state statute. "It's imperative that the people of Arizona constitutionalize that common sense principle," he said, "to take it out of the hands of people like Mr. Fontes."
Winn tied it to the broader pattern she has tracked all season — the fight over language, and her own recent Oversight Project win over a rule she said was a backhanded attempt to bar ICE agents from voting in uniform, written broadly enough to sweep in all military and police. On timing, Kolodin said the case will move on an expedited schedule because ballots must be printed with lawful language in the coming weeks; it will be decided first in Maricopa County Superior Court and, when Fontes loses, likely appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court. He praised the attorney handling it, James Rogers, as the lead counsel who represented Maricopa Recorder Justin Heap and who just won his own primary for the statehouse in LD10 — "a great conservative election lawyer in the house."
Kolodin closed on the money gap. Fontes, he said, "is getting flooded with coastal money from New York and California," while his own campaign runs on Arizona voters and needs "time, talent and treasure." His site is alexforaz.com.
Dave Smith: Sheriff Nanos, the Courts, and Two-Tiered Justice
Dave Smith, the former Pima County Republican chair who calls his segment "Smith and Winn," opened on Sheriff Chris Nanos — and did not hold back. His verdict was that Nanos has become a synonym for incompetent leadership.
Smith's case centered on the Guthrie kidnapping, which he dated to February 1st, roughly six months earlier. He argued Nanos held the crime scene only about 24 hours before releasing it, breaking his own chain of custody for any evidence gathered later — a failure Smith called inexcusable in a kidnapping, where nothing is more time-urgent. "He failed to do the most primitive steps in criminal investigation," Smith said, describing press conferences that left the public knowing less than before. Winn noted the case had reached national television, and that a second note to the Guthrie family had recently surfaced, indicating the kidnappers hadn't realized the severity of the victim's medical condition and that she had died. Smith's read was a pattern of blame over accountability: "One of the first steps of incompetence is blaming, not accountability. He doesn't solve the problem. He aggravates it."
Smith drew on his own law-enforcement background to argue the investigation ignored the obvious cross-border dimension — that in southern Arizona, a kidnapping or a body disposal points toward Sonora, a point he said Nanos seemed not to grasp. Both noted that the Board of Supervisors referred Nanos's conduct to Attorney General Kris Mayes, and both doubted anything would come of it. Smith framed it as a systemic problem: "As long as you've got a D attached to you, our justice system doesn't care anymore." He called it "a mocking Soviet-style system" of two- or three-tiered justice, and his prescription was the one that runs through every segment: "Get your Republican neighbors and your independent friends to vote."
Smith returned to that theme on crime and the courts directly, citing the downtown shooting — nine people wounded by a shooter he and Winn described as a career criminal freed by a lenient justice system — and County Attorney Laura Conover's office, which he said has 62 open positions. "Hire some attorneys," he said, arguing the vacancies themselves tell a story about who is willing to work there. His broader explanation reached back to his criminology studies: what he called social conflict theory, a Marxist framework in which crime is treated as a product of oppression and, in his telling, "the criminal is the victim" while the actual victim becomes irrelevant. He argued it has quietly saturated education, media, and the legal process.
Smith was equally pointed on the political figures he blames. He described Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva as a socialist who "failed her way up" from a weak Board of Supervisors tenure to Congress, and who "chose strangers over neighbors" — a phrase Winn adopted approvingly — by advocating for people in the country illegally over her constituents. He characterized appointed Supervisor Andrés Cano as an activist rather than a public servant. And he argued the local media offers no real scrutiny: "The freedom of the press was meant to criticize government and power," he said. "They speak lies to the people on behalf of power. That's called propaganda."
On the Democratic Party's direction, Smith made the argument he insisted on precisely: that "Democrat socialist" is a euphemism. "Marx himself didn't recognize the difference," he said. "Socialism leads to communism. It is communism." He pointed listeners to Arizona's own statute — noting that advocating the violent overthrow of the government, or membership in the Communist Party toward that end, is prohibited under state law — and suggested it as a tool against officials who openly identify as communist. "We are a constitutional republic. We are not a democracy," he said. "They keep pretending they can vote away our freedoms. No, they cannot."
Dave Smith: The 425 Money Grab
Smith and Winn turned the second half to Proposition 425, with the public-comment deadline looming the next day at 5 p.m. Smith's framing matched the week's other guests: the measure lets the county reach back to the 1980 base limit approved by voters, change it, and let the increased capacity compound over 20 years into what he called an exponential expansion of the county's power to spend.
His illustration was a Board of Supervisors moment he witnessed, when Supervisor Steve Christy tried to pin down the county's medical officer on the cost of transporting and treating people in the country illegally, and the official dismissed it as a "de minimis cost." For Smith, that captured the mindset: "Your money, no matter how much it is, is a minimal cost because they have no skin in the game." He argued the county pays its officials disproportionately, has failed to solve homelessness and poverty despite tens of millions spent, and — offered a choice between residents and the undocumented — "chose illegal aliens."
His constitutional argument was that a tax must benefit the community that pays it. "A tax that doesn't benefit the people is a taking, and that is unconstitutional," he said, objecting to what he called an envy-based structure that takes more from higher earners while returning nothing. Both urged listeners to submit a written argument against 425 before the deadline — a $25 submission, with a cheat sheet on PimaGOP.org — and Winn stressed the appeal crosses party lines: "I don't care if you're an independent, and I don't care if you're a Democrat."
A late text from Beth Borozan corrected the record: there was no Board of Supervisors meeting that night after all, which Winn relayed on air — meaning listeners had the evening free to submit their 425 comments. Both credited Christy as the board's lone fiscally responsible member and pointed to Jeff Rhodes, now confirmed on the November ballot in Supervisor District 5, as the chance to give him a second vote. "There's more Democrats in that district," Smith acknowledged, "but if we combine the independents and the Republicans — and even some Democrats don't like what they've got right now."
Stephen Mundt: Iran, the Munitions Question, and the Economics of the Anointed
Retired Brigadier General Stephen Mundt — a former Pentagon official and, as Winn put it, a good friend calling in from Virginia — closed the show with foreign policy and defense.
On Iran, Mundt separated Winn's two questions cleanly: can we trust them, and can we make a deal. "Can we trust them? No," he said. "Can we make a deal with them? Yeah. There's a lot of folks I don't trust that I can make a deal with. The question becomes what's the deal and how enforceable is it?" His impatience was with what he called an ostrich phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic — the belief that inaction makes the threat disappear. Iran and the organizations it supports, he argued, have an end agenda of destroying Israel and the United States, a reality he said 11 presidents across 47 years have failed to resolve, and he dismissed nostalgia for the Obama-era nuclear deal as having enabled the buildup. His terms for a real deal: no nuclear weapon, no movement toward one, and inspectors allowed in to verify — with the alternative being that Iran "gets swacked again."
Mundt drew on his own military experience to describe a frustration with regional partners who invoke fate rather than action — recounting a student pilot who wouldn't take the controls during an emergency procedure, saying "if Allah wills," and Mundt's blunt reply that he wasn't going to die waiting on the answer. He also noted the diplomatic churn around the Strait of Hormuz, the role of Oman as an intermediary, and the reluctance of partners like Saudi Arabia to commit when the situation turns difficult. On Gaza, he argued Israel is effectively offering Hamas a path — lay down weapons and move toward rehabilitation and a better economic future — that a movement bent on destruction will not take.
On the munitions question Winn raised — whether U.S. industry can meet the need after supplying Ukraine, Israel, and others — Mundt's short answer was yes. The U.S. has long stockpiled to fight two major contingencies, or one while holding a second, and he said the administration had secured commitments to ramp production roughly fourfold without invoking the War Powers Act. The deeper problem, he argued, is cost-efficiency: relying on expensive missiles for jobs a cheaper solution should handle. "I don't need to fire a rocket to take down a drone," he said, noting the U.S. is learning from Ukraine's forced innovation in unmanned systems. His warning was about rhetoric: media and members of Congress who make "bold statements which embolden an enemy," leading Iran to believe it can keep fighting. "If Trump unleashes this next wave, it is going to devastate Iran."
The conversation turned domestic through New York's mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whom Mundt used as a case study in the economics socialism ignores. On Mamdani's tax plan: "He's losing his tax base," including wealthy progressives who didn't expect to be on the list. On the city-run grocery stores Mamdani has proposed, Mundt walked through the mandates — fresh produce, prepared salads in place of a deli, accommodations for every dietary and cultural need — and argued no operator could turn a profit without a subsidy covering the gap. "Somebody has to pay the bill," he said. "All these people that keep claiming capitalism bad don't understand." Winn drew the through-line to Arizona's governor's race, where she said Katie Hobbs is running ads claiming Andy Biggs will raise taxes 25 percent when he has campaigned on eliminating them — "they have nothing else to run on."
Mundt's closing was about America's own self-image. Visitors, even during the World Cup, arrive expecting worse and leave amazed by the country's abundance and opportunity, he said — "but if you don't want to love America, just listen to the media." He acknowledged real problems worth fixing: uncontrolled borders, visa loopholes that let companies undercut young American workers, and housing that should be made affordable to young people "but not affordable housing to end homelessness." His warning about socialism's appeal to the young was paired with respect for the smartest of them: the ideology "makes sense" until you ask how it's paid for, and its advocates "don't even want to listen to people who've lived under communism." Winn previewed the next day's China Watch Wednesday, and Mundt named the two powers he said Americans should watch — Russia and China — both, he argued, providing weapons and targeting intelligence to Iran and pulling strings against U.S. interests. He also flagged coming sanctions on Vietnam for relabeling Chinese goods, and China's failure to honor its rare-earth commitments.
Winn signed off with a shot at the governor's race — "our governor won't debate Andy Biggs, and everyone should pay attention to that" — and a reminder that the work between the primary and November is only beginning.