Dave Smith: "Put Your Head Down and Vote"
On Election Day morning, former Pima County Republican Party chair Dave Smith joined Kathleen Winn between observer shifts with a simple message for anyone still holding a ballot. "If you don't vote, you're making a statement on behalf of the left," Smith said. "Don't sit there at Thanksgiving and tell your family it's so terrible that we lost this election." The country is marking its 250th anniversary, he noted, and he urged voters to honor their founders, their kids and their grandkids by showing up.
Winn said that by 7 a.m. she had already fielded about a dozen calls from polling places. Printers were down at Ocotillo and were back up after a call to Chris King, a sign display was pulled at a Green Valley church that doubles as a polling place because someone claimed the property was private, and several voters discovered that early ballots they expected had never arrived. Smith said he and Winn had spoken that morning to the RNC, the state party and lawyers, and that Pima County elections director Constance Hargrove had been "super helpful" in triaging issues. "Everyone's working together," he said. His advice to volunteers was to avoid picking fights with poll workers. "Just try not to pick fights, try to do your job," Smith said.
Observers Must Be Identified
One of the morning's disputes was over observer badges. Under a new law, Smith said, observers are supposed to be identified by party, and his Marana observers wore stickers reading "Republican Party" with their names. An observer at a Tucson site was told that identification was on a need-to-know basis. "It's a new rule, but when the law gets passed and it changes, you abide by the law," Smith said. "It's not emotional. It's just follow the law." Winn added that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes does not get to vote on laws he dislikes. Smith also noted that observers are not poll workers, and that the two roles are different.
Election Day Voters
Smith said the party has to "play within the rules of the league." Republicans advocated for years against early mail-in voting, he said, but with mail-in voting legal, the party has to win under those rules. He pointed out the irony that anyone who has not yet mailed a ballot and votes in person Tuesday will likely have it counted faster than those who dropped one off in the last few days. Winn said voters who have not received an early ballot but are still registered can vote at the polls. She also floated the idea of a regular registration "checkup" every few years, comparing it to servicing a car, noting that DMV transactions can sometimes change a voter's party or address.
The Case on Taxes and Socialism
Winn and Smith spent several minutes on the governor's race and the Pima County ballot. Winn argued that Governor Katie Hobbs cannot run on her record, citing Arizona's slide in education rankings, the housing moratorium and water policy, and said Hobbs takes credit for the no-tax-on-tips law she vetoed. Winn said Arizona has fallen from fourth to 47th on some measures. On Proposition 425, he said Pima County already carries one of the heaviest property tax burdens in the state and compared the county's proposal to Scarsdale, New York. "You make it so unaffordable, you can't afford it," Smith said. Winn said the county's request works out to about $630 million, a blank check. "You're voting today no on 425," she said, "and then go vote for governor, because it's that important."
Smith then made the philosophical case against what he calls socialism, arguing that it always traces back to Marx's formula of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need." "Ability diminishes, need grows," he said, and the productive class is asked to cover it. He urged voters to say so plainly. "You, the productive people, have to stand up for yourself and protect your rights," he said.
Mark Lewis: Numbers, Audits and a Ballot Measure to Fix Election Security
Mark Lewis, a longtime elected official who has spent more than four decades in Arizona politics, spoke from Maricopa County, where he said the turnout operation is in full swing. He framed Election Day as a math problem. In 2024, he said, independents voted 53 percent for Democrats, and this year they are leaning about 61 percent Democratic, an eight-point shift he said can matter in a close race. He added that the Green Party and No Labels could pull about four percent of votes away from both sides, and predicted a margin of no more than 1,000 votes out of more than a million ballots. "It's going to be very close," he said.
How Elections Used to Work
Lewis recalled his first race in 1994 and a get-out-the-vote operation that rented every church bus in the state and ran phone banks of 40 to 60 volunteers working from giant IBM printouts, with paper rulers to track names. He worked in polling places where the voter list was a paper roll and people signed in, and said Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell trained volunteers. He said that in the 1980s he tried to vote for himself and ended up with a question ballot, which led him to push the Board of Supervisors for $10 million in new equipment and fill-in-the-bubble tabulators. "Both parties need to commit to better machines and upgraded equipment and better security protocols and an audit," he said.
The Audit Proposal
Lewis said the policy he has advocated since 2019 is an independent audit of the election system. In a private company, he said, the accounting department handles the cash and an audit function checks the work. He would apply the same model to elections by having an independent auditor, hired through the Auditor General's office, check the voter list before ballots are mailed, verify the work as ballots come in and issue a report within 10 days of the election, with follow-up recommendations within 30 days. "You can't make improvements unless you measure it and get a report," he said. He and Winn discussed lists with out-of-date addresses, and Winn said a convicted felon had received three ballots at an old address for nine years. Lewis suggested Republicans and independents could circulate petitions for a ballot measure to shift Clean Elections money to counties for security upgrades, a measure that would need about 300,000 signatures.
Winn said Fontes has resisted turning over voter rolls to the Trump administration, which would compare them against Social Security records, and Lewis said that was another reason for a change at the top of the office.
Energy, Water and Fuel Prices
Lewis credited 30 years of Republican policy with attracting what he put at $265 billion in chip manufacturing to Arizona, and he warned against taxing chip factories and data centers to fund other programs. On water, he said the Central Arizona Project's contractors had sued the federal government over Governor Hobbs's settlement, and that the state might have to sue her if she wins reelection. He argued that cutting the state's water would hurt agriculture, saying Arizona produces more beef than it uses and all its own milk and cheese, and that the state could end up buying imported dairy and beef.
On fuel, Lewis said diesel was at $6.39 a gallon that morning and that he has been spending an extra $80 a week on gasoline at close to $5 a gallon, a burden he said hits construction families hard. He blamed the Iran conflict, which was supposed to be short-term, and said Vladimir Putin pushed the Middle East into war to pull attention away from Ukraine. Winn said she worries about how many people are being manipulated by polls and media. "Today the real poll is the election," she said.
Alex Kolodin: ID Verification and Why the Secretary of State Race Matters
State Representative Alex Kolodin, the Republican nominee for Secretary of State, called in with a report from the field and a plea to voters. Election Day turnout is low compared with 2022, he said, and Maricopa County Republicans were running only slightly below that year. "I'm embarrassed for my county," he said, and he asked Pima County Republicans to pick up the slack. "If Pima turns out at 70 percent, it's going to save our bacon," he said.
ID Verify Your Ballot
Kolodin explained the process that he said he worked hard to pass. A voter who brings an early ballot to the polls can ask to have the ballot ID verified, shows ID and bypasses signature verification. Signature checks, he said, are subjective and a major source of delay, and when ballots are in the tens or hundreds of thousands, they can add days to the count. "If you ID verify, you can have 100 percent confidence your vote's going to get counted," he said. Winn said some poll workers had been telling voters this was not available, and Kolodin said that the new option is a right and that voters should politely request it.
Observers and Consistent Rules
Responding to the observer-badge dispute, Kolodin said the problem was inconsistent rules made up on the fly. "That always raises suspicion and decreases confidence in the elections," he said, calling for a secretary of state who gives clear and uniform rules. Winn said the party had gotten 30-plus reports during the morning and that most had been fixed.
Prop 144 and the Fontes Fight
Kolodin urged a yes vote on Proposition 144, which he sponsored. It would ban foreign funding of ballot measures, require ID for every ballot cast, which he said 80 percent of Arizonans want, and speed up results. "It's ridiculous to wait a week to find out who won," he said. He said Fontes was still in litigation with the Trump administration over voter-roll records and was before the U.S. Supreme Court trying to dismantle Arizona's proof-of-citizenship requirement. "He's not a mainstream Democrat," Kolodin said, "and this is how far outside the mainstream this person is."
His Closing Argument
Kolodin said Ciscomani losing Pima County by five points less could decide control of Congress, and that his own race could turn on the same margin. "I want you to believe in Arizona," he said. "I want you to believe that our election system can make us proud again." Winn said she promised Charlie Kirk two years ago that Pima County would close the gap, and she told listeners to vote yes on Props 141, 142, 144 and 316 through 320.
Juan Ciscomani: "Today Is Game Day"
Congressman Juan Ciscomani, the Republican incumbent in Arizona's 6th Congressional District, joined from the road after visiting polling places since 6 a.m. He thanked Winn and the Pima County Republican Party for what he called the most unified campaign he had seen. "I've never seen so unified as I've seen in this cycle," he said. "It's game day."
Ciscomani rattled off recent wins for the district: Chiricahua National Monument, which he said was redesignated this month as a national park, and a $12 million USDA grant for water research. He said the visits by cabinet secretaries show that his work is bringing results, including U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner's tour of Gospel Rescue Mission and the visits from Speaker Mike Johnson. Winn noted that he sits on the Appropriations Committee and that the Speaker has campaigned here three times. She also noted that his oldest daughter is voting for the first time, and that he and his wife, Laura, had not received their own early ballots.
He described the race as a contrast with his Democratic opponent, whom he called too radical for the district. "She's completely reckless," he said, citing her positions on taxes and girls' sports. He said Democrats poured in money from California, New York and Washington State. "We don't want those ideas and policies from those states here," he said.
Ciscomani closed on a personal note. "Twenty years as United States citizens, and we get to vote and see our name on the ballot," he said, describing a prayer at breakfast with his parents. "Those kind of things just mean a lot."
Winn's Election Day Ballot Guide
Winn used the closing segments to run through the day's returns and the local ballot. LD19 had returned 67 percent of its ballots, followed by LD8, LD18 at 63.2 percent and LD17 at 62.7 percent, with every Pima County district above 45 percent. About 15,000 voters told party callers over the weekend they would vote on Election Day, and she urged them to do it. She told LD17 voters to vote for two House candidates, incumbent Rachel Keschel and John Winchester, who is running to replace Democrat Kevin Volk, and to back Chris King for state Senate.
She told voters in District 5 to choose Jeff Rhodes, saying the district has the county's highest crime and that Supervisor Andrés Cano, appointed rather than elected, said nothing after nine people were shot downtown. She noted that Steve Christy, the lone Republican on the Board of Supervisors, is outnumbered four to one and that flipping a seat would change the board's dynamics. She reminded uniformed police and military voters that a federal court win against Fontes allows them to vote in uniform.
On the local ballot, Winn said the Vail, Sahuarita and Tanque Verde school measures replace existing taxes and are up to voters, and that the Pima Community College item is also a personal call. She said the Oro Valley general plan, which sells assets, is a yes, and that the party recommended no on Pima JTED. The Reid Park Zoo sales tax, she said, is a decision for each voter, and again urged a no on 425.
Polls were open until 7 p.m. and anyone in line by then can vote. Winn asked voters to report anything unusual to PimaGOP.org, and invited supporters to watch returns at The Union starting at 6 p.m. She expected early results around 8 or 8:30. "The biggest problem we should have today," she said, "is that there are lines waiting."