Guests – Dave Smith, Brenda Marts, Jay Tolkoff, Alex Kolodin, Merissa Caldwell, Janet Neustedter
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Back Home, Eyes Open, and 90 Days to the Primary
Kathleen Winn returned from the NRA conference in Houston with fresh eyes and a full agenda. In her absence, the political landscape shifted in ways both predictable and stunning. President Trump visited Tucson — at Dream City Church, while she was two states away — Eric Swalwell collapsed as a political figure overnight, and Pima County's board of supervisors quietly placed a massive financial maneuver on its Tuesday meeting agenda without a single headline to announce it.
"He didn't check my social calendar," she said of the president's visit. "I'm sure he would have come this week had he known I was going to Houston."
The humor was quick but the underlying message wasn't. From the moment the show resumed, the through-line was unmistakable: Tucson's conservative movement is at an inflection point, 90 days from the primary, with city elections on the horizon, a billion-dollar spending maneuver moving through the county in near-silence, and a secretary of state race that, depending on who wins, will determine the integrity of every Arizona election to follow.
Dave Smith: The Left's Playbook, Their Broken House, and the Education Crisis
Guest host Dave Smith, who had kept the show running during Winn's trip while his wife Betsy traveled with the Winn Tucson team, joined Kathleen for the opening segment to debrief on the week's news and set the political context.
The two opened with what Smith called the "non-personing" of Eric Swalwell — a tactic he had discussed at length on Thursday and Friday's shows. Winn sharpened the framing.
"When I left, Eric Swalwell was running for governor and was a congressman," she said. "I got home and neither of those things were true. When the Democrats say 'we're done with you,' they pull no punches. They don't just discredit you. They make you have never existed. They can pretend there was no ignoring of his indiscretions, because if he never was, there's nothing to explain."
Smith agreed and noted that the parallels extend further. Swalwell, he pointed out, had been one of the loudest voices in the anti-Trump crusade — and was shielded by the very media now pretending he never existed. "It's not just what they tell you. It's what they don't tell you. He's gone. He might as well have never been. And his best friend Ruben Gallego — whose name was mispronounced on national television all weekend as 'Galago' — is going to fight to survive this because he knows that if the Swalwell scandal goes deeper, his name is on the list."
Winn added her own read on Gallego's calculation. "When is Ruben lying? When his lips are moving. He's got a pocketful of vouchers he can use against other Democrats before they use them on him. They're always balancing — who do we screw versus will they screw us back? That's not a political party. That's a protection racket."
Both Smith and Winn turned their attention to the broader structural failure they see in American public education. Smith returned to James Clavell's short story The Children's Story — a work he had recommended repeatedly during his guest-hosting days — as a warning from 1975 that reads like a diagnosis of today.
"Clavell watched his daughter recite the Pledge of Allegiance and couldn't tell him what it meant," Smith said. "He said, what good is it to teach our children the pledge without teaching them what it means? And he wrote that story because a new teacher uses the kids' ignorance to undermine the flag, the pledge, and the concept of God in about twenty minutes. Read it. It's free online. It takes fifteen minutes. It was written as a warning, and nobody read it."
Winn extended the argument into the present. "They've co-opted the American education system. Red for Ed — and red as in communism, that's exactly right — germinated right here in Arizona. Listen to the National Education Association. They're ranting, they're screaming. And you begin to wonder: how do we correct this kind of constant brainwashing? Because that's what it is. It's controlling the minds of the young."
The conversation circled to the 15-minute city concept and the broader trend of telling people how to live, where to live, and what they're permitted to do within their own communities.
"Think about this," Winn said. "If someone in the 1970s told you, 'We're going to make you live in a little block where you've got to be within 15 minutes of where you live to do your shopping, you won't be able to drive much, you can ride your bike regardless of the temperature, and we'll punish you if you go outside your zone' — you would have voted them out. And now we vote them in. That's terrifying."
Smith tied the fiscal crisis to the same machine. "They created the inflation. They canceled the pipelines. They eliminated the refineries. And now they point to Trump and say he hasn't solved the gas problem. Meanwhile, you pay for empty buses. You pay for an empty trolley. Public transportation at a profit works only in a handful of dense urban cores. Everywhere else it's a taking dressed up as a public service."
On the constitutional stakes, Smith was direct. "We're in a real crisis. If the Democrats get back in charge, they'll put fifteen people on the Supreme Court — all radical left. They'll make Puerto Rico and DC states. They will dominate. And you will think Big Brother was a party compared to what comes next. That's not hyperbole. That's the stated plan. And right now, Senate leadership won't even allow recess appointments. Trump is not able to form the executive branch the way he needs to. We are that fragile."
Brenda Marts and Jay Tolkoff: The $70 Million Shell Game at the Board of Supervisors
If the first hour was about national politics and long-term structural decay, the second segment was about what was happening the very next morning in a government building in downtown Tucson — and why almost no one knew about it.
Brenda Marts, precinct committeeman in LD-18 and a relentless tracker of Pima County's board of supervisors agendas, joined alongside Jay Tolkoff of LD-21 to break down what she had found buried in the Tuesday meeting's 45-item agenda.
"There's an item to raise the base spending level," Marts said. "I thought, what does that mean? So I looked it up. The base spending level hasn't been adjusted since it began — in 1980. The state passed a law with voter approval to put spending limits on counties, and Pima County hasn't touched their base figure in 45 years."
What she found when she dug in alarmed her. The county is proposing to add $70 million to the 1980 baseline figure of $93.7 million. On its face, that sounds like a moderate adjustment. The actual math tells a different story.
Tolkoff provided the historical context. "This goes back to the coattails of Prop 13 in California, which reined in property taxes there. Arizona passed a constitutional amendment — approved by something like 80% of voters — to put spending limits on counties, school boards, and cities. The formula already accommodates for inflation and population growth every year automatically. So the natural rise from $93.7 million in 1980 to nearly $700 million today has already been happening — built into the formula."
That means the $70 million addition is not a baseline. It is an injection into the base formula — and everything else the formula calculates gets multiplied upward from that new starting point.
"The current expenditure cap for Pima County is $762 million," Tolkoff said. "If they approve the new baseline, it goes to $1.333 billion. We're talking about nearly doubling the spending limit. In one year."
Marts connected the dots on the timing. "Only seven of Arizona's fifteen counties have ever asked for an increase in 45 years. One county asked three times. That was Greenlee County. Pima County has never once done this. Forty-five years without a problem. So what happened on their watch?"
Her hypothesis was pointed. "The NGOs can't get federal money anymore. Maybe that's it. But it should be explained. I don't know. These are my hypotheses. What I do know is that there's not enough information in the agenda report to tell us anything. And the only reason we know about it is because I happened to read it."
There had been no news coverage. Marts confirmed she had spoken to several reporters over the weekend, and not one of them knew it was on the agenda.
The process itself raised additional concerns. The item on Tuesday's agenda is a vote to refer the measure to the November ballot. Because of the legal timeline requirements, the county must move immediately after Tuesday's vote — a hearing is scheduled to follow the regular meeting on Wednesday. The entire sequence was designed to move from proposal to ballot referral in a matter of days.
"They're out of time to get the steps done legally," Marts said. "So it's treated as an emergency. Whether they call it that or not, the timeline says immediately after this meeting we have to do the next step. And that next step is a public hearing — which I now know is scheduled, but it was not publicized, and most people have no idea."
Winn summed it up. "They don't want you to have time to pick apart their argument. They want it on the ballot during a midterm election when turnout is lower. They wouldn't put it on a presidential election where people actually show up. And now we've got 90 days to the primary and we have to run around with our hair on fire trying to explain this to people."
The county's assurance that this will not cause a tax increase was met with skepticism.
"The bookkeeping doesn't make sense," Marts said. "If there's extra money they can't spend, why aren't they giving it back to us? Once the county has your money, they don't want to give it back. And now with this, they're not nickel-and-diming us anymore. They're just robbing the bank."
Winn added the longer-term context of fee increases she and Marts had tracked. Two weeks prior, the board had quietly raised a court automation fee — for domestic violence and name change cases — from $40 to $100. The people paying that fee have no choice but to pay it. This week's agenda included a $5 writ fee increase that would be passed directly to landlords — and, inevitably, to tenants. "They say they're all about affordable housing," Winn said. "And then they charge you another five dollars just because you're the owner. So who pays for that? It goes against the rent. It's a vicious cycle of nickel-and-diming people to accomplish nothing."
Both Marts and Tolkoff made a direct call to action: the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday starts at 9 a.m. at the county building on Congress Street. The public hearing on the spending limit is scheduled immediately following. Show up.
"I give you permission not to listen to the show tomorrow if you're at that meeting," Winn told her listeners. "Other than that, you have to listen."
Alex Kolodin: A Presidential Shout-Out, the Secretary of State Race, and the SAVE Act Fight
Few moments at the weekend's Turning Point USA event in Tucson generated more surprise than when President Trump called out Representative Alex Kolodin of LD-3 by name from the stage.
"It was kind of an out-of-body experience," Kolodin told Winn. "My campaign team always tells me to approach things on an even keel — act like you've been there before. But I'll tell you, you ever get so jaded that that isn't an out-of-body experience? Probably time to retire. I had my mom, my brother, and my sister Nicole there. We went out for pizza and wine afterwards to celebrate."
Kolodin is running for Arizona Secretary of State, and he describes his career as almost a mirror image of the incumbent, Adrian Fontes. Kolodin's first major legal case was against Fontes's home county to win voters more transparency in elections. He took Fontes to the Arizona Supreme Court twice and won both times — once when Fontes tried to give an illegal instruction to voters that would have allowed his hand-picked officials to determine voter intent, and once when Fontes attempted to remove a sitting member of Congress from the ballot over political disagreement. He also won in federal court when Fontes withheld records demonstrating non-compliance with federal election law.
"Numerous courts have called him a liar," Kolodin said. "And this man is the chief elections officer of the most important swing state in the country. This is the guy sitting in the middle of the road that runs straight to the White House. He is the Zohran Mamdani of Arizona — their plan for the next governor. We have to cut him off at the pass."
A recently released third-party poll showed Kolodin soundly defeating his primary opponent, with favorable numbers that increase the more voters learn about him. He noted that the campaign is not spending donor money on polling itself — every dollar goes to voter contact.
"The better that voters know who I am and what my message is, the more they like what they hear," he said. "That tells me what we're doing is working. We're going to bring that message to the entire Republican Party in the primary and to every single Arizonan in the general election."
His first act as Secretary of State, he said without hesitation, would be to call Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and accept the DOJ's standing offer to help Arizona identify and remove non-citizens from the state's voter rolls — the offer Fontes has refused.
"Harmeet, remember how you offered to help Arizona identify and remove non-citizens from our voter rolls? Remember how Adrian Fontes told you to go pound sand? Well, Harmeet's gone and I'm here and we would very much like your help."
Kolodin was clear-eyed about what is at stake in this particular cycle. The margin analysis is stark: Kari Lake lost the governor's race to Katie Hobbs by approximately 17,000 votes. Pima County alone could have swung that race. Joe Biden carried Arizona over Donald Trump by roughly 10,000 votes. In the Pima County sheriff's race, Chris Nanos beat Heather Lappin by 481 votes. The idea that Pima County Republicans don't matter in statewide elections is, by the numbers, simply wrong.
"If we can increase Republican midterm turnout in Pima County by 10 points from where it was last time, we will win — I can guarantee you that," Kolodin said. "It's a slam dunk. Tucson actually has the second-highest number of conservative voters in the state. People shouldn't forget how important Tucson is."
He also offered a pointed assessment of Senate Majority Leader Thune. "Senator Thune should have done a full talking filibuster and the fact that he hasn't is really an act of cowardice. It's not acceptable. He's also — and this may be the first time in recent history — blocked recess appointments for President Trump, which is absolutely unforgivable. He's being an empty chair. He's helping the other side put everything in place to try to force us to lose at least one chamber in the midterms."
On the SAVE Act — the federal legislation requiring documentary proof of citizenship and photo ID to register to vote in federal elections — Kolodin's message was direct. Arizona already requires both. The SAVE Act simply extends what Arizona has already proven works.
"Both our senators are posing against this just out of their biased radical left ideology," he said. "It is not aligned with Arizona's values. I actually did a text blast to Democrats about a month ago asking where they stood on proof of citizenship and photo ID, and they overwhelmingly supported it. The only thing they didn't like about the SAVE Act is that it comes from President Trump."
His instruction to Pima County Republicans was simple: call Senator Thune. Call every day. Make him feel it.
Kolodin also emphasized that Democrats who aren't part of the Fontes faction have reason to vote for him in the general election. "This is a man who is interested in climbing the ranks and making sure that his progressive faction is ascendant. I don't think all Arizona Democrats want that. Even Katie Hobbs has called him out for breaking the law, because she knows he's a threat to her part of the party. With me, what you're going to get is someone who fairly and impartially applies the law — and you're going to have a fair chance of winning, just like Republicans are going to have a fair chance of winning."
He can be reached at alexforaz.com for donations or volunteer sign-ups.
Merissa Caldwell: The SAVE Act Rally and the Battle Over Who Gets to Vote
Merissa Caldwell — longtime election integrity activist, formerly Merissa Hamilton — called in to detail the weekend's SAVE Act events and the larger battle being waged over the question of who is actually casting ballots in American elections.
"The SAVE Act was aptly titled by President Trump because it truly is to save America," she said. "We don't have a country if non-citizens are able to vote in our elections. Right now our system is really just a trust-based system — we trust that only citizens are voting. And as Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has been going around the country looking at voter rolls, she's finding that non-citizens are really voting all over the place."
The weekend's events were structured across two days and two cities. Saturday's event at the Dylan Hangar would feature Scott Pressler, Jenny Beth Martin, Brock Suitt, and attorney James Rogers — who had just won a landmark case in Maricopa County ordering the county to return all statutory duties, resources, budget, and staff that had been stripped from Recorder Dustin Hearne. Rogers has also worked on citizenship and voting rights cases across the state.
Sunday's event would take place at La Paloma in Tucson starting at 2:30 p.m., and the speaker list was formidable: State Representative Rachel Keschel of LD-17, State Senator Warren Peterson, Representative Alex Kolodin, Scott Pressler, Jenny Beth Martin, Brock Suitt, Caldwell herself, and a potential unannounced major guest still awaiting confirmation.
"We just earned our right to have observers back in Pima County," Caldwell said. "We should never have had to have that fight. And they've made it difficult. But we continue to show up and ask to be treated like the other 14 counties in the state. We're not going to relent."
She was direct about Pima County's unique situation. "You have one of the worst election setups in the state, one of the worst county boards of supervisors in the state. And so it's really important that you guys keep showing up. Tucson has the second highest number of conservative voters in the state. That is something people should never forget."
Winn closed the segment with a personal statement of accountability. "It is up to us. We can't say it was someone else's job. It's our job to save this country — and most importantly to save Arizona and our part of the world in Pima County."
Janet Neustedter: The Pima County Republican Women's Club and a Night with Seth Keschel
Janet Neustedter, president of the Pima County Republican Women's Club, joined for the final segment to discuss an upcoming event featuring election analyst and author Seth Keschel — and to make the broader case for why joining a local political organization matters more than most people realize.
"We're trying to ignite the grassroots to get involved and take it back and win it and keep the corruption out," Neustedter said. "That's what we do."
The club meets monthly at La Paloma Country Club. On May 13th at 5:30 p.m., they are hosting Seth Keschel for a 45-minute presentation on his new book The American War on Election Corruption: The Crusade to Restore Trust in Voting — the same book with a foreword recorded by Newt Gingrich, who also read his portion of the audiobook himself. Attendees will receive a signed copy. Light hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar will be available, and Keschel will present from 5:30 to 6:15.
Neustedter described first encountering Keschel's work in 2020, when he began publishing graphs and analytics on election trends that were, as she put it, "very sciency" — data-driven, methodical, and built on voter registration numbers rather than emotion or opinion.
"He came out with a new book and I see him here and there at events around town and I thought it would be great to get him to our club," she said. "His husband's Rachel Keschel's husband — you know her as the representative from LD-17 — and he's just a tremendous resource."
She then attended the Trump event at Turning Point USA and described a moment that illustrated exactly what the club is designed to produce: she found herself seated next to two gentlemen from Surprise, Arizona who didn't recognize a single candidate who took the stage. She quietly began introducing them.
"Elaine Crane came up, and I knew her. Alex Kolodin was there, Rodney Glassman, Juan Ciscomani, Paul Gosar — I knew every face. And these two gentlemen from Surprise didn't know anyone. I was glad I was placed there so I could raise their awareness. So when they go to the ballot box, they know a few faces."
That, she said, is the point. Civic familiarity is built one room at a time.
The Pima County Republican Women's Club does not formally endorse candidates in the primary, but once Republicans are nominated in the general election, the club actively supports getting them over the finish line. For those interested in attending the May 13th event or joining the club, the website is pcrwc.com, where event details and contact information for the event coordinator can be found.
Neustedter also noted she had attended the Trump event at Turning Point USA, where she was moved watching the candidates she has come to know personally take the stage. "Caroli was in the audience and President Trump picked her out and said hi. It was really exciting for me, being as involved as I have been, that I feel like — I know that person. I'm comfortable. I see that face."
What's Happening Right Now: The Pima County Fair, the Nanos Recall, and the Road Ahead
Beyond the show's guests and discussions, Winn closed with a rundown of active ground-level efforts her team and the Pima County Republican Party are pursuing.
At the Pima County Fair — running through Sunday — volunteers are collecting signatures on the recall of Sheriff Chris Nanos, registering voters, and signing up new precinct committeemen. The booth is staffed and welcoming.
"If you want to become a precinct committeeman, we can appoint you," Winn said. "We'd love to have you. We need all hands on deck."
On the Nanos recall, she added a pointed observation about the legal exposure involved. "The Democrats still have not sanctioned Chris Nanos, and each day more information is coming out. I think he should consider that he could lose his retirement if he did in fact commit a felony when he applied for his job. Isn't that ironic."
The Pima County Republican Party is also organizing a Fourth of July event to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States. Details will be promoted in coming weeks.
The primary election is 90 days away. Early ballots will be in mailboxes before that. And with statewide offices — governor, attorney general, secretary of state — all on the 2026 ballot, the outcome of this cycle will shape the rules and the landscape for every election that follows, through the 2030 census, through redistricting, through 2032.
"We are exactly 90 days to the primary and we're going to know who our candidates are," Winn said. "It's time to wake up Tucson and pay attention. We've got an election coming and we need each and every Republican."
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice.
Upcoming events: SAVE Act Rally — Sunday at La Paloma, 2:30 p.m. | Seth Keschel at PCRWC — May 13th at La Paloma, 5:30 p.m. (register at pcrwc.com) | Alex Kolodin for Secretary of State — alexforaz.com