Jay Tolkoff: How Prop 425 Passed and What Comes Next
Jay Tolkoff, chairman of the No on 425 campaign, joined Kathleen Winn on Friday to explain how the Pima County ballot measure he fought against ended up passing. The final margin was roughly 5,000 votes, or about one percent. "We were outspent and outmaneuvered," he said, thanking Winn for helping carry the message. Winn said the closeness shows that the result was not a blowout, which in her view means there is room to look for answers.
The Late-Ballot Pattern
Tolkoff walked through the counting as it unfolded, citing the county's reporting drops. The first batch, about a quarter of a million early ballots, gave the yes side roughly a four-point edge, and the no side trailed by about 10,000 votes. Election Day voters then broke the other way, he said, by about 20 points, which cut the deficit to around 1,100. The last batch of about 57,000 late ballots, he said, went to the yes side by about 10 points, which accounted for the final loss of roughly 5,000 votes. "I haven't been able to find out" where those late ballots came from, Tolkoff said. He and Winn said they would work with LD17 chair Joel Strabala to pull the recorded data per legislative district, and Tolkoff said the only recourse he can think of is to request a canvass or an audit of the late ballots.
Winn noted that LD17 Republicans turned out about 72 percent and still lost in a district with an eight-point Republican registration advantage. Tolkoff said he also wondered whether voters understood what they were deciding. He described a left-leaning woman he spoke with who voted no, he said, because county officials warned they would have to cut programs, a reason he said has little to do with what the measure actually did. In his view, the problem was a lack of promotion. "They didn't advertise it. They didn't promote it," he said, comparing it to the city council's pay raises, which he said voters also did not realize they had approved until they left the polls.
Tolkoff questioned whether notices for the measure were handled properly, and said he is not a lawyer and would need to find one. He said the county did technically meet its requirements, even though the notices ran in an obscure foothills paper. "One man's transparency is another man's 'can we put this in the back of the closet,'" he said.
Tucson Electric Power and the City
The conversation turned to the failed Prop 421, the Tucson Electric Power franchise renewal. Tolkoff said voters want a franchise agreement but rejected the extra side deal, a $2 million a year commitment to the city for 25 years that he put at about $50 million. He praised TEP. "I love TEP. I do," he said. "This little side deal, this little side hustle is wrong." He worried that its defeat gives the city an excuse to pursue taking over the utility, and noted the current agreement has until April. Tolkoff added that voters made that decision but missed the implications of 425.
What He Sees Next
Tolkoff said Jeff Rhodes, the Republican who ran for District 5 supervisor, won about 12,000 of the roughly 16,000 Republican votes in that district, a strong share among his own voters, but that there are not enough Republicans there. Both noted that Supervisor Andrés Cano barely campaigned, which they compared to the "Katie Hobbs method" of running, since it gives opponents nothing to quote. The district was drawn for Adelita Grijalva, he said. The good news, he said, is that all the supervisors are up for reelection within two years.
Tolkoff said he hopes Democrats govern well. "I hope they do great things for the country and for the state," he said. If they truly work on affordability, he is willing to be pleasantly surprised, and if they spend two years on impeachments, it would show they are there for political theater. He recalled a gay, left-leaning employee at his former restaurant who, the day after Donald Trump's 2016 win, said she hoped he would do a great job because "he's the new captain of our ship and I don't want our ship to sink." Winn said the same instinct has gone missing.
TUSD and the ESAs
Winn used the remaining time to talk about Arizona's school choice program. She said the governor has made no secret of wanting to pull ESA money back to the state and predicted a surge in homeschooling if she succeeds. She noted that Tolkoff, who served on a Tucson Unified School District advisory committee on school closures, said he came away believing the district will not close schools because people are emotionally tied to the buildings. State receivership, they agreed, could be the next step.
John Gordon: "The Next Two Years Are Going to Be Hell"
John Gordon, an attorney, constitutional commentator and host of the syndicated radio show The Truth with John Gordon, joined from Florida. Gordon ran for attorney general of Georgia and still keeps a home and businesses in Atlanta. Winn asked whether House and Senate Republicans can get anything done in the minority, with Jim Jordan expected to take the reins from Speaker Mike Johnson.
"I would like to say yes, but given the fact that my program is entitled The Truth, I feel compelled to tell it," Gordon said. "I'm not optimistic." He said the next two years would be hell, and he faulted the Senate for heading home for a three-day weekend instead of finishing work on the budget. He said Johnson did the right thing and that he was disappointed in the Senate.
Praise and Criticism of the President
Gordon described the federal government as "rotten to its very core," and said he supports President Trump on much of his record, calling him "Donald the Great" for closing the border, reducing crime and regulation, and supporting the economy. He said he backed the war with Iran as long overdue. But he said the president has failed on the budget. Gordon cited a 2023 interview in which Sean Hannity asked whether he could balance the budget within five years, and Trump said it would take less time. "He has not taken one step towards fulfilling that promise," Gordon said. Winn recalled that former congressman David Schweikert, who ran for governor against Andy Biggs, made the same case about fiscal discipline.
Gordon said he wants the Iran war to have been fought in America's interest and not another country's. Winn agreed. "America first, not on Tuesdays and Thursdays," she said. They also discussed gas prices. Gordon said the country is energy independent and does not get its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, and asked why prices rose so much while oil companies report record profits. "If everybody would just agree to tell the truth," he said, "but we've lost our way in so many regards."
Statesmen, Foreign Influence and Civic Duty
Gordon said he has a low opinion of today's Democratic Party compared with the figures he grew up with. "When I was growing up we had Hubert Humphrey. We had Richard Russell. We had Hale Boggs. Real statesmen," he said. "Even if you didn't agree with their policies, you could admire the fact that they were standing for America." He said philanthropic organizations that once did better than government have been co-opted into funnels for political money, and he voiced concern about foreign money flowing into nonprofits and elections. He pointed listeners to books by Peter Schweizer on foreign influence and immigration.
Winn praised Gordon for saying things plainly. Both complained that Republicans in Washington talk tough while running and then fail to fight. "They sure do talk the right things when they are running," Gordon said, "but they don't act like it when they get there." He said he once asked Jim Jordan at a dinner why more subpoenas had not been issued in the January 6 investigations and was dissatisfied with the answer. Winn offered to connect him with Congressman Paul Gosar's office, which she said is close to the family of Ashli Babbitt.
His closing advice was practical. "It would be so simple if every American would spend an hour a month working on civics," Gordon said. "We could reshape this country in a nanosecond." He and Winn ended on thanks and a hope that the country would be kept for the next generation.
Tim Sandefur: FreeCon and a Principled Agenda for Arizona
Tim Sandefur, vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, joined Winn to preview FreeCon, a Monday conference the Institute is hosting with partner groups from Arizona and around the country. The event, which Sandefur said has sold out and drawn twice the interest the organizers expected, aims to develop what he called an agenda of ideas for the Republican, conservative and libertarian worlds after the election. "We really believe that the future belongs to ideas, not to personalities," he said.
Ideas Over Personalities
Sandefur said recent years have been dominated by yelling and by a focus on personalities. "We've spent too much time pretending that we can ignore principles as long as our guy is running the show," he said, adding that the "two wrongs make a right nonsense has got to stop." He said the conference will begin with a discussion of the American founding and its 250th anniversary and then turn to practical problems: housing, construction, education and school choice. Speakers include Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, who once worked at Goldwater, Jenny Clark of Love Your School, Scot Mussi of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and Joe Pitts of the 1912 Institute, plus a homebuilding industry representative.
Sandefur described the 1912 Institute, named for the year Arizona became a state, as a sister organization that builds networks of ambitious young people who want to improve the state, defined, he joked, as "young at heart." Winn, who spent 30 years in the building industry with her husband, said the permitting and regulatory burden is choking growth and that fixing it would make the conference worthwhile. Sandefur pointed to the governor's water rule, which he said required developers to prove 100 years of water over an area larger than Connecticut, and said it helps explain why houses cost so much.
Government Is Our Child
The Institute's work on the ESA program was central to the conversation. Winn said the roughly 120,000 families using Empowerment Scholarship Accounts are the most vulnerable if Democrats follow through on their threat to cut or reshape them, and said she is frightened by the prospect. Sandefur agreed that the program must be defended, and said parents have a right to direct their children's upbringing. "Children are not the property of the state," he said.
He offered a line he said applies to both parties. "Government is our child, not our parent," Sandefur said. "One side wants the government to pay all of its bills. The other side wants the government to tell them how to speak and what they can read and how to pray. We are there to tell it what to do. We have to pay its bills and we have to direct its moral upbringing, not the other way around."
The Egg Case and the Next Fight
Sandefur noted that the Institute recently won its case against the Department of Agriculture's cage-free egg rule, which the department adopted without legislative approval. He said the agency itself admitted it would cost Arizonans millions. "Affordability," Winn said. "Affordability." She thanked him on behalf of restaurateur Grant Krueger, who was the plaintiff.
Sandefur said that the Republican Party in recent years has lost track of its commitment to economic and personal freedom. "I think it's a real shame that we have seen in recent years the Republican Party particularly losing track of that," he said. He said the goal of FreeCon is to rebuild the climate of ideas that Ronald Reagan planted, drawing on Hayek, Mises, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch. He added that he hopes Democrats come back to those principles too. "Live and let live ought to be the guidepost," he said. "That has been the Arizona way since the very beginning."
He also spoke about the politicization of daily life. Having grown up in California, he said, everything from building a house to using a plastic straw has become a political issue. "Civility is the consequence of a healthy society, not the origin of a healthy society," he said. "Your life should not be determined by who gets elected to public office."
John O'Connor: California as a Template
John O'Connor, an author, legal analyst and former assistant U.S. attorney in California, closed the show from his home state. He began by asking what Republicans can accomplish in the next two years, and said the first goal is preventing damage. "What we should be looking at is not accomplishing anything negative," he said. In his view the president can still use a pen and a phone, and may have to veto repeatedly. He said the economy is humming but that ordinary people do not yet feel it, because inflation takes a long time to tame. He said cumulative price increases under the previous administration, which he put at about 21 percent, are still feeding wage demands and price increases in services.
Iran, Messaging and the Midterms
O'Connor said Iran has been saying "death to America" for 47 or 48 years and that people should finally believe it. He said he fears Democrats will interfere with a good resolution and split the country, noting that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has relocated to a military base for security. He said the president's messaging has been terrible on both Iran and affordability, and said Winn had made the case in September that he needed a 15-second argument for why Iran was worth four-dollar gas. "He did not," O'Connor said.
Looking ahead, he predicted Congress will turn to what he called bread and circuses, subpoenas and impeachment without removal, and a deadlock. He compared this year's election to the 1992 defeat of George H.W. Bush by Bill Clinton, noting that economic growth in the fourth quarter of that year was the fastest in decades and that Clinton inherited a good economy. He argued that fickle voters and a media complex that focuses on the surface do not always produce wisdom.
California's Lessons
O'Connor said California shows what Arizona and the country could become. He recounted the 1998 governor's race, when Republican Dan Lungren, a friend he worked to help elect, narrowly lost to Gray Davis, whom O'Connor said won by promising bread and circuses to unions and various groups. He described California politics as an election of free stuff, driven by public-employee unions, which he said Franklin Roosevelt and Walter Reuther would have opposed, and by nonprofits that raise money to feed politicians. "None of the money that these folks get really helps out the people it's supposed to help," he said, adding that some nonprofits have little incentive to end the problems they are paid to address, citing homelessness as an example. He said California's schools suffer because teachers cannot be fired and the electorate has been left ignorant, with children who cannot read. "California is a good template for what's going to happen to the rest of the country unless we change things," he said.
Newsom and the Death Row Commutations
Asked about Governor Gavin Newsom's decision to commute the sentences of California's death-row inmates, O'Connor, who spent six years as a prosecutor, offered a more cautious reading. He said he had just come out of a trial and was not sure of every detail, but that if the governor is simply commuting the sentences, it changes little in practice because California has not executed anyone for years. Judges let habeas cases sit, he said, and he recalled a pro bono capital case he held for five years in which nothing happened. He said Chief Justice Rose Bird and Governor Jerry Brown had effectively gutted the death penalty long ago. "So what Newsom is doing is just playing to the crowd here, making it look like he's a real progressive," he said, in order to run for president. "This is political theater."
Wealth Taxes and Billionaires
O'Connor said Californians at least fought off a wealth tax, which he said would have driven even more high earners from the state. Billionaires are already leaving California, New York and Illinois, he said, and the state would be wiser to charge them the roughly 9.7 percent income tax rate it once did rather than the current 13.3 percent. "People don't understand wealth creation," he said. He argued that the Great Society and welfare programs hurt the families they were meant to help by weakening the family and the educational system, and said the answer is to restore a society built on traditional Western principles. Winn thanked him for still practicing law. "We need that," she said.
Winn closed the show by announcing that next week's programs will focus on the Arizona Bowl, including how to buy tickets as holiday gifts, noting that proceeds go back to local schools, teachers, first responders and kids. She wished listeners a good weekend.