Guests - Jarred Weisfeld, Mark Mix, Cheryl Caswell
Soft Targets, Compulsory Dues, and the Ground War for LD-19
The last show before Memorial Day weekend on Winn Tucson covered two fights that most people never hear about until it's too late: the fight to put a security guard in every elementary school before another shooting, and the fight to protect workers who don't want their paychecks funding political agendas they never agreed to. Sandwiched between those two battles was a conversation about election integrity, Rio Nuevo, Pima County's anti-business coordination between city and county, and the voters who will decide whether Arizona turns in November.
Jared Weisfeld: A Box Cutter, a Kill List, a Settlement, and a Movement
Jared Weisfeld is the President of Start Publishing, CEO of Objective Entertainment, and a New Jersey father who has spent four years turning a school district's cover-up into a national advocacy movement for school safety. In January 2026, he won a major settlement against the Berkeley Heights Board of Education — forcing the district to officially admit what they had spent years denying: that in 2022, a student brought a box cutter to school, later stabbed a classmate with a pencil, and wrote a bucket list naming two students he wanted to kill.
What the School Did — and Didn't Do
The sequence of events Weisfeld described should have triggered an immediate response under any reasonable safety protocol. The student brought the box cutter in the morning. It was confiscated. Later that same day, he stabbed a girl with a pencil. When another child asked him to stop, he wrote on a piece of paper: "bucket list" — and listed two kids' names. Later still, on a school-issued Chromebook, he typed "not killing anyone."
The school's response: tell the child to go home and inform his parents. No call to the parents of the threatened students. No call to law enforcement.
"The parents of one of the students were never notified," Weisfeld said. "They told the child to go home and tell their parents that they were going to be very upset. So the kid thought the parents would be upset with him."
When the parents called the school Monday and asked directly — did this happen? — the school said no. Was my child on a kill list? They said no. Did the written statement say they wanted to kill my kid? Well, yes.
"They didn't lie," Weisfeld said. "And they kind of backfired on themselves."
When he went to a board meeting and told the community what was happening — because the school wouldn't — the district's response was to call him erroneous and leak his own emails to the media. The emails proved his account was accurate. He sued. The settlement came in January. The superintendent is no longer with the district.
"She's cleaning pools now in South Carolina," Weisfeld said.
The National Problem: Budget-Based Security Never Works
Weisfeld's mission since winning the settlement has been to take the argument national: every school needs a school resource officer, and no budget is so tight that it justifies leaving children unprotected.
His own district's budget is approximately $63 million. Covering two unprotected schools with two SRO officers would cost $84,000 — roughly $42,000 per school.
"You're telling me your budget is $63 million and you can't afford $84,000? To me that's unacceptable."
The resistance he has encountered follows a predictable pattern. School boards believe — or claim to believe — that police officers in schools will traumatize children. Some boards have members who are genuinely convinced that the presence of law enforcement is more dangerous to a child's wellbeing than the absence of protection.
"If you don't like police officers in the school, home school your kid," Weisfeld said. His point was the same one Winn pressed throughout the segment: when you resist SRO presence, you are advertising a soft target. You are telling anyone who wants to harm children exactly which school to choose.
"Budget-based security will never work," he said. "You can't put a number on a kid's life. Every school has to be protected. If you have one school that's worse than another, that makes things worse. All the schools have to be the same."
He also pushed back on the outdated model of the typical school shooter. The demographic profile has changed. The loner white teenager shooting cats is no longer the standard. Shooters have come from every demographic and background. What they consistently have in common: parents who knew something was wrong and didn't act, and schools that knew something was wrong and didn't act.
"The people all have one thing in common. Their parents know that these kids are messed up. They don't want to do anything about it. The schools know they're messed up and they don't want to do anything about it."
His prescription goes beyond security guards. Prosecutors need to pursue not just the juvenile offenders but the parents, who in many cases had knowledge of what was coming and failed to act. For every 849 children who deserve to feel safe in school, one dangerous child cannot be allowed to remain in that environment under the shield of their own right to an education.
"He has a right to an education. But the 849 other kids have a right to feel safe in school."
His organization, the campaign for SROs in every school, can be followed through his publishing and entertainment platforms. The message he left for every parent listening was simple: if your school doesn't have a security presence, ask why. Ask what it would cost. Ask who's standing in the way. And don't stop asking.
Mark Mix: Forced Dues, the Janice Decision, Wells Fargo Tellers, and What Spencer Pratt Is Really Exposing
Mark Mix has been president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation since 2003. The foundation was established in 1968. The Right to Work Committee has been operating since 1955. Together, the two organizations form one of the most consequential and least-celebrated institutional forces in American politics: an organization that has argued 18 cases before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of individual workers who were forced to pay union dues they never wanted to pay.
The Janice Decision and What It Changed
The landmark case is Janus v. AFSCME — a 2018 Supreme Court decision that gave every government employee in America the First Amendment right to withhold financial support from a union they did not choose.
"Mark Janus from Springfield, Illinois had the courage to stand up and said: I don't want my money going to this union that's using it for causes and ideas I don't support," Mix said.
The case began in district court — a loss. It went to the court of appeals — another loss. And then Janus got his day before the highest court in the land, and the majority decided that government workers across America had constitutional protection against being forced to pay a private organization to speak on their behalf.
"That was a huge victory. And it affects literally every government employee in America."
Before the decision, government employees at every level in states without right-to-work protections were compelled to fund organizations they had never asked for, never joined, and often actively opposed — or lose their jobs.
As of this broadcast, the foundation has 298 active cases on behalf of employees exercising their rights. They stop no one from joining a union. They defend anyone being forced to participate in one.
Wells Fargo: Hotel California for Bank Tellers
One of the foundation's current active campaigns involves bank tellers and loan officers at approximately 22 Wells Fargo branches where the Communication Workers of America — an AFL-CIO affiliate — has attempted to organize in recent months.
At least five, possibly six of those branches have come to the foundation after employees realized that what they were promised when unionization was pitched to them did not match what they were actually receiving.
"You might guess that it's easy to get into a union," Mix said. "It's very difficult to get out. The rules are stacked against individual employees when they want to do that."
In three or four of those cases, when it became apparent that the employees could get an actual vote on whether the union should remain — and the union realized it would likely lose that vote — the union simply walked away. The foundation won without going to court.
The union dynamic Mix described is less about worker protection and more about institutional power. When the union's survival depends on maintaining membership rolls, the interests of the institution and the interests of the individual worker diverge. The foundation is there to represent the worker.
California, Spencer Pratt, and the SEIU's Problem
Mix connected the broader collapse of California governance directly to the power of the Service Employees International Union and its political dominance in Sacramento and Los Angeles.
"The deterioration of quality of life, the cost of living, the affordability issues — there's a common denominator in Los Angeles and the state of California, and that common denominator comes from the power of organized labor."
The government sector unions — SEIU specifically — have for decades funded the politicians who then negotiate government contracts with the same unions that funded their campaigns. The circle of self-dealing is structurally self-reinforcing and financially self-amplifying.
Karen Bass has been on their list for years — in Congress and as mayor. The unions invested heavily in her career. What Spencer Pratt has done is make the product of that investment visible to the people who have to live in it.
"He's tapping into a sense of anger and frustration that even in a city known for its progressive political leanings, people are looking at what's happening in government and finding it wanting."
The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor even ran an advertisement that Mix and most political observers believe inadvertently helped Pratt — listing his positions (more police, fewer social workers, reducing union power over government) as though they were disqualifying. Most people who heard those positions reacted the opposite way the union intended.
"Those are things that when you hear them, people say: yes, we want that."
Mix's connection between the Los Angeles dynamic and Arizona's own ESA fights, school administrator bloat, and union influence in local government was explicit: the same mechanisms that have produced California's outcomes operate at a smaller scale everywhere that public sector unions maintain political dominance over elected officials.
What Right to Work Actually Means for Arizona
Arizona is a right-to-work state. Workers here cannot be fired for refusing to join or pay dues to a union. Mix credited this as one of the reasons Arizona has attracted business, kept costs manageable, and — in the most specific example available — why the Apache helicopter was produced ahead of schedule and under budget at Boeing's Mesa facility, where Winn's husband spent his career keeping the unions out of the program.
"You have voluntary unionism," Mix said of Arizona. "People join the union because they want to. They support the union financially because they want to. Not because they have to."
In 24 states across the country, that is not the case. Workers can lose their jobs — regardless of performance — for refusing to pay a private organization for the right to work.
For any worker in a union-compulsion state who believes their rights are being violated — or any worker anywhere who is facing union pressure they don't want — the foundation's free legal services are accessible at nrtw.org or by calling 1-800-336-3600.
Legislative updates, state-by-state right-to-work maps, and congressional lobbying information are at nrtwc.org.
Cheryl Caswell: Green Valley Polling, the Per Diem Expose, Daniel Buteyras's Statement, and the Plan to Win LD-19
Cheryl Caswell — candidate for the Arizona State House in Legislative District 19, former Pima County Election Integrity Commissioner, and a woman Winn characterized as someone who builds genuine grassroots relationships across a massive five-county district — joined for the show's final segment with a Memorial Day acknowledgment and a list of practical information for LD-19 voters.
Before the Politics: Memorial Day Is Personal
Caswell opened by noting the weight of the holiday weekend in America's 250th year. Her father is an Army veteran she serves as caretaker for. Her uncle is a Purple Heart recipient from the Korean War. The sacrifice of service is not abstract to her, and she carried that gravitas into the conversation without letting it stay there long — because there is too much work to do.
The Per Diem Expose: What Arizona Taxpayers Don't Know
Winn had been at an event the previous evening where a conversation surfaced about Arizona state legislators' compensation — specifically the gap between the official salary and the total take-home package.
The official salary for an Arizona state legislator is just under $25,000 per year. Voters have repeatedly rejected pay increases at the ballot box. What voters have not been told — because the legislature has not made it a priority to be transparent about it — is that mileage reimbursements and per diem payments can drive total compensation to six figures.
Caswell confirmed it. "Our voters have voted down increases in that salary for an elected legislator, but they aren't aware that they are reimbursed for mileage or given healthy per diems."
She noted that per diems differ significantly between rural legislators who travel long distances and those who live near the Capitol in Maricopa County. The complexity of the calculation — with different rates during active session, reduced rates after session, and adjustments based on the legislative calendar — means the total compensation can vary dramatically depending on how long the legislature stays in session.
This connects directly to the current budget standoff: the legislature has been in session well past its typical end date because no budget has been signed. Every day the session extends is another day of elevated per diem for legislators.
"So if I wanted to make more money," Winn said, and didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.
Caswell extended the principle: the founding framers never intended legislative positions to be careers, and never intended them to produce salary-level incomes from expenses. The current system, operating quietly outside public awareness, is a form of compensation that voters explicitly rejected at the ballot box — repackaged under categories voters don't track.
"I look at this job as something I'm willing to take a pay cut to do," she said, "because it's just important for my community right now. This is service."
The Green Valley Polling Situation: An Update
The previous concern — that Green Valley Recreation had withdrawn its facilities as polling locations, threatening to displace senior conservative voters from their familiar polling places — has not been fully resolved, but alternatives are in motion.
Caswell noted that the United Republicans for Arizona chapter in Green Valley has committed to providing rides to the polls for residents who need transportation. Turning Point Action ballot chase representatives are also operating in the area.
The most actionable advice she offered: if you receive a mail-in ballot, don't treat it as optional or slow. Return it immediately. Early ballots that are returned well before election day will be counted first, before election-day ballots, in the order they are processed. Waiting until the last minute creates risk — not just operationally, but strategically.
"The easiest way to get people to stop calling you and knocking on your door is to turn your ballot in as soon as you get it."
For those away from home during the ballot window: PND voters (Party Not Declared) and voters traveling for the summer can request their primary ballot be mailed to a temporary address by calling the Pima County Recorder's office at 520-724-4330.
Voter registration records for every Arizona voter can be checked and updated at my.arizona.vote. The last day to register or make changes for the July 21st primary is June 22nd.
The Carla Toledo Situation and Daniel Buteyras's Statement
Winn shared a statement from Daniel Buteyras — written publicly in response to requests that he speak on behalf of Carla Toledo, who was arrested after assaulting law enforcement officers during an ICE-related incident that Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva had characterized as an unwarranted arrest.
Buteyras, who knows firsthand what a wrongful arrest looks like because he experienced one himself, declined to offer support. His statement:
"I spent the day reading about Carla and honestly, I like her. Sadly, I believe leaders in our community have pushed anti-law enforcement rhetoric and division for so long that some people now think it's acceptable to assault law enforcement officers. In my opinion, Carla has become a victim of the rhetoric of local leadership. I believe her best chance moving forward is for those same leaders to publicly apologize to the officers involved, take accountability for the climate they helped create, and ask for leniency and her release. I would support this."
The relevant detail, which Grijalva had omitted from her public statements, is that Toledo was not the target of the ICE operation. She assaulted officers who were doing a job she opposed on ideological grounds. The legal framing that Grijalva deployed — that Toledo was wrongfully targeted — does not hold up to the documented facts of the case.
Caswell and Winn connected the Toledo situation directly to Weisfeld's first-hour argument: there is a permission structure being constructed, brick by brick, by elected officials who normalize anti-law-enforcement behavior. Lane Santa Cruz, Tucson's city councilwoman, assaulted a police officer during a riot with zero consequences. Toledo followed the example set by the community's own leadership. The accountability failure is upstream.
"They've created a permission structure to be violent against police," Winn said. "And then they turn around and say: we can't have uniformed cops on school campuses. That would be a triggering event. Well, the other thing they might trigger is — they might stop a trigger from being pulled in a school shooting."
What It Looks Like on the Ground in LD-19
LD-19 spans five counties — Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, part of Pima, and part of Santa Cruz — making it one of the largest legislative districts in the state by geography. Caswell has been traveling its entirety throughout her campaign, putting up signs in every community from suburban Pima County to borderland towns along the New Mexico and Mexico borders.
The race has real stakes beyond LD-19. Two Democrat House candidates are running in the general election without a primary opponent — meaning they will be rested, funded, and organized when the general election arrives in November. Republican candidates need the primary to concentrate and then convert energy.
Upcoming events for those who want to connect with Caswell's campaign:
June 8: Fundraiser at Argentiano's Italian Cuisine (sold out)
June 20: Speaking at Vinnie's Pizza in Sierra Vista
June 27: Stand Up for Freedom Fair at Doc's Watering Hole in Sierra Vista
This Saturday: Boy Scout Troop 770 Classic Car and Coffee at the American Legion, 8 to 11 a.m.
Campaign website: caswellforarizonia19.com
Rio Nuevo, Copper World, and Tucson's Anti-Business Coordination
Before closing, Winn and Caswell spent time on two interconnected stories about Pima County and Tucson's relationship with business investment.
On Rio Nuevo: Senate President Warren Peterson and House Speaker Montenegro had both traveled to Tucson in recent days for educational meetings with downtown business leaders — coming to understand what Rio Nuevo 2.0 has actually accomplished under business-focused leadership rather than the patronage model that preceded it. The Republican-led state government had recently considered cutting Rio Nuevo from the budget, partly based on incomplete information about the current district's performance. Those visits appear to have provided some correction.
What Rio Nuevo 2.0 has produced under competent management: additional sales tax revenues that exceed what the state would have recovered by eliminating the district — even after accounting for the bond obligations that a prior Democratic administration had rushed through as a poison pill before state oversight could be imposed.
The parallel story: Jan Lesher, the Pima County Administrator, had recently sent communications to Copper World investors — including Mitsubishi — urging them to halt the project. The HudBay mine, which had cleared all relevant permitting, is being systematically harassed in a coordinated tag-team operation between city and county. The city used a technicality about a contractor's water permit for dust mitigation, then when dust appeared without water suppression, the county cited the company for dust. Then Lesher ran in with the Department of Environmental Services.
"Every permit is through," Winn said. "They're not engaged in illegal activity. But they're tag-teaming to make it difficult to have business — which means you're interfering with construction jobs, interfering with the jobs to staff it, and they'll probably never want to do another job in Tucson. They'll do one in Marana."
The water rate increase — 19 percent, imposed on unincorporated Pima County residents who cannot vote out the supervisors who set it — is the same county that claims concern about affordability when blocking data centers, fighting mining permits, and refusing to greenlight any project that might bring employment and tax revenue into the area.
"Your policies might be failing if everyone's leaving in droves," Winn said. "Your tax revenue also goes down when your population goes down. Ding, ding, ding."
The response is not anger at the institutions. The response is what Weisfeld said in the first hour, what Mix said in the second, and what Caswell said in the third: show up, document, sue when necessary, run for office, and vote.
"We here in Tucson and in Pima County have an opportunity," Caswell said. "If we turn out to vote as Republicans, we get to pick the candidates in this state. Pima County is not inconsequential."
A Memorial Day Reflection
The show closed as it should — with a pause for what the weekend actually represents.
Memorial Day began as Decoration Day after the Civil War, when communities decorated the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers and flags. The first national observance took place May 30th, 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2026, it falls on May 25th.
This year carries weight. Service members who gave their lives in the conflict with Iran will have families marking their first Memorial Day without a father, a son, a husband. The empty chair at ceremonies across the country is not metaphorical this year. It is specific.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, who recently visited Tucson with Congressman Ciscomani, has been writing publicly about the true cost of war — not the equipment, but the people. The families who know, better than anyone else, what was sacrificed and what was left behind.
Memorial Day is not Veterans Day, which honors all who served. Memorial Day is for those who did not come home. The barbecues and swimming pools and long weekends are not incompatible with that — but they are secondary to it.
Winn's closing instruction was simple: take a minute of silence. Say a prayer. Give thanks to the God who made it possible for people to be the kind of person who puts on a uniform and swears an oath to defend this nation — and then keeps that oath with everything they have.
Winn Tucson returns Tuesday, May 27th, on KVOI 1030 The Voice. Monday, May 25th — Memorial Day — will be a Best Of broadcast.
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation: nrtw.org | 1-800-336-3600
Right to Work Committee (legislative): nrtwc.org
Cheryl Caswell for LD-19: caswellforarizonia19.com
Voter registration and record lookup: my.arizona.vote | Last day to register for the July 21st primary: June 22nd
Pima County ballot and voting location information: pimaVOTES.org