Guests - Chad Connelly, Rick Shafton, Tara Oster, Stephen Moore

Welcome to Win Tucson this Monday. I think everybody saw Noah's Ark float by this weekend because we had so much rain and we love getting the rain in Arizona. Quite the weekend. As you all know, I was off Friday. Thank you. My husband is now 80 years young and we're grateful all of our kids. It was quite the weekend, and thank you for the day off. Unfortunately, over the weekend, we heard that Senator Lindsey Graham passed away suddenly, and I just want to jump to our very first guest, Chad Connolly from South Carolina, former state chair. Chad, if I remember correctly, for the Republican Party. You are correct, Kathleen. How are you today? I'm doing great. And you know what? In looking your stuff up, you and I share a birthday, although I'm much older than you. Is that right? Yes, August 22nd. Yeah, so no wonder I love you so much. We're probably the same. You're sweet. Look, I love meeting you with my pastor buddy, one of my best friends. Fred Armstrong. Yes. If I were closer, I'd be at Brent's church every Sunday. I just love the guy and his family. He's been a mentor to me. So thank you for having me on. I'm honored. No problem. And you've been all over. You're on Newsmax Day. You were on Fox News over the weekend. You knew Lindsey Graham. So I asked you to jump on with us for a brief time this morning to just let the listeners know, because you knew his heart. You knew his commitment. And I just wanted people to hear that today so they understand the significance of the loss of this senator. Yeah, and I appreciate the opportunity. I just really want to edify his memory. His team, they're incredible. That was his family. He just, he never found the right girl, never married. He was married to his job. He loved the country. He loved our state. But this is going to leave a bigger hole than people realize. Lindsay was that kind of guy that people kind of love to hate on. And I love doing small, you know, I do pastor meetings. I've got a 5-1C3. pastor network now and watching him win people over, Kathleen, it was impressive. Yes. Because they would be a keyboard warrior. I hate this. I hate this. And you know how that goes. People, you've been through that. They criticize you. They don't know you. And then they get every day. I'm the chairman down here in Pima County. I get that every day. So yes, I do know it. Every day. Yeah. And so they would, they would say, oh, he's got to go. I did my last pastor meeting with 45 pastors from over 10 denominations in Anderson, South Carolina. In fact, at the church that Brent Armstrong was with before he went to Tucson. And Lindsay's team wanted me to have a thousand people. And I kept telling them small meetings, it's pastors only, you'll understand they've got influence. I had several pastors, gosh, I don't like the guy. I just, he needs to go. I said, tell me what you think afterwards. And he won over every one of them. They listened to his reasoning. They found out what he was doing behind the scenes. Kathleen, this guy grew up above a pool hall in a liquor store that his dad on. Yep. His parents died when he was young. He had to raise his kid's sister. In fact, he adopted Darlene and raised her so she would have Air Force, but he was already in the Air Force.

And so he took care of her. Anybody hears Darlene talk about Lindsay, they would be like, wow, that is really good. He was an exceptional human being to his sister. Unbelievable. He wasn't. And he didn't, I thought he should have told the story more, but she told it so well, but she doesn't talk that much. And so she just doesn't want to be in the spotlight. But to think he'd go from that. to sitting with shakes and kings and prime ministers. I think the guy's an unsung hero, the Abraham Accords. It was Lindsay, behind the scenes, building some of those relationships that have meant so much to a restructured Middle East. And to your point, he called the president. Donald Trump on that, you know, and when he got home, he was just in with Volodymyr Zelensky from Ukraine. He was confident that they had a plan forward that would work. And I'm confident someone has that information, but he, you know, he worked until God took him home. Like, you know, I, and I'm confident that he, he, he, We didn't want, it was too soon for us. But what a body of work that this man has done over his lifetime. And there were people that didn't like him for whatever reason, because we're so fickle when it comes to our politicians. Amen. And, but he, he left it all on the field. And he gave every day to serving the people of this great nation. And, you know, we're going to have someone on. from back there after you're done and talk about who's going to take his place, but no one can take his place. He had a lifetime of service, and you understand as someone who works in the faith space. how important it is to get, have a servant's heart. And I can say this is the best, Senator Graham. He came out here to Arizona's. He was friends with John McCain. I did have the privilege of spending time with him. And I just appreciated his laugh, his sense of humor. He was very quick-witted. And... And it was great. And I'm just grateful I have just as, you know, I have memories with him and not a lot because he lived where he lived, but he was always committed to lifting. all boats to lifting everyone up and i and i don't think you can put enough value on that we don't he he's a i don't want to say he's a dinosaur but he was of a different time and era in this country that we need to not lose sight of

just about everybody who would love to have a leg up and run for the U.S. Senate seat. But I hope it's starling. She's sweet. She doesn't care about this stuff. She would be a perfect placeholder. She would go fulfill his role for the next, what, five or six months. There are reported votes coming up. And then whoever wins in November would be sworn in in January, obviously, into a new Senate. I think she'd be perfect and outstanding. It doesn't give anybody any kind of advantage because it's August 11th, the primary. That's what I heard. Imagine what it's going to take to pull this off is going to be a big deal. So I just want to honor Lindsay. His team, they're like family to him. I spoke to most of them personally yesterday, at least by text, but some by phone. And they're just heartbroken. They just love the guy. And I'll tell you this quick story. We were at a dinner. And there was a major speaker. Everybody that's listening would know who the speaker was. And another preliminary speaker took way too much time. Lindsay leans over to the main speaker who flew there to be there and says, hey, if this is going too long and you've got to go, we're going to understand. It just broke up, and everybody's like, oh, my gosh, this guy's going way too long. He's not even the main speaker. Lindsay created the levity that night at that table, and the guest speaker just broke in a laughter while the other speaker's still up there. Take his time. I know. That was Lindsay. That was Lindsay. He could change a room with his quick wit and just easy relatability. Blue collar upbringing, just easy to relate to you to like. Well, Chad, I'm going to say hello from you to my pastor who was on a race in Colorado. He wasn't there this past Sunday. His son did a great job. I want to thank you for your time this morning. I know you've got to go on to your next news hit, and we appreciate you, Chad Connolly. Just. Just a man of faith more than anything, and a friend of Lindsey Graham and Senator Lindsey Graham, rest in peace, sir. And thank you so much. And we're going to take a break. You're listening to 10. Thank you, Chad. You're listening to 1030 The Voice on KVOI.com, your trusted local news and talk. This is Wynn Tucson. I'm Kathleen Wynn. We'll be back right after this. Welcome back to Win Tucson, and Chad Connolly is a personal friend. I know because of my pastor here in Arizona, and he obviously knew Senator Graham, and we were grateful that he called in this morning in between his other news hits. And another East Coaster, who I love talking to, Rick Shafton. Thank you so much, sir. You are going to explain to everyone what this looks like, and everything else is going on in the world of politics. You need a scorecard these days, apparently. So welcome back, sir. Well, thank you, Katley. Good morning, Arizona people. Yeah. So, Rick, what happens now in South Carolina? Chad let it out of the bag that President Trump has suggested to the governor in South Carolina that they allow Lindsey Graham's sister to fulfill the last six months of his term. What do you think about that?

I think it's possible. The one thing that's going to happen is the person picked to fill the vacancy. In other words, there's two things that are going to happen. There's the remainder of the current Senate term that expires on January 3, 2023, at 2027. And then there's the nomination for the full term that begins on that date. The governor's got to appoint someone. The first thing that we know is that it's not going to be a member of the House of Representatives because they don't want to lose the seat, right, in the vote. Right. And more likely it'll be someone, maybe his sister or the lieutenant governor who just lost the... governor's primary. The name that I've heard from people in the state is Trey Gowdy. Oh. But it's going to be somebody who would not run again. Yes. Right. So would Terry Gowdy want to give up his Fox News gig to be senator for, you know, four months or five months? Oh. Well. Okay. Is he there?

Okay. Why don't you hang up on him, and then we can continue. And over the weekend, I heard Nancy Mace, but there's not an appetite for that. So did you hang up on? Is he still there? Okay. All right. Rick? Hi. Hi. We lost you for a second. Sorry about that. And there doesn't seem to be an appetite for Nancy Mace. No, not at all. But she would run in the primary. She would not be appointed. Because, again, she's a sitting member of Congress. They don't want to give up her seat. Right. And she actually, I heard her say that she actually said that the governor should just nominate himself. Yeah, that's just not going to happen. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it would be an advocate. So, it would just, publicity-wise, you just be. So I've got a question for you. You've worked in South Carolina before, right? Yes. Yeah. And did you know Senator Graham? I've got to assume you did. Well, I'll say the interesting thing about Graham is that a lot of people, and McCain may have been that way in Arizona, I don't know. But a lot of people didn't like Graham for a variety of reasons. Yep. But he would always win his primary also because he was in part a really good campaigner. And, you know, let's say, go to the Arizona. It was Jeff Blake, 10 years ago when he was running, Jeff Blake probably couldn't walk into any Republican event in the state of Arizona. People want to be, like, grow a rope around us now. I mean, he was just a spot. I remember when they pulled the state, I know. Lindsey Graham, no matter how unpopular he might have been at any particular time, could have walked into any Republican event in South Carolina, gotten a standing ovation, people would have been taking selfies with him. He'd be going up and you're like, Kathleen, I know you give me a hard time all the time. I love you. You're the number one guy. I know. I love it. I know. I love it. I did. I got to spend time with, Lindsey Graham made me laugh. And he, and I was telling Chad, he's so quick-witted. And I just, that's kind of my personality. So I loved being, I loved his energy. And I love the Southern accent. So I just, I love Lindsey Graham. And I'm sad. I'm, you know, but you're right. So funny. Anyways. So they're going to have a special primary in August. I think the date's going to be August 11th. Yes, it is. And a runoff in two weeks. South Carolina is a runoff state, as most southern states are. But they have the shortest runoff of any of them. It's two weeks. And it's so fast that, you know, you get the fog out of your head. Now it's Thursday. Right? You have your act together. You get your ads up Friday. But if not, they're starting on Monday. Now you're a week before the election. I mean, that's how fast you have to work down there. So it's literally the night of the primary you're making your ads. You have to have someone up all night making ads to start on Thursday. Because it's only 12 days out. I mean, you're...

Now, it's not like Arizona where, I mean, your primary is in a week from tomorrow. Right. And probably a majority of the state's already voting. No, unfortunately. I'm glad you said that. No, in Pima County, I still have 99,000. No, 90,000. I apologize. 90,000 ballots still out there. I need people to return their, and they may have returned them. We've also had issues if you had any interaction with the motor vehicles. They didn't send you your early ballot. So it's a mess, as usual. But we need, we have to have a much higher voter turnout or otherwise who we're sending through in these primaries is not going to be what you think you're sending through. So I need Tucson and Pima County to vote, vote, vote, vote. Thank you. That was my freak. But so much of your vote is early there, whereas South Carolina, it's virtually all election. And it's, uh, So it's just, it's so different. But you're really pushing towards that one day, one day sales. And it's not like the four-week election day that you have there. You know, it's very different in that sense. Yeah, we need to change it. We need to be more like Florida and South Carolina is what I'm telling people. But we're going to get there. We're trying to fix this as soon as possible. I hope so. Well, I did beat. I did beat. I did beat, Rick, just so you know, breaking news happened the day I was off the year. I did beat Fontes and Mays in court on one of the issues, which is uniforms and guns. If you're in law enforcement officer, you're in military, you can show up in your uniform to vote. And there are claims that those people would disenfranchise other voters. The judge agreed with us. So if you are in... Pima County and you serving in the military or your local law enforcement or first responder, you can show up in your uniform. We shouldn't have had to go to federal court for that, but we did. So, I mean, that's the kind of stupidity that we have to deal with. People don't understand how it's an encroachment that then they take that. And what it was, it was a backhanded hit against ICE agents, but they couldn't go quite that far and say that, but that's what they were saying. So, there we go. Graham Platner. He did not drop out of that race gracefully. I think he did us a huge favor, to be honest. He bashed all the people in the Democrat Party. And these women are in love with him. So do you get low voter turnout in the Democrat? Are people going to be mad that they took this guy out after 70% of the voters voted for him in his primary? I can't, you know, speak to that. I think the bigger problem is that Democrats have just been taken over by these crises. And it's going to be hard for people like Hobbs to distance herself.

from these nuts. We're hoping that she doesn't, Rick. So don't help her out. We're hoping that she just continue. She can't. I mean, it's up to, you know, the nominee, probably Andy Biggs to hold her feet to the fire on that. And just every time somebody says something crazy to call on her to denounce it, which she just can't do because that's where, yeah. Demand that she has these crazy positions. So she's really stuck in that sense. And it's just the question of whether Republicans are strong enough. And this is true with every Democrat. I don't care who it is. They're all the same. They're all the same now. And the party has been taken over by these complete crazy nuts. And it's unlike, you know, those of us who will go back and remember George McGovern. Yes. You know, Democrats were able to run away from George McGovern very easily because, oh, I have nothing to do with this guy. I mean, I'm an Arizona Democrat. I'm not going to like with him. But those days are over. They are. And you can't separate yourself from the party, even if you want to because you still have to run in a Democratic primary. Hey, Rick. I've got a hard break. Can you hang with me through the news break and then come back? If the signal doesn't drop out, I have to guess that I should be able to. Okay, good. We're talking to Rick Shafton, East Coast political consultant, works for the good team, the red team, and you are listening to 1030 The Voice. Your trusted local news and talk here on this Bustos media station. I'm Kathleen Wynn. Don't go anywhere. We'll be back right after this on Wynne Tucson. Welcome back to Wind Tucson with my very special guest, Rick Shafton. Rick, where are you headed to today? I'm actually headed up the beach now to pick up some things. Okay. All right. I didn't know if you were headed to. My producer said he's always driving someplace. I said he is. He doesn't like to fly. Summer. Summer to stay out here. Yeah. So. I just think, you know, with everything that's going on, it's a shame. You knew Senator Graham. I knew Senator Graham. Not well. You probably knew him better because of where you live. But I think South Carolina is still pretty red, correct? Yes. Okay. So let's hope that they get this right. And I like the idea of his sister filling out his term. But, you know, I don't see Trey Gowdy doing that, but who knows? I won't be surprised by anything that happens. I just hope it's not something historic because that's how we got Jim Scott. When Jim DeMitt resigned the Senate, Nikki Haley put Tim Scott in there so she'd go make history and prove that she wasn't a racist. You know, I'm sorry. Tim Scott is just like one of the emptier suits in the Senate. When I called on him in South Carolina, people really didn't know much about him other than he was black and he was the, he supported in criminal justice reform. That was all they knew about him. Yeah. I mean, he just hasn't really done it. He's not like a fighter report. It's not Mike Lee.

You know, is that Andy Biggs? He's just, you know, there. Yeah. Right way. We've been, you know, it's the only, you know, like a real holdover, right? And someone not running, because when she put Scott in the seat, she just basically gave him the Senate tenure. Well, hopefully he fills the void and rises to the occasion now that he's not, you know, he's now the senior senator, right? And so hopefully he takes that on seriously. And I have to say, Lindsey Graham, Chad Conley said it. Lindsey Graham was... behind the scenes doing the job and getting and solving problems and he came home all excited and told the president I think we've got this worked out with Ukraine and Russia and I believe him and I believe he believed it and we'll see what happens and hopefully you know God bless Marco Rubio he steps in and does whatever was put in place because Lindsey Graham never made it about himself he just made sure that everyone was working. And he also worked across the aisle, a lost art of working across the aisle. We used to have people that did that. And we could probably learn a lesson or two from that. So, well, I don't know. I don't think it was his best moments, personally, but. Well, I know. Well, right now, there is no aisle. There's, there's a chasm. There's a Grand Canyon kind of thing, and there's no getting together. But, yeah. But his best moment was definitely the Brett Kavanaugh. A hundred percent. And that's a re-elected him in 2020. When I, I mean, I. Hold on this time. But the three previous races, I pulled on him. Yes. And he was, the last time in 2020, they fight against Brett Kavanaugh just overshadowed everything. And it was why he was, none of his opposition could get off the ground. The time before that, there were six candidates running. And none of them were smart enough to tell them the world that there's a runoff in South Carolina. So all these news stories where Lindsey Graham has six opponents, you can't lose. And so, you know, that was, you know, he's just been lucky in his race that he's never really drawn a strong opponent who... was able to force him into a runoff. Right. He's always been above that 50% mark. It was just essential there. Well, he, you know, he was unique. He was one of a kind. He had a very interesting story. Pretty much raised himself and his sister. And he took care of her. And in their...

You know, he, this was unpredictable. No one planned on this. You know, there's even some conspiracy theories that maybe was poisoned or whatever, but because everything gets out there, right? Like, because people are in shock. But either way. What do you, I'm going to shift gears a little bit. Another senator, Mitch McConnell. Is he with us? Is he not with us? Is he the next senator that will be stepping down? Well, I just put a photo out. Some people say it's AI. Who knows? Who knows? The problem is Kentucky has a Democratic governor. So while South Carolina has a Republican governor to pick the Republican, there's a fight in Kentucky over whether the law, the legislature passed, taking away the governor's right to pick. Well, I think the way they did it was that the party of the departing senator. nominates three names and the governor picks one of the three. Right. But the governor's claiming, well, I don't have to do that. I can pick whoever I want. What? That's what the governor's claiming. Yeah, but they could challenge that in court. That's ridiculous. They could. And the governor's claiming they don't have a right to pass that law under the Kentucky Constitution. I don't know. So let's just hope that Mitch stays around for another six months, you know. stays around, lays around, stays alive, all those things. Yes, yes, here we are. You know, as somebody pointed out, Mr. Mitch McConnell has not missed any votes, unlike various members of Congress who, you know, are running for re-election. Mr. Grohava, Congressman Grohava missed a ton of votes before he passed away, unfortunately. And now his daughter's there, just missing State of the Union speeches because she doesn't like the president. Unfortunately, she does vote. That's a problem. He was doing his best work when he wasn't voting. True story. Absolutely true story. Which brings me back to CD6, which you were familiar with. We have Joanne Mendoza running against Juan Siskamani, Congressman Siskamani, who did get the Trump endorsement and the Turning Point endorsement. So those are good things. But you have someone who believes that you should legalize prostitution for transgender people, so they have a way to make money, not Siski money. That is Mendoza. She is part of the Socialist Party. uh she's trying to let's this democrat about i think you're going to say that he had some like libertarian no no that's a democrat the democrat and she's not even democrat she's a communist she's a socialist she served in our military though which makes this problematic but she is handpicked out of that ilk uh they are i i think adelaida already fills that spot in southern arizona so we should have balance and also congressman cizcomani has voted right he's done a good job he's brought a lot of money and resources on the appropriation committee So I would like to see him keep that seat. But this seat is, you know how it is. It's a tough seat. Well, it all depends on the climate in the fall. The Democrats are running around right now, like Republicans did four years ago and they're counting all those seats they're going to pick up. I'm just not convinced, especially with the party going so crazy left now, that they're going to pick up these seats. I mean, it's just easy.

It's easy to portray these Democrats as being crackpots, and then they just make it even easier for us. So Republicans just have to stay on that, and stop talking about all the constituent service and how, you know, they help people, because that's not driving votes. It's driving votes is that there's two sides, pick one. And if you're on side A, you better get that out and vote, because otherwise side B will win and take away all your rights. And it was interesting where we've really changed from 30 years ago. But everything was personality politics. And that nobody cares about personality anymore. Are you a Republican or Democrat? That's it. And I learned that I had a race with a client with no money at all. And we were running even with Glenn Youngkin, who was spending a zillion dollars. I mean, it was just people were voting for Glenn Youngkin. They voted for my Kandu. Now, we're here, he lost, Glenn Youngkin lost the district, we lost. But we came very close to Glenn Youngkin's numbers with almost no money. And what's happening is that people are just voting straight party now. Yes. The days of personality politics are over. And. uh... democrats you know uh... the only beneficiaries that are democrats they've been able to say i'm not a communist i'm a veteran i'm a moderate arizona democrat right well that it that doesn't work anymore as long as republicans call them out on this but if republicans allow them to uh... uh... to continue uh... with with saying that they're moderates and pretending to be something they're not, then we're going to lose. If we try to run campaigns and say, I'm a better Arizona and Democrat candidate, the Democrat, it's just not going to work. Nobody's voting for us because we're homegrown or we understand our culture better, but we understand our culture better, but we show it in terms of issues. Not I grew up on a farm, I grew up on a ranch, I grew up hunting buffalo, whatever, you know, it's like no one cares. No one cares. They don't care. Do you know what they care when they went to school? If you're like in SEC country and it's like, oh, I hate Georgia. Oh, you went to Georgia. I'll never vote for you because I hate Georgia. Other than that, no one cares for you went to school. They don't care if you went to school. How many kids you have? They don't care. They want to know. What are you for or are you against? They do, and they want to know what you're going to do to solve their problems. Okay. I mean, I was amazed. I was amazed when I saw, and when I polled on Jeff Flake, how many Mormons wouldn't vote for Jeff Flake? Oh, there was a whole divide. Oh, that wasn't true. No, no. And there's not one Mormon fits all because we, there's a faction there too. That Mormon, the Mormon vote is very split. And we saw that, you know, we saw it a couple times. Matt Salmon versus, gosh, dang it. Kirk Adams a while ago, we saw that when somebody was trying to run against Andy.

for Congress and that never worked out. So anyway, no, that Mormon split is real. And the mayor, the former mayor of Mesa, John Giles, he acts like a Democrat. He says he's a Republican. We're hearing that the governor is considering making him her lieutenant governor, which should tell everybody what we need to know. Hey, Rick, do you have to go or can you stay? I do. I have to go in a minute here. Okay, that's okay. So, oh, well, all right. Last, last thought, I just want to say, you know, the three amigos were John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and McCain died in 2018, Lieberman died in 2024, and Lindsey Graham on Saturday. So they, they proved that it. You know, that they could all work together. And we don't have those kinds. If we have those kinds of alliances right now, you don't hear about them anymore. But it would be nice if we could bring some of that back. Well, you don't have Joe Laborman-type Democrats anymore. Yeah, well, didn't he become an independent? He became an independent people. Yeah, but they're all, they're all Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner and Elizabeth Warren, and they're just crazies. I mean, there's no rational thinking left in the Democratic Party. Right. And the ones who are rational thinking can't say anything because they're forced to take the party line, which is, you know, pure communism pretty much right now. I think, I wish it was pure communism, but I think it's an extreme version of that even. I think it's, it goes beyond. It is, it is, when you want to encourage those that are here illegally to have all the rights and privileges you have as a citizen, you don't understand what you're doing to your own country, that's a problem. It's not that country because a lot of these folks are immigrants, like the mayor of New York for example. Who got here, what, six years ago? Eight years ago? You had a citizen eight years ago. And it sits at George Washington's desk and denounces the United States. Yeah. It's a horrible country. Yeah. Yeah, and he's leading the largest city in the country. That should be a, if that's not a signal, and I'm hoping people in the West pay attention because we've got to, we will first haul in Arizona, we got to change it back here. And this is going to be a bloodbath coming up. Rick, we will have you back. Enjoy your day. Thank you for calling in. I always love talking to you. Make sure that something good happens in South Carolina. You're closer there than I am. All right. Okay. All right. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you. Bye, hon. All right. You're listening to Win Tucson on 1030 The Voice. You're trusted local news and talk. When we come back, we're going to do a little election cleanup before we have our top of the hour guest. We're going to talk about what's going on around the world. So don't go anywhere. This is Wind Tucson. I'm Kathleen Wynn.

Your trusted local news and talk source here on KVOI. We'll be back. Welcome back to Win Tucson. And we are looking at 90, it was 99,000. I didn't check this. 99,000. So 100,000 registered Republicans just under... 100,000 have still have a ballot out now if you mailed it over the weekend obviously it hasn't been received yet and then we're dealing with if you have purchased a car bought a boat bought anything that has intersection with the motor vehicles division I was on the phone on Friday with our county recorder and she says people click through when they do that and unfortunately because our voting system is tied with DMV something I think we need to uncouple if we can get a new governor and stop because what they're doing is if you re-register something and let's say you take your boat up to pine top your voter registration we saw this with abhammed day the last election 6,000 people ballots didn't get counted so we need to fix that along with so many other things but the thing that is the most important thing is that you vote and i'm fine if you want to wait till election day uh and vote we've got plenty of polling places uh but it is important that you understand um that you not voting um until after, or not voting until after, you need to vote as soon as possible because there are so much going on. And if you don't vote, you're going to keep getting called, doors knocked on. And what we're finding, unfortunately, is a lot of people that believe that they're on the early ballot system, they're not. So last year in Pima County, we had. I believe if you lived in the city of Tucson, we had five mail-in elections with election day just on the final day. And because of that, people think they're on the mail-in ballot thing and they're not checking. I'm... asking you today to go to pima the we can go to pema gop.org or you can go to the pima county recorder's office and check your ballot status because the most important election will be the general election but don't not vote in the primary uh the primary is uh who we send our best candidates forward and the votes in pema county count and they matter and they matter to the republican total And we can, because of the size of Pima County, if we would actually turn out and vote, we can guide the state as to where it needs to go. And as Republicans, we want to do that. We want to do that for the legislative race in LD17, largest county representation in Pima County. LD 18, LD19. If the Democrats aren't turning out, they are.

they've got some primaries in the Democrat side. So what that tells me is they're not happy with their current people that have been there, their incumbents. And we have an opportunity when they're not happy because they're taking their party to a more extreme side, then we have an opportunity to pick up those seats. And you can't do it if you don't vote. So it's important that you take the time to learn who the candidates are. Learn who's supporting them. If you're getting a mailer from somebody and they're supporting a candidate and it's an organization that isn't conservative, look at that. Why are they supporting this candidate? So I am looking to see, let's see. Oh, and then let me check. We did win the lawsuit, a part of it, against Fontes. And I'm looking to see if I've got what I need from my attorney. So last week on Friday. A federal judge in Arizona granted us a preliminary injunction blocking Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Chris Mays from enforcing a provision of the elections procedure manual that it would allow election officials to remove or even contact law enforcement if they believed an individual in uniform or an official looking was intimidating or deterring voters. Let that sink in. So we all know that the left doesn't like ice agents. But they didn't say that specifically because that would have been just too narrowly focused. And the federal court... would have definitely said no, but this, they made it more vague. So that the elections procedure manual is supposed to be a guideline for internal workings. But what you're seeing is this Secretary of State and this Attorney General are... intentionally trying to encroach and take more power than is given to them by their offices. And so we sued on that. We don't want them to have more authority over your right to vote. And we're fighting for this. But the thing that matters most, and I'll go back where I started on this segment, is that you have to vote. We're working very hard. When I came in as chairman a year and a half ago, I would say, well, what does the party do? It doesn't matter. It does matter. It matters if you didn't have a half-send sales tax with 414. That was us out of the gate.

And we worked across lines. We worked with Democrats. We worked with independence because everyone agreed on that. And there are issues in this county and in the city of Tucson that we agree on. And one of those is that we, for the most part, support our law enforcement, support our military. We are a military town. It would be ridiculous if we didn't do that. And so if we're going to do the things that we need to do and attract business and have a good, viable county and city, we need to not be taking on extreme policies that counteract what solid economic decisions should be being made. And spending money. on frivolous things and spending money on hurting the average citizen or not spending money and and hemorrhaging money for a free bus system. Again, it is time that you show up to vote the only way we can change things through the legislature. So make sure you vote for your legislator. I have taken over 70 calls since ballots have gone out and directed people on where they can get their ballot or any questions that they have about candidates. I want to assure you that we are here this last week, starting tomorrow. The election is next Tuesday. Do not wait. Get smart. Do what you need to do. PimaGOP.org, but call us. You can call me personally, but get in touch with somebody who's in the know who's paying attention to what's going on. We have to put our best candidates forward because at the end of this in November, we need to make. Arizona red again. All right. When we come back, we will have a whole new line of conversation. You're listening to 1030 The Voice. You're trusted local news and talk. This is Wynn Tucson, and I'm Kathleen Wynn. We'll be back after this news. Welcome back to Win Tucson. And in keeping with our theme today about talking about Senator Graham and his life and legacy, he was just coming back from being with President Volodymyr Zelensky after President Trump had been there meeting at NATO summits. And he was encouraged by what was going on. And so I invited Stephen Moore. on today. And Stephen, thank you for agreeing to come. You're a Ukraine expert and founder of Ukraine Freedom Project. And I really wanted to get your take on what was going on and what was encouraging our senator before he passed away. So welcome to win Tucson this morning, sir.

Thanks, Kathleen. Thank you for having me on. So did Lindsey Graham have a right to feel what he was feeling and encouraged by what he was hearing in his meetings with President Volodymyr Zelensky? It seems like President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged him almost immediately after his passing. Yeah. So, you know, I live in Kiev. I went to Ukraine on day five, the war to help. I've been there ever since. I've been to the front like 50, 60 times. And I was the chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives for about seven years. And I've worked in Republican politics all my life. So what I'm doing now is I'm getting good information from Ukraine and bringing it for folks like you. Yes. And my listeners, because that's so important, because we don't know, right? Exactly. Listen, I don't want to shock anyone here, but the media is not telling you everything you need to know about Ukraine. Surprise. Yes, I understand. Yeah. So, yeah. So I'm in, I'm in, you know, I'm in this great opportunity where I'm able to go and find out things firsthand Ukraine and bring them back. And, you know, and I'll tell you what they're not telling you, what the media's not telling you, is that Ukraine is now winning this war by every metric except one. And, you know, Ukraine is now sending missiles and drones into Russia, deep into Russia. And billowing black smoke is now a frequent feature on the Moscow skyline, the St. Petersburg skyline. Just in June alone, the Ukrainians sent 176 drones. They struck 176 targets. inside Russia, things like refineries, things like munitions factories. And so they've hit so many refineries that they have cut the refining capacity of the Russian nation in half. And so Russia... So it's an economic war as much as anything else, correct? Because that cripples their... Exactly. Okay. Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, not at all. I'm sorry. Russia is a gas station with an army. And you cut off the gas revenues. I like that. Yeah. Well, and that's all they do. You know, I mean, Kathleen, when is the last time that you, you know, went...

went home, picked up something in your house, and looked on the bottom and said, made in Russia on it. Never. Only their twin cousin made in China is doing very well on that front though, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Stephen, Ukraine's recent battlefield successes, you know, battles and wars, it's a strategic advantage, right? But you have to have a strategy, and it seems like Volodymyr Zelensky is executing. I would say that they didn't have one in the very beginning. Maybe that's not fair. But I think that they have, with the help of the United States, they have had the upper hand. Is that what you're seeing? Well, here's a brief history of what I've seen in Ukraine. Okay. To your point, the Biden administration did not have a strategy. They had a, you know, Jake, Jake Dan Sullivan, you know, who was in charge, you know, he was the National Security Advisor. He had this fear forward foreign policy. You know, everything he did was to not provoke Vladimir Putin. And, you know, Vladimir Putin does not respect fear. He respects strength. And so every time Ukrainian military, which is highly motivated and at this point highly skilled, every time the Ukrainian military would gain the advantage, Jake Dan Sullivan would throttle them back so as not to provoke Vladimir Putin.

So we sent a lot of weapons over there and we spent a significant amount of money over there. And the last shipment of U.S. weapons came early in 2025. And frankly, they spent most of 2024 fighting without U.S. weapons because, again, Biden saw them gaining the advantage and throttled them back. And so Ukraine's developed an incredible defense technology industry. And in, in, um, in 2024, they built 2.2 million groans. In 2025, they built 4 million. And in 26, they're on target to build 7 million drones. And drones have become so important in this war that they're not treating bullet wounds anymore. There's none. You know, 95% of the battlefield casualties on both sides are from these, you know, amazing drone weapons. Do you think that Vladimir Putin, President Vladimir Putin, is, will he just go down and fight till the end? Or will he understand that he is in this position? He doesn't like to lose. Well, you know, exactly. Vladimir Putin is, and no, he does not like to lose. You know, he has a lot riding because, you know, he's held in power by a group of elites. And if the elites start doubting his capacity to protect Russia, which is certainly, I mean, he's not able to protect Russia right now because there's, you know, hundreds of strikes inside Russia. And so they will dispose of him at some point. And he's becoming increasingly desperate. Let's go back to Senator Graham's unfortunate and untimely death. Yes, please. You know, it is perfectly normal. It's a little bit, actually, it is a little bit rare his cause of death, but it's not crazy rare. But his death. does fit in a decades-long pattern of Vladimir Putin's assassinations. He is, yeah, and so, and the Russians have a, have had a poisoning development program since 1921. And there's actually many documented cases in the Soviet Union of people appearing to die of heart attacks. Yet they, the, you know, once the classified documents are unclassified, you find out that that was an assassination.

And are you familiar with the Havana syndrome? Yes, but go ahead and explain to the listeners because I think it's... Sure. Yeah. This is a directed energy weapon that's been used against hundreds of U.S. clandestine operators. And these are the people in our intelligence community go abroad and collect human intelligence. And... And the Havana syndrome is named because it first happened in Havana, Cuba, and people began complaining of sudden, intense pounding headaches, vertigo, blurred vision, and then it would continue for weeks, months, and years. And, and, and. There's no defense against it. And it's happened to hundreds of people. And the investors believe this is a Russian military unit, military intelligence unit, that uses like a sound wave weapon against people. It's permanently crippling. And so it is defamated our intelligence corps. Again, the people that go out and collect human intelligence. And so, and they have also used this on people, national security council members coming out of the White House. Yes. So this is the reach Russia has in the United States. Well, and I do a show here Wednesday is trying to watch Wednesday, and we talk about the influence of the CCP in this country, and we've done the show for three years, and we always have a new topic. So to that point, we have outliers in our nation, people that don't stand for what we stand for who mean to do us harm. And we'd be naive to think that that's not happening. So how long do I have you for? How long do you want me for? At least another 15 minutes for sure, and we have to take a minute break. Is that okay, Steve? Yeah. Okay, wonderful. Perfect. That's fine. Thank you so much. We are talking to Stephen Moore, Ukraine expert and founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back here on 1030, The Voice, your trusted local news and talk. I'm Kathleen Wynn. This is Wynne Tucson. Stay with us. Welcome back to when Tucson. We're talking to Stephen Moore. Stephen is the former chief of staff for the U.S. House of Representatives and has been in Ukraine. I think you said since day five of the war. And his NGO, the Ukraine Freedom Project, has brought humanitarian... help and aid to the areas impacted most by the war. And you have been on the ground, seeing everything, and you are a trusted source for information for members of Congress. Does Congress and our senators, I guess they're part of Congress, understand...

that we're at a turning point right now with Ukraine and Russia and where we are in the world. Can we have a free and safe Europe again, Steve? Yeah, well, and that is an excellent question. I would expand that too. You know, as you alluded to earlier, we're in a global war right now. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, all the Islamic extremist movements, you know, and the JV players like Cuba. And even, you know, probably the... I would put them in elementary school. I wouldn't even get them into junior high yet. I think they're having some serious problems. You know, I don't know if you saw the news recently, but our intelligence services have located 300 Shahid drones, Iranian-made, Russian-produced. Iranian designed Russian-produced Shahad drones inside Cuba. Shock. Yep. Yeah. Yes. So, you know, so, so again, all our adversaries are working together and America is scrolling TikTok. So, and, you know, there are so many things going on domestically, and we're in such a divisive period, divided period in our history that it's actually difficult to get people to pay attention to this. And, you know, the, you know, I think that Congress is. You know, we spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill, and they don't quite get it yet. And they're increasingly understanding. And I think that one of the outcomes from Senator Graham's tragic and untimely death is that it will shed more light on the threat. presented by Russia and Vladimir Putin to the United States. And I think, you know, when one of your colleagues, and again, we don't know if Senator Graham was assassinated, it certainly fits the pattern of Vladimir Putin's previous assassinations. And by the way, I have a substack. Your readers, I'm actually writing something. Yeah, please. Yes, please. My substack is Tales from World War III. That's Stephen Moore. T-A-L-E-S, just in case anyone needs to know, right? Just wanted to make sure. Yeah, thank you for that. No problem. It's Monday. I've got all my good jokes. Go ahead. You were writing over the weekend, weren't you? Oh, yeah. So I, I, um, I, I, I think it's important. We are on sensory overload right now because we're talking about Ukraine. We haven't talked about Ukraine. We've been talking about Iran, right? And we've been talking. And over the weekend, because of the Strait of Hormuz, we have been bombing and bombing and bombing and attacking similar to what Ukraine is doing with Russia. But people are fighting. And I think as you look at it, you've got a...

millions more of the citizens and in ukraine and russia have lost so many of their young men right is that like to um which does great damage to the next generation that's coming because you've killed off um all these likely you know at least families and fathers and and whatever tragedy so I look at what's going on and I look and I hear, you know, we all heard on over the weekend, Senator Graham's, and we probably wouldn't have heard them, but his optimism as to what he was saying and doing. Previous to that, you had President Trump over there talking to our NATO allies. Can we? Can we win this? It sounded like, and not win it like in a battle sense, but can we win it strategically so that we can start to rebuild and restore that part of the world? And you've been there, so you tell me. Oh, yeah, listen. You know, and again, Here's the situation now is that because the Ukrainians have been so innovative in their defense technology, the kill ratio for every one Ukraine that has lost, the estimates are five to eight Russians are lost. Whoa. And yeah, this is true. And it's a number of reasons. One, the Ukrainians are one, very adept. at this drone warfare. Two, the Russian strategy for, since the time of Peter the Great is to shove meat into the war machine. Russians, like the Iranians, have no concern for human life. You know, they don't care. And so, and whereas the Ukrainians have actually developed. um cutting edge methods of combat medicine that we need to adapt and um you know because we're still stuck in in the afghanistan war and uh so so the ukrainians are really cautious or not cautious but conscious they're really conscious conscious of uh saving lives so as a result um you know it's the According to Russian mill bloggers, the military bloggers that write about these things in Russia, they say the average life expectancy for a new Russian recruit inside Ukraine is 35 minutes. Oh, my Lord. So why would you sign up for that? Do they have a choice? Well, yeah, I'll tell you why. Everyone in Ukraine is a volunteer. And because Vladimir Putin does conscription for, you know, he does conscription. And so there's a draft. And those people stay to defend the Russian homeland. And everyone going into Ukraine currently, and this could change quickly, is a volunteer. And they are giving them $80,000 signing bonuses.

to go into Ukraine. And they're having trouble meeting their recruitment quotas for that. And just for perspective, $80,000 in Russia, their average monthly wage is one-fifth of ours. So ours is five times theirs. So here in the United States, $80,000, well, $80,000 in Russia spends like $400,000. And we're meeting all of our quotas, by the way, in our military recruitment. Yes. Yeah, we don't have to give those kind of numbers. So what's happening is the Russians are losing about 35,000 soldiers a month, casualties and fatalities, injuries and fatalities. And they're only able to recruit about 26,000 per month. So they're not looking good on the battlefield. Just this year, they've lost an area of Ukraine about twice the size of Washington, D.C. And so they're losing all these people. They're losing ground. Crimea has been cut off from the Russians. And this is amazing because Crimea is a peninsula. So there's three ways into Crimea. One, you can go in by sea and Ukrainians have destroyed. The Ukrainians would barely have a navy, have destroyed 40% of the Russian Black Sea fleet. with their drones and their missiles. And then if there's a, there's a land route through occupied Ukraine, that land route is become known as the highway of death. because the Ukrainians are doing such a good job, again, with their drones, cutting off the logistics there. So what's happening now, and they're cutting off the electricity and all the, Crimea is no longer a nice place to live. So the Russians that came in in 2022 and occupied it, you know, so the people that live there now are Russians who want a beachfront property after they, after the Russian army took it from Ukraine. Yeah. We joke in Arizona that we'd like California to. to maybe slip into the ocean, make an island. We don't want death, so we could get beach fund property, so that's sorry. I understand the joke. So Stephen, like, how do you, in your commitment with what you're doing, what is a perfect outcome for you? Well, I think that, listen to the perfect outcome, what you see is, you know, Vladimir Putin's not going to stop until someone makes him stop. And the next thing that coming after Vladimir Putin is not necessarily because the problem is not with Vladimir Putin necessarily. It's with the Russian system. You know, I worked in Russia in 1996 or about five months. There's a group of American political consultants that secretly advised. uh, Boris Yeltsin, the president of the time, his reelection campaign. So I worked with leaders of the country in 1996. And they have this unearned arrogance. They believe that they have the right to rule. And they're stuck in these imperialistic times that the rest of us have kind of gotten past. And so until that system is broken, um,

You're just going to see this happen over and over again. The nightmare scenario, so the perfect scenario is that Russia sees a defeat. Russia, you know, Russia thinks about whether it wants to be an imperial power or whether it wants to be a country that provides economic benefits to their citizens because a quarter of Russia lives without indoor plumbing. And so they, you know, so there needs to be a major defeat of Russia to make them decide to, you know, like, like Germany, you know, 80 years ago. Now, the nightmare scenario here is that Vladimir Putin spends $50 to $80 billion a year on personnel. You know, again, these signing bonuses, exorbitant death benefits to the family, just paying people. You know, he turns through a lot of people. And so he can't afford to do that if we keep taking economically half of his resources and his, I mean, there's going to be an off ramp, especially if you're the elitist. We have a hard news break at 1030, which is. Oh. Sorry. No, how would you know? And so I'm going to give you the option to stay or to go, and it's up to you. I've loved this conversation. I'd like to finish it up. Okay. Good. Hey, listen, I have a lot of really boring things to do. Oh, good. So we will entertain you for another 15 minutes and then we'll let you get on with your day. But we are talking to Stephen Moore, who I'm really enjoying this conversation. So audience, yeah, thank you. Audience, don't go anywhere. You're listening to 1030 The Voice on KVOI.com. This is Wynn-Tusan. You're trusted local news and talk on this Bustos media station. Kathleen Wynn, I'll be back after the news. Welcome back to Win Tucson. We're talking to Stephen Moore, and he has a wide, vast experience in dealing with Ukraine, but also our Congress. And I invited him on today to do the untimely death of Senator Lindsey Graham. But this conversation has been so much bigger than that. Your NGO, are you headquartered out of the U.S. someplace, Stephen? No, I live in Kiev. Oh, you do. So you do. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I get to watch Vladimir Putin send those Iranian-designed Russian-produced Shahid drones into Kiev most nights. I think under consideration, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's some kind of weaponry drone and others that was on the table last week that the U.S. was going to help inside of Ukraine, us producing them with Ukraine or helping them get the parts so they could produce them. Am I incorrect in that, or did I hear correct?

Well, you know, so there is a number of things happening with U.S. cooperation with Ukraine in terms of drone warfare and anti-drone warfare. And it's kind of coming two directions. So the Ukrainians, I mentioned earlier that Russia is losing this war by every metric except for one. And that one is that Vladimir Putin is killing more Ukrainian civilians. killing more civilians than Ukraine because he's targeting civilians. And what happens is that there's this drone called the Shahed. And this was designed by Iran, and it's now built in Russia. They licensed the technology early in the war in the Iranians, and they have used this groan to Shahed, which is Arabic for martyr. And... They've used it 57,000 times launching these drones into Ukraine. And they have improved it. They've made them faster, quieter, given a longer range, and a heavier payload and more destructive power. Now, Vladimir Putin took these, he sent the new improved drones back to Iran. And Iran is now using those drones against our service members and our allies in the Gulf. And he's kicked. This is true. Yes, he's killed many U.S. service members by sending weapons to Iran. And so Russian weapons are now killing American service members. Um, our, our solution to that is to, um, is when a Shahad comes against one of our bases or one of our allies, we use a Patriot missile to shoot it down. And US army doctrine, US military doctrine, uh, stipulates that if there's a, if there's something coming at you that's worth sending one patriot to, to shoot down, send two to make sure you finish the job. And. The problem with that is a Shahed drone is $35,000 to $50,000. And a Patriot missile is $4 million. Right. So we're using eight, yeah, yeah. So you either fight with the Walmart stuff or you fight with the Rolls-Roy stuff. Yeah. Well, and it turns out the Walmart stuff is what we need. Right. It works really well. And so the Ukrainians have developed, you know, $15,000 drone interceptors to take down a $35,000 shahad drone, which makes more sense. And so we're now, the United States is now getting some of that technology. Conversely, we are, President Trump is working with Ukrainians. to let them license the Patriot technology to them so they can build Patriots. Why that is important is because Ukrainians can take out 95% of the sheds that come their way. 95% of the cruise missiles, but these ballistic missiles, they just can't, they're too fast to take out with any means they have. The only thing that's taken out is a patriot. And for whatever reason, our defense industrial complex only builds

600 patriots a year. And for perspective, we used 800 patriots just in the short go-around last time in Iran. So we need more, you know, the world needs more patriots, so to speak. Absolutely. And I'm also struck by the... the way the relationship between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky has grown. When you think about how he threw him out of the White House several years ago, right? So I'm going to tell you that President Volodymyr Zelensky grew into his job of just my outside observation. But they seem to have an understanding. And I'm going to go back to where we started. Did Lindsey Graham have anything to do with that? Yeah, Lindsey Graham had a lot to do with that. And, you know, and the late Senator and President Trump played golf together a lot, you know. Yes, yes. And Lindsey Graham was not a good golfer. He used to joke about that, but he did get time with the president. He was smart about that. I hope he went to the driving range to try to improve his game. But it's because he apparently did because the president kept asking him back. And yeah, so well, and here just more broadly, you know, there's been this sense in America, you know, if you remember back to February, March of 2022, everybody thought the Russians were going to roll through in three weeks. And, you know, we've been hearing for years. The key is going to fall in 60 days and that Russia is going to roll through Donbass, you know, by this summer. And it just hasn't happened. And instead, you know, Vladimir Putin has lost 1.4 million people and taken 20% of the country. And now he's, you know, the Ukrainians are bombing him inside Russia. And so what we're finding out is that Vladimir Putin is a loser. doesn't like losers we'll put that big l on our foreheads right and say yeah yeah i mean what an idiot that would start a war that he gets crushed at right you know and and uh yeah your rhetoric is not as strong as your your rhetoric is stronger than your resources you know that's yes yeah yeah But, you know, but that being said, again, I alluded to before the break is that the nightmare scenario is that you give Vladimir Putin a chance to rebuild. You know, they have massive amount of oil revenue. And, and they can just build more of these drones, more missiles. And, you know, if we don't, if we don't put some sort of restrictions on Russia, if Russia is, you know, then Vladimir Putin's just going to come back or the next guy is going to come back. three, five, seven years. And so, you know, Vladimir Putin is already in violation of 26 ceasefires and peace agreements with Ukraine. And so, you know, this is, as President Trump repeatedly points out, this is not an easy problem to solve. And there's going to have to be something. Yeah, I think we're going to have to arm Ukraine to the teeth.

And I think that our NATO allies, you know, and I'll say everyone beats up on Europe, which I think is fun. But, you know, the people that, there's actually two Europe. There's Eastern Europe. There's the Baltic states. There's the Nordic countries, Scandinavian countries. There's the UK and the Netherlands. These people understand the Russian threat. These are the countries that are. pulling their weight in their own defense now you've got france spain and belgium and italy and and and they're a joke yes spain especially president trump's really mad at spain so yeah well and i'll tell you this they're making the french look good which is hard to do And we've come, we're almost to the end of time. We get about a minute and half. I, my husband spent his whole career in defense. He, uh, chief designer, engineer, aerospace engineer for helicopters, Apache attack helicopters. So my standard in the world is if they have those, they're an allied nation like Israel, like UAE. like Saudi. That's my Apache helicopter standard. But Ukraine is not necessarily an ally, but in that conflict, which we clearly involved ourselves with, I think it's important to finish what we start. And then hopefully... And I agree with you on Russia. You can't give them, if they're going to be a bad actor, you can't give them an opportunity to rebuild. And that's what the complaint is in Iran, is that we are decimating them, but we can't let the current regime remain in power. Fair? Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And, you know, and again, as we're discussing, we haven't gotten to China and North Korea. Yeah. And, you know, and so, you know, then that means you're going to have to come back, Steve. Listen, I'd love to talk to any time, you know, would love to do it. Let me know. I love Tucson. I haven't been there in ages. Well, the weather may be similar to where you're at. I'm not quite sure. Is it hot and muggy and humid right now? So do you stay? Do you continue? You're rebuilding inside Ukraine, right? And the money that you raise is to bring stability back to that country. Yeah. Are you getting the cooperation you need from the U.S. and from Congress? And are we understanding the significance of this area? Last question.

Um, that, that is, that is an ongoing process. That's something that needs to be built upon. Um, you know, we are not ready for the next war as, is, you know, you know, listen, I love a palatashi helicopters, but now, you know, the Iranians and the Russians and Ukrainians can take one of those down with a few, um, you know, a few very inexpensive drones. And so the helicopter pilots had survived. They didn't, they weren't hit, the drone went into the cockpit and they had a, but it had an armament on it. So they had to go into the water. And then they got, I joke, they got picked up by an Uber boat. But the helicopter survived and they survived, which is one of the features of that helicopter is the most survivable. I'm a little cheerleader here. But I. Hey, you got to tout what you got, right? So, but it's, I think, but they are now having to the changing dynamic of the warfighter and what's going on, they now have drone capacities along with their hellfire missiles. So they're kind of going to, that's the next iteration, and they're going to develop that because that's the way that we're fighting. And we also have unmanned aircraft, which is a whole other conversation again. But I think there's a way that we can bring our resources. But you do need the buy-in of Congress. And we do need all work together. And I guess we'll end where we started, which is. Rest in peace, Lindsay Grimm, and thank you for everything you did to get us here. And Stephen Moore, thank you for all the work you're doing around the world because, well, actually in one place in the world to make the entire world safer because that's a big job. And I appreciate that you left Congress to do that, you know, helping Congress because... It's a similar war zone. You know, Congress prepared me well for Ukraine. Yeah, there's dumb people and there's smart people. It's all good. Oh, I will definitely have to have you. This was fun. All right. So thank you so much. All right. All right. Have a great day. God bless you. All right. Thank you. All right. We are going to go to a break and we're going to come back and talk about elections. Why? Because you need to vote. We need you to be the smart people. You're listening to 1030 The Voice. on KVOI.com, your trusted local news and talk. I'm Kathleen Wynn. It's a Monday and we're having fun.

Welcome back to Win Tucson. I used to not pay attention to what was going on in other parts of the world because it wasn't here. And I thought it didn't matter. But it matters more now than it ever did. Because we do have a global economy. Things that happen around the world do affect our everyday life. We know this with the gas prices and everything else. We have. We are now going to switch to what's going on countywide. There are 179,326. I'm going to test you later, registered Republicans in Pima County. And so far, and I don't know if this has changed today, and Tara Oster is joining us. And so, Tara, we are currently at 16. point six percent return and we want to get at least a 40 if not 50 percent yes if not 100 percent but but let's be realistic right now right yeah yeah that's what that's what we want to get um and currently we have almost a hundred thousand republican ballots sitting on counters in their green envelope those need to be mailed by tomorrow I want to underline that, okay? If you have a ballot in your house, it's now a rotten banana and you need to get it in the mail by tomorrow. If you'd let a banana sit on your counter since it was sent to you, it would be rotten by now. So get those rotten ballots off your counter and mail them in. Don't throw them away. Just mail them in, vote and mail them in, vote and mail them in, vote and mail them in. Go ahead, please. And so that's the easiest way, you know. And they can also still early vote. More early voting sites opened today. And they can also vote in person on Election Day. Some new thing, a new thing that's happened is they can ID verify if they vote early in person or on election day. And that's a big thing. On election date, don't just drop those ballots in the box because then they have to go be signature verified. But if when you stop, you just check in, they can verify your signature right there and then it won't delay the count because your signature has already been verified with your ID. And so that can only happen for the person who is dropping off on Election Day. You know, if they have other people in their household or that they care take for and they're bringing those, then they have to just drop those in the drop off day. But we still have time. for the next two days to put them in the mail. That's the easiest way. So remind your people, all the people that you know that aren't serious voters, you know, that their ballot doesn't mean everything to them, that they need to get those in the mail as soon as possible. And then you can still go early in person and on election day to vote. And internally, we have...

Let's see, seven different LDs, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 23. And in terms of percentage, LD19's winning... With 20 point, that's given 21% as of today. And, but in terms of total number of returned, LD17's winning, but they're bigger. They're at 16, almost 17%, but they've returned almost 11,000 ballots. LD19 has returned about 4,300 ballots. So. But percentage-wise, LD-19 usually leads the way. That's our Green Valley voters. They do a great job, but encourage people to get out. And they took away 10 polling places. So on top of that, we made it so much harder for Green Valley voters to vote. They usually have an 86% return. They are election day voters. That is where we can pull this out a week from Tuesday. But if you are... Don't next Wednesday say, oh, I should have voted. And don't you dare complain about who we put forward in the primaries if it isn't someone that you... wanted. You have a say, especially if you're an LD17, there's a lot of races. The other race that I think is so important is the supervisor, right-in candidate Jeff Rhodes. So if you, and he's not in all the LDs. He's primarily in 18 and 20, I believe. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So. And some in 21. So he's Board of Supervisors District 5. And you write in Jeff, J-E-F-F, Rhodes, R-H-O-D-E-S, in where it says supervisor. If you don't have a supervisor-writing candidate, then you do not live in Supervisor District 5. So the good news is if on your ballot you see right in Supervisor District 5, you can write in Jeff Rhodes. Um, that makes you an extra special voter because you're paying attention and we want you to do that. He needs, um, close to 200 right in to get on the ballot and then we will have a, uh, a race against Andres Cano. And we've got a whole story to tell there about who he is. He was not elected. He was appointed. And he really doesn't represent the values of the people in District 5. And so we're giving the county a chance to have support for Steve Christie. Let's do this one seat at a time. And we can do that. Tara, what else should people know? You're out knocking on doors.

Many people, because we had five pretty much mail-in elections last year, they thought that they were on the early ballot list, and maybe they're not. Correct? Correct. So there's two things. You know, they could have thought that they were on the early voter list because all of those elections were mail-in. We're mailing, right? So the people thought that they were on the active early voter list. So those people who thought they were going to get a ballot but didn't, they can still vote. They just need to go in and do that. And then we'll need to get them on the active early voter list. And that's an easy process. You can go to pema.vote. Pima.Vote is going to give you a link to the voter dashboard where you can see everything about your voter record. You can see whether you're on the active early voter list. You can sign up for ballot notifications. You can see the history of your voting record. You can see all of the races that you can vote in. Yeah, so that pima dot vote is very helpful. Also there, you will find the map. It gives all the locations of where you can vote. It's a little bit difficult to navigate. You got to read all the instructions. And so that's a great resource, pema.vote. And I think that's everything people need to know. They were if you are an independent or a PND and some people, if you did business at motor vehicles. Thank you. Yes. Yes. If you did business at motor vehicles and you didn't pay attention to every little question, they moved you from your party to PND. So people who are PNDs and independents can still vote, they just need to request a Republican ballot. Well, and I think it's important if you did not get a ballot yet, your time to request one to be mailed to you was last Friday. So now you're going to have to interact and go into, we have voting centers open around the county. and we'll give addresses tomorrow, but please make an effort to vote. We're going to knock on your door. We've got lots of people out there. Tara's out there every day. God bless her. It's hot, and she's doing a great job, but we need so many more people to help, and we will have all hands on deck from now until Election Day. Please turn out the vote. Tara, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you. You are very welcome. And everyone, please vote and encourage those people who aren't regular voters to vote because if they get engaged in the primary, they are invested in the general. And we are going to need a 73% Republican turnout in the general election to match the statewide turnout. If we do that in Pima County, we will get our Republicans elected. And that's what we're here to do.

Have a great day, everybody. You've been listening to 1030 The Voice on KVOI.com. Your trusted local news and talk. I'm Kathleen Wyn, and this has been Wynn-Tusan. Go out and make it a great day.