Guests - Dave Smith, Alex Kolodin, Tom Horne

Well, it is almost the weekend, not quite, but it is Thursday, and we have so much happening. And unfortunately, we have people that are bad actors. One of those bad actors is former National Security Advisor John Bolton. He's set to plead guilty to mishandling classified materials that was reported this morning, citing anonymous sources. I love anonymous sources. He's agreed to pay a fine of more than $2 million, and he will plead guilty to a single count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents. We knew this because he used those documents in his book. Please tell me that he's also lost his clearance forever. Well, I should hope so, right? Well, but maybe we'll put him in an ICE detention center, and then Adelaide can be upset with it. Oh, I just... Well, he well, well. I know. I just completely did a whole thing there. And I want to welcome on just now that I said that, my friend Dave Smith, who will rescue me, right, Dave? Here we go, absolutely. I tell you what, yeah, he won't be at that center, but he'll be somewhere. I love that. I tell you, justice, yes. So, you know, he was indicted on 18 counts, so the fact that he's pleading guilty to one in paying a fine. But, you know, I... I am happy, and this was done without a lot of fanfare, but he couldn't have afforded a trial because he was guilty. He knew he did what he did. And he thought he could get it. The arrogance that they think they can get away with this. That's what always blows my mind. Well, when your book is your prima facie evidence against you, you're in real trouble. I've got to tell you. What evidence? What are you talking about? Oh, those millions of copies of books? I didn't write that book. I would call that a confession, right, gang? Yes. Oh, my Lord. So, Dave, Matt brought something up to me before he went on the air about since we have elections coming up. Matt, go ahead and share with Dave. Hey, you know, there's no discussion about this. The U.S., the main. Postal Processing Center in Tucson shuts down for several days. Mail is interrupted. And then all of a sudden, you know, once people started calling the news channels, they called the, oh, yeah, our power's been out for several days. And we're rerouting the mail. But don't worry, there's been no interruption and delivery, which a lot of people I know say. Spoiler alert, there was a major disruption in delivery. Well, the implication as all the powers that be, and I use that quote very loosely, but unfortunately they are the powers that be here in town have shifted everything to a mail-in election. So what if that happens and they have a major, who knows what the power out? Maybe some meth heads got into the Cherry Bell substations took out all the copper. That's why it took a while to fix it. You know, or remember in Georgia when they said they had a power out. Or a water leak. Yeah, but I mean, they're steering everybody towards these, like the one they just had, a mandatory mail in election with three ballot boxes across an area probably as big as a, you know, medium-sized state, Pima County. You've got three places you can drop things off. And then the mail service just, you know, checks out for several days on you. And they're like, oh, sorry, we didn't get the ballots. Sorry, everybody. Right, right.

Matt, it's already happened. 2024. Remember, they decided to stagger how we were going to get our ballots. Oh, yeah. Those of us who lived up in the Northwest, they wore a Republican stronghold. We took a great delay in getting our mail-in ballots. This is a game they play, and it's so frustrating. And again... We see that we're so used to being lied to in Pima County. It just becomes mundane. But then again, that's a part of the problems of living in a socialist county, you know. Well, I think that, you know, the implications of what just happened last week coming out of Memorial Day, the implications of that towards elections should be discussed and should not be dismissed. I mean, that's a big deal because you can have convenient power outages too other than, you know what I'm saying? Well, I think, you know, if you look at 2022, it wasn't Pima County. It was Pinell County when they sent on all those ballots that had the wrong information on them. So how did that adversely affect? That was national news. So and then, since we're talking about this, California, their law says you can send your ballot in on Election Day. And could you believe it this morning? This is completely, this is completely wrong. Also, if the postmark is smudged or illegible or there is no postmark, the presumption is that they accept the ballots. I mean, well, that's convenient. If you're down by, you know how many ballots you're down, you're down by, and then all of a sudden you flood, oh, look, these came into the post office. What I will tell you is that the margin between Pratt, not Pratt, he's not in this race, Spencer Pratt. And, yeah, thank God. Spencer Pratt and his, the person behind him has closed a little bit, but he's still in second place. But Steve Hilton is still in first place over there. So I'm, let's be encouraged. Let's, hope that this does you know but their law you know, they're proudly saying, that's our law. Well, someone needs to change that law. That's ridiculous. That's a mockery of elections. If, oh, you know, just drop it in the mail on Election Day, it'll be fine. We'll be accepting ballots, you know, through the middle of June. But they do make, they do make us look good. They do. Like, finally, California made Puma County, like, look okay. Arizona. I mean, like, you know, we've never met an election that we couldn't screw up in the last 10 years. Exactly, right. It's so great. That in our education system, trying to reach the lowest in the United States, our electoral process has become a joke. I'm so tired. Don't tell me democracy, democracy, democracy, and then tell me you can't protect the franchise. You can't protect the vote. You can't trust the... How is that democracy? But once again, folks, we all know that's all propaganda. It's...

Like you said, right now they're figuring out how many ballots Hilton has. And it would be great if they get Tom Steyer up and get Hilton out of that. Same thing with that. Well, they're going to have to. The problem is there's, based on what the numbers are right now, Hilton's definitely going through. There's, I mean, unless, well, I don't know. Hide and watch. I'm telling you, they have 140 this morning. I was looking 140,000, I think, to make up. If you're accepting ballots through like the 10th or 12th or 15th of June, anything can, if you're accepting new ballots, that's nuts. But they're supposed to be postmarked by the election yesterday. They can't, if they are postmarked. Are you telling me if they were postmarked this Friday? So I heard, I forget where I heard it, but they said they were saying that if the postmarked is smudged or illegible, the presumption is. So are they going to smudge a bunch of postmarks? Exactly. Hey, my job at the post office, oh, the electricity went out, is to smudger. I'm the postmark smudger, yes. Or I come up with a postmarking machine that is automatically smudges or doesn't change the date. You know, this is the thing, guys. Or ballots are the wrong size. You know, anything could happen. Exactly. Oh, where's your Sharpie when you need it? You know, I, let's just, the greatest hits of election fraud. Here they are. Keep them coming. Oh, my God. I know. Exactly right. And nothing, nothing shocks us anymore. Yes, I know. Exactly. Are the missing ballots in the room with us now? Yes. Do you see those? ballots next to you. Exactly right. Oh, no, guys, this is exactly how sad that here we are in a state that used to be bright, red, and free. You know, I got to say this. You know what? I can remember having breakfast with Rose Moffert when I was up, a training commander up in Phoenix. And I love Rose. Somebody said to me, Rose is a Democrat, you know, Smith. And I'm like, no, she's not. They go, yeah, yeah, she's a Democrat. I was like, hold. I had never, because she loved Arizona. She loved America. She loved law enforcement. She loved free. And that Democrat is dead now. And so is that party. It's become this bizarre socialist wing. And they better find their roots. I got to tell you, it's just scary what's happening. Man. One of the best calls I ever got was from Rose Moffert. And this is back when I was working for Tom Horn. And they, you know, they were coming after us and all this nonsense. And Rose goes. Kathleen, I saw that article about you. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry. And she said, no, I'm using that to line my bird cage. And she said it to me to make me feel better. And I thanked her. And we went and had lunch. And she was a deer. And so she had this thing where she would make copper plates with whatever she wanted. They were. They weren't real, they were like license plates, but they were mounted, so you couldn't put on a car or anything. And she did one that said, W-I-N-N, and it's in my house. And it makes me think of her, and it was signed by her. And she was no longer the governor, but it was the thing that she got to continue to do.

She was just wonderful. And she loved baseball. She loved sports. When baseball season would start, she'd always go and do like a hot dog stand with a friend of hers, Karen. And it was just great. And she was a Democrat. But she... was from Globe, Arizona. Valedictorian of her high school. Yeah, it's just a, her beehive hair. Bring back the beehive. Yeah, exactly. We should do that. So, gentlemen, we're going to take a break and we come back. We've got all kinds of other things. And Dave, I know you said a half hour, but I think you're going to have to stay longer because we've got a lot to talk about. Okay? We do have a lot to talk. All right, sounds good. All right. I just wanted to prepare you, give you that advance notice. You're ready, I know. You've been on vacation. You've been in Iowa. We can even talk about Iowa. I have been. They picked a nice... I was up to it. They picked a nice candidate for Senate. Very pretty lady. All right, you are listening to 1030 The Voice. Your trusted local news and talk. This is KVOI. I'm Kathleen Wynn. This is Wynn-Juson with Dave Smith and Matt Neely. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Win Tucson here on 1030 The Voice with Dave Smith, Matt Neely running production today. Yay. I got my A team and I love it. So Dave, all kinds of things going on around the country. And one of the things, some other races are taking place. For the most part, I think the Republicans are doing okay. Are we doing okay? Have you looked? I only looked at California yesterday. Matt, can you hear? We can almost hear you, Dave. Are you in need? You sound pretty, you sound pretty muffled. Can you, Dave, hang up and call back, and I'll talk to Matt for a second. How's that? Okay, hold on, hold on. Okay. I don't know what happened. It looked like you got sucked into a vortex there. Yeah. Yesterday, on China Watch Wednesday, I ever had a call back three times. Really? Yeah. Who knows? Well, you know, she's the target. So, you know, I always worried, like, is she going to call back? Or did somebody come and take her? So anyway, let me see if I can do this. Oh. I think, I wonder if his battery conked out on him. Anyway, I'm keeping an eye on the phone for you, Cap. Okay, good. Thanks for that. Well, one of the nice things is over in California, some congressional seats that they gerrymandered for Democrats actually were picked up by Republican, or at least Republicans are in the mix. So Republicans in... Really? Yeah, three of them, I think, that Gavin Newsom, San Francisco, San Diego, and one other place in the state, they were expecting to get pickups. That's incredible. Yeah. So I'm thinking I'm having a good week. Let's see. Let me see if I can find this. It was Iowa. You're back. You're back. There we go. Here I am.

All right. Guys, boy, I tell you what. You said, it sounded like Betsy had kind of covered you up with a pillow. I don't know if you'd upset her today or what. Yeah, please don't upset, Betsy. We don't like Betsy to be upset. I know. She's yelling at me now. I got into the, we're working on the RV, and I got into it, and the ding captured me. My Amazon Auto captured my. transmission, I couldn't try to turn it off. Oh, I see. Don't you hate that? I get to my garage and my, I'm in my car still talking on the phone, but because I'm close to my signal in my house, I always get it like a dead second or a couple seconds when that happens. So anyway, I was talking to you about this before the break, and that is that, and I know you guys were up in Iowa. I don't, Ashley Hinson wins the Republican primary against Jim Carlin. She did it sizably 3 to 1, 74% to be the senator representing Iowa in the federal government. So that's kind of cool. Right, right. It was quite interesting because, you know, they were in their serious prime. The advertisements were constantly on the air from both the radio and TV. A lot of money spent there. The guy we were back in from our family, back in Adam Steen, came in a distant third on governorship. But the problem is that, you know, the media is in full propaganda mode, and you hear this constantly. Well, now... Good chance we're going to flip Iowa. Good chance we're going to do this. Good chance we're going to do that. There's no way they're flipping Iowa. I'm sorry. No, there's no way. You drive in those farmlands, and there's nobody there who's got a Democrat sign up. And that's the thing. But they always find some farmer somewhere, some chicken group that's going to say, yeah, absolutely, we got a problem here. And we want a Democrat, and that's just not happening, you know. And I just have to say this, that Iowa is probably one of those deeply red states next to Wyoming. But I've got to tell you, the millions spent is just amazing. And it's frustrating. You know, we see the same thing in Arizona. Oh, you ain't seen, you ain't seen nothing yet. There will be so much money spent in Arizona. I guarantee it. You've got a, because you've got so many seats in play. You know, the governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general. The legislature is critical that we maintain that in Republican control. That's kind of slowed Katie Hobbs' role. And then just everything else, you've got nine congressional seats. They're targeting.

Congressman Siskamani seat. They're targeting the Schweikers seat, which is up for grabs right now. That's a brutal primary. We're not even hearing about that. That's between Joseph Chaplick and Jay Feely. And so I think you're going to see, I can't wait for July 22nd, but I say that knowing what we're knowing about California. So I technically can't wait for August 1st. But I'm hoping some of these races are not as close, you know. But we have to get people to turn out to vote. And for the Republican Party, your election really is in July. You know, because come November, if it's red, you better be voting for it. And independence, too. I'm hoping that this extreme... hatred of law enforcement, wanting boys and girls sports, all the, their whole list, right? That's not where the average voter is, the average American, the average Arizona. It is time that we kind of, you know, say, okay, that lines way too far. Let's pull it back. Let's do something reasonable. Exactly. What the problem is, you see, when you see a Republican being interviewed, you get this. Either you see almost none of the interview, or you see these intense follow-up questions that are always along a narrow path. You see this with Pratt, for instance. When every time they ask Pratt about a policy issue he wants in LA. He's given that more than he. But here's my point. They bring it and they bring up the Trump word every time. And they know, see, the cognitive psychology. They are trying to under put every subtext of everything he says with their hatred of Trump. And they're using that emotional anchor. He contradicts it so well. He's a natural communicator. But I'm telling you what, this is the most bizarre, full Marxist propaganda effort I've ever seen in my life. And we're going to see it here this fall. It's coming. How many times do you see any follow-up questions for the Jen Allen's? Or a Rahina, nothing. No, they're just, whatever they say is left unquestioned and undoubted. And that's the problem. So we may get a free pass because I'm hearing that Rahina Romero may be Katie Hobbs, Lieutenant Governor. Oh, my God. Oh, Dave, come on. Now, take that more seriously. I know what Matt's doing. I'm surprised Matt didn't weigh in. What was I supposed to weigh in on? That Rahina Romero may be Katie Hobbs, Lieutenant Governor. Remember, this is the first year we're going to have. See, Matt's laughing, too. So, first of all, that may be a gift. I got an, I got, not an argument, but Ted, Ted Maxwell teased me about this for a long time because when it was on the ballot to be in a, I'm sorry if I'm taking some time here, but when it was on the ballot to be the lieutenant governor, I said that the state of Arizona needs another elected official like it needs a home head. I mean, it's this crazy that you're adding to the number of elected officials, you know, and there's a... But we look at all of our school administrators. We have lots of those too, so we might as well just put some more administration and it's ridiculous. Well, the mayor got her passport stamped to Taipei this week, so she's over there in Taiwan thinking the TMS he's going to set up over here too. That's what I heard. Oh, God.

You know, again, folks, we sit there and we just, we lament, we laugh, but we wonder, where's the rational mindset in Arizona, the people who sit down and say, hey, this has got to stop. We need to vote an adult in the room. All you got to do is to abort a supervisor meeting, folks. Just come, please, and see, it's four clowns and a ringmaster trying to straighten them out. He can't get them. Poor Steve Christie cannot get them to think rationally. It's all emotion. It's anti-white now. My God, white fragility, which is a racist scad, which is now Jen Allen's favorite thing. What a psycho she is. They use the word white fragility, so I'll be Googling that this afternoon. White fragility? It was a book written by somebody who taught or was making her fortune off these sensitivity classes, these white guilt classes in corporate world. And what she wrote and what she says is, look, I would accuse, she explains to you the worst thing you could ever be in the world is a racist. And then she tells every white person in the room because they're white, they're racist. And if they got upset. She said, see, that proves my point. White fragility proves you're a racist if you're upset after I tell you being a racist bad and you get mad when I call you a racist. And who's the racist? Her. It's a circuitous logic. It's a book that was debunked instantly by any rational social scientist. But here is Jen Allen, our activist. Extraordinary. Let's be nice. She's really good at that. Go ahead. Oh, my, she is a, she's a good communicator, and she gives you these Stalin, actually the more Castro-like talks all the time. It's really bizarre. Oh, my God. It's crazy. And that's who represents you, folks. They control your money. Man. Well, there you go. All right. So on that happy note. We are very close to a break, so I'm going to go there. And then, Dave, when you come back, you wanted to share something that is going on in internal politics. We'll just brand it like that. But I think it's important that we stop, really, you know. We can continue to fight with each other, I guess. You know, it's not a good look. A lot of good that does, yeah. But I am going to try to stay above it. But I thought what you called me about and what you shared with me was important enough to debunk absolute out-and-out lies that are being said. And we're just going to put it, we're going to try to nip that in the bud today. So when we get back, we're going to talk to Dave Smith about internal workings of the party. It's really going to be more exciting than I just think. You too and your fragility. Yeah. Come on. White privilege. We're going to use it to our max potential today because we're both white and we can't help it. All right. You're listening to 1030 The Voice, your trusted local news and talk. We'll be back after this with the former chair, Dave Smith. I'm the current chair and we both. Unless Betsy strangle smothers them during the break. Yeah, Betsy don't. Yeah, tell Betsy not to do that. All right. We'll be back right after this. Don't go anywhere.

Welcome back to Win Tucson, and we are joined by Dave Smith. So Dave, we recently had a lawsuit. We were sued as the Pima County Republican Party. The judge ruled that it is not in his purview to solve the lawsuit and dismiss the lawsuit. And this lawsuit, though, goes back. It was a gift you gave me. So when you were the chairman, you dealt with this. And yet here we are. So I wanted you because I don't have time to be fair. And so I wanted to kind of create a record between you and I. Because we're in election season. My job is to get Republicans elected, period. And all of this other swirl and dramatics and people yelling at people on Facebook. And I don't have time. I don't even hardly get to go on Facebook, except if my grandkids send me stuff or their parents do. But you were attacked yesterday, and it was kind of crazy. So I wanted you. I wanted you to just kind of, let's tell a story, what happened, what's the facts, and just create a record. So you begin and I'll ask questions if necessary. Right. Well, you know, I got elected in January of 23. to be the chairman of the board of the Pima County board. Same thing you replaced me then in December of 24. And the problem we have is that I assumed a lawsuit that had been generated from just a few months before. And so, so stop right there. So the lawsuit, you inherited a lawsuit. And that lawsuit was between the former chair, Shelley Kise and Ray Ely, correct? Yes, in a group from, but then everybody, I really got to give everybody a quick background. Okay, please. In 2022, Arizona reorganized, we redistrict, okay? All of you live in a county, and you live in a precinct in that county. And those precincts are assigned to legislative districts. They shuffled these around. And the people who live, for instance, in Green Valley or in Saurita, when they got shuffled, they got put into a new legislative district that did not have representation on the board, Pima County Board, because the plurality of those precinct committeemen. lived in Cochise County, not Pima County. It's a complication because of our bylaws. So we said we need to give those people because Pima, Pima County, some of our best and most active precinct commitment are from that Sahara Rita and Green Valley. And we needed to have them be involved. LD. Legislative District 19. And just for the record, Pima County has seven LDs, 16, 17, 18, 19.

20, 21, 23. And LD19 is not only in Pima County. It is in Cochise County. It is in Graham and Greenlee. And is it also in Santa Cruz? Yeah, five counties. Okay. I think Santa Cruz. Yeah, so Graham. Yeah, so go ahead. No, and so what had happened when it reorganized in 22, before I got elected, Shelly Keist was the chairman of Pima County, and she had intervened in the organization of LD19's body of their supervisor or their committee. She made them go back and form a second one when they sued saying the county had no control over the organization of LD19, which I agreed with. Those are the two separate bodies, folks. You belong. If you're a precinct committeeman, you're both a member of the county and a member of the legislative district. Right. And so there's two separate bodies. So our people needed to have representation. So I presented it. They worked on Dana Puccinelli, put together a bylaw amendment. And in December, when you got elected, it was passed. And the people of LD19 living in Pima County were suddenly going to be able to pick their own representative for the Pima County Board to represent them and have a vote. It has nothing to do with LD19 other than the fact that by them being assigned to the legislative district 19, they had lost their vote. And the only way to identify each of the, because there were several other counties or several other legislative districts involved where we got these people get together and pick a representative for just our county. And it's just our county's business. We're a separate sovereign entity. Well, we are, we are a county. We are a county of. again seven legislative districts 19 is just one of them and on our board on our board currently my board i don't know how you had it at your board i have a representative from 16 17 18 19 the one that they don't like 20 21 and 23 but if i didn't have a representative from 19 19 wouldn't have a voice in pima county's business and and and so So, and I didn't choose their representative. I didn't adore, you know, I'm not the queen. I didn't appoint that person. They themselves, the legislative, the PCs, the precinct commitment in that district, selected that person.

And we did so, and this is the crux of this, we did so with the permission of the then, now deceased, Lewis Gasper, the chairman. I have it in writing from him. He never rescinded that, and then they sued. And so continue, though, because they just, the judge just said, he can't rule on this, that this is inner party, and that he has no authority. And from that, then they tried to substitute the widow, the former chair, who's now the new chair, his widow, Joanne Gasper, became the new chair. So they've tried to substitute her onto the lawsuit that has been dismissed. I don't think that's going to go anywhere. And we're hearing, although we haven't seen it, that they're going to try to appeal. And an appeal on this issue, Dave. is going to cost them a lot more money they're trying to cost us money and we have an election going on it's offensive it is it is it is targeted it is it is just uh that whatever they think they're trying to do is so self indulgent and And it is contrary to what the hell we're supposed to be doing right now. We are in a midterm election with so much at stake. And the fact that these people have nothing better to do than this. And they've been lashing out. I've been getting the most bizarre communications and emails about everything I'm doing wrong, which thank you. Thank you for sharing your opinion with me. It's none of my business. But continue, please. Yeah. No, and I was essentially defamed by Ray Ely. And that was very frustrating because of all the people with low credibility. But anyway, he sued Shelley Keis. He sued. Yes. When he sued. They then transferred my name when I got elected. And I said, I don't agree with this. I don't agree with Shelley Keis at all. She has no business. reaching into the organization of LD19. But conversely, I don't believe LD19 has any right to reach in and affect Pima County's organization. Two separate bodies, two sovereign bodies. So when they're saying that I'm inconsistent, they're the ones that are inconsistent. The only thing is consistent are the names involved, the Shelley Kaisers and the Ray Elis, and this is what's frustrating to me. We can't constantly, like you said, we're trying to win elections here, and they're going to win power in the Republican Party, and it becomes... to me. And I have receipts. So anytime anybody has any doubt, get with me, and I'll show you the receipts of why I have doubts about what's going on. But we, there's, the law was very clear that when each PC, each precinct committeeman is primarily a county PC. And they should have representation. We gave them that and they chose their.

Now, LB19 wants to interfere saying, well, you're creating a separate committee. You're creating a new legislative. We're not creating a separate committee. They still can have their meetings. Now, here's the thing. The whole time they were suing me, they never had a legitimate meeting. So for eight months, because to be fair, Mr. Gasper was dying in Texas. He didn't even live in Arizona anymore. They wanted to keep that lawsuit in place so badly. They used a dying man. to fight their battles. There's no courage there. There's no intelligence there. There's no grace. We are so committed to hating on the structure of the current Pima County GOP. We're going to use a guy dying of stage four cancer to fight our battle. And then he died. And that's not why this lawsuit got dismissed. A lawsuit got dismissed because it's not valid. What they were trying to accomplish wasn't in the purview of the court. And it's a legal argument. It's not a personal argument. I haven't taken it personally. I'm the chairman. Okay, bring it. I don't care. I'm trying to do a job. My job is to get conservatives, Republicans elected so that we can start to write the ship here in Pima County and in Tucson. And they, they are, to me, this is the most narcissistic, selfish, self-indulgent thing that you can do to make, to just continue to drive this car off the cliff. And, you know, and I talked to several, I had several lawyers call me, and they said, you know what? The court's ruled in your favor. The judge wrote a very comprehensive reason why he couldn't take it. Let them go through a very expensive appeals process. It's going to cost them a lot of money. And he said, ultimately, just let it play out. It's unfortunate that we have to be doing that while we're doing this. But go for it. You know, so one of the, you wanted to make some points, though. And Dave, we have to take a break. So we're at that take a break point. So you get your thoughts together and we're going to have to go, Bing, Bing, Bing, okay? We come back. You got it. All right. We're talking to Dave Smith about nonsense inside the party. I hate talking about that, but what do we do? You're listening to 1030 The Voice, your trusted local news and talk. I'm Kathleen Wynn. This is when Tucson. We'll be back with Dave Smith, chairman to chairman, right after this. Welcome back to Wind Tucson with my very special friend and guest Dave Smith. And I know the wind swept me off my feet last night. It was pretty dang windy. Wow. Wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we got any rain with it, though. No, just a lot of outflow from a lot of other storm cells. Yeah. Yeah. It was very windy. It was like I thought I was back in Chicago, Dave. All right. So, so please complete the story because I think it's important that people understand you're not even the chairman anymore and you're still taking shots. It's not right. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. And the defamation becomes ridiculous. Look.

We believe that the county and the LD are two separate bodies. They should supplement each other. They shouldn't attack each other. And that's why I agreed to settle that thing, that the county should not have interfered in the organization of LD19. Now LD19 says it needs to interfere with the organization. of pima county and that's not we love hypocrisy though dave don't we we live for hypocrisy well now i want to change it and do it the other way and by the way when you settled their lawsuit it was not a court order We've heard this over and over. It was a settlement and it was not, it was a settlement done outside of the court. Do you know why? Because the court had no purview. Again, hello. You can hear it a couple times. The court has no authority in this matter. So you keep bringing it to the court. Please do. You are burning money, and I'm going to use it to raise money. I'm going to say these people, and I'm going to make sure people know who's hurting the party. It's enough. We don't have time for this, and you're not that important. You are not that important. You are not that you are not more important than the business of the party. And if you want to keep doing it, that's fine, but we're going to make you famous. And you won't like what you're being made famous for. You want to give $10,000 to Hillary Clinton and then be the Pima County Chair. That's what you did. You stole $80,000. That's what you did. I'm not going to say the name. I want them to know that if this is the fight that they want to do, I'm not going to engage in it, but they will not like the outcome. And that's not a threat. That is because the law is on our side. We are doing this legally. The court has said so. And if you think that you are so much smarter and better, this won't end well. And I've just had, you know, it's enough pressure on the people that are running for office. And as the chairman, you have to be laser focused on the work of the party. And that's what I'm focused on. And so they don't get a lot of time and attention. So it's like when they don't get time and attention, so we're giving it to them today. When they don't get time and attention. Then they do the next greatest, biggest thing. And they just lie upon lie upon lie. And then they try to engage and enroll people into their lies. Just know none of what they're saying is true. It's just a complete lie. And if you trust them, you're going to have unreliable information. So anything else, please. Exactly.

Well, you're really, that was a great summation. And the point is, folks, this is the time of critical election, 2026. Once again, a critical election. We need to focus our energies. We need to unify. Pay attention to the people who are trying to disunite. Because one of the first things they'll say is, well, you're being divisive. They're the ones that are being divisive. We're trying to unify. And that's the thing. We need to focus. We need to re-elect our incumbents and we need to get new people in positions where we don't have control yet. We need to get a new governor with a whole smear of state candidates. We need to get elected. And fighting about ourselves or worrying about what Tima County does with its executive committee has just become ridiculous. And all we did was make a pass a... a bylaw to activate the people of Green Valley and Sahara to be able to be involved and have a vote in our, in our county business, which they should have. Like I said, these are some of the finest PCs in Arizona, these precincts commitment. They need support, and there are people who are trying to block it or control who represents them. And it just shouldn't happen. And the court says it's none of their business. Amen. It's none of their business. So let's focus on winning. You're right. We need a Republican governor. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry that we need one. But that top priority. And we need a new secretary of state. You know, Adrian Fontes was exposed for leaking protected voter data after he said he was going to protect the voter data. Again, hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy. They say something. So anyway, I think, you know, that it is time that we understand that people are running. We need to put people that will get the job done. So I think it's interesting that... You know, there's a lot of great things going on. We should take advantage of the momentum. Who would have ever thought that a Republican could come in second in L.A. County mayor's race, right? And that race is not over. I think Spencer Pratt is just coming into his stride. And as long as we don't have too many smudged post office ballots, I think Spencer prevails and he gets to go into the general. Go ahead, Matt. Or the blue post office says, hey, we got a late delivery, yes. Yes. Or Pennsylvania drives. If it's postmarked with Postmaster A.O. Cortez, then we know. You know, you can't make this up. Dave, any final thoughts? You know, I...

One last thing. I'm sorry. You know, it's my show. I... So it says Win Tucson. Yeah, it says Win Tucson. Oh, by the way, I haven't even... I'll ask you on air. I'm not going to be here Tuesday. You and Betsy, see if I'm going to be in D.C. So I haven't had a chance to ask you guys have been traveling. So think about it and then you can let me know off here. Oh, absolutely. I always love to step in and have a good time. Okay, good. All right. You heard that here, folks. So Dave and Betsy will be filling in for me Tuesday while I'm in D.C. helping... award $250,000 to a student. They started out with $8,000 and one of the finalists is from Arizona, Sam Crumley. So I'm going to find out where he is. And hopefully, wouldn't it be cool if in Arizona we had a civics U.S. history expert. I think, and we probably do. He may not get first, but the fact that he's made it this far to the finals is exceptional. So we should be proud that Arizona has produced one of those finalists. So anyway, right now people need to register to vote until... June 21st. You can register up until June 21st. You can come by the headquarters, 4801 East Broadway. You can register online. There's a lot of ways, and then you have to turn out to vote. Registering to vote is great. We love it. Our numbers are fabulous, but then you've got to vote. And Dave, so you finish up. How important is this primary election right now that we're headed into? Well, you know, this is one of those things where I want you to really sit down, folks, and look at your Republican candidates. The primary is critically important. You know, we don't want to put any more establishment folks back in there. We don't want any more of these guys who wait to see what the lobbyists say. We want to have our people who are freedom-loving. We want to get those people in there that support the MAGA movement, because it is the MAGA movement today. And we need to make America great again is still a process that we are fighting for. And we need to have everybody involved in this. You've got involved. I know what happens is he put it on the table and say, I'll mail it in later. And you don't. And that's the problem, folks. 54% of Christians. don't vote of what they call evangelicals. Well, they all worry about their value systems. You've got to vote your values. I want you all to vote your values and get involved and put a yard sign up. Those have such powerful psychological aspect. It's great. I have 15 in my front yard right now. I'm just trying to be the best on my street. Actually, I saw people driving down because my house sits back from the road, driving down and stopping to look at the signs in front of my house the other day. So I know I'm having impact on Thunderbird Trail in Tucson, Arizona. You know, Dave, just thank you for coming on. I don't know who I'm going to be handing the baton off to at the end of this year, beginning and next year.

But I will tell you that it is a very critical time for Arizona. And we're going to finish strong. We have to. We don't really have a choice. And that's okay. Because you have to rise to the occasion. You have to be willing to fight the battles. But when you're fighting battles for principle, you don't have to fight the other people in the cause. It is, the pettiness needs to stop. It just really does. It's like, come on, grow up. You know, I haven't been in seventh grade. You haven't been in seventh grade for a few years. And we don't need to act that way. We need to act like the professionals. We need to act like good citizens. And we need to get the job done. Either get with me or get out of the way. That's where we're at. So join up with us. Be ready. We have people knocking on doors. We have so many resources that we've never had before. And I feel a lot of victories coming in our future. So we'll see. I thank you, my friend, for joining me and have a wonderful day. Thank you. All right. Dave Smith, former Pima County GOP chair. He's got the better job right now than I do. Fixing the RV? Yeah, fixing the RV and being the former, the former chair. I can't wait. There'll be a day I can say that today's not that day. Is it one term? I mean, two years. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, one term. As she says mercifully. Yes. Hey, you know what the name of this song is? What? This too shall pass. I love it. It's perfect. We're going to take that into the break. You're listening to 1030 The Voice or trusted local news and talk. I'm Kathleen Wynne. This is Wynn-Tusan. We'll be back. Coming up on the Real Deal with Alan Kate. That's right. Big Al. Noon. Today, Slicin' Ice is Ed Irving and Chip Travers. Political strategist Matt Klink and Kelly Kobos, counselor with Pima J-Ted. Coming up noon. The Real Deal with Alan Keth. Kathleen will be right back after the news. Stay tuned. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Win Tucson. Well, we've been talking elections, and I thought we should talk to someone who has been an advocate for Pima County elections, and that's Alex Collin. He's been cheering us on, getting observers. We have the lawsuit with the Oversight Project. I'm suing Adrian Fontes. I thought we could. And through the oversight project, I'm their plaintiff and... Attorney General Chris May has turned about his fair place. She's always sealing Donald Trump, so why not? We should do this. But Alex, two years ago, and Alex is currently the representative in LD3, but he's been the one to get election law signed by Katie Hobbs. That's a talent right there in and of itself. But two years ago, Secretary of State Adrian Fonda's office leaked, protected. voter data and decided to hide it from the public. It's not the mistake. It's the cover-up that always gets you. Alex, welcome back. Hey, good to be back. So, and this was only found out his breach of confidential information, which he's been a big advocate for, right? He's like, I can't release this information because I, you know, on the current request through public records request. So emails.

Email records obtained by Votebeat revealed that almost nine months went by before Fontes' office noticed their mistake. They could have a baby. Go ahead. Tell me about this and why this is so important. Well, this is just the longest or the latest in assorted history of Adrian Fontes completely botching the basic functions of his office. listeners will remember, although it's hard to keep track of all the ways he bought you. The greatest hits of Adrian Fontes, right? It's like a double album, platinum album, all the hits that he's done. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm on a roll today. It's like a bad K-Tel release. I know you are. No, your listeners will remember, right, that maybe a year ago, he managed to get his system hacked. by according to him, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And now, well, he goes on. Oh, I love it. We should just bomb around just for that. Go ahead, Alex. And now when, you know, he's in court against the Department of Justice who's just filed an appeal because they're investigating his potential violations of the Civil Rights Act, I gather. And his excuse for not turning over the data that the Department of Justice is legally entitled to is he wants to protect the confidentiality of your Social Security number. from the federal government that issued your social security number uh... you know meanwhile he's not even taking basic steps to protect data that our state statutes have deemed to be confidential uh... and worse than that that that has been released before uh... political NGOs no points for guessing whether they're on the left or the right. Oh, so he can give the information to the Democrat NGOs, but he can't give it to the federal government because he doesn't like the guy that's running the federal government. So he's going to withhold the information and then pretend that he's doing it to protect us after he's already leaked our information to other people. Am I tracking so far? Yeah, I think your track is so far. And this is just the clown show that this guy has been running ever since he got into elected office. I mean, you know, our elections in Maricopa County really started going downhill in the first election he administered as Maricopa County reporter in 2018. And, of course, he got fired by the voters of Maricopa County after his first term because he'd been such a disaster. So he took his show on the road, first to Pima County, where he made your elections even worse. And then he scurried on up to the eighth floor of the executive tower, Secretary of State, where he's just been making a mess of the entire state's elections. It's time to get this joker out of office. And, Alex, what is the ACP?

The address confidentiality program, which is something Mr. Fonte's pushed very, very hard. You know, it's something that I've had a lot of skepticism about because what it does is it makes it basically impossible to do an audit of the voter rolls, the more people you add to the ATP. And every year, the legislature is that Mr. Fonte's BS. adding more and more categories of voters to the ACP. We poke in giant holes at our voter rolls. But that's a policy consideration, right? As Secretary of State, his job is to follow the law. And these are folks who are legally entitled to protection. They were folks who had a statute saying your information is confidential. And the Secretary of State couldn't be bothered to actually... enforce the law that he had promoted and protect those voters. That just demonstrates to me what a silly operation he's running. Well, and you mentioned there was at least five political data firms, but, and this is the partridge in the pear tree on this story, one researcher with the University of Arizona received the exposed data. Do we know who that one researcher is and why they would have gotten access to the data? They're not an NGO. They're just a researcher at U of A. So they got confidential voting. Can we do something about that? Can we sue? I mean, that seems like we're worried about exposure. Why did the U of A, I love them, but why are they getting confidential voting data? She pondered. Yeah, you know, we don't know who the researcher is, and we only know who one of the four NGOs is who got the data as well. My guess would be the, and I'm not sure, but my guess would be the researcher didn't do anything wrong. He put in a request, and Mr. Fontes and his bozos, you know, sent along confidential information. in addition to the approbation that the researchers requested would be my guess. But we do know. Go ahead. We do know about one of the NGOs that the data went to named American Promise. And it appears to be a progressive organization that's dedicated to overturning Citizens United, you know, basically campaign finance reform by which the left always means. We want to cut off all the avenues by which Republicans get money, but we want to keep our dark money intact. I mean, nobody's funded by more dark money than Adrian Fontes's last campaign coffers got full through George Soros and foreign billionaires funneling money through the Arabelle advisors network into our state's elections. So he clearly doesn't care about his dark money. He only cares about dark money for people he doesn't agree with, which is a consistent trend. for this guy in office. It's one rule for me and another for the. Well, exactly. And just to take people back, in 2024, Fontes office publicized the home addresses and telephone numbers of about 400 ACP voters. At that time, approximately 15% of those voters were within the program. So that wasn't as egregious, but it's still a mistake. But Fontes' office has blamed a dead employee.

for the data exposure, Craig Stender, who passed away earlier this year. We don't know by what means, but the officer fired him shortly after the discovery of the voter data breach. Stender was the director of voter registration, administration, and technology, rest in peace. But Fontes, who's running for re-election, as we all know, he still has not. come out publicly on this matter because he knows if he does, Alex, is there an excuse for this? I mean, is there something that you could say that's reasonable? Other than I'm incompetent. I just... There will be excuses that I can guarantee you. There always are with Mr. Fontes. He'll probably blame the legislature for not appropriate enough budget for him, even though we gave him $8 million to administer the CD7 special election, because that's what he said he needed. At the time, I was jumping up and down going, no, wait. Oh, Alex? That election. Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, you cut out for a second. So go back to he asked for $8 million. Just kind of restate that because we lost it. Sorry, I'm driving down the Oro Valley to speak to some more Pima County people. Yay. No, so in the last state budget. He said that he needed $7 or $8 million to administer the CD7 special election, which if you think about it for 10 seconds, is completely comical because the Secretary of State doesn't run the elections, or at least it's not supposed to. Secretary of State is there to provide oversight for the election process. Counties run elections. So what is he doing with the $7,8 million? Well, come to find out our budget staff has reported to be. that they finally realized that, oh, wait, he lied to us when he asked for that money. He didn't need anywhere near that amount. So he's going to blame the legislature for not appropriating enough money in his budget, even though he's got millions of extra dollars just sitting around in his department's accounts. I mean, this is the way the guy does it. He lives in a post-truth world. Well, maybe we can buy another mobile voting center for Tucson because we love the first one that we got so much. I'm kidding. I'm being facetious. Please don't send your calls to Matt, not to me. But here's another thing, kind of burying the lead. Governor Hobbs, while she was secretary of state, made a similar error in 2020 when her office released records of nearly 80 protected voters information while using the state voter database. for generating early ballot reports. You know, so, but what's really concerning to me is that you are running against somebody and you would think she would call this out, but that's not the case. No.

The problem with the ACP, and I understand why they did that initial ACP program, because there are some addresses where it would be very dangerous for folks to get access. I understand, even though from a sort of purity of election's point of view, it's not great to have holes in your voter role. What people need to understand, though, is that was the camel's nose under the tent. Now the ACP has been expanded to, you know, basically anybody who wants to be on the ACP. So mixed it with people who, you know, probably have a legitimate expectation that they're going to be protected by statute is a lot of folks who really just want their address confidential because they're elected officials or because... You know, because they don't live in their district or, you know, because they're a family member of somebody who, you know, who's an elected official. I mean, it's just gotten ridiculous to this huge pool. And as a consequence, the holes that are voter rolls just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's why I think that from an election hygiene point of view, you know, we ought to be, we ought to be carefully considering, you know, just how big we want this. program to be allowed to get. Because as you can see, it's not really protected anybody's data. Actually, to the contrary, if you have an expectation based on the law that your data is going to be protected, it's far more dangerous for you to falsely have that expectation and then have Adrian Fontes release your data without you knowing than for you never to think that your information was being protected. But I'll tell you one thing, regardless of what I think about any particular statute that's expanded the ACP, the job of the Secretary of State is not the second-guess the legislature, not to go, legislature should have done this with the ACP, should have expanded, it shouldn't have expanded it. The job of the Secretary of State is to take care of the law be faithfully executed. That's it. The law is that these addresses are confidential, and it was Adrian Fontes' statutory duty. to make sure they were. He failed at that duty, and depending on his level of culpability in that failure, might have committed a criminal act in doing so, not that Chris Mays is ever going to prosecute it. Yeah, and we don't expect a whole lot of results with the Sheriff Nito's thing that Chris Mays also has on her desk. If she would stop suing President Trump, she might actually get her job done. But isn't, did your opponents stick up for Fontes though? And in this, so can you explain to the, yes, please. Because that's a, that's a, I'm sorry, what you just laid out is pretty clear cut to me. I could be wrong. So, so what, what was the justification? The justification. I, I, I, I, I, It never makes any sense. It never makes any sense. I think her argument was that I somehow cut Adrian Fontes' budget, which is exactly the line Fontes always uses. But that wasn't true. He didn't even need what you gave him. Go ahead, continue. Exactly. One might wonder about the level of her coordination with that office, especially with his elections director.

you know, profusely thanking her all over Twitter and her going on TV and fawning over Adrian Fontes as how much she admires it. Regardless, I wish I could take credit for cutting Adrian Fontes's budget last year. But if you'll recall, I voted no on last year's budget. And my principal reason for doing that, which I was howling to the moon, was that we were giving Adrian Fontes as far too much money. So I can't even take credit. for the seeming hit my opponent is trying to be it but i wish i could and i'm trying to get his budget cut this year because this is the guy who when you give him money he doesn't use it to do his job he uses it for partisan political that's all he does uh... it's better for us if money needs to be distributed for our elections that are better for us to give it directly to the people who are actually running the election down at the county level well and and uh... This election is significant for Arizona. There are so much at stake. Have you heard today that the president has just won a recent victory with elections? I thought I saw that coming in. Do you know about that or maybe? Yeah. On his executive order regarding the Postal Service? Yes, please. Yeah, he did. I believe, and don't quote me exactly on this could be wrong, I believe the court denied the left's efforts to get a preliminary injunction against that. Look, I think the president's got some really sharp minds of the Department of Justice, Armeet, Dylan, who I've worked with at private practice before she was the head of the Civil Rights Division, which oversees voting. And these are people who really know how to craft executive orders that stick to the law. Elections may be largely a state matter, and they are, but the U.S. Postal Service is clearly under the federal executive branch. And so I was gratified to see that some election protection is coming at the federal level in areas that the federal government has within its purview. Are you confident right now knowing everything that you know about our elections that we're heading into? Are they going to be secure and are they going to be valid? Well, that's up to you, and more importantly, it's up to your listeners, right? Yes. You at the PIVA County GOP have been doing God's work, fighting the fight to try to seal some of those gaps, right? But now it's going to depend on your listeners. So we've got access restored after four years where Pima County's been the only county in the state excluding lawful political party observers from early in-person vote centers. We have after four years, you and I together, gotten that access restored. But it doesn't mean a darn thing if we don't have people willing to sign up to keep eyes on that process at all times. And since we have election months in this day, that means that we're going to need people for 27 days to be there 9 to 5 or actually longer than that for whatever hours those polls are open. So if you want to make sure that our elections are going to be reasonably secure.

for this most important election at Arizona history, I highly encourage you to get in touch with the Pima County GOP and sign up to watch those early a person vote centers because with observers, they're secure facilities, but without observers, they're incredibly insecure facilities. And I will sleep better at night knowing that the good folks in Pima County have their eyes on that process. Pima County Republican Party is Pima. GOP.org. And we are ready for you. Our website's been changed and updated. So if you want to sign up to observe, because we did fight, we ripped that out of Gabriela Casares Kelly's hands and got it back. It was a hard fight. We're still fighting on some of the election procedures manual with some of the things. They don't want law enforcement to show up in uniform because they say it's disenfranchising to other voters. We're going to fight back on that. We're not going to stop the fight, but we need you. your support to help make sure our elections are done correctly and so that we do have fair and free elections. And this primary is critically important. So Alex, thank you. Have a wonderful time with the Oro Valley. I think it's the Republican women there at the Oro Valley Country Club. Give them my best. And we appreciate everything you're doing. Keep up the fight, sir. Thank you, Kathleen. All right. All right. We're going to take a break. We come back. It'll be a surprise. You're listening to 1030 The Voice. No more white fragility. No more white fragility. That's right. We're going to give that up this week. All right. You're listening to 1030 The Voice. You're trusted local news and talk. This is Wynn Tucson. I'm Kathleen. When we'll be back. Hey, they mentioned it. Did you catch the attorney general primary debate on 1030? The voice will also be carrying the Secretary of State debate on June 11th at 6 p.m. was just on. And the GOP gubernatorial debate, June 17th at 6 p.m. right here on 1030, the voice. Your vote. Your voice. Kathleen will be right back. Welcome back to Wynn Tucson. Have you had a call in? No, I haven't. I can't hear you. Thank you. No, I haven't. Had my eye on the phone. But... It's the time of year for fire on the mountain and lightning in the air, is it not? It is absolutely that. All right. And keep an eye on the phone for you. Okay, thank you. So I had invited Tom Horn to come on and talk about ESAs, but I can do that. There's a petition out there that they are telling you that this is to support education. Do you know what I'm talking about? No, I don't. So. Let me get to that. So they're running some sort of a petition to make changes, like an initiative to make changes to the ESA program? And these are the people that don't want the ESA. Of course. They, why. Spoiler alert. Yeah, because it's been so successful. And they, and it gives parents choice. Right? We all want choice, Kathleen. I thought that was the big buzzword. You know, and so, well, yeah, yeah. Yeah, don't get me. Some choice, I guess. Yeah, don't let me get down that thing. So, so what is happening is.

You know, there is a, there's going to be ballot measures on the thing. And they're asking people to submit a statement to argue against this proposal. So in past elections, you, you know, you get a booklet listing arguments from groups and concerned citizens for and against each ballot initiative. But this is helpful for voters. And so it quickly educates them. And. If the initiative makes it onto the ballot and we're fighting hard that they don't get enough signatures, we are really pushing this decline to sign. But we need to be ready with strong statements submitted. The submission deadline is June 24th. But in years past, the portal has crashed prior to the deadline. So the sooner that you can send in and submit. why you believe the ESA system the way that it is is the best thing to do. And if you need any help, you can email to info at AZ. lovesesas.com. It's all one word info at a z loves l-o-v-es-es-es-a-com. You can submit it directly yourself and pay the $75 fee. There's a submission link that we can provide. And the other thing is starting this week, we're focusing on getting as much coverage as possible at a public libraries. We're looking for volunteers to help set up tables, hold signs, and urge voters to decline to sign. We don't want them to be able to get enough signatures because it's important that we fight for parents making the choice on their kids' education. Hang on one second. And so they're saying that this is funded by... And they're saying, of course, this is funded by out-of-state, out-of-state interest, which is usually the way things go around here. Hang on one second, Matt. Our guest is calling in 520790-2040. I texted it. Okay, honey. Bye. All right. Tom Horn is calling in. All right. See? We're just like that on the fly. Broke the fourth wall and nobody, nobody got hurt. But yeah, it's funded. This is funded by out-of-state interests, of course, which is usually the case of these things. And they're going to put a big cap. They're going to put a cap on how much you can make and still be eligible for ESA. So it would drastically change this for a lot of people who are using it. And then what it does is it as a parent, you have to tell what your income is. Why is that the business of the state? So, and we are going to be joined momentarily by Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horn. We're talking about ESAs, Tom and how there's this effort to decline to sign so that the ballot measure to change the ESA program doesn't make it to the ballot. Are you there? Yeah, yeah. And I think the second, from what I've heard, the second initiative,

hired away a lot of the petition gatherers for the first petition. So that's a favorable development also. Absolutely. And Tom, you are a big proponent of the ZSA system, correct? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's the thing I get attacked for the most that I believe in parental choice of schools. Well, parents first, right? Who is better equipped to make decisions for their students than the parents or the guardians? I think it's... Absolutely. Go ahead. We live with... You know, I now have four grown children. I live with them for a long time, and no one knows them better than I do. And aside from that, Any government monopoly is inefficient. It's one of the rules of the universe. With competition, the public schools operate much better. You know, it's why the United States was prosperous and the Soviet Union was poor. Because we had competition. People worked hard to compete. They produced a lot. They could consume a lot. In Poland, they used to say, we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us. And with that attitude, you don't produce much, you don't get to consume much. Well, if you want another example. Education. If you want another example, I'm sorry, Tom. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Tom. Sorry. No, you go ahead. That's fine. I was just going to say, for example, UPS or FedEx versus the United States postal system, which fire hoses billions of dollars of losses every year on us. Yeah, and when they deregulated trucks, everything got more efficient. Competition causes people to do their best. You know that in racing. If you're an important race, you're going to run faster than if you're just running on your own. And the same is, you know, I've experienced that in education because when I was on the school board, I did the... bargaining with the teachers. And one year they said they wanted to eliminate advanced placement courses that didn't make, not enough kids qualified. And so they said they're small classes, they're inefficient, which use money for something else. And I said, if you do that, at that time, charter schools already existed. I said, if you do that, you lose all your best students to charter schools. And they dropped the proposal. I never heard about it again. Well, and I think, you know, Tom, it's important that When something's working, it always seems like the other side tries to disrupt it, to destroy it, to do the things that are counterintuitive, like boys and girls' sports, right? Right. That's completely insane. I'm glad that there's a boundary there. I like that. And as you know, Kathleen, I'm in court fighting that fight. Yes, yes, yes, because your attorney general is not helping you, is she? No, she refuses to. I think she must think boys should be in drill sports. So I have to spend education money to fight it in court.

Well, and isn't that why Adrian Fontes, as we found out, has a surplus because he got $8 million for a special election down in CD7 that he didn't spend the money. And he's squirling money away. And you've got to spend our education money from the Department of Education and probably can't get the money that you need. So again. everything that should be being done isn't and it is upside down. That's why this election is so critical. Tom, why four more years? Well, you know, I was superintendent for eight years from 2003 to 2011, and we ended up with very high proficiency rates. But it took eight years. I know it takes eight years when you've got a million, 200,000 students to get a big difference in their proficiency. And I've had a lot of initiatives that have been quite successful, but it takes eight years to show... really serious progress on a big basis. And the students that you have now were younger, but they're post-COVID, right? So there was a total disruption in education during that time. And although it's a few years back, you still have kids that were affected by that in our school system. Is that fair? Without question, yes. And, you know, in Florida, kept their schools open. They didn't have any higher rates of COVID than anybody else. And Florida schools, those kids are doing okay, right? Absolutely. Yeah, they didn't have the disruption and everything. No, and we had a superintendent schools that was demanding that the schools because the governor at least was leaving it up to the local districts. And the head of the teachers union was demanding that. that they close all the schools, which is very bad for students. Online education for students in that context was proven not to work. Absolutely. I... We have to take a break, Tom. We'll figure out what we, your top priorities as we head into, we're in summer break right now, but you're getting ready to prepare for a new, you know, fall term. And I've got a bunch of grandkids that have moved up, have been progressing in their schooling. And I want to talk about the future for Arizona schools. We're talking to superintendent. Tom Horn. We'll be back right after this on 1030 The Voice, your trusted local news and talk. Welcome back to Win Tucson with my very special guest and former boss, Tom Horn, who is now the superintendent of public instruction. And Tom, I'm excited to tell you. I'm getting to go to Washington, D.C. next Tuesday. And...

And there's a national final of the presidential 1776 award for civics competition. These are high school students. And Arizona has a student in the competition. Isn't that great? Yeah. And I'm trying to find out where he lives. His name is Sam Crumley. So I will let your office know later today. But this is the, this occasion is in an effort to identify and celebrate the nation's brightest young civics minds. The students competing on the June 9th have already distinguished themselves by advancing through rigorous regional competitions. They started with 8,000 students. There are 20 finalists. And one of them is from Arizona. And the top prize is 250,000. So pretty exciting, yes? That's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. And how important is knowing history and civics to our students? Because I think... Oh, boy. Go ahead. Please talk. That's been one of my crusades. That's been one of my crusades. We have to do a much better job of teaching history to our kids. It used to be done much better than it's done now, and I push very hard on it. And there's a personal background to that. Would you like me to tell that story? Yes, I love that story. It's one of my favorite stories. Go ahead. Well, my parents were Jewish people in Warsaw, Poland in the 1930s. And my father hadn't gone to college. Very few people did in those days. But he loved to read history, and it made him a great interpretive kind of events. So he predicted that the Nazis would invade, and he predicted when they would invade. And he tried to get other people to leave, and no one would listen to him. This is hard to leave your language and your culture. So even my mother didn't want to lead. My older sister was already born in Poland. She had a young daughter. But in those days, husbands had more influence on their wives than they do. Now he made her leave. They couldn't get to the United States legally. That's like the favorite part of my story, of your story, by the way. But go ahead. So they went to Canada, and the entire extended family, other than them, which was quite large, were all killed in the Holocaust. So I know that my immediate family survived because my father knew history and could interpret in current events. And I believe the younger generation to survive is going to have to know history so they can interpret current event. So that's why I push so hard on history, education, objective, patriotic history. Well, and understanding history, because history does repeat itself, how...

How important is it, is knowing that? I mean, because we know students can't read. We know students don't know math. Like, you've illustrated why it's important to understand history because they've applied to real life. But what, but what do we do to fix what's? Kids are getting their information on cell phones and everything. There doesn't seem to be an appetite. How do we make history entertain? I don't want to say entertaining. That's not the right thing. Engaging. That's the right word. Well, history needs to be taught as narrative. And it's taught as narrative, not just memorizing dates, although that can be useful. I made my kids memorize the order of presidents. It gives you a skeleton to hang the rest of the history on as the flesh. But the main thing is the historical narratives are fascinating, and it needs to be taught as narrative to get students interested in it. but they absolutely need to know the history, much better than they do now. I distributed a test of 1910 for, I think, seventh grade of history, and 95% of college students, I think, college graduates couldn't pass it today. Our standards used to be much higher, and my crusade is to get back to those standards. Well, I think that it's, there's so many things that, education provide especially whether you're going to go to college or not whether you're going to get into the labor force but but there are critical skills and that foundation is provided back to where we started by by parents selecting the best education for their students. And there's a huge effort to interrupt and destroy that. And I don't know if, you know, your office has been very effective. You are a fighter. You have a legal background. You're an attorney. Over the next four years, I guess it's really going to depend on who gets elected this election, right, on what direction education goes in Arizona. Yeah, well, I fight hard for parents to be able to choose a school that meets in each other kids. We have a family with three kids. Two of them are doing just fine in the local neighborhood public school, but the needs of the third child are not being met. So under the system we have now, they can find a school that meets the child's needs. And I don't understand how anybody can say the parents don't have a right to do that unless they're so absorbed in their own ideology that they lose sight of what's best for the students. 100%. And I, you know, education cannot be like an afterthought. It has to be planned and organized. What do you think the greatest successes you've had this last four years, Tom?

Well, let me give you some examples because I've had a number of very successful initiatives to improve academics. We have something called Project Momentum, where people from my department go out to schools to help them do better. They had a project to work with the bottom 5% of the schools in the state. 80% of those schools are no longer in the bottom 5%. We adopted a school in a very poor neighborhood. People from our department went out every week to work with them. We increased their math scores by 27 percent, thereby proving that poor kids can learn just as well as rich kids if they're properly taught. I funded tutoring for any family who asked for it. I clawed back money that my predecessor had given to institutions that couldn't show that they work with improve academics. You can imagine I made enemies doing that. But they had a lot of success. Tutoring is the best way for kids to learn. And we had a number of students who made six months progress in one six-week tutoring session. I greatly expanded career technical education because not everyone's going to college. And we owe it to them that when they graduate from high school, they have the skills necessary to get well-paying jobs in the workforce. And so we started something called the... student industry partnership where I'm working with the 40 of the largest companies in Arizona and I made a deal with them because they they complain that we have a shortage of skill labor I said I'll tell you what I'll get you your skill labor I have access to a million 200,000 kids but in return you will teach our career technical education teachers and administrators What skills are necessary for them to get a well-paying job with your company when they graduate from high school? We divided the state into 11 parts. We had a traveling road show so that if a company wanted to hire from a particular area, they would go there and meet with the CTE teachers and tell them what schools were necessary. for the kids to succeed in their, you know, to be hired it with a good salary right out of high school in their company. Well, there's always been work for shortages for so long. And so that it helps not only the student know that what they're going to be doing, if they're not college bound, but many kids don't need college these days. They are career driven. And so that continue. And there are a lot of trades that pay very well. You know, we have in my, in my partnership, I have the Tucson company that does semiconductors. Yes. TSM. Well, they start kids out right out of high school with very good salaries. And they're part of my partnership. And we did extensive leadership training because you show me a good school. I'll show you a good principal. So we started classes in leadership.

The classes were asked if they would recommend the class to their colleagues. 99% said yes. So we got badly oversubscribed. We had to start a lot of other classes. It's been very successful. And now we also have classes for school board members and for teachers and for superintendents. It started out for principals. So those are some examples of the the initiatives that I've been doing to improve academics in our schools and my plan for the next four years is to expand on those initiatives. And during your tenure, the number of kids in ESAs has grown exponentially. You're not the only reason, but that program is working contrary to claims that it is not, correct? In three years that I've been in charge of ESAs, it's gone from 11,000 students to over 100,000 students. So that tells you right there. If it was bad, it would gone from 11,000 to 2,000. Clearly, it's, you know, and I can do a little bit of math here. It's almost 10 times improved. So. You've done exactly. And that tells me now they're trying to put this initiative that we're fighting against. They're trying to put caps on income and only make it for poor people. You know, and it is, it doesn't, it's not broken and it doesn't need to be fixed in the way that they're trying to fix it. Well, I'll make a prediction on your, on your, on my show here, yes. Yeah, on your show that neither of those initiatives will succeed. I think that's great. I hope they don't even get on the ballot so we don't have to talk about it. But right now we're fighting back and we need those 100,000 parents need to speak up and say not now, not on our watch. We're going to protect our kids' education and we're going to ensure that the kids of Arizona are learning at... in the most optimum environment for their education and their education choices. We do not have one size fits all. We are not socialist. We are not communists. We are not extremists. We are going to do traditional education and write the ship. And Tom, final comment? And if the parents encounter people are being paid to collect signatures, they should stick around and ask people to not sign. 100%. I think you're great. Well, I appreciate you jumping on and have a wonderful week. Continue the fight. And election day is coming soon. So Tom Horn, superintendent, public instruction. Thank you, Kathleen. I love being on your show. Thank you for coming. All right. Tomorrow is Friday. I am so excited about that.

How did that happen so quickly? I don't know. I think we kind of zoom through the week. And the next week I get to be here Monday, not here Tuesday. And if my plane lands on time, I'll be back on Wednesday. And we're going to have to figure all that out. You better up Dave on speed time. I get to Tucson at 815. It's going to be close. But you know what? I can do this. So you watch this. You know how it comes flying in here sometimes. I think there's like a plane setting down right here in the parking lot. You know what? If I can get a private plane, I'll be here. All right. You are listening to 1030 The Voice. Your trusted local news and talk. This has been Wynne Tucson. I'm Kathleen Wynn. Go out and make it a great day and be nice to each other for goodness sakes. Thank you. Bye.