George Khalaf and Mike Noble on Arizona Primary Predictions
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Coming up fast here in Arizona, our primary elections this coming Tuesday. And we're talking with some pollsters today. Some people who have some insights into these races. This is Sam Stone with my co-host Chuck Warren. In the studio with us this morning, George Califf. George is the president of Data Orbital, managing partner of The Resolute Group. He has been polling Arizona races throughout the year.

Can you believe we have been campaigning for a bloody year for these elections, Chuck? It just seems like yesterday, to be honest with you. But I'm not doing the day-to-day with them, so I'm more nonchalant about it. I'm not nonchalant. The more elections expand, I mean, you never stop campaigning anymore. At the point, I think we need to adopt the British system. 90 days before the election, that's it. Exactly. George, what has surprised you about this election?

Man, where do I start? First, thanks for having me on. This election has been...

I think one of the most grinding elections that I have witnessed. And frankly, I think it's because the energy and the enthusiasm and frankly, sometimes the anger of the electorate is now fully seeped into the political, what I'll call the political world. And I think that there's a lot of there's just a lot of emotions flying around. Things always get personal in primaries. No one here is a, you

doesn't know or hasn't been through a primary. - I have never been attacked before for any of the work I do, yeah. - So it'd get really personal. This year it's taken the next level. Even just this week, we released some numbers earlier this week and folks chose as opposed to disagree with the numbers, they chose to

come at our firm's reputation. And thus far, there's been two additional surveys to show that they were wrong. But we'll see, I guess, judgment day, as I've been saying, is on election day. I want to go over your most recent numbers, but let me ask you this question. So let's take the governor's race, for example. We have Carrie Lake and Karen Robson, and then we have some... I mean, I do want to do a focus group of the people who voted for Paula Z and Scott and Neely. But my question is this, do you think the opposing camps can come together

to defeat Katie Hobbs? Or is there such a divide now that it's really going to take some work, what you see in your polling? Look, one, we better come together because it's too important not to. I also will say the national environment is really bad. Katie Hobbs is an exceptional left-wing candidate.

I'm not saying she's going to perform as poorly as David Garcia. It's going to be a tight race. I don't know that we're going to have 20-point blowouts anymore, but we have to come together. I think even though some in political circles won't come together because they've decided to engage in scorched earth tactics, I think voters will because they understand that

that there's a big R Republican here, they're the nominee, and we can't afford to have Katie Hobbs. I think what's going to happen, and you see this with Hobbs' campaign already, she's following the playbook perfectly.

laid out by Mark Kelly, which is say almost nothing, kind of some bland, you know, very just, you know, the problem is when she says something, it's a doozy. Well, but she's not been for a while. I mean, you're we obviously have all the opposition research from her past where she said a lot of doozies.

But Democrats in this state, as with Joe Biden, they don't campaign on how they're going to govern. And the other thing, too, I mean, there was a Marco Lopez survey that was leaked that I had had access to about a month or two ago that showed that he would perform better than the Republicans and the Democrats are hitting each other. You know, the thing is that we've just been we as Republicans have been in this very public fight. So the Democrats have kind of skirted free. Well, they're having a.

seemingly also a very intense primary, but I think that it's just a foregone conclusion that Hobbs is going to be the nominee. But look, she has taken that playbook. She is pretending, but this is the difference. The national environment is so bad for Democrats. We see it in our polling numbers. I mean, it's just never been this bad for them, or at least not in the last bit. And we are very polarized. So again, if you're a registered Republican, even if

If Lake was not your cup of tea, for example, I believe she will be the nominee. Do you really go for the Democrat? I don't think that there's nearly enough. And if there were enough people there, will they not be offset from folks that were traditional Democrats in rural Arizona that would come over? The problem of all of us in this room, there were rational human beings. Right. I mean, if I'm supporting Karen.

I'm not going to not vote for Carrie Lake in the general. But I know people who view that way. It's the same thing with Carrie people, which are probably more antagonistic about Karen. I know people say that in the heat of the moment, but our history doesn't suggest that. And that's a very good point as well. So quickly go over the numbers you have and then.

Yeah. And just go with numbers. Go start with governor. What do you have, governor, most recent one? So in our most recent survey, we have Lake up by 11 points. Early in July, we had her up by four. In June, had her up by nine. We have never had Karen Taylor-Ropesen up in any survey that we have done. What do you credit Kerry's momentum the last 10 days to?

That's a great question because I don't know either. It's a brilliant question. That's why I asked it. It's a brilliant question. Chuck always has the brilliant question. Exactly. Exactly. This campaign up until about early July had been between two self-described conservative MAGA pro-Trump individuals. And then there was a pivot in early July.

After the debate and after Governor Ducey endorsed, and again, I'm going to try to explain this from a data perspective and not sort of give the coloring because that's not the point. There was a pivot. And then Karen chose to, I think, go down a different path. And so the work that had been done, frankly, to peel away some Trump supporters,

Was undone, right or wrong, it was undone. And as we've gone into early voting and we have about 400,000 ballots that have been returned a little north of that, there's a lot of Republicans that have yet to vote. We are trailing by six or seven points in terms of our return rate. So why are those people holding on?

Yeah, sure. Some of them, it's because they're undecided. A lot of them, it's because of election integrity concerns. Well, if you're holding on to your ballot, who will you be supporting? You're a Lake supporter. There was a pivot. You're voting for Finchman. You're voting for Kerry Lake. You're voting for Blake Masters. You're voting for Abe. So I think there was a pivot. I think those undecideds that have been holding on, I think more of them broke to Kerry Lake. Do you want to bring me? We actually have Mike Noble, another pollster from Arizona, on the line with us. We kind of want to get both of your takes on this.

I want to bring Mike in here right now. Mike is chief of research and managing partner of OH Predictive Insights, sister company of one of Arizona's largest advertising agencies, OH Partners. Mike, thank you for joining us on the program. I don't know if you were hearing what George was talking about just now. Yeah, I caught a little bit of it. Okay. What is your take? Because there's been a big shift in the governor's race in particular in the last 10 days. What are you seeing?

Well, I think you can actually see that the dynamics have changed. So from a traditional standpoint, typically in campaigns, whoever is spending more money, which Robeson is clearly outspending Lake, but also from an endorsement standpoint, it's clearly one-sided. The thing is, though, is ever since Trump kind of came out of the scene, the game has changed. And we've seen with the GOP primary voters that there's a lot of angst and anger, and it's kind of this battle between...

the establishment and the folks that, you know, that aren't kind of in the driver's seat. And there's frankly more of them. So that anger and that, I think that narrative that ultimately was kind of created in the last three weeks really wound up just pushing the vote ultimately towards Lake at the end of the day, because by a traditional metric,

Robeson should be doing in a better position, but clearly the data shows that is not the case. Great. With Mike Noble, OH Predictive. Mike, can you give us the numbers you released today on the statewide races?

Well, on the statewide races, we have Lake at 51%, Rokestan at 33%. Salmon is technically still on the ballot, nearly in vent and low single digits, and then 12% unsure. The big thing is not so much the spread. I think the race will be slightly closer than that, but that lake's above that all-important 50% threshold. But when you look at the other races, Blake Masters, he saw an 11-point increase since our early poll in July, so he's at 36%. Jim Lehman, very distant.

second at 21%, but he only gained three points. So again, momentum and also vote shares on Masters side was only 22% left undecided in that contest.

And then Abe Hamada doing well. He actually increased 24 points since early July. He's the Trump endorsed candidate. But as you go down the line, whether it's Mark Fincham at 32 percent in the secretary of state's race, you go down the line, essentially the Trump endorsed candidates are performing very well in the primary. Mike, if you were to if you were to predict those four statewide races, what

What is one race you think that could be a surprise on Election Day versus what the polling is showing right now? Is that the AG? That would be my guess. That's the race I still think could be in flux a little bit.

Correct. I think the AG's race is the one that could be a surprise, given that, yes, Hamada does have Trump's endorsement. The issue is that he doesn't really have money to get that out. Glassman, though, on the other hand, has been showing some forward momentum, and he is spending. And there's also a good chunk of undecided still left in that contest. Abe is the candidate I thought benefited the most from Trump coming out here last week.

Well, he had no money. Right. I mean, there's no other way to view it. I mean, you can clearly show what it meant. He had no money, right? If Trump had not come out...

both Mike and George, do you think Rodney would have won this race, clearly? - I mean, yeah, look, the Trump endorsement's only good if you have money to put it out there. There's other people that are Trump endorsed that you don't know, the electorate has no idea that they're Trump endorsed, but you know, 'cause not everyone's the governor's race and not everyone's Kerry Lake, and so everyone, it's been broadcasted, or in Masters where there's a PAC that has a significant amount of money to pump that out there. Abe just does not have that outside support and his campaign didn't end up having, I don't even know that he's gonna end up being in the top three in terms of dollars raised. - No, no, I have a question I wanna ask both of you.

I feel bad for pollsters because if you don't give numbers a campaign likes, you must be on the take, right? I mean, it's very obvious, right? You're both multi-multi-millionaires now, have five homes in all these exotic locations because you're on the take. Mike, I want to start with you. What do people not understand about polling, how you go through your process?

Well, and again, it depends on the pollsters. There's partisan pollsters, there's nonpartisan pollsters. We happen to fall in the category of nonpartisan, so we don't have a vested interest in any race. And so we're just reporting the numbers. And when looking at the polling, that polling is essentially giving you that snapshot in time of where the race is at in sentiment. So, you know, it's not, hey, numbers at 51 percent, that's exactly what the number is going to be.

That is a fuzzy number given the margin of error, plus you've got to account for how the undecideds are going to break. So it really tells you kind of, it really informs strategy, but also really where the momentum and also where the sentiment is going on campaign. So, again, like we saw in our polling that the race was still competitive in early July. That's what it was then. A lot has happened since now until then. We remeasured, and we see that, you know,

that voters kind of broke heavy and hard toward Lake or these other Trump-endorsed candidates. So again, it kind of really tells you where folks are at, but also in the polling people think it's kind of very, you know,

definitive, in a sense. But again, that would probably be my takeaway when it comes to polling. George, what do people not understand? I mean, it doesn't benefit either of you to put out crap numbers. Yeah. I mean, look, and we are unabashedly, and I've never heard from it, we are partisan pollsters. I'm a Republican. I did a stint at the Arizona Republican Party. I have a consulting firm, for God's sakes, that works on a lot of these campaigns, and

And we've had a, for example, we've had a subscription service that we've done monthly and a number of them get leaked and a number of them that have gotten leaked have shown that our clients aren't winning. And so, I mean, look, while I may have a vested interest or not, that's not the point of the numbers. And again, in this week, I've been called everything from a establishment plant to a far right crazy, depending on who's talking about and depending on who

The Arizona Republic came straight out and said you were fudging numbers for Cary Lake. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what Lori Roberts said and then claimed that the other survey was a was someone who didn't have a vested interest. That was an internal survey from the Karen Taylor. We have just a few seconds before we have to go to break here. But we're going to be right back with George Califf and Mike Noble. Guys, thank you for joining us. This is this race is going to be interesting all the way through November now.

Welcome back. Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Arizona Election Day Eve edition of Breaking Battlegrounds. We have two of the best data guys, two of the best pollsters in Arizona, George Califf, Mike Noble. They are both. Mike is on the phone. George is in studio with us.

You guys have, I think, one of the toughest jobs in politics these days because how much harder is it getting to get accurate data from the electorate? Which, I mean, I know plenty of people who straight up lie when people are calling them on the phone at this point. I know plenty of people who just won't answer and will duck it. And it's not like it was 20 years ago where you just bang out a number of calls to landlines and

and you get a broad selection of the electorate, that isn't really the case anymore. No, no. And I'll tell you all, I mean, we have long been really up until the last handful of months exclusively live caller. And then we started noticing, not to get into too many of the details, but long story short, there's a specific divergence in the governor's race exclusively between, for example, people that we reach via live caller landline and cell phone and people that we reach via text-to-web.

Only on the governor's race. And it is it goes from like a Karen Taylor ropes and margin of 10 points on live landlines to live cell, which is a carry lake margin of usually about eight to 10 points. And then on text to web, which is carry lake plus 15 to 25. Wow. Only on that race. And again, there's there's a lot of unpacking that need to be done. But you're right. I mean, look, I'll tell you, and even all the paid call work that we do.

People are sick and tired of being reached. And there's just so much money that has been spent. I mean, more money, as you all know, more money in this primary election than any other primary by a mile that we've had in the state. More than any general. Right. I mean, it's a lot of money and we haven't even gotten to the general election. People are just tapped out. It is people are tapped out. So we have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the accurate sample.

Mike, you've been doing your polling for quite a while. What have you seen as a change in the demographics and the attitude of the average Arizona voter? How has it changed? Has it become more purple, more blue, more red? What have you seen in your polling? Well, if you talk to nationals or other folks, they'll say Arizona's purple, but they're wrong. When you look at, you know, Arizona, if you want to properly color code it, we're magenta.

which is the lightest shade of red. And you saw that from our last election when you go through the post-election analysis that, you know, Trump lost the state by, you know, less than half a percentage point. And, you know, when you look at, you know, yes, he lost it as a Republican. However, down ticket, Republicans outperformed, you know, from, you know, county supervisors to state legislative races on down, they outperformed Trump. So,

You know, it was very much a referendum on that. So Arizona is still very much a center-right state. But I think the interesting thing is that, yeah, running to the right in primary stuff like Blake Masters or like is great. But when you get to the general election, you have to start moving to the middle. If not, you're going to end up like Martha McSally and lose both U.S. Senate seats. What would you tell somebody running for office in Arizona how they should approach the electorate here?

Well, approaching the electorate is obviously in the primary is a different story. But when you get to the general election is that you have to start moving in the middle. For example, like for the claims of, you know, the election was stolen or the election was, you know, you know, corrupt or whatever the case may be. You look at that, which is great. That's great in the primary election. But when you look at the general, especially among those all important independents, you

that that is the case. I mean, so you're trying to push something that they're not even agreed upon. So it just creates a bigger liability in the general, because if you look at the difference between the traditional conservatives, you know, Republicans that have ran before, because prior to Trump, 2018, every statewide office was held by Republicans.

Now, because of this new dynamic, yeah, the MAGA crowd or Trump crowd, yeah, they've been winning primaries. But the issue is that they've been losing the general election in Arizona. They've kind of become definitely more blue ever since that dynamic happened. So, again, on one side, it's interesting. On the other side, though, you know, where is the Republican Party? It's definitely not in a better position than where it was four years ago. That's fantastic, Mike. George?

How much do you think the election was stolen is going to influence the general election for the independents?

- I mean, this is the problem. And I think the mistake that the left has made is they've made this election referendum on January 6th and the out of touchness of the right and then abortion and then guns. There's not been a single issue. Everything the right is demon on and we're all bad on. And so I say that to say, I don't know how much it's gonna affect when gas prices are where they are, inflation is where it is, we are about to enter into a recession no matter how the Biden administration defines it, our GDP shrunk for the last two quarters.

Our world is not in a good place. And so are people going to be more worried about the fact that they feel like Republicans are out of touch with them on this issue? Are they going to be more worried about the leadership that Biden has provided and frankly, the lack of leadership that Biden's provided? That's why I continue to be bullish. That doesn't mean we can't. We have to talk smartly. Arizona is not a deep red state. Don't get me wrong.

But I am bullish about Republican chances in November because I think that the electorate wants a fighter and I don't think the electorate wants anything that Joe Biden has given them. And so I just don't think that January 6th or the election fraud narrative from the left against the right is going to be sticky in the general election because we have way too many other problems for voters to walk through to vote for Democrats. I would ask both of you, start with you, Mike, and then George.

How much are we seeing? I'm deeply versed in what's going on on the Republican side, but I haven't paid as close attention to the Democrat side. On the Republican side, it looks like low propensity voters, people who turn out in one of the last four elections, two of the last four elections, are coming out in this primary in numbers far beyond what I think a lot of people expected. Are we seeing that on the Democrat side also?

When it comes to the Democratic side, I haven't actually looked a ton at the Democratic side because, frankly, there just really hasn't been any competitive races. They don't actually do primaries here. GOP has been taking up a lot of the oxygen and tension. And we're tracking not only Arizona, but Nevada and Utah from our regional expansion. And so, frankly, I haven't really looked at it. But George may be able to shed a little light on it.

So as an example, return rates so far for Democrats that are 0-4, which means they've never voted in an election, is 10%.

For those that we have as unknown, because there's a lot of noise in the data file, Democrats, it's 27, but they're actually under where it was in 2020. When you go to the Republican side, even though return rates for likely voters are down, return rates for 0-4 is at 12%. So even though overall Democrats are outpacing Republicans, there are more Republicans 0-4 that have never voted that have shown up. Return rates are 30% for 1-4 and 27.5%.

for the unknowns, which means that we have more of our unknown voters. And even though, again, they're the phenomenon of less Republicans turning in their ballots, which means there's more of these people that are going to show up on election day. Look, we knew the phenomenon for Trump as well. Why did he break in at the Iowa caucus, how it all started? It's because there were people that had never gone to the Iowa caucus that showed up and caucused

We're going to have the same phenomenon here in Arizona, which is why I've been predicting what I've been predicting in terms of Carrie Lake being the Republican nominee, because there's voters that have not participated in in the same way that they never participated in pre-Trump. They're going to come out because they're motivated by her in a way that they haven't been motivated by other Republicans. And these are people that are choosing to vote in our primary, but they've never engaged in these primary elections before. Mike, your thoughts on that?

Well, I mean, I think that you could attribute that to a couple scenarios. And also, you're probably going to have to look at a little bit deeper into the data. Because I think also another probably plausible explanation for it is that, you know, compared to the Democrats, they don't have really competitive primaries on the GOP side that's

It's the exact opposite, tons of money. A lot of candidates are out there pushing for votes, everything else. And then also Arizona, we've had obviously a good amount of population growth, especially with this pandemic that happened a couple years ago when that started and that exodus from kind of the Midwest and California. As people realize they can work from home and Arizona is a very attractive state.

Absolutely. Sorry, Mike, I have to cut you off. We're going to break right here, but we're coming right back with George Califf of Data Orbital, Mike Noble, OH Predictive.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Mike Noble, OH Predictive, he had to get off the line. He was up against a hard deadline. We thank him for joining us this morning. Very much appreciate his insights. George Califf, thank you for sticking that out with us for one more segment here. We really appreciate having you in studio this morning. George, what is an issue that you feel Republicans should just latch on to? Say, OK, you're giving messaging for every campaign statewide.

What are the two issues you think, look, you just talk about this in your sleep, when you go to the restroom, when you fill up your gas, you just talk about these two things. What are those? I'll actually sum it up. There's multiple issues that are going to be unpacked. I'll sum it up with one word, security, right? Whether we're talking about border security, whether we're talking about security

an issue that you know well, Sam, safe communities with police on the streets, whether you're talking about security for their children and their education and their ability not to be indoctrinated, all of it stems to me. Financial security. Financial security and not getting our wallets ripped out from us. At least I've been so excited. I've saved $15 on gas, and now it's only been double the price I paid it two years ago, not triple the price that I paid two years ago. So thank you. I have really come to believe there is only one group of actual swing voters left in this country, and those are...

suburban soccer moms who will generally vote Democrat if they feel safe and secure and times are good and their families, everything's going well because they like the idea of liberal social policy. You know what it is? I'm going to use this analogy for suburban voters. I'm not going to just put women. I'm going to put suburban voters because households are influenced by one another. When things are good, you don't want to hang out with dad.

Right. And things are bad, financial or whatever, like, you know, it's good going home for Sunday dinner. And I sort of feel that's where we're at right now. You know, I had a friend who's not a he's conservative. He's not a big Romney fan. He's a donor. He says, but you know what? In the last 30 years, my car broke down at 2 a.m. I'm calling one guy, Mitt Romney.

Because he's going to show up and take care of the problem and then probably lecture me why I was driving around at 2 a.m. But nonetheless, he's going to fix the situation, right? I feel that's what it is. You know, when things are awry, we want strong leadership. We want hardened criminals thrown in jail, key thrown away.

Then when things are good, we just have this luxury. We seem to forget what got us to the point we're at. Would you agree with that, George? Yeah. I mean, look, voters in the time span, I wouldn't even just pick on voters. In America, we have so much noise flying around that the attention span is very short. We do forget what got us into this mess.

And again, we got out of the four years of Trump after being promised by the left that it was going to be Kumbaya and rainbows and sunshine and Biden was going to bring us all together. And if one person in this country can tell me that he's brought anyone together, I'll give him a lot of money. Look, substantively on virtually every issue, there's no question Trump was a better president than Joe Biden and the country was a better president.

place in his lower approval ratings. Can you imagine that? But as much as the media was focusing on it, but you wouldn't know that by list, you would not know that turning into broadcast. No, you would not. I mean, you would not have any clue. His divergence and his unfavorables are higher at this point in the administration than Trump's were at this point in his administration. And unless you're nerdy like the three of us in this room.

You would not know that, you know, like I would not know we're in a recession if I'm not, you know, have to actually fill up my gas tank and go grocery shopping because the press is telling me it's a whole new definition. The gaslighting during this administration is so next level. I don't even know what to say. I mean, they're literally changing the definition of a recession. Well, we get into the day the numbers come in that we're in the press is so the press is more protective of Joe Biden than my mom is of me.

Right. I mean, it's just it's absolutely incredible. And even though they are, they even have to call out some of the junk that's happening or his administration, the secretary of transportation that says, well, it's OK that you're feeling pain at the pump because that means that it's better for electric vehicle drivers. I don't think that these people actually understand or live with average Americans. Right. George, I want to ask. We had two minutes left with you. I want to ask this question. All right. Does do Republicans keep control majorities in the Senate and legislature? Yes. Yes.

Yes. I actually think, look, I am very bullish in November, not because Republicans do everything perfectly. The country is in really bad shape. Democrat policies don't work. I spent a lot of time talking about it. And frankly, for the first time ever, to the point that you made earlier, Sam, is that we may even have the edge on cultural issues because the focus isn't just on social issues, but even on abortion they have overreached, but on cultural issues when it comes to parents' rights and education. Right.

We now have the leaning. We've never had that. Transgenderism is poison for them with the Hispanic community. It is poison. And they won't stop. It keeps coming and coming and coming. They will not give it up. It's also their stance on abortion. Yes. From conception to birth. California bill three days after birth. I mean, that's just not even, that doesn't fit. Even, I think a lot of people are pro-choice to some degree, but that doesn't fly with 80, 90% of the, well, I know it doesn't fly with 90% of the people. That's the key. Yeah.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Whether it's in Arizona or anywhere in the country. And so I am very bullish. I think we make gains. We take over the U.S. House. I think we take the Senate. I'm not saying it's going to be a 10-point filibuster-proof margin. It's not going to. I think we make gains in the Arizona legislature here. And frankly, maybe for one surprise, I think we may go back to a full Republican statewide elected official sweep because things are just that bad. Yeah.

That'll be interesting. Real quick before we go, George, thank you for joining us today. How do people follow you and your work and stay up to date? So go to dataorbital.com. Sign up for our email list. We send out very consistent emails. I'm doing a Zoom meeting on Monday where we're giving updates. Follow us on Twitter, underscore Data Orbital, or follow me specifically, George, underscore Califf, K-H-A-L-A-F. George Califf, Data Orbital. Thank you for joining us. Thanks, George. Say hi to your bride.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Great program today. Election Eve here in Arizona. It is a, as people have been talking about, this, Chuck, is a battle for the soul of the Republican Party in Arizona. The lines have been drawn and it looks like the America first election

Trump aligned candidates are pulling away with it for the first time. Arizona's history has really been a more establishment Republican history in the last 20 plus years. And on the line with us right now, one of those Trump endorsed candidates, Mark Fincham, candidate for Arizona secretary of state. He is running for one of the key posts in Arizona. If anything were to happen to our next governor, he would become the governor.

So this is a critical race for people to be tuning in, be aware of. Mark, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, gentlemen. It's a pleasure. You have a big field in that race. You have a whole bunch of candidates. I think people haven't been paying attention until fairly recently. And now that they're tuning in, you're pulling away. What do you see going on?

Well, there's an OH predictive poll that came out titled Arizona's Public Opinion Polls that came out this morning. It shows that we are at 32%.

voters are likely to vote for me. Now, we also know that roughly 445,000 people have already voted. They've already turned in their ballots. I'm not sure what the total universe of voters is going to be, but we're expecting a very high turnout. In fact, we've gone from, in early July, 72% of voters were unsure. That's now down to 41%, and that's late July. So I think that there's a

Potential for an undervote, but at the same time, you know, I've been at several events in the last couple of days where people have said that they are not going to trust their ballot to a drop box or the post office. They are going to hand deliver their ballot to protect chain of custody. Now, it's interesting that they are using the nomenclature and the phraseology.

That I have been, in fact, my colleagues, people like Sonny Borelli, Senator Borelli and Representative Leo Biasucci and Wendy Rogers, we're all talking the same nomenclature. So it's clear to me that the public is paying attention when they say, I want to protect the chain of custody. That's not a term that the average everyday Joe speaks of. It's certainly not until the last year. Yeah.

Yeah, but the events that I've been at last couple of days, folks have said, hey, I've already voted for you. I got my ballot at home. But on Election Day, I'm going to hand deliver it so I know that it makes it all the way to the recorder's office. Now, for the late, as you know, I'm working with Carrie Lake. For her campaign, we've actually shifted because we're actually becoming concerned that there are so many people coming into the polls on Election Day that our county recorders are not prepared for it.

we've actually shifted to telling them if you have one of those polling centers open, not the drop box, but if you have a polling center open that you can get to, go there now. Get it in today. Get it in tomorrow on Saturday or get it in on Monday because we may have a huge number of ballots turned in at the polls, early ballots turned in at the polls on Election Day, and those are the last ballots counted today.

So that's right. That that overhang might not start to come in until Wednesday after the election. That's right. Yeah. So I would recommend that folks, you know, get your ballot turned in. It's going to be treated the same way if you go to a voting center and you turn it in today versus you turn it in Monday or even on Election Day. The issue is that come Monday.

They'll begin preparing. They'll probably begin counting ballots on Monday. Then on Tuesday, they shift gears and they start handling the Election Day ballots. So to your point about overhang, everything that comes in late,

is going to be counted last. So an early count is a good thing. My recommendation besides that, you're likely to avoid waiting in line because I'm guessing that we're going to see a lot of queuing coming up on Tuesday morning. There are there's a growing number of people who want to vote on Election Day at the polls. And I have always done that. So, yes, I understand that.

Yeah, well, even I'm going to do that. I'm up here in Phoenix this week, but I'll drive back down to Oro Valley where I'm registered to vote and where my homestead is. And I'm going to vote at the polls this year. I've gotten myself off of the mail-in ballot list. And I think that if you're going to lead...

Leaders do it first and lead by example. And folks who don't know, I'm going to shift gears on you real quick. Folks who don't know. Sure.

Do not associate Oro Valley with Tucson. They are two entirely separate entities, and Oro Valley is a beautiful place to live. It's like two universes. Yeah. Yeah. Tucson's a dump. Oro Valley's the lifeboat for conservatives. The People's Republic of Tucson, not so much so. Mark Finchman, running for Secretary of State. Will you tell people what...

the responsibilities are for the Secretary of State office and how you, if elected, will manage that office?

Sure, I'd be happy to. So and this isn't something that's top of mind for folks, but we don't have a state election. We have 15 separate county elections. The county elections officials are responsible for running the elections. The position of secretary of state when it comes to being senior elections officer for the state.

Really, it's one thing. It's to to hold people accountable for following the law. Hard stop. The the secretary of state doesn't write new law. That's a legislative prerogative. The law that's already been written that is on the books, you know, that has been properly passed by the legislature and signed into effect by the governor.

That's the responsibility of the secretary of state. Now, there's a number of other things that the secretary of state does as well, but that's probably the most important function. And it's to see to it that county elections officials are set up properly. There's a certain amount of auditing that goes on there. So, for example, we learned in 2020 that Maricopa County, with their uncertified Dominion voting machines, by the way,

the access to those machines, everybody had the same username and same password. Well, that...

defeats an audit trail because you have no idea who is logging into a machine, who might be altering records, who might be updating records. The whole point is to be able to identify who accessed the machine at what point and what change was made. And as the leaders of the DNC proved, having password as your password is a terrible idea. Chuck, you had a question. Pretty much. I think one thing people don't understand about the Secretary of State office is

You don't have the ability to make a bunch of rule changes there, right? The legislature passes law, and you adhere to what they pass and make sure that's enforced. Is that a bad take, or is that the reality? Well, the reality is that the election procedure manual, think of it as a cookbook.

And anything that is in that manual has to be in furtherance of the law. You can't depart from the law and go down your own path as the secretary of state, but it is a, it's an interpretation of law giving instructions to the County elections officials. Now, interestingly enough, that elections procedure manual also has to be approved by the legislature and the attorney general. So again,

That's one of the reasons that we are now faced with having to use the 2019 election procedure manual, because Katie Hobbs, some people call her Katie Hobb Goblin, the Marxist, decided that she wanted to go down her own path and wrote an update, air quotes, that had some 260 plus pages of red lines.

This was a policy document. It was not an execution document. Big difference. So let's think about the lanes of our elected government. You have the legislative lane, which is the public policy and law passing lane. You have the executive lane, which that's where the secretary of state is, that is supposed to execute executive.

on the directions that had been given in law. Now, of course, the governor signs things into law. That's also an executive office. But in Arizona, and as with many other states, the secretary of state is responsible for holding people accountable to follow the law. Now, what's been revealed over the last, I don't know, a couple of weeks is the opposition, Democrats, are terrified of me being in that role. Well,

Let's unpack that a second. How can you be terrified of somebody who is sworn to follow the law? Unless, of course, you're not following the law and you're afraid you're going to get caught. And you know what, Mark? I have zero question. Having known you a little bit, I have zero question that you're a man who you will follow the law. You're a believer that that is the one of the most important things an elected official can do.

Well, I was 21 years a law enforcement officer. Yeah, exactly. Well, 18 of my 21 years I was a law enforcement officer. 21-year career of following the law. Then add to that seven years at end to it of working to interfere with, interrupt the attempts at defrauding the company using fraudulent software.

Counterfeit software. That was my job to shut that off. So, yeah, I'm kind of augured in on following the law. One of the things that a lot of people I think don't realize is the secretary of state has a lot of duties outside of an election. They're administrative in many ways. Katie Hobbs has been a disaster at that side of her job. It's the one portion of the state government that remains COVID shutdown. Like her people are in the office.

One of the first things that's going to happen under a Mark Fincham administration, the COVID glass comes down. No more of this police escort to the seventh floor to talk to somebody that you've elected. What? And one of the beefs that a lot of people have with the Secretary of State's office is the access, but moreover, the wearing of political clothing.

Secretary of State should be serving people, not parties. And it's been very clear that there is a bias towards one political party. Now, once elected, I'll have to take my partisan hat off because my job is to see to it that nobody

has their thumb on the scale of electoral justice. That means every single person who wants to run for office must have their suffrage and their viability as a candidate protected by that office. I don't care if you're a libertarian, Green Party, some other party that comes along, Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter.

That office has to be zealous about safeguarding everyone's opportunity to compete on a level battlefield. I love that. Marcus, we've got a little time left. Why don't you tell people a little bit about you, how you got here, what's your career, who's your political hero or two? Tell us a little bit about you. Okay. I'm 65 years old, 21-year career with the City of Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.

Was a firefighter paramedic to begin with and then cross-trained into a law enforcement capacity. My last billet was with the Criminal Investigations Division where I was investigating check fraud. Got an educated and retired, moved to Arizona, was elected in 2015 to the Arizona House of Representatives, which I am now finishing.

Then, education-wise, I got a bachelor's degree from Grand Canyon University in State and Local Public Policy, master's degree from Rogers Law School at U of A in Law and Economics, and I have a certification as a Six Sigma process engineer. If people want to know more about me, they can see every interview that I've ever been in if they go to votefincham.com. That's D-O-T-E.

F like Frank, I N like Nancy, C H E M like Mark.com. And they can click on the news tab. And if they want to support my campaign, they can also donate in there as well. Fantastic, Mark. We really appreciate having you on the program today. Folks, be sure to tune in.

this Tuesday, 960 a.m. You can get us online. Look it up, 960 a.m. in Phoenix. Breaking Battlegrounds is going to be breaking down all the election results beginning at 8 p.m. Pacific through midnight Pacific. Chuck and I

We'll have to find some way to stay awake two hours past our bedtimes. Two. Oh, I forgot. My political hero? Yes. Teddy Roosevelt. The piece that he wrote, Man in the Arena, if people read that, they'll know Mark Fincham. That is the surprise on the radio show today. I love that. That is fantastic, and it tells me tons about you. Love it. Love it. Absolutely love it. Mark Fincham, thank you for joining us today. How do people follow you real quick?

Well, they can go to VoteFincham.com, and again, they can click on news. They can see that. Also, all of the social media widgets or whatever they call them up in the upper right-hand corner, they can follow me on social media as well. VoteFincham.com. Last word.

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