Breaking Battlegrounds Primary Election Night Coverage - Hour 4
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Now on 960 The Patriot, you're listening to live primary coverage with Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Brought to you by Breaking Battlegrounds. All right, well, welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We enter hour number four, which is, you know, three hours longer than you and I have ever been on the air here before. It's a little bit of an adventure. We're an hour past our bedtime. Somehow we're both still awake. And these county recorders are not keeping up with the numbers for us. No, this is unbelievably slow.

Again. What can you say about it? Let's talk quickly here, Sam, as we wait for some more updated numbers. I want to talk about the congressional races. Yes, let's do that. So we've talked about the Senate, but let's talk about these congressional races. So first of all, David Schweikert is at 43.65%. I think David's won that.

I do, too. I mean, again, there could be a big swing in Election Day vote and that would tend to favor, I think, Elijah Norton. But remember, David's endorsed by Trump. Right. So what's interesting here is I think you can add up Elijah Norton and Josh Barnett, who have fifty five, fifty six percent between them.

as an anti-Schweikert vote, right? Absolutely. So if this is one-on-one, I think David Schweikert is done. I think he's going home. But in a three-way, he's going to pull it out. A good friend of ours three weeks ago said he didn't understand why Elijah just didn't start going after Josh. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Because he said that those are votes you're wasting. It wasn't going after Josh personally, but it was –

You're wasting your vote. I've got this lead over Josh. Let's not waste your vote if you really want Schweikert out. And I think I didn't pay super close attention, but I think I did see Josh actually going after Elijah some. So he actually kind of understood that more than Elijah and his team did. Absolutely. And then in CD2. Let's talk about the all important Democrat. And actually, you know what? Let me let me back up.

Jevin Hodge appears to be the Democrat candidate, young black candidate who will be running against Schweikert. And that district is now trending its way into a swing district. Yeah, I think it's plus two Republican. Plus two are. Yeah. Plus two are. I don't see Schweikert losing that race this cycle. I don't either. But Schweikert is going to have to really change something or change.

He's a guy who for years blew out every opponent who dared come near him. The scandal that he had in his office, which I tend to attribute to him being off doing other things and kind of losing control of his office more than his own illegal actions, has hurt him. It's hurt him. And he's going to have to rebuild from that.

So coming up next and can talk more about the legislative races, especially in depth. He's worked the worked Arizona legislative races for years as probably the leading Republican consultant on our state House and Senate races. Constantine Carrard is joining us right now. Constantine, thank you.

founder and president of Grassroots Partners. They have elected a CQ. Tell me if I'm wrong on this. Have you have you helped elect a majority of the Republicans in the Arizona House and Senate?

That is correct. Specialized. In all humility, you've done it. No, but look. In all humility. You shouldn't be humble about that. Give me the guy with 80 bucks and a dream. That's my guy. Nobody's throwing elbows trying to take that business away from me. I don't know. We do get to work with a lot of good people. Constantine, it looks like the legislature is going to get more conservative.

You're welcome. Yes. Take your bow, man. Take your bow. Well, and obviously credit to the candidates. And the families, all the guys are working. This is a, you know, the big race, obviously, will get a lot of the attention. They're vinyl, the TV ads. But the grassroots part of politics is still a very real thing. And you're seeing grassroots victories in a lot of these races because,

And almost every one of these races, we're going to be outspent. And sometimes it's by a lot. And it's sort of the establishment money that comes in, and it's PACs and industry groups and chambers and whatever. And they like the folks that kind of vote yes on everything, which isn't a surprise. And you've got people that are knocking doors, going door to door, talking to their neighbors, making phone calls, phone banking, and...

So you see Scandalbury beating Pace. You see Barnsworth beating Bowers. You see Michael Carbone beating Joel John. Champ over Osborne. You know, they dumped a ton of money in for trade trade in the West Valley and Montenegro and Austin Smith that went down. So, I mean, the legislature is definitely taking several steps to the right in a year where hopefully we don't just add quality but some quantity to it. What has surprised you about tonight? Um...

As far as the statewide races, I think, I mean, the first jump, I think having Ropes and

As far out in front as she was was a surprise. Having Masters and Lehman as close together as they were was a surprise. The Democrat Secretary of State initial numbers are closer than I would have thought. And the Republican Attorney General race, I think, is still a race because 20,000 votes is not a lot of votes. And I think Ava had a pretty rough last week. So it'll be interesting to see what the walk-ins and the day of votes look like in that race.

When you talk about, you know, generally your candidates are outspent, right, based on what we call establishment money, which is, let's say, a political action committee for an industry or things of that nature. How much more, when you talk grassroots, what are they doing with grassroots? Is it them and their family personally walking or is it just they've engaged the activists that they feel like they want to go spend their time in the seat to go recruit their neighbors and vote? What happens? Yeah.

It is. It's a pretty sweet committee, man. It's members of other groups. You know, the Scamabury race we had, there was sort of a Ron Paul offshoot of Young Americans for Liberty, the Make Liberty Win pack. They had boots on the ground. You know,

So Scantabury would get to a door and they're like, oh, someone was here for you already. And he'd be like the second person at the door because his volunteers had been there or an outside group had knocked on the door for him. So it's PCs, it's activists, it's people who are involved in politics. And listen, if I want to

If I'm going to put 10 hours into something, I can't swing a governor's race with my 10 hours of time. But I might be able to swing my state house race or my state senate race. And so it is nice because in a day where, you know, a lot of folks are spending a lot of money, it's nice to see shoe leather win out. It's nice to see, you know, the small guys win. And in this case, it's happening. It happened all over the state. Constantine, hard work still pays off in politics, doesn't it?

It does. It really does. And, you know, it happens in close races, but some of these ended up as kind of blowouts. Now, in fairness, in some of these races, President Trump endorsed as well. So, you know, it was up to us to get the word out, but obviously that's a helpful word to get out in some of the down-ticket races. But others were... Sorry about that. I make a point here about that. So we had Chad Haywood on earlier talking about the governor's race, but he said he felt one thing...

And his view was that that Trump endorsement for lower ballot candidates really played a big deal for people, more so sometimes in the races we all focus on statewide and so forth. Do you buy into that theory?

It's true, and it really has to do with the fact that it becomes proportionally a huge piece of information. So the average voter doesn't know who's running for statehouse necessarily, or they'll learn two or three things over the course of the final six weeks or something. So if I don't know much, but I know that Donald Trump endorsed somebody, then that endorsement plays a huge role. Or, you know, whoever your big endorsement is. You've got Dosa, you've got Biggs, you've got whatever. So endorsements are oversized. If I'm spending $15 million on TV...

you as a voter know enough about me that you make a decision in your gut. But Donald Trump's endorsement might factor into it. But if your judge says, I'm voting for candidate A, and Trump says, I've endorsed candidate B, that endorsement is not big enough

for you to overrule your own instincts. So the bigger the race, the more the candidates you're spending, the more familiar the voters are with the candidate, the less important the endorsement becomes. If you're down the ticket, and like I said, you got 80 bucks in a dream, you know, then all of a sudden a Trump endorsement is a huge piece of information to be able to give voters.

Yeah, it plays a lot bigger in those races where people don't know who the candidates are. And I think you saw that with the AG's race. You're seeing that with a lot of these other races. The public, frankly, just doesn't tune in to politics all that much, at least not nearly as much as those of us in the business seem to think they do.

Until right at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Then they'll jump online and do some research. So if you are the general consultant tonight for Carrie Lake or Abe or Rodney Glassman or Karen Taylor Robson, what would you be telling your staff to be looking for the next 24, 48 hours?

Well, I'd be looking for a lot of missing county recorders. We need some day of numbers here. I mean, that's the challenge is we don't have, we don't really have a day of trend that we can compare to the early votes. So the day of trend will tell us obviously not just what happened today, but it gives us an idea of the late breaking. So all the ballots that were dropped off today may be similar to today's

in-person votes. Really, the ballots can last two or three days. So if you're Glassman, you want to see how you did on day of, because if you win day of and you start to close that gap, you know, then you're excited. Pretty much for all you do, if you're Robeson and you're ahead on early ballots and then you win day of, you know, then you're probably feeling pretty good because there's no trend anywhere that's working against you. So I think the first thing they're all waiting for is to see what happened today so that they can

they can kind of ascertain whether or not they have momentum and they need to be gearing up for the next three or four days of counts. How many more drops do you expect us to see tonight? I don't know. I mean, usually they will continue to drop until they're basically...

all done with election day votes. Like they may stop at like 98% of precincts reported because they're having a technical problem with a machine or two. But usually you don't, you wouldn't stop on election night, you know, at 40% of precincts or 60%. You've done, you've closed up your precinct, you roll the machine up, it goes down to county recorder's office, you basically pull the card out with the votes on it, you put it in your system and you're done. So I don't know why that's taking so long.

But there'd be no reason for that to drag into a second day. So we should continue to get drops tonight from various counties really until they're almost done or done. Well, they said right now, I'm looking at the Secretary of State site, and they said that precincts reporting 71 percent as of right now. That's what it says on there. So those are your early ballots that came in before...

Friday, right? Or through Friday. Through Friday. And then those are your day of, I went into the polls and voted at the polls. Obviously, as Stephen Richer, Maricopa County recorder, said this, does not include the people who walked in, like I did yesterday, and dropped my early ballot in there. So how many of those are out there? That's a big question. And right now, Carrie Lake needs an awful lot of those out there if she's going to have a chance.

Yeah, we don't, we'll know numbers probably by tomorrow in terms of how many are left out there. I had heard something like 100,000 ballots cast today or 130,000 ballots today and another 150 still to be counted or something. But we're kind of guessing at numbers until they tell us. Yeah, absolutely. Because they don't really know. I mean, they're just, they're literally collecting bins of ballots from all these polling places. They're guessing too. Constantine Carrard, thank you so much. Breaking Battlegrounds, come back in just a moment.

Now back to Chuck Warren and Sam Stone with your live primary election coverage brought to you by Breaking Battlegrounds.

Welcome back, and thank you if you stuck with us through three and a half hours almost so far tonight. We've got about 40 minutes left before we're off air. No updates. No. These updates are very slow. We have had one update basically since we got on the air to the overall numbers. It's tightened up a little bit in the governor's ranks. Karen Taylor now at 48.03%. Carrie Lake at 41.79%. The other races appear to be holding...

fairly close to what they were in the first drop. And we're getting near the point where all that's going to be left are ballots that were dropped off at the polling locations over the weekend, Monday or today. Those could be a very significant number, but we have no idea, as Konstantin Carrard was saying, and he is back and joining us for a second segment. CQ, thank you so much for sticking with us. We have no idea how many of those are out there.

No, we don't, and we can't say for sure how they're going to break. We always expect them to break kind of similar to Election Day numbers because these are people that decided kind of right at the end. But that's an imperfect guess. You know, the day of voters, you know, Carrie Lake is winning those. But how many are those? You know, we assumed she would do well at the day of voters because, frankly, if you're somebody who you don't trust the mail and you don't trust the machines and you don't trust whatever, you're going to lock that ballot in with your own hands and

and put it in there, you're probably more likely to be a late voter. Yeah, correct. But if you're just somebody who got your ballot in kind of at the end of those last two or three days, that may not apply to you. So the governor's race is not over, but it could be... You may be a procrastinator. Well, let's put it this way. Let's put it this way about the governor's race. It may not be over. I don't think it's over yet. But not many people saw...

Karen still up by nobody. Nobody. I mean, they can take credit for, you know, the one Emerson poll, which showed her up by like one. But nobody has called this race correctly if it ends up looking anything like this. No, they really missed something. I tend to think that. And beyond that, if she was if she was ahead on early ballot, that would suggest she's been ahead much of the time.

in which case everybody's poll's missed it. Right. Constantine, as you talk to people, look, you're like me. So the one thing I've noticed the past 10 days, and we're probably, the three of us in this category, you have people call, right? Now, because I was not affiliated with a gubernatorial campaign,

I was so people probably call and ask who you're voting for versus Sam. They just knew. Right. If they knew you, they knew who to vote for. Right. They asked me for a lot of races, not the governor's race. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But it was amazing. I think I had between 25, 30 people last 10 days call me and they just said, you know, and they were asking pretty much for a G is what I got. And I said, well, who'd you vote for others? And they're just like, you know, I decided to go with Karen. And it wasn't like, hell yeah, Karen. It was just like I decided to go with Karen.

and there was a myriad of reasons, but as I was telling a donor this morning, I didn't know what that meant, but apparently it meant a little something.

Yeah, your anecdotal and your sample size isn't large enough to count as your own poll. But it turns out your poll was more accurate. The Chuck Warren 25-30 people sample is the great poll here. Anyone who's going to win, ask Chuck the day before. Yeah, exactly. Well, I guess it doesn't matter how you get the vote if they're coming through because they're just not sure of your opponent or because they love you, the vote counts the same. And

And, you know, depending on how the race works out, we could have some pretty good working theories as to why it worked out the way it did. I think, you know, Lake was the frontrunner for a long time and never really altered the message in a way that would broaden her appeal, which I always thought was kind of a missed opportunity because when you're ahead by that much, your base loves you. But they're going to love you even if you talk about something else, like...

So did she miss an opportunity to rock her page? You're speaking to a choir of one right now, CQ. I'm just here shaking my head. Yeah, okay. Well, at least...

And that you agree or that? No, I agree. I agree a hundred percent with you. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Um, and so that's, you know, that's kind of the missed opportunity. Um, but listen, I mean, you, you know, it's really the Monday morning quarterback, these people, um, they've both sides ran good race. I mean, there's a reason to stay close rate. It's a tough race. One side had money, but started kind of from zero. The other started with certain advantages, but was getting crushed financially. Uh,

So in that regard, it was kind of a fair fight. It's going to end up close, and what's important is that at the end of the day, folks come together and remember that November's the real battle because there is always that danger where a lake will win, and the media are like, well, I guess that means on Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. I have to be...

Jim Colby, Jeff Flake, we need to stand for decency and vote Democrat, you know, press conference. So, you know, we've got to make sure that we keep folks united no matter how they're standing. CQ, thank you for saying that, because I want to add my voice to that also. Look,

Karen Taylor Robeson obviously was not my first choice in this primary because I was working with Carrie Lake. But at the end of the day, I will have not one second of hesitation in pulling the trigger for Karen Taylor Robeson in November over Katie Hobbs.

Well, and in fairness to Karen, too, when she was asked if she lost, if she support Kerry, she without hesitation said yes. Yes, she did. Well, she took a lot of crap from Lori Roberts and, you know, the cabal of the Arizona Republic. Well, who want Democrats to win? They just don't want to admit it. But, you know, but, you know, I mean, she goes and says that. Then there's a whole column about what an awful human being is. Karen is. And what a hypocrite. Right. And.

You know, I mean, one thing you can say about Karen, you know, is I mean, she knows the difference between Democrat policy and Republican policy and what it means for the state. Yes. For sure. Yeah. No, look, Karen Taylor is not going to push the bounds of conservatism. I mean, you know, that's that's not who she is.

But she is going to be a much more conservative alternative than anyone the Democrats have ever elected anywhere in the state, period. And the good news is, whoever ends up governor, we've given them what looks to be a much improved legislature. Hugely improved legislature, yeah. That will also make a really big difference in policy because we've got some good candidates.

some good conservatives with some real backbone who will do what's right. So whoever the governor is, you know, they will not be ruling by fiat. CQ, we were talking earlier about the Rusty Bowers race, and one of the things that I posited and Chuck, you know, kind of seconded here was that his loss may not be about January 6th and the elections and all this stuff, but the spotlight that got put on him because of the elections issues was

brought up the fact that he's had a lot of other votes that are out of line with Republicans. And I think it's that that got him as much as anything else. Do you disagree or what do you see in that? Absolutely for sure. I think he knew he was out of touch. I think as a speaker, he basically checked out a year ago. I think he decided at the last second hand, might as well run. But he was pushing bills that

You know, his district disliked, his church disliked, his constituents disliked, his caucus disliked. And I think at the end he just decided, you know what, I'm not going to get run off on that. I'm going to go ahead and run anyway. But, you know, the January 6th stuff, I mean, that was...

That was almost an exercise in vanity, I think, for him. It was his chance to kind of make himself a martyr. But he wasn't losing because of Trump. He wasn't losing because of January 6th. He had simply left his district behind ideologically. So, I mean, folks, I mean, Farnsworth got into that race,

a long time ago to make sure that Rusty knew not to even bother to run for the Senate. You know, Farnsworth didn't want to come back to office necessarily. He stepped forward just because he was called to say, hey, someone's got to make sure he knows it's over. So he stepped up and ended up having to run the race anyway because now he's tried. And it's over. You are correct. And it is officially over. Breaking Battlegrounds coming back in just a moment.

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Now back to Chuck Warren and Sam Stone with your live primary election coverage brought to you by Breaking Battlegrounds. All right. So, Chuck, a little bit of breaking news right now. I'm being told that there are as many as 250,000 ballots still to be counted in Maricopa County. Now, those would be people who dropped their ballots off at the polls over the last four days. That is a huge number. It's almost equivalent to the number that have been counted so far.

Carrie Lake right now is down by about 32,000 votes, 48 to 42. If she gets 60 percent of those in Maricopa County, if there's 250,000, she gets 60 percent. She would get 150,000 to 100,000. That would push her into the lead. So here's what just happened. So they just updated it.

And it has Karen Taylor Robson at 48% with 168,769 votes. Carrie Lake at 42% with 148,825 votes. So that is, you know, only 20,000 vote difference in Maricopa County. So, yeah, I mean, look, this... It's not over. No, this is not over. This may go a couple days. Yeah, look, no one should be declaring victory tonight. Right.

You know, we'll have to see what happens tomorrow. This may take a few days. This is sort of a nightmare scenario in many ways. If you're Stephen Richer, I think he's going to have a few days where he just needs to stay off social media. For example, for Blake Masters is increased. He's gone from 37 to layman 29 now.

So he's gone up eight. He was at four or five. And so now he's jumped up. So Election Day is pushing him up a little bit further. Yeah. And it looks like Schweikert still has a nine-point lead over Elijah. Again, you had a 57% vote against David Schweikert. I mean, yeah.

I mean, I think he's going to pull it out. Well, he is, but there's some problems they got to somehow figure out to fix for this general election. And I'll say this. We had Congressman Schweikert in here in the studio, and he's a very bright guy and a policy nerd, which warms my heart. But I got to tell you, I think that guy really needs to get in the trenches again.

In a way, he probably hasn't in a decade now and reconnect with voters or there's going to be maybe not be this cycle, not to a Democrat. But he's in trouble at some point unless he really solves that relationship again. 100 percent. I am. I'm trying to look and see if there's any updates on the state site because we just got.

You know, Maricopa download. There is a little bit of an update on the state site. You know, Blake Masters, 35.62%. Jim Lehman, 30.19%. Oh, Finchman's really increasing his lead. He's now 11 point over Bo Lane.

Yeah. I mean, that one's over. Yeah. That one's over. You can declare Mark Fincham the winner. And frankly, look, for all the people wondering about him and the election stuff, the guy is a cop. He's going to follow the law. He is going to be a perfectly excellent secretary of state for Republicans and everybody. What's amazing about this governor's race as well is you still had 10 percent of the Republican voters. Yeah.

Cast a vote either for Matt Salmon, who dropped out... Is it a month now? Yeah, about a month ago. A month ago. Scott Neely at 3.5%, and Paulo Z at 2.3%. The Cookie Monster. I mean, it's 10%. Well...

I think there's always. But is that the middle finger boater? Just like I don't like any of you. I think that is partially that. But look, the other part of that is there's been a lot of retail campaigning in this. Karen Robson hasn't done a ton of retail campaigning, but the others all have. And at the end of the day, if you're going around and shaking a million hands around the state, you're going to find a few thousand people who like you.

Do you think the AG surprised tonight at all? It doesn't surprise me particularly. Me either. But do you think he's surprised when he started this a year ago that this is how this would turn out? I should be. He should be. Yeah. I mean, Mark Brnovich's result, not good. He's a bad campaigner. And, you know, frankly, he never laid out an agenda properly.

that would attract voters. What does he stand for? What's he going to do in the Senate? I have no idea, and I'm about as close a political observer as you can find. Well, I know when Aaron was running Arizona debates and trying to get him on debates, he just wouldn't even accept those. I mean, he just seemed to avoid any opportunity to go and define himself. He never, you know, I mean, there were lanes he could have run in in this election, and he didn't run in any of them. It was just an unfocused campaign.

We have about one minute before we get a break and then we're coming back. We have a clip we want to play. This will be our final segment, the last 15 minutes of the program. Folks, if you've stuck with us all night, thank you so much for joining us. Stay tuned and follow us. Our show is growing. I'm probably not supposed to say this, but I think last month we actually clocked in as the number one weekend show in Phoenix. The show has been growing by leaps and bounds. We're adding markets.

And we are really looking forward to the next phase for Breaking Battlegrounds. I know you and I are excited about that. So, folks, follow us. You can find us anywhere there's podcasts. Tune in on Saturdays or get on our Twitter, Breaking underscore Battle, and get all the good stuff that way. We'll be right back. Now back to Chuck Warren and Sam Stone with your live primary election coverage brought to you by Breaking Battlegrounds.

All right. Welcome back to the final segment of the night with the Breaking Battlegrounds team. Thank you all so much for joining us this evening. Chuck, I know you have a clip to play, but of course, the biggest breaking news of the night before we go to that is that Claire Van Steenhoek has lost his one millionth in one race.

To Frank Carroll for the state senator representative district number 28. I think he has run in every cycle since I have lived in Arizona, which is 30 years now. Well, there are other races to always run for. So let's play the clip. This following clip is from Modern Family, and it's about when they're doing debate preparation for Claire, who is the matriarch of the Dunphy family. And she was running for city council, and the family decided to do some debate prep with her. Go ahead, Jeremy. Welcome.

Welcome, candidates. Mrs. Dunphy. Thank you for having me. And Councilman Bailey. Gosh, thank you so much, Alex. I'm deeply honored to be here, and I remain, as ever, a humble servant to the greatest little town and the greatest darn... Eye-rolling. Playful eye-rolling. Uh, how do we as voters know it's playful? I would avoid it. Okay. New eye-rolling. And don't press your lips like that. It makes you look annoyed. Mm-hmm. And don't touch your face. Yeah, no face-touching. Seems nervous. Some of this is subjective. Ah!

What? What now? Anger. It looks like you're scolding us. I will keep my hands at my sides. Not on your hips. You're not Superman. Can we get started? We haven't started. I've prepared some questions. Oh, goodie. Actual questions. Honk. Sarcasm. Just go. Okay, Mrs. Dunphy, why are you running for local office? Okay, that's, um, that's good. I, um, I... Mom, you really shouldn't set her over a basic question like that. You should at least know why you're running.

I thought the moderator was supposed to be objective. Not if she's the only one in the room who has actual debate experience. Now, why are you running? I saw the need for a stop sign... Liar! Phil! I just think you should be ready for anything. I saw the need for... Sorry, accidental buzz. I saw the need for a stop sign in my neighborhood, and although I collected the necessary signatures and did the paperwork, I found local government to be entirely unhelpful. When what? Too long. I'm bored. Yeah, next question. I feel like I'm in school.

Some say the political system is bogged down by ideological hardliners unwilling to compromise. How would you respond to that, Councilman Bailey? - I would like to use my lifeline.

I'll take this. If elected, I would consider all perspectives and I would not ignore opposing viewpoints. Helicopter. Just keep going. I would consider all perspectives and I wouldn't ignore opposing... You suck! Luke! You have to be ready for hecklers. He's right. Okay, I'm doing over. No buzzing. If elected, I would... What? Too close to the mic. It's a hairbrush.

If elected, I would consider all opinions and not ignore those of the opposition as Councilman Bailey has done for six terms. That was a great answer! Well, I couldn't hear it because you were showing me the bad side of your face. I have a bad side. Yeah, the left. No, it's the right. Dad, it's totally the left. I mean, look at it. Sweetheart, why do you think I chose my side of the bad? Okay, okay, thank you. Thank you, family. This has been super-duper helpful.

Hands, lips, sarcasm, eye rolling, wrong side of the face. Oh, yeah. Now I see it. She's ready. I mean, for crying out loud, we actually have debates now that sound like this. You don't even need to be practicing in your living room with your family. You can get this in public on PBS. I think the one thing that as we go and have these election results and election nights that we forget is that all of these people have put their name on the line.

They've spent time, they've sacrificed, they've missed family things.

They miss playing the drums. They just missed a lot of things and they don't get enough credit for it. Right. And we, we can sit here in a studio and talk about this nonchalantly, but this would be very personal for them and their family and key supporters. It is. And let me say this, you know, I try to be as objective as I can be on this program because I think we owe that to the viewers. That's kind of our, our shtick Chuck is to, to be fair and to be honest, uh,

even when it's not things that we want to say. And I want to say this. I want to thank Carrie Lake for the opportunity to have worked with her for over a year now to get to this point. Whatever happens tonight and tomorrow, the next few days, because you talk about work. She has worked harder for a year than any candidate I have ever seen. This is now my 14th year in this business. You've been doing it longer. But she just went a year faster.

where she did not go 24 hours without doing multiple appearances. Well, she has worked so hard. I mean, hardest working woman in show business this year. Yeah, no question at all. She was everywhere in this state over and over again. She's been in all the rooms. She's shaking the hands. You know, she ran up against an opponent who had a huge amount of money to spend.

more than has ever been spent in the history of Arizona, but who also worked very hard for this. And Karen has worked hard for this state. Yeah, and that's... For a long time, and people miss that a lot. Well, you know, one of the things, and we had Chad Haywood on from Camelback Strategies, who's, you know, her campaign consultants, and I don't want to step on Chad's toes, so Chad, I apologize, but I'm going to do that anyway. Karen Taylor has done...

More fundraising for more charities in the state of Arizona than anyone I'm aware of for decades. She has been one of the people that has led the way for any number of really valuable local civic institutions. And if I had been running her campaign, the very first ad I would have come out with is people who have benefited from all that work she's done over all those years. And there's a lot of them.

And even not advertising that, that's a lot of people who know her and support her because they've had that personal experience. Well, you and I got to know Karen working at Joe Foss and passing civics education exams.

initiatives and legislation throughout various states. So win or lose tonight, I hope both women will stay involved in our community, in our state, because they both have a role. Yeah, absolutely. And so the worst thing that could happen is either side to have such hurt feelings that they try to pick up their ball and go home, because this is a team sport and

Look, Katie Hobbs is a nightmare. Oh, she cannot win. Garrett Archer just put a tweet out five minutes ago that Maricopa County had dumped another 28,653 ballots, carried like 64.6%, Karen Robson 30.1%, and Robson now leads by 21,351. So, folks, yeah.

You'll go to bed. This may switch in the morning. This will be different. Yeah, no, this race, I still think Kerry has a very good chance to pull this off, and obviously I'm rooting for her. But I do want to put that out there that this has been a very tough battle against a large field, Matt Salmon,

is a very legitimate contender and a, you know, a legitimate gubernatorial candidate in, in, you know, he got pushed by the wayside, but he still deserves a lot of credit for his work in this race. Scott Neely, uh, Paula Z, uh, Tuliani Zen, uh, Paula, please. I, when I say you're the cookie monster, I really do not mean that in a bad way. I, I apologize. I hope that doesn't come off bad because I actually, she is like the sweetest woman on the planet. Uh,

A truly, truly decent human who has shown that throughout this campaign. Maricopa, seven minutes ago, Maricopa County is 90% done with Election Day ballots. With Election Day ballots. Yeah, Election Day ballots. So...

Yeah. So, folks, we hope you'll keep paying attention. You'll have probably more clear results tomorrow. I think we can say with surety that Blake Masters is the Republican nominee for Senate. And congratulations to Blake. Mark Fincham, Secretary of State. Absolutely. Almost certain to be the nominee. Congratulations to Mark.

Abe is going to be, it looks like, the Attorney General nominee. And so the really only questionable race we have tonight is for governor. Yeah, absolutely. Kimberly Yee has secured the nomination again as state treasurer. No doubt about that one. She's running away. Tom Horn with a very good margin in the superintendent of public instructions race. He's at 42.59. Shiri Sapir at 30.71.

Look, that's an important race too, right? Kathy Hoffman is an activist who has really driven the Department of Education in a very, very leftist direction at a time when that is not what people in the community want to see.

And so that's an important race for this next cycle. Absolutely. Likewise, the Corporation Commission, Kevin Thompson, Nicholas, Nick Myers leading there over Kim Owens on the Republican side, the Democrats with Sandra Kennedy and Lauren Kuby, two radical sort of Green New Deal types. Yeah.

That battle is going to be critical. It's going to be absolutely critical, folks. If you like low cost, reliable energy and you don't want to have brownouts in the middle of our 120 degree summers here, you better darn well be voting Republican in November there. Yeah. I mean, it just seems like such a boring thing to vote for, but it has has the most fundamental direct impact.

Pros and cons in your life. Yeah. Corporation commission sounds like a snooze. But the fact is, I mean, try sleeping when it's 120 and the AC doesn't work. Don't sleep well. That's the problem. No, I look. I think if we get to the point of rolling brownouts here in the middle of our summer heat, the Green New Deal is going to get thrown out the window at the end of pitchforks.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. So that's that's a big race. A lot of others coming down, as CQ said, we're going to have what looks to be a more conservative state legislature.

not going to have maybe some of the defections that have limited the Republican agenda the last few years. Do we pick up a seat or two in the majority in the House and Senate? I think we do. I think we do. And I think we pick up at least one of these congressional seats. We haven't talked enough probably about that tonight. But these congressional races, obviously critically important. We've talked about David Schweikert quite a bit. Eli Crane, Bill

beating Walt Blackman for the CD2 nomination. Mark Deluzio coming in third there, Andy Yates fourth, John Moore fifth. I won't keep going down. That's an unbelievably long list of people. So they'll be running to take on Tom O'Halloran, who I actually think might have a better chance if he had run for governor.

Absolutely. Then he does running for the district that he's an incumbent in because that district has shifted quite a bit with redistricting. Absolutely. And, you know, one so called Cisco money. Yes. Down in you. I'm CD six. I really think that's a pickup opportunity.

Well, it certainly should be. Is Cisco money really blowing out that field? Forty six point five. Three percent. Brandon Martin and second. Twenty one percent. Kathleen Wynn and third. Seventeen. Look, one I've known for years. One and his wife, Laura, are phenomenal people. I have always said and one, I apologize that this is true to this day, that Laura would make a far better candidate than one. He probably would not disagree with you. No, he doesn't. You know, but but hey, look, we all have pride, right?

But but at the end of the day, I think that is absolutely, as you said, a real opportunity to pick up that seat. That's going to be an open seat. The Democrat Christine Engel appears. Kirsten Engel appears to be winning that over Daniel Hernandez. Engel is the more radical liberal. They're putting you know, they're putting the progressive extremist forward. Right. And I think that's a real opportunity for a pickup. Right.

You know, Andy Biggs obviously heading back to Congress. There was never any doubt about that. But one other race that is worth noting, we've touched in on Kelly Cooper, 29.57 percent. Tanya Wheelis at 24.63. Not a whole lot of votes cast in that race. No, it's disappointing. I'm getting the sense a lot of people filled out the top two lines on the ballot and stopped right there.

Yeah. And I think part of that is because the top two offices sucked all the air out of the room with their spending and their campaigning. And everybody's like, I don't know who they are. This is another race, by the way, where Tanya and Kelly have traded a lot of blows in the last couple of weeks and probably should have been targeting fire on Dave Giles and Renee Lopez and the others that were siphoning off those votes.

Folks, we have just about 30 seconds before we are done for the evening. Again, thank you so much for joining us. Follow us on Twitter, breaking underscore battle. You can download our podcast, including this entire night's broadcast, available on anywhere you can find podcasts, Apple Podcasts, all the good stuff there. Chuck, final word? How many days do you think do we know who's governor, the governor nominee? Three. My over-under is three. Friday? Friday. Okay. All right, folks.

That's it. Get to bed. Good night. Tune in Saturday, 3 p.m.

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