Pete Hanlon likes to save a few bucks when he can. So when the 44-year-old Phoenix resident walks down the dairy aisle, he keeps an eye out for the yellow tags advertising a discount, in return for scanning his plastic grocery discount card.

On one recent trip, he saved $10 on a $90 purchase.

And while Hanlon said he figured the store was keeping track of what he buys, he didn’t realize that — for a hefty price — that sort of detailed consumer data is being leveraged by political campaigns trying to decide whether Hanlon is someone they should target as a persuadable voter or even to hit up for a contribution.

“I remember as a kid hearing that when we grew up we would have bar-codes on our arms that would be scanned before we could buy anything,” Hanlon said. “It … Read More »

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission is considering a handful of changes to its legislative map, including proposals that would add another competitive district.

Placing the “I” word in front of Redistricting Commission doesn’t mean it’s really independent.

And the five commissioners — Democrats Linda McNulty and José Herrera, Republicans Richard Stertz and Scott Freeman and independent chairwoman Colleen Mathis — who soon will begin redrawing the state’s legislative and congressional district boundaries, are about to find out that politics, like desert sand in the summer winds, infiltrates everything, no matter what adjective modifies their group.

Politics, of course, is mobilization and persuasion, the handshakes, backslaps and wagging fingers in the opponent’s face. But the seeds of politics are in the unlikeliest of places: on a piece of paper. For it is the mission of the IRC, written in the Arizona Constitution, to satisfy six standards of electoral theory, and two of them are on a collision course: “communities of interest” and “competitive districts.”

Already, Hispanic activists … Read More »

It was a Saturday gathering that started with a sizzling race for chairmanship of the Arizona Republican Party, climaxed with a bare majority for the winner, then ended with the smiles and sounds of unity.

But now comes the hard part: the charting of the future of a party apparatus that boasts of electoral victories, but falls short in fundraising.

And with Tom Morrissey — late entrant in the race for the chairmanship, former U.S. marshal, Tea Party activist — now in charge of the state party, questions abound as to whether Republicans can overcome the growing can’t-be-too-far-right mood that mocks moderates and scares off big-money contributors.

A Tea Party chairman might encourage the continuation of diverting campaign money around the party structure and cause moderate Republicans to be boxed out of the party campaign machine in favor of more rigid Tea Party … Read More »