Journalists’ Roundtable: 4-28-23

Camryn Sanchez, Howie Fischer and Laurie Roberts joined Ted Simons, host of Arizona Horizon, to discuss the latest top stories of the week including Sanchez vs. Rogers, the tamale controversy and bible controversy, Cochise County elections and officials’ Medicaid and Education budget concerns.

Sanchez vs. Rogers

Camryn Sanchez, an Arizona Capitol Times reporter, joins us to discuss Sanchez vs. Rogers, with Laurie Roberts explaining what led to the case. “You have a young reporter who is doing her job. She’s a professional journalist,” Roberts said. “She’s doing an investigation, an entirely legitimate investigation, into whether a state senator lives in her legislative district. She [Sanchez] found her documentation to discover that this particular legislator, Wendy Rogers, who claims to live in a trailer up in Flagstaff in her northern Arizona district, has lived for a long time, a decade at least, in a house in Tempe, and in January bought a $750,000 house in Chandler and signed a piece of paper, a deed, I believe it was, saying that she was currently living in Tempe.”

Arizona Capitol Times is challenging this and has a lawyer.

Tamale Controversy

Governor Hobbs recently vetoed a bill that dealt with selling tamales. “You know what’s funny is this thing passed overwhelmingly in both the House and Senate, but then the Governor decided, ‘Oh, well, I don’t know,'” Fischer said. “And in a very stupidly-worded veto, she said she was concerned about rodent- and insect-infested kitchens. Now, let me tell you how that went over with Hispanic lawmakers. So you’re basically saying our kitchens are rodent infested? No, that was not a brilliant move,” Fischer said.