Journalists’ Roundtable: Blake Masters, Jenna Ellis, Election Task Force Proposals and more

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable. To discuss the week’s top stories, we were joined by Bob Christie with Capitol Media Services, Jeremy Duda with Axios Phoenix, and Mary Jo Pitzl with The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Blake Masters announcing his run for Senate
• Jenna Ellis’ plea
• Elections Task Force proposals
• Fontes vs. No Labels Party
• Anna Tovar named to State Board of Education

Blake Masters runs for Senate

Mary Jo Pitzl: “Blake Masters does not live in this district, he ran for U.S. Senate from Tucson. He did campaign videos showing himself with his family in Tucson. I’ll be curious to see if Masters establishes any kind of temporary homestead in the 8 districts, it’s going to be a long campaign.”

Bob Christie: “Anybody who has West Valley experience is going to be in this as well. It’s going to be a knock-down drag out in the primary.”

Jeremy Duda: “Folks maybe want someone who has connections to the West Valley, it’s a very distinct area of the Phoenix-metro area. Right now, the two leading candidates do not live there.”

Jenna Ellis‘ Plea

Mary Jo Pitzl: “I can’t remember if Ellis recorded a video prior to taking the plea that will be there for prosecutors to use, but if she did, I would assume that our Attorney General would be very eager to take a look at that.”

Bob Christie: “She’s getting probation, so she gets a felony, that is a bad problem for her and her career. If she participates, she stays out of jail.”

Jeremy Duda: “Is it possible that folks like this, if people in Arizona are going to be facing an indictment, could that extend to people outside of the state, if the investigation goes how the democrats are hoping for it to go.”