Journalists’ Roundtable: Lake endorsed by national GOP group, bill eliminates early voting, Hickman resigns and more

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable. To discuss this week’s top stories, we were joined by Howie Fischer of Capitol Media Services, Laurie Roberts of The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, and Camryn Sanchez of KJZZ Radio.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Kari Lake endorsed by a national GOP group
• Hickman resigns
• Bill: Award Presidential electors before vote
• No short-term rental regulations
• Tamale bill part two
• Bill: Changes to Open Meeting law
• Bill eliminating early voting

Maricopa County offical Clint Hickman has resigned amid looming election

Howie Fischer: “Why does anyone want that job? Particularly as a Republican. It is a thankless job, even for the pay.”

Laurie Roberts: “Well, Bill Gates (a previous Republican county official that quit) was trashed so often and threatened so often he was diagnosed with PTSD. Clint Hickman has been the recipient of death threats; one guy called up and said, ‘We need to hang you.’ You know, it’s a tough, tough thing to do. These people have been egged on by politicians to see the opportunity to either move up on the food chain or grab some power or grab some money. They’ve created this myth about the elections they can’t prove, and they’re running regular, good, decent mainstream Republicans out of office.”

Camryn Sanchez: “He (Hickman) said he wanted to spend time with his family and work on his business. We’ve got five Maricopa County supervisors. It’s a large county, so that’s a pretty big responsibility. And four of the five right now are these sort of Republicans, of some of the same ‘ilk’ of Republican. And now we have two sort of question marks going into the next election: Are we going to see more MAGA Republicans joining our supervisors?”

No short-term rental regulations leaves many frustrated

Sanchez: “When it comes to housing and homelessness, STR’s (short term rentals, such as air bnbs) and just really everything in that realm, there hasn’t been that much of a radical change. People are frustrated because homeless is rampant, the cost of housing is high, and when it comes to STR’s, people have been asking for regulation because STR’s, when there’s a lot of them, fewer people can live in the neighborhood and be permanent residents there. It also means that there could be a lot of partying going on, a lot of littering, noise pollution, and it causes chaos and irritates permanent residents. So they’ve been asking for reforms, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this year again.”

Roberts: “Well, we used to have regulations, until, I think it was 2016.”

Fischer: “I literally asked the Governor at that time, I said, ‘What happens when people start buying up properties for that (STR’s)?’ That’s exactly what happened. Look at the housing in Sedona; 15% of Sedona is short term rentals. You cannot maintain a healthy, vibrant housing economy that way.”