Journalists’ Roundtable: Biggs’ rally launch and budget delay

It’s Friday, which means it is time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable. This week, “Arizona Horizon” host Steve Goldstein was joined by Camryn Sanchez of KJZZ, Dennis Welch of AZ Family and Mark Brodie of KJZZ.

This week’s topics:

• Andy Biggs holds first gubernatorial campaign rally in Phoenix
• Arizona Democrats to meet in Tucson on Saturday
• Ruben Gallego’s stance on trans athletes
• State budget: Are lawmakers making progress, or is it still stalled?
• Katie Hobbs concerned about ICE agents pretending to be utility workers
• Hobbs vetoes measure to prevent China from buying property in Arizona
• Greg Stanton starts Extreme Heat Caucus
• Warren Petersen on desalination in Colorado River talks

On Andy Biggs’ rally:
Camryn Sanchez: “A lot of it was what you would expect. There was a big focus on Trump, and he pledged to do away with some of the stuff that [Governor] Katie Hobbs has been doing, like some of the bills she’s vetoed he promised to bring them back and pass them as soon as possible.”

Dennis Welch: “What kind of stood out for me from the Turning Point rally was the fact that Andy Biggs decided to make an issue of the fact he has Donald Trump’s phone number. Because I guess in politics, these kinds of things matter when Donald Trump has dual-endorsed, he’s endorsed both these candidates. We know how important Trump’s endorsement is, so now they’re trying to separate themselves to show who’s closer to Donald Trump.”

Mark Brodie: “Depending on how the big beautiful bill debate in the Senate goes, Medicaid could once again end up being a big topic of discussion during the next election. And I’m guessing that if he is the nominee, that’s something we’re gonna hear a lot about from the Hobbs campaign.”


On foreign land ownership bill veto:
Camryn Sanchez: “When Hobbs vetoed the bill, she put out a statement and said basically this is not effective in counter-espionage and that the way the bill is written could affect other issues like arbitrary enforcement of the law. I was a little surprised by how much pushback and blowback there was on social media and even a little bit of national news over that veto.”

Dennis Welch: “I think what really started this was Fox, the national news outlet, got a hold of this and saw maybe a chance to put veto, democrat, china all in the same headline and play some politics. Arizona, viewers of this show know, it’s an important swing state. There’s always a lot of politics going on.”

Mark Brodie: “With the legislature not doing a whole heck of a lot at least publicly, if the Senate gets in the chamber and holds a vote, we’re all gonna be talking about it. Because, if for no other reason, there’s really much to talk about right now politically, at least from the legislature.”

On state budget:
Camryn Sanchez: “The main issue seems to be between the House and the Senate. The House and the Senate are not on the same page even though they’re both run by republicans.”

Dennis Welch: “It’s worth reminding everybody, every year we go through this kinda exercise. Will they, or won’t they get this budget passed before the Government shuts down on June 30 or July 1. They’ll come up with something, what that looks like I don’t know.”

Mark Brodie: “This is pretty typical, right. The budget gets done and there’s sort of like a flood of other bills that have been sorta backed up, waiting for the budget to be done that come out. Prior to that, while they’re doing paperwork or whatever between the House and Senate, or immediately after the budget, sorta these last several bills before they can wrap up.