Journalists’ Roundtable: Troubling allegations involving Mark Lamb and more

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable, where we discuss Arizona politics. This week, “Arizona Horizon” host Ted Simons was joined by Jeremy Duda of Axios Phoenix, Wayne Schutsky from KJZZ Radio and Mary Jo Pitzl, a freelance journalist.

This week’s topics included:

• Mark Lamb

• Budget update

• Heap vs. Board of Supervisors

• PBA appearance: Haley vs. Norton

• APS rate hearing

Allegations involving Mark Lamb

Wayne Schutsky: “The context there is this is a very Republican district. Whoever wins this primary is going to win the race, most likely… Lamb is the favorite, he’s got President Trump’s endorsement, so whether this is enough to knock that wind out of the sails, I mean, we’ll see. But, he’s running as a family-first, family-values type of candidate, and then when you have these messages come out… it does definitely undercut family values in a district that is very religious, very heavily oriented towards family.”

Mary Jo Pitzl: “I think those [alleged threat] allegations really targeted one woman in particular who, she is deceased, but she left behind a very rich trove of digital evidence, if you would, of her encounters with Lamb. As he neared his campaign for sheriff, he asked her to just take the stuff down, don’t post any more. And when she started questioning that and sort of gave him a hard time, he threatened her with prosecuting her under the state’s revenge porn law, even suggesting that he had contacts at the Department of Public Safety that could spell bad things for her. Didn’t stop her.”

Jeremy Duda: “He hasn’t really responded to the individual allegations. There was kind of a blanket statement from an attorney saying these are misleading and defamatory and harmful, but he did not address any of the specifics. Which is going to, I think, leave a lot of people wondering which parts are you referring to, what specifically isn’t true?”