We’ve talked quite a bit here about the history of Tucson, Arizona and how foolish they would be ever to sit down with the piranhas that are NFL negotiators regarding the foolish half-cocked Alazona proposal that was briefly floated to fill dormant offseason news cycles that, before signing their extension with the city of Oakland, the then-homeless-for-2019 Raiders could play half their home games in Birmingham and half in Tucson. But most of what we’ve discussed — [CH 1] the obvious logistical challenges; [CH 2] the unconsidered negative consequences to Tucson of actually pitching Alazona as a serious proposal; and,  [CH 3] a brief example of the millions wasted the last time the brain trust of Tucson attempted to step outside their wheelhouse of DUIs and dirt — has been backwards facing. “Sure”, some may argue, “Rio Nuevo took $400 million in funds to accomplish $40 million worth of progress but they got momentum now! If we were judged only on our failures, that lack of patience would have meant no Nick Saban dynasty at ‘Bama or Marvin Lewis’ in the Big Cin Sity.”

Besides, history will always be there for us to preserve and reflect on. What makes me think current leadership doesn’t have the stones…the huevos…the marbles, to sit down with professional scammers and come up with a win-win proposal that makes blax looks like nothing more than another bitter out of town hater that doesn’t understand the potential of this fine poverty-stricken near-border town and left instead of making it realize this fine destiny?

Well, let’s discuss.

First, Tucson’s current mayor, Johnathan Rothchild (D), is wrapping up his second term and will be passing the torch to the winner of this upcoming election. Rothchild, who first won the seat in 2011, could be credited with finally stopping the hemorrhaging of Rio Nuevo (discussed in CH 3) and knowing his role to stop fighting and just bend over for the state and private powers who were hell-bent on taking over the project. It worked and so, all in all, you can say he’s done an adequate job. Fun aside, the first time I watched Red Zone was when a buddy invited me to watch games one Sunday and it ended up being at the mayor’s adult son’s house. The guy was pretty elusive about sharing his last name until about an hour in it slipped and he confirmed that his dad was the mayor. He seemed like a pretty good dude but I can imagine more tactless guests would use the opportunity to take a jab at the guy. I did enjoy the Red Zone Experience, however.

What Rothchild is most known for — in a gaff-like manner — is having his city-owned Toyota Prius carjacked at gunpoint outside his house in 2017. The vehicle was recovered but the suspect was never caught. Tucson is a world-class city.

Now, before we move on to the current stable of candidates, I want to mention one thing. Tucson uses a city manager form of local government.  From Wikipedia:

Tucson follows the “weak mayor” model of the council-manager form of local government. The 6-member city council holds exclusive legislative authority, and shares executive authority with the mayor, who is elected by the voters independently of the council. An appointed city manager is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the city. Tucson is the only city in Arizona that holds officially partisan elections for city offices, with candidates being nominated through party primaries.

This is, frankly, a big part of the city’s problem. People elect a mayor to theoretically implement his/her agenda but, in reality, they just get one vote at the city council table and appoint a city manager (CM) to do the heavy lifting. As, I think I have made clear, Tucson tends to elect suckers who put morons in the CM position, it becomes a circle of failures yet the city refuses to change this structure. Guess it goes to show you don’t have to be poor and right wing to cling to stupid ideas that have proven not to work and consume the occasional conspiracy theory as a leap year type necessity to rebalance your understanding that fantasy exists in the real world but you just can’t see it.

For a point of reference, current CM Michael Ortega was selected by Mayor Rothschild immediately after a citizens advisory board met with the finalists (of nearly fifty applicants) and voted against hiring Ortega, recommending the hire of co-finalist Mary Jacobs. I don’t care to spend any time on Ortega here other to point out that he was selected by the elected mayor but was not suggested for hire by a citizens oversight committee. So basically, the structure of the city government is such that every decision has a built-in excuse/deflection/escape for any sense of individual responsibility. And it shows.

Oh! Which reminds me, before we get off the topic of Rothchild, Tucson had a brief stint of celebrity as a QAnon conspiracy theory popped up of child sex traffickers utilizing a shut-down ready mix plant as a travel base and, according to the nutjobs pushing the nonsense (for one thing, the plant isn’t in Tucson, it is in Pima County outside the city jurisdiction) Rothchild — because of the name, of course — had ties to the cabal that prevented appropriate investigations from exposing this criminal enterprise. Damn local governments always preventing federal law enforcement agencies from protecting brown children who would be better off sitting in a concentration camp for $700 a day to the Trump Inauguration Committee’s largest private-prison donors!

So, if you make the accusation that I never say anything nice about Tucson, just remember that I was the one who voiced that it’s different than 220+ square miles of Comet Ping-Pong [non-existent] basement.

But, again, what is past is prologue. Tucson is the midst of its primary season as mail-in ballots have already been sent out to let tallied and the citizens have choosen their next Democratic challenger for mayor. Similar to The Wire Season 3 (actually, in so many ways), Tucson’s overwhelming Democratic influence means that tne the winner of the primary will be the next Mayor. In fact, there isn’t even a MAGA republican candidate running (the threshold to get on the ballot — just 3,000 signatures) though independent Ed Acklerley is expected to be the challenger in the general who most-definitely be crushed by the winner of the dem primary.

So the next Mayor of Tucson will be current city council member Regina Romero. Romero, the first Latina to be elected to the city council in Tucson, is a career Tucson politician, graduating from the University of Arizona with a communications degree in 2000, working for the county for a few years, then beginning her 11 year stint on the council. Her husband is the district director for US Rep Raul Grijalva and she has been tied in with the local political machinery since first running for (and winning) her council seat in 2007. Romero, when she does win the general, will be the first woman mayor of the city and second mayor of latino heritage in the city’s history — the first being Estaban Ochoa in 1875.

I don’t have much to say about Romero in general. Would I want her to be the mayor of my town? Absolutely not. But, for Tucson, she’s probably perfect. While most famous for her desktop computer being stolen from her office right when the city was fighting a public records request related to a land deal where Grand Canyon University wanted to open a campus on the land of a defunct public golf course. I haven’t discussed this topic before but maybe we’ll get into it in a later chapter because this was actually a very good example of how Tucson handles negotiating — even if the then-for-profit GCU, with leadership that included Arizona business tycoon Jerry Colangelo, is no NFL franchise.

Actually — crap, I really should have covered the GCU-El Rio deal previously — I don’t have much to say about how a Romero administration would handle a room with NFL negotiators because it wouldn’t even be funny. Romero, who is really just biding time until she can make a run for a US Congressional seat (a la the Grijalva playbook), has no affinity for change. She’s politics plain and simple. A friend of mine once referred to her as like AOC without the agenda. It’s actually a pretty solid comparison. The same way the rest of Arizona will vote for any old white guy who ran an [anything] business, Romero is assumed to be a liberal powerhouse — but actually is way more moderate in the business-friendly (see: political donor) sense.

Personally, I think the use of the term ‘machine’ is overused when discussing the Grijalva influence in southern Arizona but, as a structural entity of the only viable political party in Tucson, the coziness of the Grijalva/Romero camp with the handful of influential area donors is quite problematic. That is to say, that handful of donors — Raytheon Missile System; the University of Arizona; local developers like Don Diamond and Humberto Lopez in addition to national homebuilders who are active in the area; and GWB mega-donor and car dealership big wig Jim Click — are a big part of what is “holding Tucson back”. By trying to exact change but without upsetting these donors is exactly why Tucson cannot exact worthwhile change. If Romero were asked to sit down with NFL negotiators, she’d give away the bank because the ‘machine’ would expect to be able to spin Alazona into a positive deal, regardless of the details.

Anyways, I had planned to get this all finished before the primary was over so we could discuss the other two candidates in the democrat primary — but they lost so that’s pointless now. So I’m gonna wrap this up but hopefully you’ve learned a little something about the political structure down in Tucson. Maybe next time we’ll get into who these power brokers are or cover more of the details of the GCU-El Rio deal. I dunno. Let’s see what happens.