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Arizona Talks co-founder Jered Scrivner argues that most candidates are more likely to lose than win, and should campaign that way: on the positions they actually hold, not the ones they think will get them elected. Even a losing campaign, he writes, can push public debate somewhere more honest.
After learning to disagree well through high school speech and debate, Nivea Krishnan and two fellow Arizona Talks leaders make the case for expanding an activity only 48 of the state's roughly 560 high schools can offer.
The bipartisan town hall has all but disappeared from Arizona politics. A freshman legislator decided to hold three anyway, and found that civility still holds when voters get room to be heard.
“The strength of our nation depends on our ability to see ourselves—and others—as more than who we vote for. Our country needs you and me to be more than our political identities.”
I’ve spent more than three decades in Arizona’s public life — most of it in media, where the job is to observe, analyze, and, at times, amplify the noise. For a long time, that felt like enough. You cover the story. You move on to the next one. But something changed. In recent years, especially around our elections, I found myself less interested in the daily headlines and more drawn to what was happening underneath them. The arguments were getting louder, the lines sharper, the trust thinner.
We're launching Arizona Talks Voices: a new platform for the kind of writing that civic life has been calling for.
Arizona Talks Voices is produced in partnership with the Arizona Local News Foundation.
