Winn Tucson

Guests - Nils Grevillius, Joel Strabala, Rick Shafton
Fifty-some days out from Arizona's general election, Kathleen Winn framed her Thursday show around a single contention: that the Democratic Party is in the middle of a civil war with its own socialist wing, that the same fight is playing out from Wisconsin to Pima County, and that the opening it creates is Arizona Republicans' to seize — or squander. Three guests carried it: a crime expert and Army veteran on the ideology and the geopolitics behind it, the LD17 chair on the mechanics of turning out the vote, and a national political consultant on the races that will set the tone in November.

Guests - Ava Chen, Joel Strabala, Dave Smith
Kathleen Winn's argument for the week was that the same force shows up in three places — the manipulation of American media, the mechanics of a Pima County ballot, and the intellectual history of a political movement — and that all three trace back to a hostility toward the American system itself. Her Wednesday show ran that thread through China Watch Wednesday with Ava Chen, the nuts and bolts of the general election with Joel Strabala, and a long conversation on socialism with former Pima County Republican chair Dave Smith.

Guests - Mark Mix, Tim Le Sota, Sine Kerr, Jay Tolkoff
Kathleen Winn's Tuesday show made a habit of taking the national and running it local — Medicaid fraud in California to Arizona's own pay-to-play problems, a WNBA controversy to a ballot measure on girls' sports, a union-dues scheme to the stakes of a governor's race. Four guests carried it: the head of the nation's leading right-to-work organization, the attorney chairing the Yes on 318 campaign, Arizona's first Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, and the citizen watchdog who has become the show's recurring guide to the Pima County budget.

Guests - Grant Krueger, Betsy Smith, Elijah Norton, Joanie Hammond, Joel Strabala
Kathleen Winn came into Monday's show off a weekend that captured the two halves of her season-long argument at once: a new downtown restaurant she treats as proof Tucson can be revived, and a packed Andy Biggs rally she treats as proof the state can be turned. The broadcast moved from a restaurateur to a police-association voice on women's sports, to the Republican nominee for state treasurer, to a pro-life advocate, to her elections chairman — five guests, one throughline. As Winn put it, the next few months would be spent "breaking down the real differences between the Republican Party and what is morphing into the socialism party."

Guests - Eddy Acevedo, James Rogers, Sergio Arellano, Rachel Alexander
Friday's broadcast ranged from a Caribbean island a few miles off Florida to a courtroom in Maricopa County, but Kathleen Winn tied every segment to the same argument she has pressed all season: that freedom is fragile, that elections are where it is defended, and that Arizona's is now on the line. A Cuba policy expert opened with a portrait of what communism does to a country over decades. An election attorney explained the lawsuit he filed that week over Arizona's SAVE Act ballot language. The state party chairman went after the governor's running-mate rollout. And a journalist introduced voters to the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor.

Guests - Josh Jacobsen, Betsy Smith, Dr. Carol Lieberman
Ninety days from Arizona's general election, Kathleen Winn devoted Thursday's show to a single argument built from three directions: that Tucson and Pima County are being run into the ground by the people in charge of them, and that the fix runs through the ballot. A crime-policy advocate laid out the local failures case by case. A national police spokesperson widened it to the state and to the federal help she says other cities have accepted. And a psychiatrist weighs in on New York's mayor.

Guests - Ava Chen, Robert Paylor
Wednesday's broadcast split cleanly in two. The first hour was China Watch Wednesday, where co-host Ava Chen used a fresh New York Times report on Chinese surveillance to argue that what the mainstream press is discovering now, the whistleblower movement she belongs to documented a decade ago. The second hour set politics aside entirely for a former national-champion rugby player who broke his neck, was told he would never move his hands again, and walked out of the hospital a year later. The bridge between them was a theme Kathleen Winn returns to often: that character is revealed in the moments when everything is on the line.

Guests - Alex Kolodin, Dave Smith, Stephen Mundt
A day after America First Legal sued Arizona's Secretary of State over ballot language, Kathleen Winn spent Tuesday's show connecting a single thread across three very different guests: the fight over how measures and candidates are described to voters, and what she argues is at stake if the descriptions win. The Republican nominee for Secretary of State explained the lawsuit. A former county chair turned to the sheriff, the courts, and Proposition 425. And a retired brigadier general widened the lens to Iran, the munitions supply, and the economics that, in his telling, socialism never accounts for.

Guests - Jay Tolkoff, Jack Dona
 

Guests - Brenda Marts, J.L. Wittenbraker, Yvette Serino, Seth Keshel
The Andy Biggs campaign opened Kathleen Winn's Friday with news: Biggs had named former state senator Sine Kerr as his running mate, making her Arizona's first Republican nominee for the newly created office of lieutenant governor. Winn described Kerr as the daughter of an Army combat veteran and a naturalized citizen from Mexico, a Buckeye dairy farmer of more than 40 years who represented Maricopa and Yuma counties in the state Senate, married 46 years to her husband Bill, with four children and 12 grandchildren in the West Valley. "Arizona is going to win big this November with Biggs and Kerr," she said, noting she had already put in an early request to get the ticket down to Pima County, and that the praise for Kerr was coming from both sides of the aisle — "already a good sign." With that, the show turned to its dominant subject: a county spending measure Winn wants voters to reject, and the ground game she says will decide whether Pima County matters in November.