Arizona
How Arizona Republicans for Harris redesigned their signs so they’re easier to read
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at how one Republican group backing the vice president in Arizona adapted their signs for the closing days of the campaign and why milk cartons in Northern California have a political ad opposing a local ballot measure.
Scroll to the end to see: “I Couldn’t Vote” stickers designed to draw attention to voter suppression. 🗳️
Of all the swing states he lost in 2020, former President Donald Trump lost Arizona by the smallest margin. Four years later, he could win it back.
Polls have shown Trump with a narrow lead in the state, where registered Republicans and independents outnumber registered Democrats. If Vice President Kamala Harris hopes to win in Arizona, then, she needs to build a broad coalition. Luckily for her, there’s Arizona Republicans for Harris.
The all-volunteer group, a political action committee formally called “Arizona Republicans Who Believe In Treating Others With Respect,” formed during the 2020 campaign in support of President Joe Biden. That first generation of yard signs showed the Arizona flag, a well-designed and popular state symbol. But they also had a major design flaw: hard-to-read type.
The group had sized the words “Arizona” and “Republicans” in small type to fit on either side of the Arizona flag’s copper star with a small “For” and king-sized “Biden” written below the star. Now, the signs are getting a home-stretch revamp with larger type.
Since many of the group’s physical signs are vandalized or taken, it has heavily devoted resources this year into digital billboards. The group has 30 digital billboards up now in the Phoenix area, with 50 total that will be in rotation in the week before Election Day. The group has also made about 750 yard signs and about 100 larger street signs, and they expanded their sign slogans to include “Arizona Independent,” “Moderates,” and “Conservatives for Harris,” as well as their latest iteration, “Arizona Together For Harris.”
“It looks really good because ‘Together’ is just about the same length as ‘Arizona’ and so it’s really symmetrical,” Arizona Republicans for Harris member Kelli Millett tells me of the new sign. It also speaks to the group’s larger message. “Our group wants unity and hope and respect.”
Despite their early hard-to-read signs, many of which are still up on street intersections, they’ve inspired copycats with disparaging slogans, like “Incels” and “Cucks for Harris,” that mimic the “Arizona Republicans for Harris” design with the Arizona flag. Inspiring parodies is proof at least that people have been reading, but the rival signs also reveal political divisions in local neighborhoods and congregations in cities and towns like Mesa and Gilbert in the Southeast Valley.
Political yard signs in Arizona are protected by law during campaign season, and signage is a major part of political messaging in the state. Signs can sometimes turn ugly with personal attacks, especially after early voting begins, though it doesn’t have to be that way.
For Arizona Republicans for Harris, the choice to use the state flag in the sign was “a way to communicate that we’re all Arizonans no matter what political party you’re in,” Millett says, not to mention “it’s an awesome flag.”
“We’re really proud of our design. We think it’s great and it seems like a great message about Arizona,” she says.
To Arizonans, the state flag is a symbol of self-identity that lends itself well to traits like independence and bipartisanship. Arizona’s political icons are notoriously independent, like “maverick” John McCain who ran for president with the slogan “Country First,” and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female U.S. Supreme Court Justice who was appointed by Ronald Reagan and became a key swing vote on the court. That gives the state a unique political culture. A recent survey from the nonpartisan Center for the Future of Arizona found about 60% of Arizonans want candidates who compromise and work across the aisle to find bipartisan solutions and 77% believe the state’s primary system rewards the most extreme candidates and should change.
Arizonans don’t always fit into tidy boxes—and proudly so. The state, famously, doesn’t follow daylight saving time. And no matter how Pluto’s classified elsewhere, in Arizona, it’s the official state planet (it was discovered in Flagstaff in 1930). By associating the state flag with cross-party voting, Arizona Republicans for Harris tap into a proud Arizona tradition of standing up for what you believe in, even if it isn’t popular.
Today’s multi-platform political campaigns reach voters across television, streaming, digital, outdoor, audio, and mail advertising. And in one California county, political ads are also popping up in the dairy aisle. Clover Sonoma is utilizing its milk cartons to urge voters to reject Measure J, which would limit the size of dairies and “concentrated animal feeding operations” in Sonoma County.
“No on J,” reads the ad, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “Keep Local Dairy. Keep Dairy Local.”
Milk cartons have, in the past, been used for public service announcements for missing children, but dairy packaging is an otherwise unexpected place to find anything other than nutritional information.
“We never thought we’d be making political ads, but when an activist group submitted a ballot measure that would outlaw organic, multigenerational, American Humane Certified family farms based on the number of cows they have, we knew we had to communicate our opposition on our cartons,” Michael Benedetti, a spokesperson for Clover Sonoma, told the Chronicle.
Proponents of Measure J say it would protect animals, water, and small farms, but those opposed to it include the Sonoma County Farm Bureau board president, both the county Democratic and Republican parties, and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat editorial board, which said it puts local farms at risk. The county auditor found that if passed, the ballot measure could potentially reduce sales tax revenues and increase property tax revenues.
Luckily for Measure J opponents, they also have the goodwill earned by a 108-year-old regional milk brand on their side. Clover Sonoma is known in Northern California for its mascot Clo the Cow, who appears on billboards, and the dairy’s request to its customers is for an issue that impacts them directly.
By appealing to potential voters in the dairy section with an ad that stays in the fridge until its “best by” date, Clover Sonoma has achieved the kind of targeted advertising that most political professionals can only dream of.
This brilliant new “voting” sticker is designed for the millions of people who can’t vote. The creative agency Public Domain worked with VoteAmerica to create the “I Couldn’t Vote” sticker to raise awareness about voter suppression, which impacts 30 million people according to VoteAmerica. [Fast Company]
How Republicans pushed social media companies to stop fighting election misinformation. Since 2021, the social media industry has undergone a dramatic transformation and pivoted from many of the commitments, policies and tools it once embraced to help safeguard the peaceful transfer of democratic power. [CNN]
Democratic allies promoting third-party candidates. In difficult House races in Alaska and Montana, Democratic-linked outside groups are trying to boost third-party candidates who could siphon votes from Republicans. [Politico]
Harris to make “closing argument” speech at the site of Trump’s Jan. 6 remarks. The vice president plans a large rally a week before Election Day at the location in Washington where former President Donald Trump spoke ahead of the riot. [NBC News]
Trump’s closing message of the campaign is us vs. they/them
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Theodore Roosevelt bear belt buckle (1904). Roosevelt was associated with bears after he refused to shoot one on a 1902 hunting trip the year after he assumed the presidency following the assassination of William McKinley. Bears showed up on items like this belt buckle and on a match safe.
Portions of this newsletter were first published in Fast Company.
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Arizona
New study reveals how victimized Arizona women end up behind bars
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — It’s a first of its kind study to better understand an often overlooked group of people: women behind bars.
“No other jail system in the country is doing this,” said Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, director of Arizona State University’s Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research. “Many of them have offenses that are related to other people’s interference. So whether they were forced to commit that crime with someone else, they were under someone else’s control.”
Roe-Sepowitz spearheaded the effort that explores the pipeline between victimization and incarceration for Arizona women. What she uncovered was even worse than she expected.
“The scope of trauma, the sheer amount of violent experiences was a surprise to me,” she said.
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Brandon Smith teamed up with Roe-Sepowitz for this project.
Since 2018, they’ve worked together to identify and support sex trafficking victims inside county jails.
“A lot of them could be they were more of a victim than a suspect in a crime,” said Smith.
In May 2025, the pair decided to dig deeper with a survey to learn more about the life history of all female inmates.
“We didn’t want to re-traumatize them. We were very careful about asking appropriate questions in the right way,” said Smith.
More than 400 women in the Estrella Jail completed the questionnaire which represents 49% of the female population.
The results show most are mothers, locked up for drug offenses.
77% reported a mental health diagnosis, more than 78% have been homeless, just over 50% have been sex trafficked, and 80% said they were victims of domestic violence.
With that knowledge, there is hope that jail programs can help break the cycle.
“We’re able to tailor programming to that in order to hopefully keep them out of jail, become more productive members of society, be with their children,” said Smith.
About 14% of participants were there for their first arrest.
New trauma-informed programs and training will soon be implemented.
“We’re looking at what can we do for that 14% that are here for the first time to hopefully make sure it’s their last time,” said Smith.
“How to build hope for the future, how to stabilize their life, how to continue the relationships they have in healthier ways,” said Roe-Sepowitz.
More research is on the way. ASU just wrapped up a similar survey in the Perryville prison and plans to conduct it again at Estrella Jail this year to collect additional data.
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Arizona
This prominent attorney collects art to celebrate his Mexican heritage
ASU professor talks about writing Day of the Dead book
ASU professor Mathew Sandoval talks about why he wrote “Día de los Muertos: A Chicano Arts Legacy” at the Mesa Arts Center on Oct. 25, 2025.
Prominent Arizona attorney Jose Cardenas loves to show off his vast collection of Mexican and Mexican American art.
But he once made a fool of himself arguing with the legendary Mexican journalist Elena Poniatowska over a piece of artwork on display in his spacious 4,000-square-foot Chandler home.
Cardenas was giving Poniatowska a tour of his art collection during a reception he hosted for the writer. She was in town giving a lecture at Arizona State University.
“This is a self-portrait of Siqueiros,” Cardenas remembers telling Poniatwoska, referring to David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of Mexico’s three most famous muralists.
Poniatowska took a look at the sketch and shook her head, “No it’s not.”
The two got into a back and forth, with Cardenas continuing to insist the man depicted in the painting was Siqueiros.
“That’s what they told me when I bought it at the gallery in San Francisco,” Cardenas remembers telling the Mexican author.
Finally Cardenas backed down, thinking, “She’s getting up in years. I’m not going to embarrass her and argue with her.”
A few days later, Cardenas was flipping through TV channels. He came across a PBS documentary about the 1970 Chicano riots in East Los Angeles. The documentary highlighted a portrait Siqueiros had painted in homage to Ruben Salazar, the Los Angeles Times journalist killed by a tear gas canister fired by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy during the protests.
Poniatowska was right. The figure in the painting was not Siqueiros, the Mexican muralist. It was indeed Ruben Salazar, the Los Angeles Times journalist, as painted by Siqueiros.
Cardenas tells this story when he gives tours of his art collection to visitors. They break out in laughter.
“You were mansplaining” one visitor told him. “No, I was being an idiot,” Cardenas said, “because why would you argue with her, of all people. She knew (Siqueiros). She wrote about him. She interviewed him. Not the person to say, ‘No, you are wrong.’”
Cardenas built prestigious career from humble roots
The personal art tours Cardenas hosts weekly at his home are peppered with similar stories that showcase his self-deprecating humor and highlight his enormous pride in his humble upbringing and Mexican heritage.
Cardenas comes from modest working-class Mexican immigrant roots. But he rose to become one of the most prominent and successful attorneys in Arizona. He has used his considerable wealth to amass what artists say is the largest collection of Mexican and Mexican-American artwork in the state, which he shares often with visitors during various events at his home, from personal tours to his annual post-Christmas bash.
Born in 1952, Cardenas is the son of an immigrant dad from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, and a Mexican-American mom. Cardenas grew up in Vegas Heights, a working-class Hispanic neighborhood west of Las Vegas that was still segregated. His father, Fortunato Cárdenas Sánchez, had a sixth-grade education. He worked as a foreman for construction company that laid pipelines. He was killed in a work accident when Cardenas was 15.
His mother, Gloria Frances Gómez Vigil, was born in a small town in northern Nevada to Mexican immigrant parents who eventually moved to Las Vegas. She only attended school through eighth grade.
After his father died, Cardenas, the second-oldest of four children, wanted to quit school and work to help his family with finances. But Cardenas was a good student, and his mother insisted he stay in school and encouraged him to attend college.
Cardenas became the first person in his family to graduate from high school and then college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and then a law degree from Stanford.
After law school, Cardenas clerked for a federal judge in San Francisco and then moved to Arizona in 1978 to work for the powerhouse law firm Lewis and Roca. Cardenas mostly handled commercial litigation but also did pro bono work on death penalty cases. In 1999, he was named managing partner, becoming one of the few Hispanic managing partners of a major law firm in the nation.
In 2009, Cardenas left Lewis and Roca to serve as chief legal adviser and senior vice president at Arizona State University, a position he held until 2022.
For nearly 20 years, Cardenas also hosted Horizonte, a public affairs show focusing on Arizona issues through a Hispanic perspective on Arizona PBS (KAET-TV Channel 8). He stepped down in 2023. Now semi-retired, the 73-year-old Cardenas continues to serve as special senior university adviser at ASU.
Cardenas and his Mexican-born wife, Virginia, were childhood sweethearts. When Virginia turned 15, Cardenas was one of the escorts in her quinceañera coming-of-age celebration. The two then began dating in ninth grade. They married when Cardenas was 19 and Virginia was 20 by one month. She worked as a counselor at Chandler High School. She died in July 2012 of kidney cancer.
Cardenas and Virginia bought their first artwork when he was still a financially struggling law student at Stanford. The two prints Cardenas purchased from a fellow student are now among the thousands of pieces of artwork that adorn his home.
Couple made frequent trips to purchase art
Cardenas said he and Virginia were introduced to the world of Mexican and Mexican American art when they moved to Arizona and met artists Zarco and Carmen Guerrero at a party. They are the founders of Xicanindio, the original name of Xico, a nonprofit organization that promotes Latino and Indigenous art and culture.
The couple became deeply involved in the organization. Virginia became the program director for several years and Cardenas served on the board of directors, including a stint as president.
Over the years, Cardenas and Virginia traveled frequently to Mexico City, Sante Fe and San Francisco to purchase paintings, crosses, ceramics, prints and pottery that cover practically every inch of Cardenas’ ranch home in Chandler.
Cardenas said he considers the collection an embrace of the Mexican heritage he and Virginia shared.
“It’s pride,” Cardenas said during an interview at his home.
“Virginia was born in Mexico. She came here when she was eight,” Cardenas said. “And I never considered myself Mexican American because when I was growing up, those terms weren’t used. So we were Mexicans.”
After Virginia died in 2012, Cardenas commissioned East L.A.-born artist George Yepes to paint a portrait of her. Yepes is best known as the artist who painted the cover of the 1988 Grammy Award-winning album by Los Lobos, “La Pistola y El Corazón.”
At first, Yepes turned down the commission after Cardenas showed her photo of Virginia, who was known for her dazzling smile.
“I can’t do it,” Cardenas recalled Yepes saying. “She’s always smiling. I don’t do smiles.”
A few weeks later, Yepes emailed Cardenas. “I think I can do it.”
The 7-foot-tall portrait Yepes painted of Virginia now hangs in Cardenas’ living room, where it dominates one of the walls. Cardenas considers it his most treasured piece, along with a portrait by a different artist of his three grown sons when they were young.
“The funny thing about this is she was pretty short, she was barely five foot tall. This painting is seven feet. And she’s sitting down. So talk about bigger-than-life-size,” Cardenas told a group of visitors during one of his tours.
Home is an art gallery, with frequent visitors
Cardenas frequently opens his home to visitors, serving as docent as he escorts visitors from room to room, telling stories along the way about various pieces of artwork.
In addition to the personal tours, Cardenas hosts an annual open house to showcase the ofrendas he creates in honor of Dia de los Muertos. At his Day of the Dead open house in November 2025, during the Trump administration’s ongoing mass deportation effort, one of the ofrendas focused on immigration. The ofrenda included photos of Cardenas’ relatives from Mexico, along with numerous quotes by Pope Francis that Cardenas printed out and framed.
“Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity,” read one quote.
“It is necessary to respond to the globalization of migration with the globalization of charity and cooperation, in such a way as to make the conditions for migrants more humane,” read another.
Cardenas also hosts an annual Los Tres Reyes Magos party every January in honor of Three Kings Day, a Christian holiday that is popular in Mexico and Latino America and marks the biblical visit of the three kings to the baby Jesus. This year’s party, attended by some of the most influential people in Arizona, will be Jan. 10.
One of the most powerful pieces on display in his home is a painting Cardenas commissioned as a tribute to the victims of the 2022 mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The shooting killed 19 students and two teachers, and injured 21 others. The artwork, which Cardenas displays in his dining room, also was painted by Yepes, the artist who painted the portrait of Virginia.
The painting depicts a woman draped in an American flag, her arms and hands outstretched in the shape of a crucifix, with swords piercing her exposed heart, while doves flutter around her head, wrapped in a crown of thorns.
‘Everything they have in the collection was for them’
One of the most striking pieces is a massive Talavera ceramic jar created by artist and restauranteur Gennaro Garcia, a native of San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, who now lives in Phoenix. Garcia created the piece in Puebla, Mexico, where he studied the hand-painted Mexican ceramic artform that blends Spanish and Indigenous influences.
Cardenas had the piece shipped to his home, where he had to remove the table from his kitchen to make room for the artwork, which towers over six feet in height.
Garcia said he strived for years to have his artwork included in the Cardenas’ collection.
“As an artist, you want you want to be in in collection that you admire,” Garcia said. “His collection was already so good, and I wanted to have my name associated with those other artists” and with Virginia and Jose Cardenas as collectors.
Garcia describes the collection as a love story between the couple.
“Everything they have in the collection was for them,” Garcia said. “I always remember them standing in front of the art, talking about it, and then deciding to buy it” as a couple.
Garcia said he was not aware of a larger personal collection of Mexican and Mexican American artwork in Arizona.
“It’s the biggest one. Easy,” Garcia said.
Cristina Cardenas, a Mexican-born artist based in Tucson, agreed.
“In Arizona, to tell you the truth, I haven’t met anybody else with a bigger or more rich collection” especially of Mexican-American and Arizona artists, said Cardenas, who is not related to Jose.
She has sold numerous paintings to Cardenas. The collector also has commissioned her to paint several murals at his home, including a mural of a smiling Virginia that adorns an outdoor wall in the home’s sizable patio, and a mural of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo that greets visitors to his home.
The artist said Cardenas and Virginia have supported many artists through their collecting. They have played a role in opening the door for Latino artists to sell their work to other collectors, Cardenas said, noting that she once sold a print to former Arizona governor and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano through an introduction by Cardenas.
“It’s a commitment to represent our people, our communities, and to represent Mexico and the really highest rich cultural history that it has,” the artist said.
She noted that visitors will notice that Cardenas and Virginia have had a strong interest in collecting female figurative art. They were influential in shifting Xico artists away from depictions of low-riders and other traditional Chicano symbols toward prints and paintings that celebrate female figurative art.
Cardenas the artist, and others, often wonder what will happen to the massive collection after Cardenas is gone.
“It has to be preserved and it has to stay together. That’s my recommendation,” Cardenas the artist said.
Collection is a priceless legacy
Jose Cardenas said he isn’t sure what will become of his collection. He knows that some of the pieces will be passed down to his children and family, including the portrait of Virginia. The rest may go the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University, he said.
In the meantime, his collection continues to expand. He recently mounted two new pieces by renowned contemporary American artist Ayana Jackson, who reconstructs the portraiture of the 19th and early 20th centuries to, according to her bio, “assess the impact of the colonial gaze on the history of photography.”
The two pieces Cardenas acquired depict the artist suspended in midair in a battle stance while in character as Adelita, the Mexican female revolutionary soldier.
Arizona
Multiple freeways closed as snow moves into northern Arizona
A snowstorm hits Flagstaff in early January 2026
People play in snow, build a snowman, sled and a dog gets the zoomies in Flagstaff, Arizona, on Jan. 8, 2026.
Provided by Discover Flagstaff
A winter storm sweeping across the state was dumping snow and whipping up gusty winds in northern Arizona, forcing multiple highway closures and travel advisories throughout the region.
Snow moved into the high country early Jan. 8 and was expected to continue through the afternoon and evening. Flagstaff had picked up 2 to 4 inches, with snow reaching lower elevations, including Prescott and Sedona, according to the National Weather Service in Flagstaff.
“In our area we expect it to come to an end here later this afternoon and early this evening, with only an inch or two more here in the Flagstaff area,” said Brian Klimowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Flagstaff. “It’s going to continue this evening and overnight to our east.”
Snow levels dropped as a cold front moved into the region, falling from about 6,000 feet at sunrise to as low as 4,000 feet by late evening. Forecasters say heavier snow was likely this afternoon and evening as the system moves through.
“Roads are bad right now,” Klimowski said. “The highways will be very slick, and we expect conditions will remain in a deteriorated state here this afternoon to this evening, especially along and east of the I-17 corridor.”
Which highways are closed in northern Arizona?
Several major highways across the high country were closed on Jan. 8 due to winter weather and related crashes, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.
As of the afternoon, the following closures were in place:
- Interstate 40 eastbound at US 93 (milepost 72)
- Interstate 40 eastbound at State Route 89 in Ash Fork (milepost 146)
- Northbound Interstate 17 at State Route 169 (milepost 278)
- State Route 64 (both directions) between mileposts 244-264
ADOT said there is no estimated reopening time for any of these highways.
Drivers can check the latest road closures and travel conditions through ADOT’s AZ511 system, with an online interactive map and mobile app. Information is available at AZ511.gov or by calling 511 from within Arizona.
Snow, wind and cold persist
Flagstaff could see snow totals around 2 to 5 inches, with more at the higher elevations. Snow will continue across eastern Arizona into the evening Jan. 8 and early on Jan. 9, including parts of Black Mesa, the Chinle Valley and the Chuska Mountains.
Gusty winds could reduce visibility, especially in areas with blowing snow. Winds will shift northerly overnight, summoning colder air as the system departs.
“It’s going to dry out,” Klimowski said. “It’s going to be cold and blustery tomorrow and then a slow warming trend through much of next week.”
Lows on Jan. 9 will be 10 to 15 degrees below normal, with wind chills near zero in the High Country. While snow will cease by Jan. 9, slick roads and hazardous conditions could remain,
“Be careful if you’re traveling tonight,” Klimowski said. “It’s going to be slick out there.”
Why does it snow so much in Flagstaff? Here’s what to know
Flagstaff may be in a state known for its scorching summers and years-long droughts, but it is one of the snowiest cities in the United States.
Hayleigh Evans writes about extreme weather and related topics for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Email her with story tips at hayleigh.evans@arizonarepublic.com.
(This story has been updated to add a new video).
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