Larry Bodine

Larry is an intelligent, articulate, and insightful commentator whose views are shaped by a combination of journalism, entrepreneurship, law practice, and leadership.‎ ✍ He is an experienced leader, having served as Chair of the LD18 Democrats, and President of the Democrats of Greater Tucson, a teacher at the UA Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and Video Manager for Iskashitaa Refugee Network, ‎ ✍ A common-sense business leader, he operated a successful marketing consultancy for 20 years. He is skilled in fundraising, artificial intelligence, and online communications.‎ ✍He considers multiple viewpoints before forming an opinion. His ethos is the Boy Scout Law.‎ ✍ Larry is a lifelong writer, having worked as a seven-time award-winning journalist for the New York Daily News and as the author of 600 articles for the Blog for Arizona.‎ ✍He is a graduate of Amherst College and Seton Hall Law School and has also attended the University of Munich in Germany.‎ ✍He is not all work and no play. Larry enjoys singing and playing the guitar, hiking Tucson's beautiful trails, going on outings with his Portuguese Water Dog, weight training, and meeting his many friends for breakfast.‎ ‎** Scroll down to see my articles below. **

How to Vote on Arizona’s 8 Key Ballot Measures

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Print this out for future reference. Mail-in ballots will arrive on Oct. 10
Print this out for future reference. Mail-in ballots will arrive on Oct. 10

Faced with a corrupt State Legislature and Supreme Court, Arizona voters will have the chance to fight back on 8 public initiatives.

Teachers, elected representatives, and a transportation official explained the merits of the ballot initiatives at the recent
Tanque Verde Valley Democratic Club meeting.

Arrayed against voters are dark money interests and self-dealing corporations that are already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to sabotage ballot initiatives to fund public schools, renewable energy, and clean elections.

“I said that this Legislature is owned by dirty money on the state House floor, and I was gaveled down,” says state Rep. Pamela Powers Hannley. “We still have corruption in the state government.”

Echoing these remarks, Luci Messing, the chair of the Tanque Verde Democrats, says, “We have a very corrupt majority in the Legislature who are not looking out for us. We need to take them out. That’s why it’s so important we vote for people who are pro-education, pro-family and will do best for Arizona and not for their pockets or personal gains. It’s definitely one of those issues where we can make a difference. The power is in our hands.”

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George Cunningham, chairman of the Grand Canyon Institute

State pays $10,700 subsidy for private school students — 75 percent more than their public school peers

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George Cunningham, chairman of the Grand Canyon Institute
“Arizona can’t afford fiscally irresponsible private school subsidies that siphon money away from its public education system,” says George Cunningham, chairman of the Grand Canyon Institute

According to a new policy paper, Arizona’s two private school subsidy programs cost the state $10,700 on average per regular education student who would not otherwise have enrolled in private school. This imposes an additional $62 million cost to the state’s General Fund.

Published by the non-partisan think tank the Grand Canyon Institute (GCI), the policy paper $10,700 Per Student: The Estimated Cost of Arizona’s Private School Subsidy Programs looks at how the state’s two private school subsidy programs — private school tuition tax credit scholarships and Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) vouchers — have affected private school enrollment and then estimated a per student cost to taxpayers. 

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John C Scott back on KVOI

Podcast: What You Don’t Know About the Primary Elections

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In this 9/1/18  interview on the John C. Scott Show  broadcast on KVOI 1030 AM, Blog for Arizona writer Larry Bodine reveals his insights about the August 28 Arizona primary races. Topics include: Who turned out to vote in the primary election? Was it Millennials and Latinos? Astonishingly, 100,000 people voted for a convicted racist crook. … Read more

Rep. Victoria Steele and Pamela Powers Hannley

Victoria Steele Gets a Write-in Challenger for LD9 Senate Race

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Rep. Victoria Steele and Pamela Powers Hannley
LD9 state Senate candidate Victoria Steele with Pamela Powers Hannley, LD9 House representative.

Update: this was previously titled “Democrats Get to Pick their State Senator in Tucson’s LD9.”

After getting 22,590 votes in the Democratic primary for the LD9 state Senate race in Tucson, Victoria Steele has picked up a Republican write-in opponent.

Steele, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives from 2012 to 2016, collected 82.2% of the votes in the primary.

Now a political nobody called Randy Fleenor has gotten 698 write-in votes (363 were needed) to be the Republican candidate the November ballot. Fleenor is an electrical engineer who works at IBM. He spouts the usual GOP tripe about not raising teacher salaries, expanding school vouchers and not raising taxes.

Even though Fleenor has never been elected to public office, he was put up for the job by Republican national committeeman Bruce Ash. There will be an official hand count audit & write-in ballot tally on Sept. 1.

Steele vows to take action

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Omarosa Tell-All Book is Delicious, Nasty Reading about Trump

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During a speech at the White House last November, 71-year-old Donald Trump awkwardly reached for a bottle of water. Then he used both hands to drink it. It looked as if Trump had a small episode of some kind.

“I found it worrisome,” wrote Omarosa Manigault Newman, an assistant who had known him for nearly 15 years. “I believe that Donald Trump is physically ill. His terrible health habits have caught up with him.”

He’s obese, doesn’t exercise, eats junk food, has daily tanning bed sessions and drinks up to 8 cans of Diet Coke a day. When she first met him on The Apprentice in 2003, he was svelte and weighed 30 pounds less.

She estimates that over the last 15 years he’s poured 43,800 cans of Diet Coke into his system. Omarosa thinks it gave him dementia, based on a Boston University study linking diet soda to brain damage.

This is just one of the stories she tells in Unhinged, her nasty, trashy tell-all book about her time in the presidential campaign and the White House. Progressives will enjoy 334 pages of satisying Schadenfreude written by a woman scorned.

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