Arizona Illustrated takes the Friday Roundtable on the road to Green Valley with special guest Ray Carroll, Pima County supervisor.

Watch it all after the jump.

Jon Stewart talked about things we're not thankful for last night, and Arizona Congressman John Shadegg—who last week dangled a baby on the House floor as a prop—makes the list after he suggested that terrorists should consider kidnapping New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's kids. Shadegg has since apologized, sorta.

We think Stewart should be thankful for Shadegg, who has made so many recent appearances on The Daily Show that he's practically a correspondent.

And you have to love the shot of the empty House that Shadegg was addressing at the time.

Tedski scoops us on the Rasmussen poll showing that McCain is vulnerable in a GOP primary to J.D. Hayworth, the sportscaster-cum-congressman-cum-radio talk-show host.

An interesting tidbit that shows the growing split within the GOP:

Hayworth, a conservative former U.S. congressman who now is a popular radio talk show host in Phoenix, is reportedly interested in the race but has not formally declared for it. He captures 59% of the male GOP vote, while McCain wins 58% of female voters.

Younger GOP voters like Hayworth more than their elders. McCain has a solid lead among the relatively small number of moderate and liberal Republicans in the state while Hayworth picks up a plurality (48%) of conservatives.

If the ongoing purge within the GOP were to claim McCain—McCain!—and J.D. were to become the nominee, that puts Democrat Rodney's Glassman's hopes of claiming the Senate seat in a whole new light.

ETA: On the other hand, Rodney probably can't be too happy about this line from Rasmussen:

For McCain, the GOP Primary appears to be his biggest challenge since no major Democrats in the state have stepped forward yet to run against him.

So I wrote about what was supposed to be the simple special session that everyone—or at least a majority of lawmakers—could agree on this week.

Not so much: The plan to snip some spending has collapsed in the Senate. Rhonda has details.

If they can't even get it going with this (relatively) simple stuff, how are they ever going to be able to fill a $2 billion hole?

Dave Devine stopped by a press conference regarding downtown's Coronado Hotel and files this report:

Several speakers blasted the Downtown Tucson Partnership's efforts to sell the Coronado Hotel, which has provided 42 units of low-income housing since 1991.

The Tucson City Council is now scheduled to discuss the plan at its next meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 24.

Almost 20 years ago, the building, located at Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street, was renovated, in part with local and federal tax dollars.

Glenn Lyons, who heads the Downtown Tucson Partnership, could not be reached for comment. But earlier press reports indicated Lyons thought the building could be turned into offices or even a hotel.

Ward 1 Councilwoman Regina Romero said today that the city needs to ensure that there are affordable housing options downtown.

"Slowly but surely we're losing them," Romero said.

Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias echoed that concern.

"We need to save the Coronado as affordable housing," Elias said.

Attorney Bill Risner said the Downtown Tucson Partnership was a "con game" and predicted the proceeds from the sale would go to help developers.

"We need to give the City Council a spine," Risner said. "They need to say no."

• City of Tucson
• Tucson Ward Map (At Red Star's Request)

The big takeaway: We live in a divided city.

As we suspected, Republican Steve Kozachik pulled off his upset of Democrat Nina Trasoff by driving up turnout on the east side, while Democrats failed to get their voters out on the west and south sides.

That’s been the formula for GOP success in city elections for more than a decade.

Republicans clobbered Democrats in east side Ward 2 and Ward 4, while Democrats whipped Republicans in wards 1, 3, 5 and 6.

Kozachik, who beat incumbent Democratic Councilwoman Nina Trasoff by 1,756 votes citywide, lost his own ward. Kozahick picked up just 40 percent of the vote in midtown Ward 6.

While the final margin that separated Kozachik and Trasoff citywide was close, the margins within the individual wards are big in the Ward 6 race.

In addition to losing Ward 6, Kozachik didn’t fare well in Ward 1 (40 percent), Ward 3 (42 percent) or Ward 5 (38 percent). But in Ward 2, Kozachick captured 61 percent of the vote. In Ward 4, he got 65 percent.

In those two eastside wards, more than 35,700 voters cast ballots, accounting for about 48 percent of the roughly 74,000 votes that were cast in the election.

Citywide turnout was 33 percent, but it was higher

Here’s a surprise from the recently wrapped city election: Democrat Richard Fimbres, who won the race to replace Steve Leal in Ward 5, was outspent by Republican opponent Shaun McClusky.

New campaign-finance reports show through Nov. 9, McClusky spent $90,211, compared to Fimbres’ $78,526.

McClusky, a political rookie, also managed to outraise Fimbres, despite Fimbres’ deep community ties.

McClusky raised a total of $49,649, which was matched by $45,822 in city matching funds.

Fimbres raised just $44,837, which was matched by $38,442 in city matching funds.

McClusky had trailed Fimbres in fundraising until the final weeks of the campaign. Between Oct. 15 and Nov. 9, McClusky raised $15,420, while Fimbres raised just $5,936.

McClusky spent a staggering $82,330 after Oct. 15, according to his campaign finance report. The spending included roughly $15,000 on robocalls and $54,500 on a mailer accusing Fimbres of mishandling money when he headed up the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

Those campaign expenditures were paid to Lincoln Strategy Group, which is run by Phoenix political consultant Nathan Sproul.

Here's McClusky's most recent report: McCluskyFinal.pdf

Here's Fimbres' most recent report: FimbresFinal.pdf

The dust is still settling from our 2009 City Council election, but candidates are already preparing themselves for next year’s midterm election.

In 2008, we had the seven-way super-slam in Legislative 29, where seven Democrats jumped into a primary for two House seats.

Something similar may be brewing for next year in midtown Tucson, where District 28 Rep. Dave Bradley is hitting his four-term limit.

Bradley’s seatmate, Rep. Steve Farley, will be seeking reelection, although he tells us he may not be using Clean Elections this time out because the publicly financed election program is facing a constitutional challenge that may eliminate matching funds, which would leave candidates who use the system in a bind should another candidate or an independent expenditure committee decide to spend a lot of campaign cash.

At least five other Democrats are looking at the race:

• Local Ted Prezelski, who made a run for the seat in 2006, has gotten a much earlier start on his campaign. Prezelski’s brother, Tom Prezelski, lost a House seat in the aforementioned seven-way super-slam.

• Democrat Tim Sultan, who lost a 2004 congressional primary to Eva Bacal back in the Age of Jim Kolbe, has lowered his sights to the state Legislature.

• Mohur Sidhwa, a former Democratic chair of LD28 and a current vice chair of the Arizona Democratic Party, is making her first run for a major office.

• Former LD28 House member Ted Downing is making noises about running, although he has not formally filed for the race. Downing now has an exploratory committee for an unnamed office.

• Bruce Wheeler, a former Tucson city councilman and a one-term lawmaker waaay back in the 1970s, is talking about making a political comeback.

Andrew Sullivan, as you might expect, is having a field day:

As this blog persistently demonstrated in last year's campaign, Palin is a delusional fantasist, existing in a world of her own imagination, asserting fact after fact that are demonstrably untrue, and unable to adjust to the actual reality after it has been demonstrated beyond any empirical doubt. The campaign's media strategy of making sure she was never in a position to be asked anything in an uncontrolled setting, and of never holding an open press conference (unprecedented in the history of presidential campaigns) were a response to this. The only interview that dared stray even a little from this fawning celebrity-deference, Katie Couric's, revealed Palin to be an astonishingly inept know-nothing, camouflaged by incessant victimology.

She is a deeply disturbed individual whose grip on reality is very weak, and whose self-awareness is close to nil. This much is not a leap, let alone unfair. It is simply unavoidable if one examines her surreal invention of reality - even when she must surely know that the evidence exists out there to contradict her.

As I have long noted, this is not the usual political mendacity and spin. It is far weirder and more disturbing than that. She creates her own reality. And the fact-indifferent, editor-free marketing company, HarperCollins, is only too willing to make some money off it.

A conversation with Ernest Calderon of the Arizona Board of Regents, after the jump.