Rothschild Launches Reelection Campaign

• Mayor Jonathan Rothschild: “Move Tucson forward!”

Mayor Jonathan Rothschild formally announced his plans to run for reelection last week.

Rothschild, who is finishing up his first four-year term, told Democrats and others gathered on the patio at downtown’s Connect co-working space that he was focused on “moving Tucson forward”—a slogan he tried to get the assembled crowd to chant with limited success.

“What this campaign is going to be about is people who want to come together, who have come together, who want to work for the positive for Tucson, as opposed to those who just want to continue to complain and continue to throw arrows,” Rothschild said.

He cited the city’s work to repave roads using bond dollars, a water deal with Phoenix, an initiative to end veteran homelessness and the ongoing downtown renaissance as accomplishments in his first term.
“Today, Tucson’s downtown is looking better than it has since I was a kid,” Rothschild said, “and yes, that was a long while ago.”

So far, the only person who has registered with the City Clerk’s Office to run against Rothschild is a filmmaker, Chuck Williams, a Democrat who has never sought public office in Tucson before. We haven’t had a chance to interview Williams just yet, but he did send over a DVD of a film he co-produced, Eddie Presley, the story of a “down-on-his-luck ex-Elvis impersonator. We haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, but “Film Threat” called it “a tribute to every rock band in L.A. who truly believes they’ll be the next Guns ’n Roses and every porn actress who knows she can out-act Julia Roberts.”

The rumored GOP mayoral candidate was Zach Catsorus, but The Range hears that his campaign may have hit a snag. We hit him up on Facebook to find out what’s up, but he didn’t get back to us.

While a GOP mayoral candidate may remain elusive, we now have at least three Republican candidates for this year’s City Council election.

This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2015.