38 MEGALOPOLITAN LIFE SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 | WWW.BESTOFPHOENIX2025.C0M | BEST OF PHOENIX 2025 Trump’s widdle-bitty birthday party. Who knows if the collective display of resistance has slowed Trump down, but it’s offered a soothing mental effect. Every time there’s a big protest, we can all remind ourselves that while the country may be crazy, we’re not. e e e B E S T B O O T L I C K I N G KARRIN TAYLOR ROBSON Name one super-Trumpy candidate who has won a statewide election in Arizona since 2016 — besides Donald Trump himself. It didn’t work for Kari Lake or Abe Hamadeh, despite their election-denying bullshit to the contrary. It didn’t work for Blake Masters. Tacking to the right hasn’t worked out in Arizona, where registered Independents outnumber Republicans or Democrats. That makes Karrin Taylor Robson’s gubernatorial candidacy all the more curious. Once consid- ered a business-oriented, moderate Repub- lican, the wealthy Taylor Robson has attempted to reinvent herself as Trump’s biggest sycophant in the Grand Canyon State. Despite Trump’s ballooning unpopu- larity, KTR glowingly endorses every Trump utterance and decision, no matter how dumb, cruel or illegal. If it seemed like such craven subservience would work and win her the governorship, maybe it would make sense. But the Trump wing of the GOP already hates her — see the cheers far-right primary challenger Andy Biggs got at the state party convention — and her constant Trump tongue-bathing causes moderates to throw up in the back of their mouths. Trump endorsed her, but he has also endorsed Biggs, so KTR may have sold her soul for nothing at all. e e e B E S T I N A B I L I T Y T O A C T N O R M A L F O R O N E D A M N S E C O N D ARIZONA DEMOCRATIC PARTY After a stinging election defeat, any self- respecting political party retreats to its corner, licks its wounds and methodically plots a new course to power. But whoever said the Arizona Democratic Party was self- respecting? Instead of rising from the ashes, Arizona Dems collapsed into chaos and self- parody. After painful losses in 2024, the state party booted its old chairperson and voted in little-known Robert Branscomb II in her place. Branscomb then united the party under his … yeah, that’s not what happened. Within months of taking the job, Branscomb had publicly feuded with the state’s top Democrats, spent money the party didn’t have, froze out others in party leadership and wrote off any opposition to his tenure as racist backstabbing. With the governorship and other huge statewide offices up for grabs in 2026, Arizona’s top Democrats ditched the state party to set up a new fundraising structure run through the Navajo County Democratic Party. Six months into his tenure, state Democrats voted Branscomb out of power. Will normalcy finally return for the Democratic Party? We dunno, does the Pope shit in the woods? e e e B E S T S I N O F O M I S S I O N ABE HAMADEH Pop quiz, hotshot. You’re Abe Hamadeh, the son of Middle Eastern immigrants, an Amer- ican success story who rose to become a first-term Congressman. Your MAGA buddies are pushing a scheme to ignore the guarantees of the 14th Amendment and rip birthright citizenship away from the chil- dren born to immigrant parents. “Huh,” you think, “MY parents were undocumented when I was born. I have birthright citizen- ship.” What do you do? Well, if you’re Hamadeh, you keep your trap shut, opening it only to question election outcomes and cheerlead the very party that would love to erase you from the country. That voice in your head is your conscience, Abe, or maybe one of your remaining brain cells. Listen to it once in a while. e e e B E S T C O R P O R A T E G I V E AWA Y AXON BILL It’s hard to have much sympathy for Scotts- dale, a hoity-toity town that notoriously hates apartments and the unwashed masses who rent them. But in opposing the political mach- inations to green-light a new headquarters for the Taser-making corporation Axon — a campus that will feature loads of new apart- ments — even Scottsdale and its far-right city council have a point. The Axon development was approved last year, before the new council took office. The plan sparked a movement to nix the project via ballot measure, a right guaranteed in the Arizona Constitution. However, state lawmakers happily tossed that aside when Axon threatened to leave the state if its new headquarters faced any roadblocks. A bill passed by a bipartisan group of legisla- tors and signed by Gov. Katie Hobbs ensured the Axon development will move forward. How? By depriving Scottsdale voters of the ability to put the matter on the ballot. Every
