50 MEGALOPOLITAN LIFE SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 | WWW.BESTOFPHOENIX2025.C0M | BEST OF PHOENIX 2025 always easy for politicians to relinquish what’s not theirs to begin with: the taxes Phoenicians dish out when purchasing over- priced tickets, hot dogs and tall boys at the ballpark we nominally own. e e e B E S T R I G H T - W I N G N U T T E R MIKE BROOMHEAD With a voice that mimics the sound of broken glass being scraped across concrete, KTAR radio host Mike Broomhead is living proof that lack of talent is no impediment to success, especially in the narrow lane of right-wing talk radio. Granted, Shovelhead, whoops, Broomhead’s great claim to fame is that he used to sub for wingnut conspiracy titan Glenn Beck. Remember him? (Don’t worry, it’s been a while.) Anyway, Broom- pile is a reliable Republican Party lap dog whose lips seem permanently affixed to predictably reactionary politicians and any law enforcement heinies he can find en route to his next ride-along with local cops, who can do no wrong in his book no matter whose rights they trample on. Whenever Republican Sheriff Jerry Sheridan is on Broom-lick’s show, for instance, you’d think Sheridan just saved Mike’s puppy from drowning in a nearby canal. Broom-putz is sure to let the softballs fly whenever a GOPer takes the mic, making one long for the days when talk radio meant challenging precon- ceived notions and doing something as radical as — OMG — taking calls from listeners. Now, the airwaves are jammed with annoying, one-sided authoritarian drivel like that of Broomhead. e e e B E S T L O C A L N E W S L E T T E R ARIZONA AGENDA ARIZONAAGENDA.COM No other single source reveals how the sausage is made better than the Arizona Agenda. It started in 2021 as a scrappy two- person labor of love built on grants, sweat and journalistic zeal devoted to helping average folks digest, dissect and discuss state politics. Along the way, this independent, online five-day-a-week operation has gained steam and reader support — enough to expand into covering Tucson, water issues, education and AI. But its meat-and-potatoes is following the state legislature in a way that’s savvy and sassy (believe it or not, they make state politics entertaining). If you want to know what your lawmakers are up to — or not up to, because they also report on who’s “working hard and who’s hardly working” — this is your guide. And although the name “agenda” indicates a certain bent, it doesn’t shy away from exposing Democrat misdeeds as well as Republican. Finally, the AA deserves praise if only because of their unflagging campaign to get a monument at the state capitol honoring investigative reporter Don Bolles, a Fourth Estate hero to many who was killed by a car bomb in 1976 while covering organized crime for the Arizona Republic. e e e B E S T P O L I T I C A L S O A P O P E R A SCOTTSDALE CITY COUNCIL Over in Scottsdale, a political catfight worthy of the town’s legions of Karens has unfolded. Onlookers have dubbed it “Parkingate.” While last year the city began to approve contracts to build two new parking garages near Old Town, newly elected Mayor Lisa Borowsky came in with a plan to scrap them after David Hovey Jr. — one of her donors — showed the mayor an alternate plan for a garage. She was unsuccessful in swaying the Scottsdale City Council, as she was the only one to vote to delay awarding the contract. After an anonymous complaint about Borowsky was sent to the Maricopa County Attorney, she was furious and sued to find out who was behind the complaint, suspecting two fellow councilmembers. Councilmember Adam Kwasman — who was not named — said the letter Borowsky’s lawyer sent to councilmembers “reads like Homer Simpson’s father yelling at squirrels to get off his lawn.” As it turns out, audio recordings of interviews with investigators show it was three council members (including Kwasman) who belong to the council’s far-right wing who wanted Borowsky out — one even called her a “bitch.” The bitterness and jabs make it the best soap we watched this year. e e e B E S T D U M P S T E R F I R E JESSICA BUENO Being friends with a child sex offender may be bad luck. Using the deed of your home to bail them out of jail is bad judgment. But doing all of that while being the president of an elementary school district’s governing board is a certified dumpster fire. This is the story Phoenix New Times unraveled about Jessica Bueno, the then-president of Phoenix Elementary School District No. 1’s governing board. Randall Denton, the owner of Xanadu Coffee and Bueno’s former business partner, was caught in a sex sting operation after an undercover officer, posing as a 14-year-old girl, messaged with Denton online and arranged a meetup for sex. When Denton arrived, he was met with a swarm of officers. Bueno bailed him out and lit her political career on fire in the process. A year later, the news broke. District parents sported “No Pedo, No Bueno” T-shirts to board meetings and called on Bueno to resign. She eventually did, but only after a fiery exchange with Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in a school board meeting. e e e B E S T D I V E B A R A D V O C A T E CLUE HEYWOOD Arizona’s Odysseus of the Dive Bars, Clue Heywood, should write a guidebook detailing his peregrinations through the Grand Canyon State’s ass-kickin’ caverns of cheap drinks, good times and spilt Friday beers. Heywood’s already composed the first draft, post by post, on X, highlighting taprooms such as Matt’s Saloon in Prescott, La Cabana Saloon in Wickenburg, Tucson’s Buffet Bar and the Dirty Drummer in Phoenix, to name a few. Heywood punctu- ates his Falstaffian escapades with the occa- sional digression about poltroons in power or the delights of taco truck comestibles, illustrating it all with barstool-snapped iPhone photos from his interminable night- time crawls. The low life never had a better ambassador than this pseudonym-ized attorney, draped in a silver Coors Light jacket, his face forever obscured to hide his real identity from the State Bar of Arizona and other such repositories of ill repute. e e e B E S T C H I L D A B A N D O N M E N T PHOENIX CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL For years, hundreds of transgender children and their families had been making life- saving trips to Phoenix Children’s Hospital to receive gender-affirming care in the form of hormones and puberty blockers. But after an unenforceable and likely unconstitutional executive order by President Donald Trump, the hospital decided to abandon those patients, leaving them in a state of limbo. PCH was the largest provider of gender- affirming care for transgender youth in the Valley. That changed dramatically in late January when Trump said the administra- tion would yank funding for any entity that supports trans kids under 19 years old. Fearful that they’d lose federal funding, PCH decided to pull the rug out from under trans kids and their families. Even after a judge temporarily blocked the order, care didn’t restart, and families have grappled with new decisions about moving out of state — or even the country. e e e B E S T D E M O C R AT YASSAMIN ANSARI Rep. Yassami Ansari started her tenure during a turbulent time. Many Arizona polit- icos were unconvinced that she would be the anti-Trump firebrand that her party so desperately needed — and that her primary opponent, Raquel Terán, surely would have been. Yet Ansari quickly proved doubters wrong. From the jump, Ansari positioned herself as a leader among Arizona Demo- crats — and congressional Democrats at large — as a strong voice against the Trump administration amid mass deportations, funding cuts and federal firings. She traveled to El Salvador in an attempt to visit the CECOT prison. She made multiple trips to the Eloy Immigration Detention Center to meet with detainees. She’s also held virtual and in-person town halls to share informa- tion with constituents affected by mass deportation efforts. Other democrats may have shied away from being the opposition, but in her first year on the job, Ansari has stepped up to the plate. e e e B E S T R E P U B L I C A N THOMAS GALVIN Given how completely Donald Trump has captured the Republican Party, this is a diffi- cult category to fill. But there are still a few not-crazy GOPers out there, and Maricopa County is particularly fortunate that Galvin, who chairs the powerful but perennially overlooked county board of supervisors, is one of them. Like former county recorder Stephen Richer, Galvin has little patience for Arizona’s unique breed of election denier. Indeed, with MAGA doofus Justin Heap now running the recorder’s office and waging war against the Republican-domi- nated board of supes, Galvin has regularly clowned Heap and called out his every misstep. He has provided a refreshing dose of sanity in an increasingly insane world, as well as a bulwark against the damage an unfettered Heap would do to elections in the state’s largest county. To be sure, Galvin is still a Republican — his positions on Israel’s war in Gaza, Trump’s attack against Iran and the need to speed up vote-counting could hardly be mistaken for liberal. He has also opportunistically railed against the ongoing independent oversight of the county’s prob- lematic sheriff’s office, griping about the price tag while sidestepping the agency’s languishing backlog of internal affairs cases. Then again, if he didn’t hold some of those positions, he wouldn’t really qualify for Best Republican, would he? e e e B E S T S P O T T O R U N I N T O A L AW M A K E R THE HISTORIC GOLD SPOT 1001 N. THIRD AVE. THEHISTORICGOLDSPOT.COM While meeting with your local state repre- sentative might not be on the average Phoe- nician’s to-do list, if you’re ever looking to spot one in the wild, The Historic Gold Spot is the place to do it. It’s less than 2 miles from the Arizona State Capitol and it’s not uncommon to see former state Representa- tive Raquel Terán chowing down on a gyro at Pita Jungle or House Speaker Steve Monte-
