T hey say it’s bad form to bring up politics at Thanksgiving dinner. Better to stick to pleasantries about the kids and sports rather than getting Kinda Racist Uncle Larry ranting about vaccines. But you know what we say here at Phoenix New Times? Screw that. Go nuclear. Collegial Thanksgiving holidays are forgettable ones. We say drop Donald Trump’s name into the mashed potatoes, take a step back and enjoy the rapid dissolution of polite society. Thanksgiving might as well be like every other day. That’s what we’re doing at New Times this week. As we did last year, we’ve picked out the biggest turkeys of 2025. These are people who lied, who obfuscated, who kept problematic company and who generally had trouble keeping their heads out of their asses. Each deserves a good roasting. Here are this year’s biggest losers. It’s been a rough year for Justin Heap, the election skeptic who ousted centrist Republican Stephen Richer from the county record- er’s job last year. In his first year as Maricopa County Recorder, Heap has bumbled his way into controversy after controversy. He’s beefed the Republican-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors almost since the moment he took office. He has accused the board of usurping election administration duties that are rightfully his, going so far as to sue the board over a planned audit of their shared IT systems. (He’s already lost once in that case.) But that’s just one of Heap’s many flubs. He’s also been caught lying about firing staffers who resigned before he took office. He mistakenly sent mailers to 83,000 voters that said they’d be marked as inactive voters, and then falsely blamed a printing contractor for the mix-up. He proposed mailing ballots to people who didn’t request them, which Arizona Republican Party chair Gina Swoboda warned was illegal. He also got caught whining to some supervisors by text message — which the outlet Votebeat had to sue to obtain — and falsely claiming that he had the board’s lone Democrat, Steve Gallardo, in his corner. Few have earned turkey status so completely. – Morgan Fischer After Arizona Democrats’ disappointing showing in the 2024 election, which saw Donald Trump win the state and Republicans gain seats in the Arizona Legislature, party members decided to shake things up. They shook a little too vigorously. The party booted its old chairperson and elected Branscomb, an underdog candidate, to lead it forward. Instead, things quickly unraveled for the Laveen businessman. He lasted only six months, most of them defined by infighting, budget issues and Branscomb’s willful defiance in the face of calls for him to get his shit together. The saga started when Branscomb publicized a conflict with the state’s top elected officials, whom he claimed had withheld funding from the party because they didn’t like Branscomb’s staffing choices. The state’s top Dems — Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, along with Gov. Katie Hobbs, Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — then jointly announced they would not fundraise through the state party, a stunning vote of no confidence in Branscomb. Branscomb also caught flak for issues with the union representing his staff, the party’s lackluster fundraising and financial misman- agement that put the party at risk of insolvency. He blamed racism for his unpopularity and the intraparty uprising against him. “It could be profiling me, thinking that because I’m a Black man, I’m unsavory,” he told New Times. “I was barely in office before they said they couldn’t trust me.” While some wings of the party agreed with him, many more wanted him gone. In July, Branscomb was dethroned in a 476-56 vote by party members. – TJ L’Heureux Leila Parnian painted herself into a corner with her biggest project of her relatively short art career. In July, the Scottsdale artist unveiled “Through Her Eyes,” a 230-foot-tall mural adorning downtown Phoenix’s Saiya apartment building. The vibrant depiction of a woman’s face was crowned Arizona’s tallest mural and showered in praise by local media. Parnian called it a “beacon of hope.” The glow of positive press couldn’t mask the controversial histories of Parnian’s assistants on the project: Maryland artists Danny Lorden (a.k.a. D-Lord) and Shawn Forton, both of whose portfolios contain MAGA-flavored artwork. Lorden’s social media reads like a Trumpian greatest hits — pieces lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse and espousing COVID denial, “Let’s Go Brandon” graffiti and a Las Vegas wall he spray-painted with a billboard-sized “Kill the Homeless.” Forton, a former corrections deputy with Maryland’s Harford County Sheriff’s Office, has his own baggage: a 2024 felony theft and forgery case involving a forged $15,000 check, resolved with an Alford plea and a five-year suspended sentence. Their involvement marred what should be a career milestone for Parnian, who quit her parents’ upscale Scottsdale furniture store in 2018 to pursue art full-time. Not that she’s willing to talk about it. Over the summer, repeated requests for comment from New Times about Lorden and Forten’s backgrounds went unanswered. No explanation, no distancing, no disavowal. Her silence speaks volumes. – Benjamin Leatherman Justin Heap Robert Branscomb II Leila Parnian The 6 Arizonans who failed the hardest in 2025 By Phoenix New Times Staff (Remixed Photo Gage Skidmore Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0) (Photo screenshot via YouTube) (Remixed Photo via New Times)
