The most popular billionaires in America — besides, inexplicably, Elon Musk — are the owners of sports franchises that win titles. The most despised might be owners who rip beloved teams away from fans in search of a bigger buck elsewhere. Guess which one Alex Meruelo is? Until recently, Meruelo owned the Arizona Coyotes, a Valley staple since the 1990s. Their fan base was small but passionate, even as the team struggled to find consistent success or a permanent home in Maricopa County. Last season, the Coyotes were consigned to playing in the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena at Arizona State University. The idea that a pro hockey team won’t work here is hardly ridiculous, but how Meruelo abandoned the Valley was. Meruelo and the Coyotes were all-in on securing an arena deal in the Valley until, with a week left in the season, they suddenly weren’t. By the time the team’s final home game of 2024 rolled around, news had broken that the club would be sold and relocated to Salt Lake City, pulling the rug out from under fans. Meruelo retained the rights to start a new Coyotes franchise in the sale, but he bailed on a potential Phoenix land deal as soon as it got hard. Meanwhile, the Coyotes are no more. The “Utah Hockey Club” lives on. – Zach Buchanan (Illustrations by Russ Kazmierczak, Jr.) If Tom Horne is good at one thing, it’s waging dumb culture wars. The Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction has spouted anti-trans rhetoric, made life more diffi- cult for teachers, platformed the far-right education site PragerU and claimed that rainbow stickers make kids dumber. He’s endorsed the idea of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education and railed against Critical Race Theory, which isn’t even taught in Arizona schools. One thing Horne is bad at is his job. In the two years of his current term, his administration has been defined by lengthy delays in Empowerment Scholarship Account reimbursements and somehow also a loosey-goosey standard for what ESA parents can buy with state funds. Then there’s the $29 million in federal grants he nearly let slip. That saga was reported by The Arizona Republic, which chronicled how Horne’s office missed an allocation deadline and then baselessly blamed the screw-up on his Democratic predecessor. It took a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education — which, again, Horne wants to abolish — to fix the blunder. The 79-year-old Horne, who bears an eerie resemblance to Beetlejuice’s shrunken-headed minion “Bob,” has always been a magnet for scandal. If he spent 2024 making all the wrong headlines, well, that’s just Horne doing what he does best. – Morgan Fischer When a suburban city council meeting makes national headlines, it’s usually for a bad reason. And when they’re to the extent that people outside of Arizona know where Surprise is or that Hall is its mayor, it’s for a really bad reason. During the public comment portion of an Aug. 20 city council meeting, Hall got into a verbal spat with Libertarian activist Rebekah Massie. Massie was criticizing a proposed pay raise for the city attorney when Hall cut her off to warn that she’d broken a meeting rule about not speaking negatively about city employees. Massie rightfully noted such a rule violates the First Amendment. Then Hall had her arrested. The arrest generated national headlines, led to an ongoing free speech lawsuit against the city and prompted Republican lawmaker John Kavanagh to request an investigation by the state attorney general. Quickly and quietly, Hall and the city council changed the rule in question, though it took two months for criminal charges against Massie to be dropped. Hall’s term is expiring, and he’ll soon return to civilian life, where he hopefully can’t order police to do anything. – Zach Buchanan
