Tuesday’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that non-essential travelers will be allowed to enter the United States via land and ferry Ports of Entry (POEs) starting sometime next month if they present “appropriate documentation” of being fully vaccinated for COVID-19 is welcome news for businesses and communities across Arizona.
“Cross-border travel creates significant economic activity in our border communities and benefits our broader economy,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement, which did not include an effective date other than sometime in early November.
In 2019, Mexicans were estimated to have spent about $1.4 billion in Arizona. While Mayorkas called the travel of tourists and others who come to Arizona for various reasons “nonessential,” many business owners around the seven CBP Ports of Entry in Arizona say the revenues associated with regulated crossing is anything but.
“Taking this step to welcome vaccinated tourists will be an essential push to strengthen all border communities that heavily rely on international commerce,” according to the Nogales-Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce, which noted the county’s economy has been “heavily impacted” by the travel restrictions.
Those COVID-19 travel restrictions at POEs were initially put into effect in March 2020 as a public health measure. Essential travel -medical, educations, employment- was later allowed but President Joe Biden has continually extended the non-essential travel ban, despite data showing the ongoing closure was decimating the economies of Arizona border communities.
Critics also pointed to the fact that air travel between the two counties has been allowed for months. Mayorkas’ announcement, which also applies to POE access into the United States from Canada, came just days before an Oct. 21 deadline on non-essential travel was set to expire.
The irony of the White House announcement, however, has not been lost on one Arizona business owner.
Constanin Querard of Grassroots Direct, LLC noted that the policy change means “fully vaccinated people who want to come in legally can now get in as easily as unvaccinated people who want to come in illegally.”
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration’s refusal to fully reopen the Ports of Entry to land travel before now is having an unexpected beneficial impact for one group.
The Douglas POE in Cochise County is an economic driver in a community controlled and governed by Democrats for decades. But according to Robert Montgomery, the devastating economic impact of the non-essential travel restrictions has been a boon for the Cochise County Republican Committee.
Montgomery, chairman of the CCRC, told AZ Free News that many “very frustrated lifelong Democrats” have been checking out the Republican platform. And they like what they see, particularly on the issues of abortion, gun rights, and illegal immigration, Montgomery said.
This is resulting in more Conservatives getting involved in local public office, from school boards to the city council, and Montgomery says the list of Republican precinct committeemen is growing.
He added that the transition from blue to red voters in border communities “is not unique to Cochise County; it’s happening across southern Arizona and the southwest U.S. border,” he said.
A recent cover of The Week magazine proclaimed “Undermining Democracy. The GOP’s blueprint for nullifying Democratic votes in 2024.”
The article was another installment of the concentrated effort on the Left to convince Americans that voter fraud is essentially nonexistent, just a hoax used by Republicans as an excuse to deny the franchise to underprivileged Americans.
But is it true? Are Republicans using strategies like restricting the number of weeks early voting is allowed, cleaning up outdated voter rolls and requiring voter ID simply to squelch minority votes?
The Week article didn’t describe one voter who had been even partially hindered from voting. Critics seldom do because such cases are devilishly hard to find.
Any limiting of access is illegal under federal law and the Department of Justice has a large and aggressive enforcement unit. Yet during the eight years of the Obama administration, just four cases were filed under the relevant voting rights section.
Moreover, a 2019 survey of turnout data from all 50 states concluded that voter ID laws, for example, “have no negative affect on registration or turnout“ for any race, gender, party or age group. The Census Bureau in 2012 reported that blacks nationally had a higher turnout rate than whites.
Mississippi had a higher percentage turnout of black voters than white, unlike Connecticut, New York or Delaware. Much reviled Georgia’s black turnout percentage was higher than New York’s in 2018 and 2020, all during times when Republicans were being loudly accused of voter suppression. They must be the most inept vote suppressors in history.
The Maricopa County 2020 audit was meant to clear up some of these issues of fraud versus suppression. It was never intended by its sponsors to overturn the election. So all the chortling by its detractors when that didn’t happen is their mistake.
Nevertheless, both sides felt vindicated. One thing for certain is that allegations that voter fraud doesn’t exist were again demolished. Voters voting in multiple counties, mail-in ballots from prior addresses, dead people voting, deleted files and duplicated ballots were all uncovered.
But the commission whiffed on the issue of bulk mail voting. The practice of sending unsolicited ballots by mail to millions of voters is by far the greatest potential threat to election integrity.
Unfortunately, they looked for evidence of mail fraud in the wrong place at the wrong time. The audit was of the accounting process and never really addressed how the ballots were generated in the first place.
Mail-in fraud has caused entire elections to be canceled and major schemes have been busted in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states. But any fraud discovered is likely only the tip of the iceberg. Fraud from bulk mail voting/ballot harvesting occurs out of sight and leaves few traces.
Unlike in-person voting, there is no ability to assure the vote is cast independently. Arizona’s sole safeguard has been the notoriously easy-to-game signature verification process with no ID required.
Normally, chain of custody violations are considered a major breach by election officials. Here, there is no chain of custody. What could go wrong?
There’s a reason that after Democrats discovered electoral gold in 2016, votes by mail more than doubled in 2020, and just 28% voted in person on election day. Yet as far back as 2005, the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform advised that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
Our sister democracies know that. 74% ban absentee voting entirely for citizens living in the country, 6% have very strict restrictions and another 15% require photo ID to obtain a mail ballot. France and Mexico banned mail-in voting after massive fraud and political intimidation were finally discovered.
America has a serious problem. Our elections do not have, and do not deserve, the confidence of a majority of Americans.
The overriding problem is not lack of access to the ballot. In fact, a plurality of voters believe it is too easy to vote.
It’s not stolen elections or miscounted ballots. It is intentionally flawed election laws that permit massive security leaks, raising the undeniable possibility of widespread cheating.
That, friends, is the true threat to democracy.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Several more Arizona voters have come forward to AZ Free News to report they’ve been receiving ballots for voters that should’ve been removed from the rolls years ago – in at least one case, several decades. This report is not to say that this is a widespread issue, but to reflect the fact that AZ Free News has received more reports of this issue from concerned voters.
One voter, Christine Accurso, told AZ Free News that her cousin, Nadia, had moved from her residence to Kuwait a decade ago. Despite her and Nadia both telling Maricopa County for years that Nadia no longer resides in Arizona, the county has continued to send ballots in Nadia’s name to Accurso’s address. Now, Accurso has another ballot for her cousin for Maricopa County’s jurisdictional elections.
The struggles began several years after Maricopa County purportedly removed Nadia from the voter rolls in 2011 at Nadia’s request. As expected, no ballots arrived for Nadia in the 2012 and 2014 election cycles. (However: even if the county had neglected to remove Nadia from their voter rolls initially, Accurso added that Nadia wouldn’t have gotten a mail-in ballot. Nadia had only ever voted in person, and confirmed with Accurso that she’d never signed up for the Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) or any opt-ins to receive her ballot by mail.)
Then in 2016, Accurso said that she received a mail-in ballot for her cousin. They both contacted the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. At first, they were relieved to hear from the office that Nadia would be removed immediately. Then 2018 came – and with it, another ballot for Nadia.
“The weirder thing is that we didn’t get [ballots] in 2012 or 2014 – for those other elections we didn’t get one for her. Then all of a sudden in 2016 we got one,” said Accurso. “The thing that bothers me the most is the fact that [Maricopa County has] been told multiple times [to remove her], and we’ve called and confirmed multiple times [that she was removed]. Then this year I got another one. Something is just wrong.”
AZ Free News was also informed that another individual received a ballot in 2020 for her husband, who’d been deceased for 20 years. That was the first year the deceased individual received a ballot, and for some of the family members it reportedly opened up old wounds connected to the loss.
Yet another concerned voter told AZ Free News that she received ballots for her son in 2018 and 2020 – despite the fact that he moved out of the state in 2017. She marked and returned the ballots to Maricopa County election officials both times to indicate that he no longer lived there.
“I haven’t checked [this year] to see if he still hasn’t been taken off of the [registered voter] list,” explained the voter. “I just remember thinking – how easy to cheat!”
2 live at our house. 2 of our adult children haven’t lived with us for years. They live in WA. pic.twitter.com/Qi6nyrMSuO
Former Gilbert Mayor Jenn Daniels has encouraged voters to support Gilbert’s $515 million transportation bond – a deal which her lobbying firm, Horizon Strategies AZ, could stand to benefit from greatly. Ballots for the all-mail special election began to be sent out last Wednesday.
The former mayor offered her endorsement on a text alert sent to Gilbert voters.
“Gilbert consistently ranks as one of the most desirable places to live because we have always focused on keeping taxes low and quality-of-life investments like safe roads, bike paths and improved technology to keep traffic moving,” read Daniels’ endorsement. “Question 1 is a responsible plan to keep up with growth and maintain our current streets and intersections. Please join me in voting YES on Question 1.”
Daniels’ endorsement was paid for by “Yes for Safe and Efficient Gilbert Roads,” sometimes also marketed as “Yes on Question 1.” The PAC disclosed that they received no funding from out-of-state contributors, and weren’t authorized by any candidate.
AZ Free News reached out to Daniels about her endorsement and potential benefits from the bond. She didn’t respond by press time. Daniels resigned from her position as Gilbert’s mayor last August, citing “personal reasons.” Shortly after, she turned her focus on building up her public relations and lobbying firm.
Former mayoral candidate Matt Nielsen raised concerns about Daniels’ endorsement of the $515 million transportation bond, noting that Horizon Strategies would stand to benefit from it. He told AZ Free News that the whole advocacy movement behind the bond was “really swampy.”
Nielsen also raised questions about Vice Mayor Yung Koprowski’s advocacy to pass the bond. Koprowski co-chairs “Yes for Safe and Efficient Gilbert Roads Committee,” or “Yes on Question 1 Committee” alongside Councilmember Kathy Tilque. The vice mayor also owns a transportation planning and civil engineering firm, Y2K Engineering. On Sunday, Koprowski and Tilque published an opinion piece in Gilbert Sun News urging Gilbert voters to approve the transportation bond. They also published their advocacy in the town’s publicity pamphlet.
“What it is is that the language behind the $515 million dollar bond is so vague that it looks like a blank check for government spending. The $515 million wasn’t a price tag from looking at the needs of the town, saying ‘This is a dollar amount that is needed,’” asserted Nielsen. “It just reeks of backroom deals, bad behavior in government again.”
Two of Horizon Strategies’ key team members were lobbyists in their recent past.
Jessica Pacheco worked as a lobbyist for power giant Arizona Public Service Company (APS) and their parent company, Pinnacle West Capital Corporation from 2010 to 2020, as well as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce from 2007 to 2008 and SunCor Development Company in 2010.
Katie Prendergast also formerly worked as a lobbyist for power giant APS and Pinnacle West Capital Corporation from 2014 until last September. Prendergast’s profile on the state lobbying portal doesn’t include her work as a lobbyist for the Arizona Small Business Association (ASBA).
Additionally, Horizon Strategies recently hired an Arizona State Capitol legislative staffer named Kelsey Jahntz to become their legislative director, as Arizona Daily Independent reported. Jahntz isn’t listed on the state’s lobbying portal, and hasn’t been listed on the Horizon Strategies team member webpage as of press time.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
About two weeks ago, an incident occurred on Arizona State University’s (ASU) Tempe campus in which a group of activist students drove two students out of a study room. The two students happened to be displaying gear that could be construed as more conservative or Republican: a Bass Pro hat, a “Police Lives Matter” sticker, a Chick-fil-A cup, and a “Did Not Vote for Biden” t-shirt. Behind the camera were the activist students – members of the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition (MSC), a group that had been advocating for a multicultural space for years – who essentially wanted to maintain a “safe space” for people of color which they called their “multicultural center.”
AZ Free News looked further into this incident. We discovered several key facts: for one, the “multicultural center” wasn’t established officially at the time of the incident. This was discoverable in subsequent statements and interviews from MSC members involved in the incident.
Additionally, AZ Free News learned that there are several inconsistencies with one of the key activists behind the viral video: graduate student Sarra Tekola.
Multicultural Center Wasn’t Established Officially
In an interview with Civic Cipher about a week after the incident, Tekola asserted multiple times that the two male students “didn’t know what the space was.”
Two of the other female students involved in the incident were also interviewed: Mastaani Qureshi, a history and justice studies undergraduate, alum liaison for the leadership sorority Omega Phi Alpha and co-president of ASU’s Women’s Coalition; and Miriam “Mimi” Araya, a Black Lives Matter (BLM) Phoenix policy minister, vice president of ASU’s Black Graduate Student Association, and doctoral student in justice studies in the School of Social Transformation. The pair concurred with Tekola’s assessment that the two students didn’t know they were in a place designated as a multicultural center.
Tekola also admitted that there were no official staff members, rules, aesthetics, or formal governance associated with the space. She blamed ASU officials for not properly outfitting and identifying the space as a multicultural center.
“This space only just opened up at the beginning of September,” said Tekola. “At that point, [I] became aware [that these students] must’ve not even known what this space is – that’s on ASU, that’s not on them. […] So these students didn’t know what the space was.”
Tekola and her activist group, the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition (MSC) said in their official statement in response to the incident that the multicultural center hadn’t been fully launched.
“We have been working toward this goal [to establish a multicultural center] since 2016 and, as of 2020, we have been coordinating with ASU administrators to establish a multicultural center. The multicultural center is currently housed in one room on campus that was opened this semester and has not yet been fully launched,” wrote MSC. (emphasis added)
Yet, Tekola’s characterization that the space opened up at the beginning of September appears to carry its own inconsistencies. ASU’s newspaper, The State Press, indicated in a September 11 article that the center hadn’t launched. They reported that no further updates were provided in a meeting on the center and other social justice initiatives the day before, though Senior Vice President for Educational Outreach and Student Services James Rund had told the paper in August that the center would be running at some point that semester.
Tekola conflicting herself isn’t out of character for the PhD candidate. It appears that she, Qureshi, and Araya told Civic Cipher that they’d foregone “opportunities to respond via other media outlets.” However, Tekola interviewed with The Arizona Republic on or prior to September 29.
Inconsistencies of that caliber are more frequent than not in Tekola’s life.
Tekola Goes By Multiple Versions of Her Name
This PhD candidate has multiple variations of her first and last name. AZ Free News has found the following name variations associated with this individual: her first name has been cited as Zarra, Sarra, or Zahara, and her last name has been either Teacola or Tekola. At times, Tekola has dropped her last name and gone by “Zarra” only.
According to ASU, her graduate school profile knew her as “Sarra Tekola.” That profile was last archived on Friday. By Monday, the page was removed.
Tekola’s Instagram profile used to be @zebratekola, but she made it private after the incident. Tekola even attempted to claim it wasn’t her, despite screenshots of her original profile and a shoutout linking to her profile from “Scary Movie” film series actress Regina Hall.
Now, Tekola has another Instagram profile called @sarratekola, likely created on Monday judging by the first post on the page. As of press time, her Twitter profile is still active, though it’s now private – @zebra425.
Finally, on her Facebook profile page, @zahara.teacola, and a GoFundMe for her arrest connected with multiple BLM protests, Tekola refers to herself as “Zahara Teacola.” The latest public post on that page occurred April 22, 2020, where she reposted something that’s since been removed claiming that the Kardashians were in blackface. Tekola asked if people decided that the Kardashians’ alleged blackface was okay because they “sleep with black men.”
At times, Tekola has opted to not give her name at all. In May, BLM Phoenix posted an interview of Tekola discussing her arrest last October for obstruction of a public thoroughfare and tampering with physical evidence (CR2020-130075). Those charges were later dismissed without prejudice.
Claims She’s a First-Generation College Student, and Father Was a ‘Climate Change Refugee’
Tekola has claimed repeatedly that she is a first-generation college student, and that her father was a “climate change refugee.” She claims that latter assertion inspires much of her work.
However, as first reported by the Arizona Daily Independent, Tekola is the daughter of Ethiopian refugee Fasil and Susan Tekola. Fasil attended an Ethiopian college prior to fleeing the violent communist revolution of the ’70s. Up until around 2016, Susan was a registered nurse and union member that advocated for socialized medicine. According to the Washington Department of Health, Susan had her credentials suspended in 2016 for “neglecting to respond to charges of being unable to practice with reasonable skill and safety due to concerns related to mental health issues.”
Susan wasn’t Fasil’s first wife – he told The Grist that he married an American woman named Debby to gain citizenship. Prior to their marriage, Debby was an English teacher that he’d met in Kenya and began dating.
The history of Tekola’s parents challenges her previous claims that she is a first-generation college student. Fasil had attended university while in Kenya. It’s likely Susan attended even more college: the state of Washington currently has required all registered nurses to have a bachelor’s degree.
Fasil also wasn’t a “climate refugee” as Tekola has claimed repeatedly. According to The Grist, he fled the violence in Ethiopia, not the drought. Fasil first fled to Nairobi, Kenya, then Israel, then Greece, before reaching Sweden. There, the Swedish government denied Fasil’s asylum application, deporting him back to Kenya. While in Kenya, Fasil studied wildlife range management in college for a year, before taking a job with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Before his world was thrown into turmoil, Fasil Tekola lived a comfortable life in Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa. Born into a wealthy family, his father a colonel, he was one of only a few kids who drove their own cars to school.
The communists rounded up Fasil Fasil and “men of all ages, targeting the educated and wealthy, and gunned them down. Known today as the Red Terror, the genocide claimed more than 10,000 lives in Addis Ababa alone.
Tekola was 19 years old. He and other students were rounded up and jailed. But because his father was a well-known community leader and had left the military in the years preceding the war, he was later released. Two of his friends were not so lucky. After hearing about their murders, Tekola and a friend decided to flee the country.
Their escape began a journey that would send Tekola bouncing across the world in search of asylum. After years of traveling, he’d end up literally a half a world away in Seattle.
Tekola is also far from a victim of oppressive systems and circumstances, claims under which she’s aligned herself in her activism. The PhD candidate grew up in Maple Valley, Washington. According to census information, the median value of a house there from 2015 to 2019 was over $414,000, while median income in 2019 sat over $57,000. As Arizona Daily Independent noted, the median income in Tempe, Arizona, is just over $30,200.
Tekola also claimed in a poem she wrote that she was homeschooled growing up, but said her mother felt she was too naive about the “real world.” Due to that belief, Tekola recounted, her mother placed her in a private Christian school. Tekola said her main contentions with the school were the uniforms, authority figures, mean girls, and how easy the schoolwork was, so her parents put her in a public school.
Here’s what else we could discover about Tekola:
PhD Dissertation Proposes Decolonization as a Climate Change Solution
Tekola’s PhD dissertation suggests that decolonization is a solution for climate change, according to her profile on Academia.
“[Tekola’s] dissertation works on the social side of climate change focusing on creating the cultural change Western society needs to successfully implement climate solutions,” read the profile. “She is investigating the connections between climate change and colonization, and how the colonial trauma Western countries have affects our ability to address climate change today and what we can do to change this dynamic.”
Tekol further suggested on her profile with Happy Lab ASU, a collaborative project of ASU School of Sustainability Students, that the dissolution of Western society would solve climate change:
“My dissertation research focuses on identifying the social causes of climate change as affected by colonization.Specifically, I consider how the colonial mentality still prevalent in Western society, which promotes individualism, consumerism, egotism and hegemony, prevents us from the just transition required to address climate change. I am conducting action research, seeing what happens when Western consumers build relationships of solidarity with the people directly affected by their consumption. Right now we are working with the Black Mesa community who is being displaced from their traditional lands due to coal that is used to pump water to our city. My work is about creating the cultural change needed to successfully implement climate solutions, experimenting with decolonization as a climate solution.”
ASU couldn’t confirm or deny whether Tekola would be finishing her PhD candidacy due to the privacy rights of students, according to ASU spokesman Jerry Gonzalez.
Co-Founded Black Lives Matter Phoenix, Admitted as Ford Foundation Fellow
Tekola co-founded the Phoenix chapter of BLM, and serves as the “co-minister of activism.” Like most of the other BLM protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, peaceful BLM protests in Phoenix devolved into violence and looting last May. An estimated millions in damage resulted from rioters descending on Scottsdale Fashion Square. BLM Phoenix issued a statement after the riots that they were not involved.
In the past, Tekola’s activism has included her work as an advisor for the Hive Fund, a climate change and gender justice activist organization; a board member for the Rowan Institute, a climate change activist organization; and a director for the Reclaiming STEM Institute, an advocacy organization for diversity in scientific leadership and policy.
Tekola was also the co-founder of Women of Color Speak Out, a group focused on making environmental activism accessible to people of color. That group lasted from 2015 to 2019. According to a pop-up notice that appears on the homepage, the activists parted ways due to ideological differences. None of the founders that AZ Free News contacted responded to our inquiries by press time.
Finally, Tekola was awarded the prestigious far-left Ford Foundation Fellowship in 2018 for a predoctoral expertise in “geography.” Factors considered for a predoctoral fellowship award include the applicant being a minority and focusing their studies or research on diversity and underrepresented communities. The current award sits at $27,000 for three years, exclusive Ford Fellows conference access, and exclusive Ford Fellows networking opportunities.
At the time of press, ASU hasn’t issued any further statements about the incident, or whether any of the students involved will face any penalties.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Former Gilbert Mayor Jenn Daniels has encouraged voters to support Gilbert’s $515 million transportation bond – a deal which her lobbying firm, Horizon Strategies AZ, could stand to benefit from greatly. Ballots for the 