Arizona Secretary of State Releases Official Canvass for September 23 Special Election for Congressional District 7

Today, Tuesday, October 14, 2025, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes released the official canvass for the September 23, 2025 special election for Congressional District 7. Although Adelita Grijalva, the Democratic candidate, won with nearly 70% of the vote, overwhelming opponents Daniel Butierez (Republican), Eduardo Quintana (Green), and Richard Grayson (No Labels), but Republican U.S. House Speaker refuses to swear her into office, knowing that she will be the deciding vote in favor of releasing the Epstein files, which may contain embarrasing details about President Donald J. Trump.

AP Article on No Labels Suing Arizona to Block Arizona No Labels Party Candidates Mentions Richard Grayson

An Associated Press article by Jonathan J. Cooper, "No Labels sues Arizona to block opponents from using the new political party to run for office," published today, September 28, 2023, mentions Richard Grayson:

The No Labels party on Thursday filed a lawsuit in Arizona seeking to block its ballot line from being used by Democrats who oppose the group’s efforts to launch a third-party ticket for president next year.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Phoenix to block Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes from allowing people to run for offices other than president or vice president under the No Labels banner.

Fontes’s office told the group last month that it is obligated to accept filings from candidates even if party leaders reject them. At least one person who’s filed under No Labels is a Joe Biden supporter who opposes the group and wants it to disclose its donors, something long sought by supporters of the president.

...

Candidates have filed statements of interest to run for U.S. Senate and Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulator. One of them, Corporation Commission candidate Richard Grayson, is a No Labels opponent who has been critical of the group’s efforts.

Arizona Official General Election Canvass of Ninth Congressional District

The Arizona General Election Official Canvass was released today, Monday, December 5, 2022.

In the Ninth Congressional District, Rep. Paul Gosar (Republican) won with 192,796 votes. Democratic write-in candidate Richard Grayson received 3,531 votes. Democratic write-in candidate Tom T. received 858 votes.

Richard Grayson's "EIGHTIES' END: AUTUMN" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Eighties' End: Autumn. It is available in a 298-page trade paperback edition for $15.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn.

Earlier, Grayson published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

In EIGHTIES' END: AUTUMN, Grayson alternates his fall diary entries from 1987, 1988 and 1989, when he is variously spending time with other writers, artists and musicians at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire; living on the Upper West Side and serving as a writer-in-residence at the suburban Rockland Center of the Arts under one of the state arts grants he has at the time; with his emotionally troubled grandmother at the beach in Rockaway; and in Florida, training Miami schoolteachers on the use of computers and teaching writing classes at Broward Community College.

Grayson is juggling a massive credit card chassis, putting out two new books of short stories, and embarking on a strict diet to lose forty pounds. He's also getting himself into the newspapers as a social activist, demonstrating on Wall Street against leveraged buyouts and at Florida shopping centers against a Halloween mask denigrating to Arabs.

EIGHTIES' END: AUTUMN is the final volume of THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, whose other books include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, WEST SIDE SUMMERS, INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, and SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL.

(The author, 1988)

The book will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Tuesday Morning in Downtown Phoenix: Official Drawing for Arizona Presidential Primary Ballot at the Historic Senate Chambers at the State Capitol

This morning we were again at the Arizona State Capitol

in downtown Phoenix for the official drawing for the Arizona presidential preference primary ballot order

for the Green and Republican parties.

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett presided as candidates or their representatives drew lots

from a historic trophy, given by the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1915 to the USS Arizona in 1915,

and announced the results. We went up first of all the candidates because we were the first Green to file,

and had our campaign manager, Bunny Greenblatt, draw for us.

She handed the paper to Secretary Bennett and he announced that we got ballot position five out of the six candidates in the February 28 primary. We had made sure to wear all Green for luck, but it didn't work.

Neither did evil Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This fat old cannibal from the house of walking swastikas drew number 17 out of 23 for Texas Governor Rick Perry on the Republican ballot.

Many of the candidates are part of Project White House 2012,

a civic project of the Tucson Weekly newspaper, which has encouraged ordinary people to get on the ballot.

All of Secretary Bennett's staff worked hard to make this a great event and were extremely helpful to everyone.

Secretary Bennett himself, using white gloves, drew for those candidates who weren't there, and one of his staff members, as he said, "played Vanna White" and put up the candidate's name in the proper ballot order. (Bunny and I did it ourselves.)

It was a tense moment as Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin went to draw for Mitt Romney, who got ballot position number 9, which the Speaker hopes was good enough to get him a job as undersecretary of something.

When Sheriff Arpaio went up to draw for Rick Perry,

he apparently noticed Bunny sitting next to me. The next we thing we knew, a deputy asked her for proof that she wasn't in this country illegally.

Actually more annoying to Bunny was news radio station KFYI getting her name wrong:

Arizona's lax requirements to get on the ballot leads to colorful candidates on the ballot. Green Party candidate Richard Grayson brought his stuffed animal, Bunny Green Black, who he claims is his campaign manager to pick his ballot number.

This is presidential candidate Gerard Davis of Phoenix, who was accompanied by his wife Sonya and their child. He is number 6 out of six on the Green Party ballot, but the last shall be first, according to Rick Santorum (whose representative, a really nice man, was wearing a sweater vest just like his candidate).

This is Kip Dean, one of the Republican presidential candidates you've never heard of, perhaps because unlike Romney, Paul, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Santorum, Bachmann, Cain and the serious ones, Kip actually knows that we're not in the 1950s anymore and he's not running for leader of Leave It to Beaverland.

Kip wrote this and posted this pic on Facebook:

Favorite part of my day--the rolling of Sheriff Joe's eyes and his comment of "gawd" when he saw Richard Grayson's campaign manager (the bunny hand puppet pictured in the middle of us) pull his ballot spot slip for the Green Party Presidential Primary. My thoughts were different as I thought the bunny puppet was smarter than John Huntsman's campaign staff and Rick Perry's racist jackass slip puller (Joe himself).

These people in the back looked like politicians and seemed out of place.

The press was really interested in why former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China did not make the ballot when all anyone had to do was sign a simple declaration of candidacy and get it notarized. Secretary Bennett said that if Gov. Huntsman was going to challenge his not being on the Arizona ballot, he'd better do it fast because Maricopa County planned to start printing their ballots tonight.

Arizona Green Party co-chair Angel Torres drew for both of the presidential candidates officially recognized by the Green Party of the United States, Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay, and at the end of the drawing took photos of the ballot so the Arizona Green Party will know which of its own candidates it will sue to kick off the ballot this year.

Bunny and I were grateful to everyone at the Secretary of State's office and to all the fine candidates running in the Arizona presidential preference election.

It was wonderful to see American democracy at work, sort of.

Monday Morning in Downtown Phoenix: Stop the War on Women Rally at the Arizona State Capitol

This morning we were at the State Capitol in Phoenix at the opening session of the Arizona state legislature to join the Stop the War on Women Rally

sponsored by AZ NOW, NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, and Arizona List.

As the call to action said,
In our state legislature, the war on women wages on and the future of women’s health hangs in the balance.

During the 2011 Arizona legislative session, anti-choice legislators passed extreme legislation preventing women and families from accessing care and limiting health care professionals from providing needed services.

In 2012, women have the power to choose which candidates will ultimately determine whether our health care will remain accessible.

Join Arizona List, BPW, Phoenix/Scottsdale NOW, NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona and Planned Parenthood Arizona on Monday, January 9—the opening day of the Arizona Legislature—as women from across Arizona gather at the Capitol

to remind our legislators… women are watching, educating their friends, sharing, taking action, and WE WILL BE VOTING.















This was one of the best demonstrations for women's rights we've seen since August 26, 1970, when as an 18-year-old boy we were at City Hall Park in New York for the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage, when we took photos of second-wave feminism's icons like Betty Freidan, Bella Abzug, Elinor Guggenheimer and others before the historic march for women's rights that day.

Someone took a pic of us expressing our devotion to Planned Parenthood, one of our favorite organizations of all time.

We're grateful to the organizations and advocates who made today's Stop the War on Women rally at the Arizona State Capitol such a rousing success.