Nine months of Ducey calendars; five months to receive them
Explore what former Gov. Doug Ducey was up to between January and September 2022.
Elected officials work for the people they represent. I’ve said this a lot and will continue to do so since it seems to be lost on them through their actions.
Doug Ducey, Arizona’s now former governor, is a prime example of this.
In his final two-or-so years leading the state, he cowered away from tough interviews, from press conferences, from any interaction with reporters who cover him the most and from any form of transparency to the public.
Instead of press conferences we got used to during the early height of the pandemic in 2020 (albeit testy), Ducey resulted to recording office videos where his word is the only one that matters and no journalist could press him on explaining things further or ask questions on other topics important to their coverage.
Instead of tough interviews with the likes of the Arizona Agenda, Dennis Welch, Brahm Resnik, KJZZ or others, Ducey frequented national conservative shows or spoke to Mike Broomhead, his friend on KTAR. He conducted 47 interviews with media in the first nine months of 2022 and none were with the aforementioned media. Not Howie Fischer either or the Arizona Republic.
He did do one interview with Nick Phillips of the Arizona Capitol Times and JJ Cooper of The AP, but the rest were a friendly audience usually of people who don’t press for follow ups or push back on his sometimes misleading or false narrative.
And as I’ve become a broken record in this space, Ducey was maybe the least transparent official when it came to public records –– specifically his public calendar.
Elected officials, especially the governor, should be informing the public (or at least the media) of their daily and weekly whereabouts. It’s our right to know where you are and what you will be doing. Anything less wreaks of secrecy and shadiness.
Ducey’s office used to send over calendars frequently through his early tenure and stopped doing as such in the past two years.
It took until 10 pm on their final day serving on the Ninth Floor to provide me with nine months of calendars that I began requesting on August 10, 2022. That fits in line with how long it typically took the office to fulfill requests and solidified my suspicion they were purposely holding out records as a way to get back at me for my tough but fair (and award-winning) coverage of his administration.
I’d say it’s a badge of honor, but really it’s just annoying and unbecoming of the state’s top official who was also one of the most prominent Republicans in the entire country.
It’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
What’s more annoying, is a quick scan through of the 96 pages Ducey’s Office sent me at 9:54 pm New Year’s Day doesn’t show anything that would warrant spending almost half a year to hand over.
Outside of the interviews, Ducey took several plane trips throughout the state (using the state plane the governor has access to). I tracked every time “wheels up” or “wheels down” was included in his calendar and here are the locations he traveled to for state business.
Marana on Jan 14
Yuma on Feb 17
Flagstaff on Feb 18
Douglas on April 19
Coolidge on April 27
Yuma on Sept 8
Tucson on Sept 17
There were some other locations listed on his calendar like Washington, DC or California (including several instances where his wife and children went on trips with him), but those did not include travel details in the calendar. Ducey’s summer trip to Israel also was on his calendar.
Take a look at his calendars and let me know if you spot anything interesting.
Update at 10 am:
I checked the dates of when Ducey had Covid, which I forgot happened, and based on his calendar it appears he may have been sick for almost a full week before the public was made aware when he had to cancel a border trip.
His calendar from June 8 was clear until he returned back to work on June 20. It seems likely Ducey was exposed either in Israel (he returned to the states June 2) or shortly after.