Clean Elections Partners with the Arizona Agenda on Legislative Debates

PHOENIX, March 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Clean Elections, Arizona's only non-partisan voter education entity, statutorily authorized to run candidate debates, announces a new partnership with Arizona Agenda which aims to increase awareness and accessibility to Arizona's legislative debates. All 90 seats in both chambers of the Arizona State Legislature are up for election in 2026 making this year's legislative races highly anticipated.

"We are consistently looking for ways to reach more voters and to encourage participation in all elections," said Gina Roberts, Voter Education Director at Clean Elections. "Our new partnership with the Arizona Agenda aims to increase name awareness for all participating legislative candidates so that voters can get to know them long before they fill out their ballot."

The 2026 Clean Elections Legislative Debate series will be live streamed and as part of this new partnership moderation will be provided by Arizona Agenda journalists including Hank Stephenson, Nicole Ludden, Joe Ferguson, Curt Prendergast and TJ L'Heureux. Each debate will be highly promoted ahead of time. In addition, post debate summaries and video from every debate will be distributed to members of the media and made readily available to the public following each debate.

"Clean Elections is the gold standard for fair, nonpartisan debates," said Arizona Agenda founder Hank Stephenson. "When they approached us about reimagining their legislative debate program, we saw a chance to match that with what the Agenda does best: make people want to pay attention to local politics. We're building a format that puts more candidates at the table and gets more voters tuning in."

Starting in April voters will be able to tune into this new format for legislative debates on the CCEC YouTube Channel. The most current legislative debate schedule has been published on the Clean Elections website at CCEC Candidate Debates.

Emphasizing the importance of legislative debates, Clean Elections Executive Director, Tom Collins said, "Members of the Arizona Legislature are very influential in state policy from making decisions on taxation to government spending, allocating funds for schools, public safety, transportation and so much more."

In preparation for tuning into debates, voters who are unsure of their respective legislative district can enter their home address into the CCEC Voter Dashboard to find it. In addition, voters can already submit debate questions for prospective candidates by emailing [email protected] or calling 602-364-3477 (toll-free at 877-631-8891).

The Arizona Agenda is an independent, journalist-owned political newsletter and news outlet focused on Arizona state and local government. It quickly grew from a two-person weekday newsletter into a statewide newsroom, including sister publication, the Tucson Agenda.

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SOURCE Citizens Clean Elections Commission