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Photo of the Week
“I love sitting outside in the morning watching the sunrise and Decker was enjoying the hummingbirds I feed.” —Janet Veta, Elgin
News
District 7 candidates stake out turf on opposite sides of Trump
By Dave Lumia
The two candidates in the Arizona District 7 Congressional special election wasted no time at Saturday’s PRT-presented candidate forum in Patagonia succinctly pointing out where the line is drawn between them.
The first question posed by forum moderator Thomas Fink, Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge, asked the candidates to expound on the “greatest distance between you and your opponent.”
Democrat Adelita Grijalva, speaking first, said: “My understanding is my opponent is very supportive of Trump’s current agenda, and that’s where we differ greatly.”
On this point, there was no disagreement from Republican candidate Daniel Butierez: “I actually believe in what Trump’s doing, she’s right,” Butierez said. “I agree with what Trump says.”
Grijalva and Butierez are vying for the District 7 congressional seat that became vacant following the death of Rep. Raul Grijalva, Adelita’s father, on March 13. The special election will be held on Sept. 23, with the winner serving through the end of 2026.
The forum attracted a standing-room-only audience to the Tin Shed Theater. While the tone of the dialogue was respectful, there was very little common ground between the two candidates.
Grijalva, 54, former Pima County supervisor and Tucson Unified School District board member, focused much of her remarks on the policies put in place by the Trump administration and the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” describing it as “the largest redistribution of wealth in our nation’s history.” She was specifically critical of the dismantling of the Department of Education and the financial impact on public schools, cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, and the rollback of environmental protections.
“Right now Trump has carte blanche to be able to make a lot of decisions without consulting Congress or the Senate,” she said. “We need to create a better balance of power so all branches of government have a voice.”
Butierez, 58, a painting contractor from Tucson, described many of the concerns Grijalva pointed out as “fear-mongering.”
“Most of these things people are talking about aren’t true,” he said. “He’s not taking our Medicaid. He’s not taking our Medicare. These are just lies being pushed out by local media because they have nothing else to run on except to hate Trump.”
Butierez, who was defeated by Raul Grijalva in the 2024 general election for Congressional District 7, said his alignment with Trump makes him better positioned to serve the district.
“That’s the plus of me not having attacked Trump, because if I’m elected, I can go in there and work with the administration and Congress to protect Arizona,” he said.
“I will be able to go in and do some things in Washington because right now I have more power than my opponent as it is a Republican administration, Republican House, Republican Senate.”
Butierez’s campaign signage emphasizes the need to “make Arizona safe again,” and he made multiple references to the need to address the homeless crisis and combat drug trafficking, citing businesses throughout the district that have been shuttered due to shoplifting, loitering and safety concerns.
“That directly comes down to we need to secure our border and stop the drugs from coming in, and we need to address the homeless crisis,” he said. “Those are directly impacting the crime that’s happening in our streets.”
Grijalva countered that the Trump administration’s cuts to public safety programs are counterproductive to cleaning up the root causes. “Those are cuts that are helping with prevention; those are early intervention programs that are keeping kids in school,” she said.
“When we look at those cuts and what that means, there’s going to be an increase in violence because we’re going to have frustrated communities, and we don’t have opportunities for people to get ahead.”
Other topics that sparked spirited disagreement were education, Medicaid and immigration enforcement.
On education, Grijalva lamented the cuts in federal grants that are needed to prop up a state that ranks 50th in spending on public education. “My frustration is what we are doing is creating a system of the haves and have-nots,” she said.
“We’re going to see increased class sizes, we’re going to see stressed teachers, we’re going to see more and more people opt not to go into education,” she said. “I don’t think in our nation you should have somebody that wants to be a teacher but can make more money working at Starbucks.”
Butierez acknowledged that Arizona schools are struggling but doesn’t consider it a financial issue: “As a business owner, when something’s not going right, the job’s not getting done in a way that I’m satisfied with, I evaluate the problem, I don’t throw more money at it.”
The two also clashed on the impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on Medicaid, which provides health-care for low-income residents. Grijalva said some 376,000 Arizonans, including 142,000 children, are facing cuts to health-care availability unless the state picks up the slack. Butierez disagreed with the assessment: “There’s a lot of people that don’t agree with you. It’s an opinion. A lot of people think it’s going to run out. I don’t have that opinion.”
The candidates also diverged sharply when asked about the administration’s immigration enforcement and militarization of the border.
“I don’t believe our National Guard should be deployed to police American citizens,’’ Grijalva said. “[Trump]’s creating his own government with not doubling ICE’s budget, but 20 times the budget, so he’s going to have his own military force that he’s going to be able to directly target individuals, people who look like me. I think it’s sort of like a test to see how much we can be desensitized to these issues.”
Butierez said the crackdown is necessary. “This has been a really big problem, and the Trump administration is trying to address it,” he said. “He is going after the dangerous criminals, and if there’s someone with them that happens to be illegal, they’re getting sucked up in it.”
New Methodist pastor welcomed to Patagonia at community potluck
Pastor Katrina thanks everyone for their warm welcome to the church, her first post as a pastor, and to the community, which she already loves. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Pastor Katrina’s family flew in from Mesquite, Nevada for the occasion: father Pastor Malakai Pahulu, brother Tau Pahulu, mother Linda Pahulu, and sister Olivia Pahulu, who will become a Patagonia resident. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Katrina’s family introduces themselves at church with father, Pastor Malakai Pahulu of Mesquite UMC in Nevada, at the pulpit, and brother Tau, sister Olivia, and mother Linda. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Katrina’s brother Tau looks over the baked salmon dish prepared by his sister Olivia for the potluck. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Even the little ones are eager to shake hands with Katrina. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Kay Pitt, chair of PCUMC Staff-Parish Relations, welcomes Katrina to her first position as a pastor. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Community volunteer Steve Finch describes to an appreciative Pastor Katrina how he’s going to redo the floors for the PCUMC Thrift Shop in its big spruce-up this month. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Father Simon of St. Therese Catholic Church gives a warm welcome to Pastor Katrina’s mom, Linda, who is returning to Nevada after helping Katrina settle in here. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Father Simon of St. Therese Catholic Church flanked by the Pahulu family: father Pastor Malakai, Pastor Katrina, mother Linda, sister Olivia, and brother Tau. Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
People keep coming in to line up at the back of the hall for the potluck dinner table even as others were already on their way to the desert table! Photo by Linda Jade Fong 
Deserts-a’plenty at the Community Potluck. Photo by Linda Jade Fong
New Patagonia Community United Methodist Church pastor Katrina Pahulu laughed as she announced in church just before the community potluck welcoming her, “It is said that Methodists grew so fast in the 1800’s partly because we knew how to throw a good potluck!”
This potluck lived up to this billing, with Thurber Hall filled with well-wishers from the area coming to greet Pastor Katrina. As a special bonus, they got to meet her family, who flew in from Mesquite, Nevada and appeared in traditional Tongan dress to celebrate the Hawaii-born Katrina’s first post as a pastor. Katrina’s younger sister, Olivia, will stay here and become a Patagonia resident.
SEFD Board sets agenda for Aug. 25 meeting
The five-member Sonoita-Elgin Fire District Board of Directors will hold a regular meeting this coming Monday, Aug. 25 in the Meeting Room at the Fire Station at 3173 N. Highway 83. The meeting is open to the general public and will begin at 9:00 am local time. The meeting room will be open and accessible to the public by 8:45 am local time.
Click here to view the meeting’s complete agenda.
Volunteers needed to help build artificial burrows in Sonoita for burrowing owls
From Audubon Southwest:
August 23: Visit Arizona’s beautiful grasslands in Sonoita this Saturday to help build artificial burrows for Burrowing Owls! All tools and instruction provided, and a map will be emailed to you after you RSVP.
Contact Wild At Heart – An Arizona-based raptor rescue organization with questions or RSVP by emailing greg@BTLLCAZ.com
More info: https://btllcaz.com/
What the canyon towhee’s song means
By Vince Pinto
In the video above, a male canyon towhee sings from atop a dead Palmer’s agave stalk, proclaiming his territory against any would-be rivals at Raven’s Nest Nature Sanctuary. His singing began in earnest after a recent monsoon deluge, signaling that fat times may loom in the coming weeks—the better to feed any offspring. Indistinguishable from females of the species, the gender of the males becomes readily apparent as they vocally entice females to mate with them, while keeping other suitors at bay. Once paired, canyon towhees are often monogamous for life. The male sometimes reinforces this bond by feeding his mate as she begs for food a la a nestling.
Canyon towhees are our second-largest member of the bird family Passerellidae or New World sparrows. In Arizona they are exceeded in size only by Abert’s towhee. The range of the canyon towhee extends from central Colorado to southern Mexico and from central Texas to western Arizona. Within this considerable span, the species inhabits desert scrub, arroyo scrub, mesquite woodland, riparian forest, pinyon-juniper woodland and pine-oak forest.
The diet of the species consists largely of seeds, such as those from Palmer amaranth, goosefoot and grasses. The towhees augment these staples with small invertebrates, especially during breeding season. Canyon towhees mostly forage on the ground by scratching around with their feet and beak. They sometimes do a “double shuffle” where they rapidly jump forward, then backward in unison with both feet. This foraging technique helps them to procure hidden food items. In turn, canyon towhees are consumed by various predators, including loggerhead shrikes, American kestrels, various snakes and any number of mammalian carnivores.
Behaviorally speaking, canyon towhees vary from shy and retiring to rather bold and obvious—the latter particularly occurring when living in close proximity to people. They can be so audacious around us that they become almost insatiably curious. I have observed them exploring the inner recesses of my unattended vehicle when I was unloading groceries! They can also be very reclusive to the point that I have led various Sky Island birding tours where we tallied over a hundred species and have still failed to register a single canyon towhee.
Public Service Announcements
Remember When?
We’ve posted over 3,400 articles on the PRT website, with more to come as we digitize the print issues’ archives. Here’s an article that’s relevant to this time of year, first published in our August 2014 edition…
Informed Mowing: Sustaining the Sonoita Grasslands
By Mark Stromberg
Aug. 1, 2014
Haying off the native grasses at the peak of their green growth, often when the seeds are not even mature, has become a growing practice in the Sonoita plains.
If you are a landowner, you might be tempted to do this, but haying the native perennial grasses can break their growth cycle and lead to the loss of their vigor, promoting invasion by shrubs and thorny vegetation, along with loss of the shallow topsoil during heavy rains. If haying is done year after year, our grama grasses will be unable to store enough below-ground carbon, nutrients, and sugars and slowly will dwindle away, especially in dry years, as we have recently seen.
Cattle, if managed appropriately, are probably the best way to mow a native perennial grass pasture.
School News and Youth Events
Fall internship seeks Patagonia, Sonoita and Elgin youth to help shape local justice solutions
From Santa Cruz County Justice Project (SCCJP):
August 2025: The Santa Cruz County Justice Project (SCCJP) is inviting high school juniors, seniors, and college students from Patagonia, Sonoita, and Elgin to apply for its Fall 2025 Internship Program.
SCCJP is a local nonprofit organization seeking to make the legal system easier to understand and more accessible for everyone in Santa Cruz County. This hands-on internship will empower youth to contribute to real-world justice initiatives and help develop resources addressing domestic violence, housing challenges, and civil disputes.
“We want to hear from every corner of Santa Cruz County,” said SCCJP founder and Patagonia Municipal Judge Pro Tem Miguel A. Lopez. “The voices and experiences of students from Patagonia, Sonoita, and Elgin are essential to making sure our work serves the entire community.”
Recognizing that traveling to Nogales can be a challenge for eastern county residents, the program will offer flexible participation options, including remote work, carpool coordination, and adjusted meeting times.
County leaders are commending the program’s efforts:
“Judge Miguel Lopez is doing incredible work, and I’m thankful for all that he’s doing for our community,” said John Fanning, Santa Cruz County Board Supervisor for District 3.
Interns from the inaugural SCCJP Summer 2025 Internship Program are also reflecting on the value of their experience:
“Not everyone in the county can afford a lawyer,” said Samantha Thwaits, a senior at the University of Arizona. “Our work will bridge the gap so justice can be found in more places.”
Applications are set to open on September 1st. Students from Patagonia, Sonoita, and Elgin are encouraged to apply.
For more information, including how to apply, visit sccjpaz.org/internships or email info@sccjpaz.org.
Upcoming Events
To share information about an upcoming event in the PRT Weekly News Bulletin, please submit a poster/flyer in JPEG or PNG format. Email your submission to prtadast@gmail.com by Monday, 5pm. Remember to submit your event at least one week before the event date. Thank you!
From Borderlands Restoration Network:
Monsoon Mixer with Borderlands Restoration Network
Saturday, August 23 5-8 PM
Patagonia Lumber Company
Celebrate the season of renewal with Borderlands Restoration Network at our Monsoon Mixer! Join us for a casual evening gathering where you can connect with BRN staff, board members, and fellow supporters who care deeply about restoring and protecting the borderlands.
Enjoy music from Connie Brannock & Little House of Funk, a great beer and wine selection, and delightful company as we share updates from the field, stories from the borderlands, and our vision for the work ahead. This is a special opportunity to meet the people behind the work and learn how your support makes a lasting impact.
Let’s raise a glass to rain, resilience, and restoration. We can’t wait to see you there!
Award-winning early music ensemble Magdalena to perform free concert in Patagonia
From Santa Cruz Foundation for the Performing Arts:
We are thrilled to announce that the Benderly-Kendall Opera House has again been selected as the first of three venues for the concert winners of the 2025 Arizona Early Music Emerging Ensemble Residency Program. This prestigious program aims to support and showcase new talents in the field of early music (music from the 14th and 15th centuries, played on period instruments). We are honored to host Magdalena—this year’s winning ensemble—at our exquisite venue in Patagonia.
We hope you won’t miss this opportunity to be part of an exciting musical event!
Join us on Wednesday, August 27 at 5pm in congratulating the performers and celebrating their dedication to enriching the world of early music!
Get ready for the 110th Annual Labor Day Rodeo — it’s almost here! Tickets will be available starting July 30 at SonoitaFairgrounds.com — so hold on to your hats and mark your calendars!
From the Santa Cruz Foundation for the Performing Arts (SCFPA):
The announcement for our upcoming season was designed by the talented Paula Schaper and inspired by Pat McNamara’s wonderful work of art. Please mark your calendars for the 2025-2026 season at the Benderly-Kendall Opera House. Tickets will go on sale September 15.
Recurring Events
Alcoholics Anonymous:
- Sonoita Bible Church – Tuesdays at 7pm, 3174 N. Doors open at 6:30. Highway 83, Sonoita. Zoom option: 601-758-3907.
- Patagonia Methodist Community Church – Thursdays at 6:30pm. 387 McKeown Ave., Patagonia. Contact Dave at 207-249-8302.
Crossroads Quilters: Are you a textile artist (weaving, embroidery, knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting)? The Crossroads Quilters invites all interested textile artists to our meetings. Bring a project to work on and enjoy a morning of information sharing and camaraderie. We meet the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month at 9am at the Sonoita Bible Church, 3174 N. Highway 83. For more information email: alisbunting@gmail.com
Overeaters Anonymous: to find a meeting go to oasouthernaz.org. Contact Adrienne H. for more info 520-404-3490.
The Patagonia Senior Center has received a grant from Delta Dental of Phoenix to help seniors with dental expenses. Vouchers are provided for up to $350 to participating dentists. If interested, please call the Senior Center at (520) 394-2494.
Click here to consult the PRT’s ‘Community Calendar’ for additional events and meetings.
Employment Opportunities
To list an employment opportunity, please contact Nisa Talavera at prtads@gmail.com or 740-206-9594.
Farmers Markets
Patagonia Farmers and Crafts Market – Thursdays 10am-12pm by Red Mountain Foods.
Sonoita Farmers Market – Saturday Mornings 9am-12pm at the Sonoita Post Office parking lot (NW corner of Hwy 82/83)
Sierra Vista Farmers Market – Thursday 10am-2pm at Veteran’s Memorial Park.
Nogales “Little” Mercado – Fridays 4-7pm 163 Morley Ave, Nogales.
Church Events and Schedules
St. Therese Parish in Patagonia
Patagonia United Methodist Church
Click here to consult the PRT’s ‘Community Calendar’ for additional events and meetings.
Our Advertisers
For information on advertising in the PRT’s print edition, Weekly News Bulletin, website or a custom package, please contact Nisa Talavera at prtads@gmail.com or 740-206-9594.
Private collector interested in buying good quality minerals from the Patagonia area and other Arizona locations. Please contact Bob Stewart, 315-440-2786 (Sahuarita)
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