New federal rules mean Arizona will be getting a lot less water from the Colorado river. City leaders say they've been planning for years and no one will run out, but keeping taps flowing is expensive.
Page F2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
Both parties vow to fight for working-class voters; their water bills go up regardless.
As it ran on the front
Run the promise against the bill, hon.
Politico's reporting this week quotes both parties saying, on the record, that they cannot afford to lose the working-class vote — 'we better not blow it,' in the words filed under that story. That's the pledge column. Filed the same week, NPR's reporting on the Colorado River carries the other column: Arizona's taps will keep running, and the water bills that keep them running will go up, under a federal plan negotiated by the same government making the pledge.…
…(cont) Two filings, one household. The pledge column says: you matter, we're competing for you. The bill column says: the number on your statement is rising regardless of who wins that competition. Nobody in either party's pledge specifies which bill gets smaller if their side wins. The reporting doesn't have a line for that because there isn't one filed yet.
This is not a comment on whether the Colorado River plan is sound engineering — keeping the tap running during a supply shortfall is, by the numbers in the story, the harder and more expensive path, and hard, expensive paths cost money, and the money has to come from somewhere, and 'somewhere,' per the filing, is the ratepayer. That's not a scandal. That's arithmetic. Rivers don't send invoices to press secretaries.
What's worth reconciling is the gap between the two documents' audiences. The pledge document is addressed to 'working-class voters,' plural, general, a category. The bill document is addressed to a specific household in a specific service area with a specific due date. One of these documents is aspirational. The other one has a late fee.
Whose column gaps like that tend to close, hon? Historically, the bill's. The pledge renews every two years. The bill renews every month.
In lieu of a rebate: read the water bill before you read the stump speech. The due date is real; the pledge, per the filing, is still pending.
“Both parties keep telling the guy at the end of the bar they're fighting for him, and meanwhile his water bill's going up either way — nobody's fighting the bill, they're fighting for his vote, and that's a different fight, and he loses that one every month.”
“The Colorado River plan protects water security for the entire Southwest, that's not a tax on working families, it's an investment in — well, it does show up on the bill, technically, but it's an investment, that's the framing, let's stick with the framing.”
The receipts
New results from The POLITICO Poll show a 37 percent plurality of Americans say Democrats best represent the interests of the working class, while 30 percent say Republicans.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.