FOIAzona

They may not have been able to keep their hands off each other, but sadly they did keep them off of government devices.

Roxanna Valenzuela is the mayor of South Tucson, a small and neat city about two hours south of Phoenix, who was revealed in November as being in a secret and ongoing romantic relationship with Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City.

It seemed a little random and I was curious: Did they meet at a campaign event—Valenzuela, an outspoken progressive, hasn’t been shy about taking selfies with Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—or was de Blasio seeking out government contracts in Arizona?

So, I requested the mayor’s emails and text messages from the City of South Tucson (anything to/from de Blasio or mentioning his name).

Bad news for the looky-loos, though.

The City notified me this week that it “conducted a search of the email account … for the requested date range” but that “[n]o responsive email communications were located.” Further, “[w]ith respect to text messages, the City is not in possession of any responsive records.”

There were a handful of media requests from the New York Post (David Thompson and Hannah Fierick), Page Six (Mara Siegler), and the Daily Mail (Victoria Churchill), but other than 13 News KOLD-TV (Mary Coleman) local media didn’t seem very interested in the tabloid beat.

Best of luck to the Happy Couple and whoever de Blasio dates next. Hopefully this will be the last time our blog covers the FOIA aspect of a political romance. (It won’t be.)

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