HEADLINES
interest was intense. Hobbs’ calendar was
packed with media interviews — local and
national — from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. some
days. The race came down to four states,
including Arizona, that everybody in the
country was watching.

“There was a lot of anxiety but I don’t
think that any of us could have imagined
“SharpieGate” or anything that came
about because of it,” Bones said.

SharpieGate refers to the 2020 election
when a false claim was made stating that
ballots filled out with Sharpies could not
be read by vote-scanning machines in
Maricopa County.

Lawsuits and election denialism
followed and the month after the election
felt like a decade, she said.

In 2021, her office focused early on
issues that would likely come up during
the 2022 election, such as the best
ways to address misinformation and
disinformation. They learned to “pre-
bunk” or anticipate misinformation and
election conspiracy theories to inoculate
against them before they snowballed.

One priority was enlisting the media
in explaining the election process to the
public. Maricopa County election officials
held weekly press conferences leading up
to Election Day and Bones’ office used
social media and other outlets to help
people understand the time it takes to get
results and why not all votes are counted
by the end of Election Day.

While media outlets were helpful in
disseminating election information, some
elected officials and candidates amplified
the notion that if results took too long it
was evidence that “the fix is in.”
Still, most media pushed back on those
claims and explained that mail-in ballots
are secure and would be counted in a
timely manner, Bones said.

Though the races were close,
November’s results seemed to repudiate
many election-denier candidates across
the nation, including in Arizona. Hobbs’
Republican opponent, Kari Lake, was
“kind of the poster child whose loss
was a big one for the election-denier
community,” Bones said.

“A loud message was sent that voters
are ready to move on and to focus on
the problems that are facing the state
— as opposed to continuing to rehash
an election that happened over two
years ago.”
Still, given the makeup of the state
legislature, election denialism is not
dead in Arizona. Additionally, Lake
continues to assert there was fraud in
November’s election. However, she lost
her election lawsuit alleging misconduct
with ballot printers and chain of custody
in late December and was ordered to pay
$33,000 in Hobbs’ legal fees.

To critics who accused her office of
vindictively disenfranchising voters,
Bones countered that there should be
a conversation about “what it actually
means to disenfranchise people — telling
your voters that it’s not safe to vote early,
causing them to go and stand in long
lines and telling them that it wasn’t safe
to put their ballot in a certain box was
disenfranchising to voters.”
Following the 2020 election, there
were “count the votes” protests outside
the Maricopa County Tabulation Center
that were scary and the staff “definitely
felt intimidated,” Bones said. She has
heard some “really nasty things” this
time around about how she belongs in
jail, how she’ll look good in orange and
should be in Gitmo, but the worst of it
has been directed solely at Hobbs.

But after surviving all that 2020 threw
at her and others, nasty comments aren’t
enough to keep Bones from vocally
defending elections officials’ work and
integrity on Twitter.

On Nov. 10, she tweeted: “Beyond
tired of the disrespect from certain people
towards those working 18-hour days
to follow laws/procedures that exist to
ensure the integrity of our vote. These
people are heroes and deserving of our
gratitude and appreciation for their
service. #accurateresultstaketime”
(Bones also tweets her passionate love
for many sports’ teams, specifically, the
Arizona Wildcats, the Phoenix Suns and
the Arizona Cardinals. And as a native
JN TURNS 75
and I used to visit very often,” said
Eckstein. “I have vivid memories of them
talking about the paper and what his
garage looked like, that’s where he did
all the work — except for the printing.”
Eckstein’s father, Cecil Newmark, man-
aged the Phoenix branch of the American
News Co., a magazine distributing
agency. Her mother, Pearl Newmark,
worked part-time as a legal secretary while
raising the couple’s three children: Flo,
Diane and Steve.

In 1955, Cecil was transferred to
Denver to manage the company’s
Colorado branch. Eighteen months later,
the company was sold and Cecil needed
to find a job.

“We came back to Phoenix because
that had been our home for many years.

Our friend, Bud Goldman, ran Jewish
News at that time out of his garage. He
encouraged Cecil to buy the paper. So,
we thought we’d try it,” said the late
Pearl Newmark in a piece in the May 16,
2008 issue.

On Oct. 28, 1960, Cecil Newmark
was added to the masthead as the man-
aging editor and in 1961, he purchased
the paper from his friend Goldman and
moved into an office on Roosevelt St.

in downtown Phoenix. Pearl became
associate editor.

“When my parents ran it — it was really
mom and pop — they were the only full-
time people,” said Eckstein. “Mother was
the editor and bookkeeper, and my father
was the publisher and ad salesperson.

They had one secretarial person that did
support stuff and a few part-time writers
including Leni (Reiss).”
Eckstein was working for Jewish Family
& Children’s Service (JFCS) in Phoenix,
starting as a secretary in 1965. She went
to part-time after sons Michael and Tim
were born and earned her master’s in
social work at Arizona State University.

When she returned full-time to JFCS she
worked in geriatrics and immigration,
helping refugees, many from the former
Soviet Union, to settle into the Greater
Phoenix area. “It was very rewarding,”
she said.

At 75, Newmark was looking to retire,
so Eckstein and her husband, Paul, an
attorney, decided to buy the paper from
her parents in 1981.

“Paul, who was the editor of our high
school newspaper, and I decided it would
be a fun opportunity for us, so we bought
the paper from my parents, and I became
the publisher,” said Eckstein. The couple
were classmates at West High School in
Phoenix. The paper was renamed Jewish News
of Greater Phoenix and Eckstein changed
the frequency to weekly because “news
happens every week.” She also started
special sections including arts and culture,
families, education, weddings, holiday
planning, bar/bat mitzvahs and summer
camps. In 1988, she published the first
community directory — a comprehensive
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
and his wife, Bertha, was co-chair.

Goldman and Joseph Stocker, a jour-
nalist who had worked on staff at the
Oklahoma City Times and Associated
Press of Denver before coming to
Phoenix, became co-publishers and took
over production of the paper as an inde-
pendent enterprise on Dec. 31,1948.

Bertha and Stocker’s wife, Ida M. Stocker,
became associate editors.

“The Federation started it for a matter
of months and then realized it wasn’t
something they could effectively take
on with whatever tiny staff they had and
that’s when Bud said, ‘I can do it,’” said
Eckstein. With the new management came a new
title design. Gone was the heavy block
lettering; in its place was a new font and a
graphic of a desert scene with mountains,
cactus and the sun.

The paper would now be published
bi-weekly and, for the first time, its col-
umns would be open to advertisers —
both Jewish and non-Jewish. Foodville
at Seventh Ave. and McDowell Road
advertised “good” roast beef for 39 cents
a pound, Carnation milk for 23 cents for
“2 tall cans” and “strictly fresh” grade A
eggs for 55 cents a dozen.

Goldman created the paper from
his garage at 528 W. Granada Road in
Phoenix. “My father was very good
friends with Bud Goldman and my dad
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