No one’s blaming you if you didn’t have the attention span to sit through our entire two-hour livestream Wednesday night as a panel of city- and district-wide candidates fielded, sometimes confusingly so, duplicate and triplicate questions about imaginary apartment high-rises and the overpopulation bogeyman.

The town hall at Province didn’t scrape half capacity and although it droned on, the mid-campaign-season affair wasn’t without its ridiculous gaffes, tense spats and totally false claims.

While sparsely attended, the evening’s events were one of few authentic glimpses at who’s commanding your precious vote July 30. For mayoral challenger Leon Potter, for example, it’s your only chance, as he’s gone 2-for-2 in refusing to face Mayor Nancy Smith head-to-head.

“I’m not a professional, by any means,” Potter, who wants a promotion after quitting his city council gig halfway through his term in 2014, said Wednesday night in what his campaign team, if he has one, can only hope was a gaffe.

He said he’s running on a platform of scaring away anyone who wants to move to Maricopa.

Potter and city council challengers Chrystal Allen-O’Jon and Le’on Willis all shared last night they support raising taxes for Maricopa residents. Meanwhile, incumbents Smith and Councilmen Eric Goettl and Bob Marsh reaffirmed their intentions to maintain or lower tax rates as they’ve done the last six years.

There’s a lot to unpack. Here are the five craziest, most heated and just plain silliest moments from Wednesday night.

Willis forgets he’s not running for school board

Willis, who doubled down and attached himself to the U.S. Air Force again that night despite never enlisting in the military, seems to have a thing or two to learn about what exactly a city councilman does.

As he did in an interview with InMaricopa last month, Willis said his ultimate goal was improving the quality of education at Maricopa Unified School District schools.

“One of my pet peeves is educational attainment,” Willis said Wednesday night to some puzzled reactions, tacking on the school district should only hire teachers who graduated top 10% in their class.

Arizona is amid an unprecedented teacher shortage that presents a “potential catastrophe,” according to the Arizona Department of Education, which does not afford schools to be picky about who they hire. Whittling MUSD down to teachers from the top 10% would mean hundreds and hundreds of students per classroom.

But the point is moot as, under state law, the city council is not allowed to interfere with the school district’s hiring, operations or literally anything else.

“It’s pretty straightforward. We’re not responsible for education,” Smith said bluntly.

Rich Vitiello, candidate for Pinal County Supervisor in District 1 and a former Maricopa vice mayor, responded to Willis: “That’s a separate sanctioning body called the school board.”

The other “key component” in Willis’ campaign, he said, is “inclusism,” which is not a word, although it likely means diversity, equity and inclusion, colloquially dubbed DEI.

Tortosa resident Barry McCain, a U.S. Navy veteran and self-styled cousin of John McCain, came dead last in a state House Democratic primary in 2018. Now, he opposes Vitiello and another experienced elected official in George Arredondo in Pinal County’s District 1.

McCain is running as a write-in candidate after he says he accidentally destroyed all his nomination petitions, and his gaffes Wednesday night were numerous, starting with the first words of his opening statement, which came just before 7 p.m.: “Good morning, everyone.”

Speaking of his doctors, McCain said in the late 1990s, “They told me I had six months to live.” A pause for dramatic effect, and then: “I actually only had three.”

Many a head was scratched.

McCain said he’s compassionate “because I’m biracial,” and leveraged his grandson’s job with the Houston Rockets among his qualifications. He has been a lobbyist at the State Capitol since 2005 with admittedly no success, which he cited as a reason to move on from the gig and seek public office instead.

Several times he sniped at Vitiello by name, calling him a “ringmaster” and, in his closing statement, alleging, “Rich violated state statute,” without elaborating how. Other panel members were quick to respond that Vitiello has never been convicted, indicted, charged or investigated in reference to any crime.

“I wish I knew what he was talking about,” Vitiello told InMaricopa after the debate. “I don’t know why he’s attacking me. If there’s a problem, he can go to the county or the state.”

Potter and Smith tangled often Wednesday night as the mayor twice undressed Potter’s false claims and once called his bluff.

Potter claims he sat in on a recent city council budget meeting and accused his opponent of approving a revenue bond without knowing the interest rate. “Council made a decision without having the full information,” he said.

“He’s assuming that I didn’t have all the information,” Smith bit back, warning: “That’s the wrong direction to go when you’re actually addressing somebody on what they think and what they know. So, he’s making that assumption; that’s not good.”

The argument continued yesterday on an InMaricopa website when Potter told a voter, “I appreciate the mayor wanting me to do her job and respond to why it shouldn’t haven’t been voted on by city council.”

Smith retorted: “Sorry, you don’t have the right information.”

In another heated exchange, Potter accused Smith of violating the city charter in creating a new chief strategic officer title for ex-City Manager Rick Horst, erroneously positing Horst will report to the city council, which sidesteps a municipal law. In reality, Horst reports to City Manager Ben Bitter.

“He says he asks questions and then he proposes he knows that’s happening. He hasn’t asked me, anyone on city council or the legal department. Rick reports to Ben, not council,” Smith said in her closing remarks, adding she is “distinguishing myself as someone who does ask questions from someone who just says he’s going to.”

Potter, who said his “platform is to slow growth,” believes the “population has exceeded the capacity that our city can maintain.”

Smith came armed with the latest copy of InMaricopa Magazine, quoting Monica D. Spencer’s interview with expert local economist Jim Rounds, whose extensive research suggests without more population growth, the city will stagnate. “I’m not going to support a stagnant community,” said Smith.

The city would lose $3.8 million this year alone if the population stagnated.

Potter quipped back the economist was cherrypicked, asserting he could name a slew of other experts who agree turning away people who want to move to Maricopa somehow helps the economy.

When asked to name just one, Potter conceded: “I don’t have a name in front of me, but I looked into it.”

Vitiello, a New Yorker who lives in Cobblestone Farms, made a splash Wednesday night with an onstage ensemble that was impossible to ignore. While five other men on the nine-person panel donned suits and ties, Vitiello sported a star-spangled campaign sign of a button-down tee and was the only panelist to stand up and walk around when answering questions.

He was smartly sure to always answer last among the supervisory hopefuls and commanded a single microphone while his two adversaries shared one between themselves.

When asked about his showy display after the debate, Vitiello said this: “I work hard. I will continue to work hard. I do what I say, and I listen to what the people want and need.”

Clark’s complaint gets eviscerated a second time

Scorned Province resident Terry Clark’s ethics complaint against Councilmember Vincent Manfredi, who is not up for reelection, was ruled unfounded and thrown out at Tuesday’s city council meeting. The issue was broached at the debate a day later via an audience question almost certainly floated by his wife, Becky, who attended.

The council ruled ethics complaints are for internal, council member-against-council member use only, citing the $10,000 legal price tag attached to a previous citizen-filed complaint in 2020.

Incumbents didn’t mince words about why they didn’t investigate the complaint, which Smith noted contains no evidence to back up its charges of bullying and name-calling.

Marsh, speaking with an endearingly Biden-esque stutter, said the onus is on complainant Clark to “sell a council member” on opening the probe himself. But Marsh found such an event unlikely.

“It wasn’t a real complaint,” the predictably soft-spoken councilman said in his most strongly worded statement of the night. “It didn’t have any facts.”

The Maricopa City Council and mayoral elections will be held July 30. The supervisorial election will be held Nov. 5.