Wine-industry magazine Wines and Vines has a roundup of how Callaghan Vineyards, Canelo Hills Vineyard and Kief-Joshua Vineyard are dealing with the damage caused by last week’s hailstorm:

Elgin, Ariz. — A freak hailstorm stripped ripening grapes and foliage from winegrape vines in this high-elevation viticultural center south of Tucson last weekend. Growers in the affected area are struggling to salvage even a fraction of their 2010 vintage, already squeezed by an untimely freeze April 30.

Read the whole thing here.

Politico looks at Southern Arizona's Congressional District 8:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has built a political fortress here in this southwestern swing district that shares a rugged, sparsely populated 114-mile border with Mexico.

The Arizona Democrat's $1.9 million war chest is more than twice the size of that of any other House candidate in the state and her politics are perfectly calibrated for the seat. Giffords talks tough on the pervasive issue of border security — harshly enough to rankle some Hispanic Democrats — and she has used her post to address local needs, from securing a $6.4 million earmark in a recent military construction spending bill to build the Pentagon a special operations parachute-training facility in Marana to bringing House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson to the district to meet with local ranchers after one of their own was killed in March by what everyone here presumes was a drug smuggler.

But in a tumultuous political year — and one in which incumbency and parochialism have become double-edged swords — Republicans here are convinced none of it will be enough to save Giffords' political skin.

In short, the 8th District — a vast expanse that stretches south and east from Tucson, through Sierra Vista and Tombstone, all the way to a corner border with Mexico and New Mexico — provides an ideal test case to understand the degree to which national political forces might sweep aside even a polished incumbent who has steeled herself for the onslaught by paying close attention to state and local matters.

"She's done everything she needs to do. If she loses, it would be one of those cases where it doesn't matter how much you spent, it doesn't matter what you do," said Rodolfo Espino, a political science professor at Arizona State University.

Read the whole thing here.

The gang at KUAZ-FM was kind enough to have me on Arizona Spotlight to talk about tomorrow's primary election with Christopher Conover. You can listen to the show here.

You know Republican Andrew Thomas has troubles when conservatives such as Greg Patterson from Espresso Pundit and Stan Barnes from Copper State Consulting say that they don't like the idea of the abuses that would come from allowing him to become Arizona attorney general. Plus, they're even talking about CD8 up in Phoenix.

Politico looks at Jesse Kelly's campaign in the GOP primary that will decide the nominee who will face Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords:

No one will ever accuse Jesse Kelly of bringing weak tea to the party.

The conservative 29-year-old Marine combat veteran and tea party favorite made waves this week when a video of him criticizing Sarah Palin's endorsements of "people who will sell our principles down the river" surfaced and caused a stir.

The brief moment of national notoriety notwithstanding, Kelly is surging at the end of the 8th District GOP primary campaign here, largely on the strength of an impressive grassroots organization and a cocky, free-wheeling style that contrasts sharply with that of the more measured, more disciplined former state Sen. Jonathan Paton.

"I'm expecting a pretty sound victory ... I'm not expecting to squeak by. I'm expecting it to be a mandate," Kelly told POLITICO in an interview over lunch at a P.F. Chang's restaurant here. "Someone forgot to tell the conservatives in District 8 that we had no chance in this race."

If Kelly's right, he'll win the chance next Tuesday to take on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in November, providing yet another proving ground for conservative activists to show that their candidates can win in politically competitive seats.

Read the whole thing here.

If you haven't sent in your early ballot yet or plan to go to the polls on Tuesday, take a look at the Arizona Education Network's website here to better understand how candidates support education. This nonpartisan organization asked candidates to fill out a survey, and looked at 2009 and 2010 voting records. Expected: Most Republican candidates didn't complete the survey. Unexpected: Some Democrats didn't complete the survey and look stupid. It's good stuff and we're lucky to have the Network looking out for us.

But several confidential sources inform me that Glassman's staffers left because they were not happy with the behavior of their candidate.

These sources relayed a litany of complaints about the Glassman campaign, from Glassman berating staffers and volunteers in public, even yelling at them, to Glassman's having his brother Jeremy play a major role in the campaign (doing little or nothing, they say), and the fact that Glassman and his minions gave Democrats reason to believe he would sink millions into his bid for Senate.

Arizona's Illustrated's Friday Roundtable gang previews Tuesday's primary election, with a focus on the Congressional District 8 race between Jonathan Paton and Jesse Kelly as well as the U.S. Senate race between McCain and Hayworth.

Pima County Republican Party Chairman Bob Westerman and Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Rogers visit Arizona Illustrated's Friday Roundtable for a pre-primary political talk.

Now, President Obama's faith or religious beliefs come up again because tea-baggers can't seem to figure out how to live with the fact we elected an African-American president. Obama could be Muslim, but he isn't. He could be Jewish, but he isn't. He said he's Christian, but that doesn't seem enough.

When Reagan was president he didn't go to church because he said he didn't want to disrupt the congregation. No one questioned it because he was St. Reagan, and white and wrinkly and all, so that was totally cool.

I hope President Obama is like most people I know—they may identify as Christian, Jew or Muslim, but they don't know what they really believe. They try to do the right thing anyway. Or they are atheists and just want people to use reason and a little more social justice to figure out our world's problems.

Or wouldn't it be cool if President Obama was actually Halk Kar from the planet Thoron, which is in the same solar system as Krypton? A little less cool than Superman, but still he’s Superman’s brother.