Democrat Nick Mansour wins AZ treasurer race

All right, it's time now, 8:07, you decide. Democrat Nick Mansoor named the winner over Republican challenger Elijah Norton in the state treasurer race. All right, and he is here with us in studio this morning. Nick, good morning. Good morning. Yeah, congratulations. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Kind of give us an idea, What is first on your agenda as you take office? Yeah, well, first, just excited to win. You know, it's been a 17-month process. My whole family is involved, and it's great to be here. So the first on my agenda is we have an endowment fund in our state. We're not investing it well. I want to make sure we're investing it in a fiscally responsible way. Second, we have some issues with waste. We want to eliminate waste. We want to get to that. I want to attract good companies and businesses to our communities and... I want to keep partisan politics out of this office. That's what I was going to ask you, though, because this is the first time, what, 60 years? Sixty years, yeah. That we've had a Democrat taking the role of treasurer. Talk to me about why you think that was, that why were you the candidate that won this office? Well, I think it's a combination of things. Number one, obviously, it's a very good night for Democrats around the country. But, you know, I am running on a very common sense agenda, an agenda that I don't think is very partisan. I think a lot of the issues I'm talking about It should attract both Republicans and Independents and Democrats, and it did that, and I think that's what it's about. So for people, obviously, when you think of a treasurer, right, you think of any type of, like a HOA, like if you're a treasurer, you handle the money. What type of budget are you dealing with, though, at the State Treasurer's Office? Our treasurer manages $32 billion, rather. It depends on the day, but right now it's about $32 billion. Have you ever done that before? Not $32 billion. I've managed hundreds of billions, but not $32 billion, yeah. Yeah, when you take a look at the numbers, I mean, that really funds everything that happens in our state, right? That's right. $21 billion of that is for our state budget, our state cash operating needs, daily needs. And the other $11 billion is in this endowment fund that I talked about. Are there certain things that you see just by looking at maybe the budget now where you think we could trim there, trim there? This is kind of like my first order of business. Well, there's a couple of areas that we've had a waste. And one is you may remember the sober living homes incidents from a couple years back that cost us $3 billion. So we want to make sure we're not having problems with that again. And then I'm sure as you know, you know, some of our educational dollars have been paying for things like Flat screen TVs and kitchen appliances and things like that, and we want to make sure we're not doing that anymore. I'm glad you brought that up because I think a lot of people, there are a lot of families in Arizona. We've been a leader in charter schools. We've been a leader in school choice around the nation. Would you be in support of getting rid of that? I am not against the program. I support the ESA program. I'm against the waste, and we need to get rid of that waste. So this is going to be the first time that you've obviously been in the private sector for a long time. What is going to be the biggest transition for you going from the private sector to now being an elected official here in Arizona. Probably shows like this. Good answer. I've never done this before, I'm used to just going to work, rolling up my sleeves, so yes, probably this. Well, you're doing a great job so far. Thank you. You guys are being very nice. Yeah, you're a numbers guy, right? I am a numbers guy, yes. And so in the private sector, what did you manage? Well, most recently I was chairman and CEO of a school called Arizona College of Nursing. We helped thousands of people become a nurse there. I have been out of the day-to-day for about two years at this point, but that's the most recent experience. Yeah, I was looking at some of your other interviews you did, and one of them you talked about Arizona's not investing well. That's right. What do you mean when you say not investing well, and how do we, I guess, change that trajectory? Yeah, so this is the education endowment fund I mentioned. We are investing in two things, bonds and public stock index funds. Those are great to be investing in, but we're investing a little too much in bonds and a little too little in the public stock indexes. And so I just want to change that allocation a little bit. All right. All right. Wonderful. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Great to be here. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Good luck. We'll have you back again. More practice. More practice. Thank you, Nick. Have a great day.