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Alex Rodriguez is a man on the move. It might well be that Alex has been preparing himself for the job he now seeks for nearly his whole life. (Alex says we have to draw our own conclusions on this matter.) For a relatively young man, he has built up an impressive array of experiences and credentials, both academic and practical.

Alex has been a member of the Board of the Tucson Unified School District since 2004. He points out that by winning election to TUSD, he has won in a much larger electoral district than any other Democratic candidate in the race. He works for Raytheon, the largest private sector employer in Tucson, as a supply-chain manager. Alex says he worked with the citizen’s advisory commission on transportation that produced the plan for the Regional Transportation Authority, which voters will decide on May 16th.

Alex argues that he is the only cadidate in the race who combines being a veteran of the armed forces and prior electoral experience. He posits rhetorically why voters would risk nominating any candidate who is either a political neophyte (only he and Giffords have held elected office) or doesn’t have the credibility on national security issues confered by being a veteran and working in the Penagon (only he and Latas are veterans who have worked in the Pentagon). Since he’s is the only candidate who combines both credentials, Alex feels confident that he is the best choice for Democratic primary voters, and would win the general election by appealing to moderates and national security-oriented voters of both parties.

Alex was born in 1970, and points out that at 36 he is only the second-youngest candidate in the race: the youngest is Gabby Giffords. Alex’s parents moved from Nogales, Mexico to Nogales, Arizona in 1963, making him a natural-born citizen of the United States by seven years and a stone’s throw. His parents and siblings have also all become citizens. He is the youngest of 10 siblings in a close, Catholic family, in which he was raised with traditional values and strong spiritual traditions.

Alex says that his family’s success here in America, and their immigrant experience, embodies the American Dream, and gave him an abiding faith in the power of that Dream. And, he notes, it also made him the king of hand-me-down clothes. It also gave him his campaign slogan: “Restore the American Dream.”

Alex started life with few advantages beyond a supportive and nurturing family, but through hard work and service in our armed forces, he has achieved his dreams. Alex attended public schools here in Tucson (Lineweaver Elementary), and in Nogales (Nogales High School). He witnessed first-hand the problems of the Mexican border, living with friends and family on both sides of the border. He volunteered in the U.S. Customs Service Explorer program, which is similar to a police cadet-training program, from 8th grade through high school, where he experienced working alongside customs inspectors and border patrol agents.

Alex graduated high school in 1989 and entered the Army. He enrolled in the ROTC program at the New Mexico Military Institute and transferred to the University of Arizona as a Lieutenant in 1991. He served in the Army Reserve with the 8th Battalion, 40th Armored, stationed at Ft. Huachuca on weekends while earning his B.A. in Political Science, History, and Spanish. Upon graduation in 1994, Alex worked as a legislative intern in the Arizona Senate with the Minority Leadership’s staff on appropriations, banking, insurance, and finance. Alex next went to study in Mexico for a summer, then moved to New York and worked as a graduate intern at the United Nations. He applied to graduate school and won a Woodrow Wilson scholarship to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. There he earned a Masters degree in Public Administration with emphasis on international trade and global security affairs.

After graduating in 1997, Alex joined the Clinton Administration as a nominee to the Presidential Management Fellows program. He worked in the office of the Secretary of Defense, for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for General George Casey (commander of U.S. forces in Iraq), and for Secretary Cohen’s media office. While serving as an Army Reserve Captain in a civil affairs unit, he went to work for the State Department’s Bureau of European affairs on Bosnia and Kosovo. In 1998, Alex was seconded to work for the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations on the issue of NATO enlargement.

In 1999, Alex returned to the Pentagon and was deployed with his civil affairs unit to Bosnia, where he served on active duty until 2000. His civil affairs unit acted as soldier diplomats, working with local authorities to build civic institutions and aid democratic reforms. Alex was assigned to work with U.S. Ambassador William Farrin, formerly an ambassador to the U.S.S.R., in trying to stitch Bosnia back together.

After returning from his overseas billet in 2000, Alex went back to work in the Pentagon and traveled with Clinton’s High Level Contact Group headed by General McCaffrey (Clinton’s Drug Czar) to Mexico City to negotiate new agreements. In 2000, he turned 30 and decided to move back to Arizona, to be near his family He went to work for Wells Fargo in commercial banking, and then to Raytheon as a supply chain manager and strategic planner.

Now, Alex is settled in Tucson, starting a family, and running for Congress. He just married Claudia Rodriguez, neé Arazia, who is 27 and an educational psychologist. After becoming engaged in a very traditional manner (they planed an engagement event for their families) they decided to get married in a civil ceremony in advance of their traditional religious wedding, which is scheduled for after the election.

I found Alex to be a credible, well-qualified candidate, who brings great diversity of relevant life experiences to the table. His facility in pivoting a question to his own frame of reference, or to a straw man of his own choosing, is a prime asset to a politician (one which he demonstrates more than once in this interview), but also sometimes serves to obscure his opinion on important matters. Alex is obviously an intelligent, able man and a quick study. Most importantly, he demonstrates a significant degree of humility, willingness to learn and listen, and a mental flexibility that should serve a candidate, or an office-holder, very well.

Alex’s background as a veteran Army officer, his experience in staff and training positions in both the Executive and Legislative branches of state and federal government, as well as his life experiences in southern Arizona’s borderlands and service in governing TUSD, are all good grounding for a larger leadership role. I found Alex’s comments on the qualities of a good legislator to be the most well-considered and complete of any candidate I’ve interviewed so far. Alex has obviously given leadership serious thought; perhaps he has been thinking about it all his life.

Throughout the interview, any comments inside square brackets are my own as I transcribed our conversation. At times those comments summarize an exchange that was either irrelevant or just too long and detailed to relate more than the gist.

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