A Vote for Deborah Howard This November is a Vote for Fairness and a Public Servant Who Wants to Improve the Lives of Her Constituents

With Democratic electoral prospects in the upcoming Midterms on the rise, more congressional and legislative district seats are coming into play.

A State House seat in Arizona Legislative District (LD) 27, an area that includes parts of Peoria, Glendale, and Phoenix, is one of those coveted seats.

Running after nearly scoring an upset victory in 2024 for one of that district’s House of Representatives seat, Deborah Howard is looking to retire incumbent extremist MAGA Republican Lisa Fink.

Running on a platform to improve the lives of her constituents and promote economic and social opportunity and fairness for all, Howard, if elected, will work to advance an affordability agenda, provide water security, hold people who betray the public’s trust accountable, and reform the Empowerment Scholarship Account-Private School Voucher Program while increasing funding for Arizona’s public schools.

Ms. Howard graciously spoke with Blog for Arizona to discuss her candidacy for one of the State House Seats in LD 27.

The questions and her responses are below.

Please tell the readers two reasons you like to run for the Arizona House seat in LD27.

“There are many reasons, but the top two are that I believe that voters deserve to have a representative who will listen to them. And the extremist Republican legislators have proven over and over again that they won’t do that. The other one is I want to focus on the issues that are actually going to improve the lives of Arizonans in a thousand different ways. And we have a $18 billion budget. There should be enough money there that we can figure out how we allocate that in ways that both promote a really strong economy and provide services for the people who are served by that economy and who work in it.”

Please tell the readers why you are a better candidate to serve them than your opponent.

“Again, I will listen to voters. That’s fundamental to why I’m doing this, because I have legislators who won’t listen to me. Furthermore, my opponent, Lisa Fink, is focused on conspiracy theories and culture wars, and I just don’t think that’s what people need at the moment. I think they’re far more focused on how the government can make their lives more secure and more affordable. We talked previously when we were getting going about water security. We were talking about utility rates. We were talking about insurance prices. These are areas where hard work within the state legislature can deliver real results for consumers, make life more affordable and provide a bit of security. 

Lisa Fink cares about bathroom bills. The very first thing she did when she was elected was to hold a hearing on chemtrails. She then proposed legislation to ban cloud seeding, which is just ridiculous. And it’s not at all meaningful to what Arizona voters and Arizona residents actually need.”

There are many important issues Arizonans are concerned with, like affordability, accountability, ESA Reform-Investing in Public Schools, and accountability. Would you like to elaborate on any of these?

“The fundamental problem that the Arizona legislature has to fix is that voters don’t trust them. The Arizona legislature, under extreme Republican leadership, has repeatedly acted in ways to erode that trust. The way we rebuild that is through transparency and accountability on every front. And being trustworthy. When I say I will listen, that means I’ll stand beside you, and I listen to what you have to say. That is not something that others will do, or they’ve proven that they’re not willing to do that.”

“On the ESA program, it was problematic that the same entities that have waged a decades-long campaign against public education here in Arizona were successful in making the school voucher reform disappear from the ballot. But it was never going to be enough. Our campaign had 22 volunteers who collected about 1,600 of those signatures between the end of March and the end of June. So the removal felt personal. Still, we understood it was only a stopgap measure. To truly protect public education, we were always going to have to flip the state legislature.  

The most obvious example of the legislature acting in ways to erode trust and refusing to listen to voters relates to the Abortion Access Initiative in 2024. It passed statewide by 61 percent. Here in L.D. 27, I think it passed by 59 percent. But there were 19 efforts by the state legislature in 2025 and 2026 to undo that, to take away the health care access for reproductive freedoms that voters had just said we wanted. I find that unacceptable. I think that’s at the core of why voters don’t trust government, because why bother to vote if you’re not going to listen to me anyway? 

I want to turn that on its head. I will listen to voters. Even when we disagree. I want to hear what you have to say, because I want us to have a government that can solve tough problems like we’ve done in the past on water. I think Arizona is pretty amazing when we look at how it historically addressed its water issues. We’ve more than quadrupled our population in 40 years, whatever the right numbers are, and at the same time, we’re using less water. That shows foresight and discipline and commitment to making life livable. 

Big problems with water are in our future. And I am confident we can solve hard problems when we elect people who are more interested in the hard work of governing, rather than cosplaying with performative politics around culture wars and conspiracy theories.  We live in the desert, for God’s sake. We have to have people in place who will make those hard decisions. We can’t do that unless voters trust us that we’re putting their interests first. I think my opponent, Lisa Fink, fails to do that time and time and time again.”

What are at least two ways you would conduct voter social media outreach to Democrats, independents, like-minded Republicans, and people who normally do not follow politics and current events?

“You mean like 85% of the population? I was on a phone bank a week ago and spoke with a woman who shared she hadn’t really realized there was an election in November. Now she knows. 

The foundation for reaching voters in door-knocking and phone banking. We need to talk with voters where they are. In 2024, we ran a great campaign in a bad year. We had calculated my “win” number to be 45,000 votes. I received 45,601 votes. That was 10,000 more votes than the Democratic candidate received in 2022, and 5,000 more votes than the two Republican House candidates that same year. 

But still, a loss is a loss. So this year we’re running a better and bigger campaign in what we hope will be a better year for Democrats. Our strategy this cycle has two tracks. First, to turn out our base voters. A friend analyzed the vote, and there are enough registered Democratic voters in this district that, had they shown up in 2024, I would be Representative Howard already. So we are reaching into the community and building our base. On this front, I have a cadre of volunteers who have written 15,000 campaign-branded postcards with our message. (We’re still fundraising for postage if any readers are motivated.) 

Second, of those 45,601 votes last cycle, about 10,000 were from voters who were not registered as Democrats. So there is room to grow our winning coalition with more Independent voters and disillusioned Republicans. And we are doing all in our power to reach both. 

For voters of all persuasions, we are out in the community. We spent months (894 hours to be precise) collecting signatures for candidates and the Protect Education and Voter Protection initiatives. That effort produced more than 8,000 signatures all totaled – and probably represents 5,000 distinct conversations with voters. We created a single walk card under the umbrella of “Standing Together for Public Education in the West Valley” featuring the four public education champions on the ballot in LD 27 .  We were doing the signature collection at the Motor Vehicle Department. Together we covered public events like Second Saturday in Peoria and special events in our neighborhoods. 

Is there anything not covered in the first four questions you would like to tell the voters? Also a vote for Howard is a vote for…

“A vote for Howard, I believe it’s a vote for fairness.  I also think that it’s a vote for all of us.

What I mean by fairness is like, I don’t think the economy, I don’t think our culture right at the moment is set up to be fair for all of us. And I think we need that. And to solve the hard problems that we have. That is my focus: to level the playing field and make sure that the field is actually expanding so more and more people can play on it. I think that is fundamentally my entire platform. 

“LD 27 is ripe for change—and the Republicans know it. The Republican State Leadership Committee, which is the counterpart to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, has identified LD 27 as one of their four targets. I believe that there has to be polling that goes with that, which, of course, I’ve not seen, but they didn’t list their four districts, which are 4, 13, 16, and 27 in numerical order. They’re afraid that in here in LD 27, I am going to unseat Lisa Fink. And I say they should be afraid, because we’re running a great campaign. We have a great network, a strong team, and coalition that we’re building. And it seems to be growing every day. 

This morning, I learned that I’ve been endorsed by the National Democratic Redistricting Commission committee as a Democracy defender, as one of the people who would be in place to protect elections going forward. I am honored by that. In the same vein, I’ve been endorsed by Attorney General Kris Mayes and the Voting Rights Fund. I’ve been endorsed by many labor organizations, environmental support organizations, and others. What unites these disparate organizations is a commitment to fairness and democracy. 

There are others; the i’ve been endorsed by multiple environmental groups which realize we need to have people in office who are going to take environmental issues like water and electricity really seriously. We have fabulous leadership here at the LD level; I want to give a shout-out to Val Harris and Terry Raml. And then our partners and donors and everybody who’s doing everything that they can to make our campaign a success.”

Please click here to find out more about Deborah Howard and her candidacy for the Arizona State House of Representatives—District 27.

Please click here to read Ms. Howard’s previous interviews with Blog for Arizona.

Legislative District 27 is primarily a residential suburban district, including neighborhoods in Phoenix, Glendale, and Peoria. The district boundary to the north is Pinnacle Peak Road, which kisses I-17 and then pulls away to 43rd Ave as the eastern boundary; we go as far south as Northern Ave, taking to Desert Diamond Casino, but not the Glendale stadium. Our western boundary is the 101 loop roughly. 

I love this district. It seems every neighborhood is punctuated with parks, shopping and entertainment areas, and professional complexes. It is home to the Peoria Sports Complex—spring training home for the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres. Both the ASU-West campus and Midwestern University are located in the district. The median age of LD27 residents is under 40, and roughly a third of all residents are renters.

I’ve attached a pretty special map of our district, a Treasures Map, created by Christie Beniston, an artist who has been creating public art projects, residential and commercial commissions, and fine art for more than 30 years. Beniston’s private and public art commissions include Southern Methodist Hospital, Rady Children’s Hospital, LA Metro, and the San Diego Airport. I am deeply grateful for her talent and her contribution. 

I’ve used this map to talk about our district at the doors. Voters will take the map out of my hands and show me places where they play, shop, live, and go to school. It is just another way to create a shared community.