Alan Smith Wants to Be a “Citizen Legislator” for the New LD 15

Alan Smith Wants to Be a “Citizen Legislator” for the New LD 15

The new Arizona Legislative District (LD) 15, including East Mesa, Queen Creek, and San Tan Valley, deserves better representation than election denier-extremist -Anti Democracy-Trump Republican, Jake “Troll Farm” Hoffman.

Alan Smith, the Democrat who is looking to defeat Mr. Hoffman, represents a much better alternative for the people in the East Valley District which includes portions of Maricopa and Pinal counties.

Pledging to be a Citizen Legislator for the new LD 15, Mr. Smith vows to, if elected, work on:

• Protecting Democracy.
• Securing women’s and LGBTQ rights.
•  Fulling funding public school
• Water Conservation Policy.
• Common sense gun safety laws.
• Infrastructure improvements.Mr. Smith graciously took the time to respond to questions about his candidacy. The questions and his responses are below.1) Please tell the voters at least three reasons they should vote for you over Mr. Hoffman.My name is Alan Smith. I’m running for State Senate in LD 15 against Jake Hoffman.

  First, I feel our democracy is under threat. Jake Hoffman is a Republican election denier. That’s the major one. If we don’t believe in our voting, democracy is dead. . We really have to support our election results and if you’re a loser, you’re a loser. You need to accept that. I just joined a group called the Arizona Democracy Resilience Network. One of the pledges that you make is that you’re going to accept the election results and that you won’t make fraudulent claims against them. I would love to see other candidates do that as well. So, number one is, I really feel our Democracy is threatened. We really need to close out the 2020 elections in Arizona. Arizona citizens voted and Arizona’s dedicated citizens counted and the election is over. There was no massive fraud.

Number two would be women’s healthcare and reproductive rights. It’s a woman’s body. It’s her choice and we shouldn’t let a legislature get involved in that decision and take that right away. She has a right to privacy. She has a right to her own healthcare decisions.

The third reason is fully funded public schools. Our schools are the worst-funded in the country and our teachers are the worst paid in the country. And now our legislature, at the last minute, threw out another voucher program that the voters defeated four years ago after the legislature had put it forth four years ago. Now they’re doing it again. They just won’t listen. And so, I’m out there, collecting signatures for the petition to stop the voucher program. If just every parent applied that had their kids in private schools and that had homeschooling for their kids, we’re talking about 97,000 children that would be available for vouchers. And if you do the math at $7,000 per child, that’s almost $680 million taken out of public schools going to private schools and homeschooling, and that’s just horrible.”

2) What are the three main issues in the legislative race against Mr. Hoffman? Please explain.

“They’re pretty much the same ones as mentioned above.

Mr. Hoffman and I are totally opposite on each of those three issues that I brought up. He’s an election denier. He was a fake elector that said that Donald Trump had won this state when indeed he had not.

He is for the voucher program. He’s the one that was very instrumental in getting it through the legislature at the last minute. And he took out any accountability out of the legislation as well. He said it’s private schools and that we have no right to look at their finances or the results or test those children, yet, it’s public funds. So, I totally disagree with that.

Then there are women’s healthcare and reproductive rights. I am totally pro-choice and he is totally pro-life. He’d like to see pro-life go across the country. I believe it’s a woman’s life. It’s a woman’s choice. It’s a woman’s privacy. It shouldn’t be the legislature.

So, there’s a huge difference between the two of us that we’re very polar opposite on the issues. So, it’ll be a clear choice to voters, depending on their political makeup, on what they, they feel will be the best choice for Arizona.”

3) Please describe your campaign strategy to reach voters in the new LD, including Independents and disaffected Republicans.

“In my campaign, I am out canvassing with my wife Karen. It’s awfully hot to ask for volunteers to do that. I have one other, my treasurer, helping me right now, but I really haven’t done anything further than that with canvassing. I’ve canvassed with Mark Kelly’s group and with Javier Ramos’s group. I’ll do more canvassing when we get closer.

I am also doing phone banking. I have 30 phone bankers that are calling for me. We’re calling on the leaner Democrats and we are going after Independent men and women. We are also going after Republican women. We do have age groups that we’re looking at for demographics that we’re going to grab off some of those votes. The only way I’m going to win is to get the Independents and some Republican women because the Republicans, by far, outnumber the Democrats in this part of the state.”

4) Is there anything that is covered in the first three questions that you would like the readers to know about you or your candidacy?

“I’d like everyone to know that I had no plans to run in this race. I was waiting for the results of the candidates that filed and was all prepared to support the Democratic candidates that came out. Well, they announced them and there were no Democratic candidates and the Republicans were all running unopposed. In particular, Jake Hoffman was running unopposed and I am just so upset with Mr. Hoffman and his beliefs. I just couldn’t let it go. We had to give the voters another choice.

So, I tried working with my LD15 chair and I was told actually that it was too late to file and run for office. Well, I went and did some research and found out I could run as a write-in, in the primary, and if I got a certain threshold of votes, I needed 488, that I would qualify for the general election ballot. So, that’s what I did. That’s where I started making contacts. I’m really new to the process. I called for Mark Kelly in 2020, so I’ve always been active in the party. I’ll call support, and donate those kinds of things, but never as a candidate.

I want to be the people’s “citizen legislator.” I want to run for this cycle for these two years, win this election and then run for reelection in two years. Four years

in and then retire and be done. So just go to the legislature for four years and be done and leave Arizona in a better place than I find it.

We’ve got issues we need to deal with instead of the fake issues that I’m seeing the Republicans bring forth and we really need to get after things like water and we need to get after infrastructure and we need to shore up our public schools. We need to increase internet connectivity. We should be leading the country in clean energy. There are a lot of issues out there besides the ones that we’ve just discussed: Fighting the Republicans on, like, women’s reproductive healthcare, our democracy, and common sense gun legislation, things like that. So, I’m a citizen legislator. I just want to go in, do my job and leave Arizona better than I find it right now.

I’m also texting to reach out to voters. I’m doing phone banking, texting, and postcards, but right now flyers are what we’re doing. It’s just a black and white flyer. I’m running a low-budget campaign. Right now, I’m in probably $5,000 overall. Two thousand of that went to the Van’s list for the Democrats list and the Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (ADLCC.) It’s been marvelous. Their support has been marvelous. They’re pretty good people over there.”

Please click on the below social media sites for more information on Alan Smith and his candidacy for the Arizona State Senate in the new LD 15.