Arizona House CD Six Democratic Nominee Kirsten Engel Discusses What She Would Like to Do in Congress

• Protect women’s reproductive freedom and health care.
• Help people buy affordable homes.
• Working to solve the state’s water crisis. 
• Securing the border

Those are four of the major goals Arizona House Congressional District (CD) Six Democratic Nominee Kirsten Engel would pursue if elected to serve in the House of Representatives this November. 

A nominee who barely lost the CD Six in 2022, Ms. Engel’s agenda is a far cry from the MAGA-extreme right Patriot Academy/Project 2025 agenda championed by Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani who has largely towed the Trumpist-Christian Nationalist line of restricting a woman’s choice and refusing to do anything about border security so he, like Mr. Trump, can use it as a political wedge issue in the campaign.

Ms. Engel graciously interviewed with Blog for Arizona to discuss why her goals as a House Representative are superior to the record and goals of Mr. Ciscomani. 

The questions and her responses are below.

• Please describe at least two reasons why your public policy goals as a House Representative in Congress will move Arizona forward and lift Arizonans up. 

“My top public policy goal is to restore the ability of we as women to make our own health care decisions, including the decision of when and how to have a child. This is going to help women in the state to control their own bodies and their own future and it will help families. In Congress, I plan to work to guarantee these rights. Our healthcare rights have been stripped away by the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe versus Wade. It’s left us with fewer rights now than we’ve had for 50 years. My daughter has fewer rights than I had, fewer than her grandmother had! This is unacceptable. It is something that affects us as women. It affects our health and our future. I believe that, unless reversed, it will impact whether families stay or move to Arizona to build their families, their careers, and their futures.”

“We also need to bring down costs for Arizonans. One of my top public policy goals is to promote affordable housing. In addition to abortion access, this is a top issue I hear about when I am talking to voters at their door and over the phone. There are many ways that we can make housing more affordable, especially for young people and their families. We can crack down on price gouging by landlords and we can make sure that the federal government is helping to fund and supply more housing. We can provide and fund federal tax credits for first-time home buyers. We can create a new tax credit for renters and work with local governments to try to increase the supply of affordable housing.”

“Arizona has a water crisis made worse by climate change. The Colorado River has been experiencing drought conditions and there are parts of this district where residents’ wells have run dry. Especially in regards to our groundwater in our rural areas, Republicans in this state have kicked the can down the road rather than taking action to protect this vital natural resource. There’s so much that we can do in terms of making sure that we are using our groundwater responsibly, that we are making sure that our farms and our ranches and our city dwellers are using our water in the most efficient way possible.”

“People throughout the district are feeling the impacts of climate change. The extreme temperatures, the wildfires, the escalating utility bills. They want action, especially our young people. There are so many things we can do to reduce climate change which will also lower people’s utility bills and build a more resilient environment for our future.”

• Please describe at least two reasons why your opponent’s public policy goals as a House Representative will move Arizona backward and pull Arizonans down. 

“Despite posing as a moderate, in Congress Juan Ciscomani has sided with the far right in his party. He has aligned himself with them on reproductive healthcare to border security, to the budget. I think one of the most harmful positions he has had is that he has been an opponent of Reproductive Rights. From cheering the repeal of Roe versus Wade and voting repeatedly in Congress to restrict abortion access, to restricting access to medication abortion and restricting access to reproductive health services for women in our military and our veterans. Ciscomani even voted to cut off access to guaranteed IVF for federal employees here in Arizona. That type of extremism by cutting off health care rights and decision-making ability by women is really outrageous and people are upset about this and they’re not going to take it.”

“On border security, Ciscomani rejected out of hand the bipartisan border security and immigration reform deal that would have invested billions of dollars in border security and in immigration judges to process the immigration claims of migrants at the border. His rejection, in compliance with Trump’s demand that the deal be rejected so he could campaign on the border crisis, shows he is not interested in solutions, but rather in promoting politically ambitious and extremist politicians like Trump.”

“Another very troubling aspect of Juan Ciscomani has been his longtime affiliation with this Christian nationalist organization, the Patriot Academy, that rejects the separation of church and state and seeks to rewrite the Constitution. It teaches kids as young as 11 years old how to use deadly force. Ciscomani has said that nothing has given him a clearer direction in life than the Patriot Academy. This is clearly an extremist group that is suggesting that the solution to our political differences is potentially through violence as opposed to debate and dialogue.”

How do Ciscomani’s votes in Congress and association with the Patriot Academy resemble the goals of Project 2025? 

“They seem to be right in line with it, especially on the issue of abortion access. The Patriot Academy is very clearly anti-abortion. That lines up with the goal of Project 2025 to enact a national abortion ban and Ciscomani’s views where he’s been voting for restrictions. on the federal level to abortion access are completely in line with that.”

• Please comment on the current state of your ground game operations. 

“Our ground game has been very strong. We are very excited to be working alongside the coordinated campaign now headed by our presidential candidate Kamala Harris. We also have our own staff. We have a field director on our campaign and actually several staff members who are devoted to the field campaign. We’re really building that up and getting everywhere. in this very very large District. There’s really a lot of excitement right now in the party on the ground.”

• Is there anything you would like to convey to the readers about your campaign for the House of Representatives in CD Six? Please explain. 

“I want to remind folks that in 2022, I missed winning by one of the closest margins in the country. I missed winning by just a little over one percent after being outspent by outside, dark money 6 to 1.”

“People are watching. They see that the current Congress is under the control of the far right and it just isn’t consistent with their needs or values. They want a working Congress that is lowering the costs of groceries and housing, not one that is stripping away their healthcare rights. They’re watching my opponent, Juan Ciscomani, and how he is enabling the far-right politicians who are in charge in Washington rather than sticking up for their needs here in Arizona. It’s been a very dysfunctional Congress. They’re not addressing high costs for families. They’re not addressing the border and immigration issues.”

“We would love to have your participation in and support for our campaign! Please visit our website at: engelforarizona.com and sign up to volunteer! We have a variety of volunteer opportunities to meet your needs, from door-knocking to phone banking to writing postcards!  Check out our website and follow the mobilize links.”

“Getting out our message is also expensive so if you can donate to our campaign, we very much appreciate it!”

“On to a win in November!”

Please click here to view Ms. Engel’s campaign website.

Please also take a look at her first general election social media ad.

Excited to share our first ad! Voters are sick and tired of the dysfunction in Congress, and they deserve better than Juan Ciscomani putting politics over Arizonans. I look forward to being a leader in Congress for all my constituents, just as I was when I served in the Arizona… pic.twitter.com/VR3Wwxkgx5

— Kirsten Engel (@EngelForArizona) August 5, 2024