Deborah Howard Will Actually Listen to Her Constituents as a State Representative for LD 27

Arizona Legislative District (LD) 27 is another potential fork in the electoral road that will determine which political party controls the Arizona Legislature. 

Community activist Deborah Howard is one of the candidates who could help flip the Northern Maricopa County LD 27 blue. 

Running on a platform of fully funding public education, protecting reproductive freedom and women’s health care, and making life affordable for all Arizonans, Ms. Howard pledges, unlike her Republican opponents, to actually listen to what they want done at the State Capitol. 

Ms. Howard graciously agreed to respond to questions about her candidacy for the Arizona State Legislature. 

The questions and her response are below.

Please describe at least two reasons why your public policy goals as a State Legislator will move. Arizona forward and lift Arizona’s up.

“I think the two issues that I want to name are the two issues that I still hear the most at the doors and that is women’s reproductive freedoms and also increasing the funding and quality of public education.”

 There are two steps to protecting women’s reproductive freedom in Arizona. The first thing we have to do is overwhelmingly pass the initiative on the ballot The second step is we have to flip the legislature because the current Republican Majority again will try to undo it if they win again. They do this every time they don’t like something the voters tell them they want to do.”

“The same is absolutely true of Public Education. Voters twice told the legislature that they did not want universal expansion of vouchers and they did it anyway. Voters told them they wanted a funding mechanism for public education and the legislature refused to implement it rewriting the entire tax code and the process and those two things alone, not implementing the funding mechanism and expanding universal vouchers, took Arizona from a state budget surplus just last year to a state budget deficit this year. So, I Believe by listening to the voters and advocating on their behalf as a state legislature, I will absolutely raise Arizona up and not me alone but as part of a Democratic majority.”

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

 Well, I think that’s the same two issues. I mean voters have a right to make their own health care choices. It is a human right.  And Lisa Frank and Tony Rivero? There’s no daylight between the two of them. They universally oppose a woman’s right to choose. They oppose Proposition 139 and will do everything they can to undo that if voters pass it this election.”

They have both gone on the record as saying that they see, absolutely no problem with the universal school, vouchers. So, they will continue to expand that program. They will continue to decimate, underfund, and diminish the value of public education in Arizona. I just think we have to reverse that trend.  Lisa Fink is just so certain in her beliefs that it’s only parents can make these decisions. And while yes, of course, every single parent knows best for their children, the bottom line is, when they make that decision for their children, that does not give them the right to undermine the universal system for every other child in the state. And that’s essentially what’s happening with the universal school vouchers. Ninety percent The vast majority of the students using that new school voucher, were never in public school in the first place. So, it’s simply become a subsidy for wealthy parents.”  

Please comment on the current state of your ground game operations and how you will generate turnout on par with like the congressional or Presidential races.

“The ground game is solid. We are canvassing every single day. I canvassed more than 1300 doors in June. And I recall that there were very, very many of those days that were over 118 degrees. My tally is over 5,000, I haven’t actually been really disciplined about tracking that, but it’s substantial. I will hit 6,000 doors personally, by the end of this campaign. It’ll probably be substantially more than that. In LD 27, our LD chair Val Harris from the day after the last election, has been working our precinct voters and asking where are the independent voters that are persuadable? Where are our persuadable Republican voters? And we have been reaching out to them every single week since the last election. So if there are 60,000 voters, each one has been reached at least twice and that doesn’t include what I’m doing and that doesn’t include what our allies like Save Our Schools and others are doing.

 Is there anything you would like to convey to the readers about your campaign for the Arizona State Legislature that was not covered in the first three questions? Please explain.

“This campaign is a little bit of a rebel alliance. We’re trying to do something very hard. We’re trying to convince voters that this is a competitive district and that I am a credible candidate and we’re running a really strong campaign. We’re doing great on all three of those things, but I am looking forward to victory in November and then I’m looking forward to a really fun re-election campaign. And there are so many things that once people have the sense that we can have a Democratic majority. Then we can go forward and do some really exciting things that are both engaging and beneficial to all Arizonans.”

Please click here to find out more information about Deborah Howard and her candidacy for the Arizona State House.