UPDATED 9/11/24: Greg Whitten Hopes to Be the Democrat that Finally Breaks Through the Red Wall that is CD Eight

EDITOR MDB UPDATE: Greg Whitten will appear at a TheDGT.org event on Monday at Noon on Sept. 23rd. Please register in advance and come meet and discuss the CD 8 race against Abe Hamadeh. Register here!

In 2018 and 2020, Democrats fielded strong candidates like Dr. Hiral Tipirneni and Michael Muscato in the hope that they would dislodge MAGA favorite Debbie Lesko from the Maricopa County West Valley’s Arizona House Congressional District Eight seat.

They were not successful.

With Lesko retiring from Congress and seeking a seat on the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, 2022 Arizona Attorney General MAGA Candidate Abe Hamadeh emerged victorious from a six-person Republican Primary. 

He will face off with the University of Arizona and Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government Graduate Greg Whitten.

Greg is a national security expert, having served in the Pentagon as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Program. Mr. Whitten is running because:

 “I know there’s nothing more powerful than people working together towards a shared vision. So, in Congress I’ll put people over partisan politics and work to ensure every Arizonian feels safe and secure — safe from threats from at home and from abroad, secure in a retirement that’s been put at risk, all as part of an Arizona economy that’s creating jobs.”

If elected to Congress, he would focus his efforts on:

• Protecting reproductive freedom.
• Jobs and Economic Security.
• Helping senior citizens. 
• Assisting veterans.
• Arizona’s water crisis.
• Strengthening public education.
• Border, health, and biosecurity.

Mr. Whtten graciously took the time to discuss his campaign to break the red wall of CD Eight.

The questions and his responses are below.

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

“I think the number one issue that’s on everybody’s mind is women’s access to health care or reproductive freedoms.  I believe that is a decision between a woman, her doctor, and her family. When you look at this issue, I know that on the MAGA side with Trump and my opponent, Abe Hamadeh, they talk about this as a state issue. But when you look at that and even those policies and what the Supreme Court did with Roe, this is not just about abortion. This is about women’s access to health care. For example, if the 1864 ban was installed in Arizona, you’d see fewer and fewer OBGYNs. You’d see less Healthcare access for women and that’s really what it’s about. When you think about your mother, your sister, your wife, you want if there are any sort of medical life-saving procedures that need to be done, you don’t want doctors having to think secondly about having to do that with a threat of being either sued for malpractice or even being prosecuted by anybody. A perfect example of that is the law in Texas where you saw a lot of women that had to leave and go to other states, and I just don’t think that’s right. I think that’s a right for every woman to make that decision about her body.”

“The second one I would say is something very big for my district because I have a lot of retirees in Medicare and Medicaid. This is another issue where my opponent has been very misleading. He can’t really tell you what he wants to do – but we all know. Under the Trump Doctrine and under what the Republicans want to do, they’re moving towards privatization. He talks about not taxing people that are on Medicare. We actually know that that will bankrupt the system within and of itself. These programs were meant for people who need them to support our retirees. In my opinion, we need to keep these programs. There are a few things that I would move forward. We need to think about higher means testing – right now that’s capped at 250,000 dollars. I would probably move that from 500,000 to a million. A couple other things that we can look at is increasing the Medicare tax so that people who really need these programs can really do that. I also would move forward to expanding the Biden Administration negotiation on the top ten drugs and capping insulin at 35 dollars. I think we need to think about those things. I have a long history in health care. I was the Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense programs. I’ve been working in vaccine and health care abroad development for 16 years so I understand these issues and understand to get one of the largest constituencies in my district what they need so they don’t have to worry about every single day getting the health care and things that they need.”

How do your views on border security help Arizona? 

First, we already had a bipartisan bill that was going to be the strongest since Reagan if you could go 15-16 years back. That’s probably a Republican bill. What we see with my opponent Abe Hamadeh is he follows Trump to a T and they cancelled that and did not want to do that because of politics which shows that they really don’t want to do anything on the border.  Abe Hamadeh supports playing politics on the border, not fixing the real problem.”

“The other thing that I would want to do is expand the budget for the Department of Justice so that we can truly process asylum at the actual border, not after the fact. I would also look at giving authority to the FBI, DEA, and other agencies to be able to conduct operations in Mexico. We need to think about the cartels and how we’re going to stop them. I am much more aggressive than my Democratic colleagues in regards to how we face the cartels – we need to attack them with the Department of Justice, FBI, and the infrastructure that we already have.”

• 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. 

“When you look at women’s access to health care, Abe has actually said, on the record that he supports the 1864 ban on abortion. He tries to hide behind the “whole this is a states issue” line, but actually even this year about a month and a half ago, he was on TV and he said that anybody that supports reproductive rights for women is immoral and rotten and he called our culture absolutely bad for accepting that. That’s not okay with me and that’s something that drastically differs between him and me. As you heard from my first response, when he’s there, I guarantee you he will probably try to codify something like a 13-week ban or something along those lines because we do know how he feels about that.”

“The second one as I pointed out before with Medicare and Medicaid. He definitely believes in privatizing that. If we privatize that system, it’s only going to punish the people who need that public program the most. I already laid out my policy views on how I would differ on that.”

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

“We just got a poll back from the field. This is a competitive race due to the fact that women’s access to health care is at the top of the ballot. We see that in this historically red district, we’re polling at 41 to 47 percent.  We’re down only single digits because Abe Hamadeh wants to ban abortion with no exceptions.  That’s because, like most Arizonans, I support a woman’s access to healthcare and Abe Hamadeh doesn’t.  We saw in this district that overwhelmingly they do support women’s access to health care with 54 to 29 in favor.”

“We’re going to win by one of the largest field operations in the entire country. We want to be hitting 20 to 30 thousand doors a month to be able to share our message. We also are going to be working towards mailers and ads as we come up. We’ve just had our strongest-ever month and our strongest-ever quarter for fundraising. So we’re seeing that people across the nation, not just in Arizona, are interested in this race and they want to stop the extremists like Abe Hamadeh. We really got a lot of momentum behind us. 

How is your Democratic candidacy different from the two good Democratic candidates that ran before you?  

“I think the difference that I bring to the table is one, I’m a third-generation Arizonan. My grandfather was a Republican. He was good friends with Barry Goldwater and John McCain. I am a moderate. I have spent 16 years working in National Security. I really feel like I can pull off a lot more of those Independents that maybe didn’t have access to the Nikki Haley voters; the ones that believe in those sorts of things. I think that it’s just my more moderate centrism.  Also on top of that having 16 years in public service specifically in National Security and working in the Pentagon. 

Is there anything else that you would like to convey to the readers about your campaign or yourself for the House of Representatives in CD 8? Please explain.

I think the biggest thing for me is we have momentum!  In this campaign we just had the largest fundraising quarter and our progress isn’t slowing down. I also would say that this is a true horse race pointing back to that poll 41 to 47 with 12 percent undecided. This is a really unique year for this from the top down all the way from the President all the way to vote down below Congress in the fact that we are running against people that are not going to represent everyone in this district. Voters will have a choice: do they want someone who represents them or who is just interested in being a part of the chaos in Washington like Abe Hamadeh.  Do they want someone who will protect their reproductive freedom or someone who will throw doctors in jail, like Abe Hamadeh?

“There are a lot of big things that are happening in this district that they never ever talked about when they were running in their primary.”

“I think this is one of the most important elections of our history. People are starting to wake up. I think that my race is a microcosm of what’s going on in the larger scale of things and I think that at the end of the day, Congressional District Eight is going to refute extremism. I really think that we have a lot of good momentum and I look forward to the next three to four months to be able to expand and talk to voters and make sure they know who I am.”

Please click below to find out more about Greg Whitten and his campaign to break the red wall in CD Eight.

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