New Arizona Democratic House Leader Andres Cano on the Priorities of His Caucus

Democratic Candidates for the Arizona State Legislature, despite a new legislative map that tilted towards the Republicans, defied electoral expectations in 2022 and maintained their numbers of 29 House and 14 Senate seats.

With many new faces in both chambers and a Democratic Governor taking the helm in the first week in January, there is optimism among the new Legislative Democratic Leadership team that priorities long ignored or given half-measure attention like fixing the public education funding system and solving the water crisis will finally get the critical attention it deserves.

In the State House, Democrats have chosen Representative Andres Cano of the new Tucson area Legislative District (LD) 20 to become their new leader.

A member of the House Ways and Means and Natural Resources, Energy, & Water Committees, Cano, a Gates Millennium Scholar who was raised solely by his mother, hopes the election of Governor-Elect Katie Hobbs will foster a new era of bipartisan cooperation on the major issues that evaded the legislature on many instances during the Doug Ducey Era.

Representative Cano graciously took the time to discuss the priorities for the Democratic Caucus in the next Legislative Session.

The questions and the responses are below.

• To what extent is the atmosphere among Democratic House members more optimistic knowing there will be a Democratic government at the helm in January? Please explain.

“The Governor-Elect made it very clear throughout her campaign that she would be staying focused on bipartisan solutions that bring Arizonans and our legislature together. For far too long, and particularly the last four years that I’ve spent at the State House, we’ve been stuck in partisan gridlock and at this point, it’s our desire among House and Senate Democrats to figure out where the middle is and to work with our Republican counterparts in the House and Senate, and not have to be fearful of a veto pen that is very much a possibility under our Democratic governor and a Republican Legislature.”

• To what extent will it be a different legislative strategy for the caucus working with the Democratic Governor during the next session? Please explain.

“We are going to stay focused on education, focusing on teachers, on classroom facilities that have been crumbling over many years now because of decades of inaction by our GOP state legislature. Arizonans are looking for solutions and what we want to bring forward at this point is a balanced budget and strategic investments that lift people up.”

“One of those prime examples that I think has a unique opportunity for us to work across the aisle is going to be on housing solutions. In the last year, about 69% of Arizonan renters have experienced a rent hike. That to us is troubling. Not only because it’s becoming more expensive to live, but because we also need to be looking at the long-term solution, which involves incentivizing more housing, but particularly also paying close attention to how we are going to be building more units. We need about 8,000 units per year to be able to keep up with demand and we’re far behind on that.”

• To what extent will it be easier to work out legislative compromises on major issues with the incoming Republican caucus now that there will be a Democratic Governor? Please explain.

“I had the honor of meeting with the Speaker-Elect and we expressed our commitment to work with one another to have our differences discussed internally and not amongst the public. I really do just think that at this point with the House and Senate still being controlled by the Conservative Republican Party, it’s on them to be able to demonstrate that they’re serious about sending legislation that’ll actually get signed into law by the Governor.  For the last four years, in the last two years, we’ve had a near-even split in the House. It’s been 31 Republicans and 29 Democrats. We’ve not seen those numbers since the 1960s and in the last election cycle in 2020, we gained a seat in the State Senate, bringing us to the historic and current 16 to 14 that we’re at right now. A call to action really on our part to say, welcome us in. We’re nearly half of each chamber. Unfortunately, I think that because there was a Republican trifecta, there just was little opportunity for that kind of engagement. There was little desire among the Republicans then. Now, we all have to work together and that’s what we’re staying focused on.”

You don’t see at least a branch of the Republican caucus calling for total paralysis?

“I believe that there will be some members who will not want to work with the Democratic members whatsoever. I mean the further that these absurd election claims continue in our courtrooms and be denied every step of the way, I think that there’s going to be a desire for some Republican members to continue to dispel myths in hysteria about our elections process. One incoming state representative (Liz Harris) has already indicated that she would be not voting on any legislation until we re-certify and in fact, just do a complete redo of the November 2022 election. That’s just not going to happen. The election has been certified by a Republican governor. It’s gotten the support yesterday of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. Their president, who was in Kari Lake’s kitchen cabinet every morning leading up to election day has said enough is enough. That one particular member is going to find that she’s a crucial part of a 31-member majority on the Republican side. When that happens, it only opens up our ability to say, work with the minority party because we’re not going to feed into that kind of hysteria.”

• With regards to the Aggregate Expenditure Limit, (AEL,) will Democrats try to push legislation to suspend it on the first couple of days of the legislative session? Please explain.

“We are absolutely going to do everything in our power to ensure that the billion dollars that would be lost by our school districts are not only protected but that we also try to negotiate a long-term solution to the Aggregate Expenditure Limit. I support Speaker Bowers’s call for us to have a permanent solution. We’re obviously disappointed that we’ve not been able to do that under this current legislature, even after the assurances of Governor Ducey over the summer when we passed a historic bipartisan budget. So, we’re going to be absolutely focused on ensuring that our schools have the ability to use the state dollars that were already approved. I mean, this is nothing but political theater by Governor Ducey and the current Republican legislators who perhaps are really just upset with the 2022 election results and are now holding our school’s hostage. It’s not fair. Our teachers, our students, and our support staff deserve better.”

• With regards to the 2023/24 state budget, what will be at least three high-priority items of the Democratic caucus we’ll be pursuing this new legislative session? Will it include expanded Kids Care, full-day kindergarten, Universal Pre-K, reducing ESAs, lowering college tuition, and further addressing the water crisis and sustainability? Please explain.

“It’s going to be all of the above. We’re going to be prioritizing our K-12 schools. I had a fantastic conversation yesterday with Republican members about our school facilities in particular that need about a billion dollars more, and guaranteed fixes to be able to ensure that the roofs are fixed, the walls are repainted, and the AC systems are replaced. These are all years and frankly decades of these upgrades that have been needed and improvements that have been needed for quite some time, but just have not gotten the attention. I’m going to stay focused on K-12 schools.”

“In addition, our community colleges have not been adequately funded for quite some time, but two community colleges in particular who happen to be the first and second largest community college districts, Pima and Maricopa. They’ve been gutted from the state budget since 2016. We fully intend on ensuring that they get the state resources that they need to ensure that we can support workforce development, create local jobs, and rain our workforce. I’m going to be paying close attention to that.”

• Is there anything I covered in the first five questions you would like to know, like the readers to know about the Democratic caucus and the new legislative session? Please explain.

“I’m actually going to give two different responses.”

“One of the other issues that are going to be of significant importance, because all Arizonans are reading the same headlines about our water crisis is going to be water conservation. I mean, this last year we put a down payment on a long-term solution for a potential desalination plant that still has a lot of question marks. It’s a proposal right now and what I was able to negotiate in the last legislative cycle on top of the long-term strategy and the augmentation plan. We also 200 million dollars for a water conservation fund that’s going to support shovel-ready projects and support municipalities, for instance, and emptying/filling in swimming pools that sometimes are costly in our burden to families or working with agriculture partners to figure out how we can get them on drip technology. The $200 million that we allocated and that was signed into law by Governor Ducey, the package is from Democratic and Republican negotiations to be able to focus on our water security and I do think that given the news that we’ve received about a desalination project moving forward, I still believe that we need to discuss the regulatory framework at the legislature that’s going to focus on actual meaningful water conservation policy. For instance, we don’t have a statewide policy for water metering. Even conservative states like Florida laugh at the state of Arizona when we let them know that we don’t track how much water’s coming in or out. Our rural groundwater management has to be a top priority. Unfortunately, it’s been blocked by the Chairperson of the Natural Resources Committee at the State House year after year, and on climate resiliency, on water conservation, the status quo of the last two decades of Republican leadership at the legislature just isn’t going to cut the bill anymore.  I fully intend on pressuring the Republican legislature to get beyond, what they’ve done on water conservation.”

“With regards to the incoming members at the State House, we’ve got 18 members who are freshmen coming in.15 of them are true freshmen, meaning that about three of them are coming from the Senate or they are returning to the House. So that brings us a unique opportunity for us to have a completely different lens of what public service at the legislature means. We have dynamic candidates who have spent the last year speaking and connecting with voters, in their districts. They’re energized, they’re excited, they’re exceptional, and they’re so ready to go on day one. Of course, we’re ecstatic to be able to figure out  how all of our campaign commitments can be translated into actual governance and actual state policy on all the issues that we’ve discussed for the people.”