Retired Educator Cindy Hans Will Listen and Work for the People as the Next State Senator from LD 13

The new Arizona Legislative District 13 is one that encompasses much of the old LD 17.

A purple district, it provides Democrats with an opportunity to expand their influence in the Arizona State Senate with the possibility of gaining the majority in that chamber.

One of the Democrats looking to run for the new state senate seat in LD 13 is Cindy Hans.

A retired educator and a current volunteer on voting and education matters, Ms. Hans, unlike her likely Republican opponent, JD Mesnard, promises to listen to everyone and work for common sense solutions for all Arizonans in the State Legislature.

If elected to the senate, Ms. Hans will focus on:

• Education funding.
• Safe communities.
• Voting rights.
• Protecting individual privacy.
• Ensuring tax breaks are fair.

Ms. Hans graciously took the time to discuss her candidacy for the Arizona State Senate.

The questions and her responses are below.

• What are at least two reasons you want to run for a term for the Arizona State Legislature? 

“I’ve got boots on the ground experience and education funding is certainly on everybody’s mind.

I have a boots on the ground experience in elections. I have been an election worker since 2017. So I know that system as much as possible. I am convinced of the security of the elections. I’ve spent countless hours speaking to voters who come to the vote centers and they’re concerned about the security of their ballot or their vote and how it is counted, et cetera. I give them the tools so that they can feel more confident in the system. 

The one thing is that I do listen to people. In education, I was known for listening to people and working with groups that sometimes required negotiating. Everybody has a point and that needs to be acknowledged. and they need to be addressed. People’s concerns need to have a platform, and they need to be treated with dignity.

I don’t say that I have all the answers, but I certainly can acknowledge that this is your concern. And maybe I can help. And maybe I can explain, but you will be listened to if I’m elected and before I’m elected, actually.”

• What are at least two reasons voters should have let you over any opponent in the legislative race? 

“My experiences with life. I raised my children in Arizona. I’ve worked in Arizona. My concern for the economic and educational health of Arizona, which are tied together.

An educated populace is going to be an economically healthy population and to, to try and separate those out is short-sighted and foolish. So, and what I just said, I just want to say that I need to know what other people’s concerns are by talking to voters. I’ve heard Texas. I’ve heard extraordinary rent raises. So, I want to know what the citizens of Chandler are concerned about.”

• If elected, what are at least four issues you will focus on in the legislature? 

“Education funding and the corollary to that is transparency for charter schools.  I would like to see charter schools held to the same accountability and transparency that public schools are held to. The analogy is this: let’s say you’ve had a 900 calorie a day diet, but you need 2000 calories to be healthy. The legislature says, “We understand so we’re going to give you 1200 calories a day.” Sure, you’re closer to what you need, but you’re still short by 800 calories every single day. This is what has been happening to education. Arizona deserves a quality education system and it’s critical to meet the funding needs.

I want communities to be safe. That means that schools need to be funded appropriately. First responders and all of their support people need to be funded. We need to do something There needs to be something to address gun violence. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know that it needs to be addressed. 

I want to keep the accessibility to the elections as easy as possible. I want to keep mail-in ballots. I want to keep vote centers to replace those ballots.  Accessible and secure elections is one of my big issues. 

I think tax breaks need to be looked at. There are some pretty frightening statistics out there about how big our tax breaks are compared to the whole budget of the state of Arizona. I don’t know if those tax breaks benefit all the four million people in the state or just four, but we need to look at those.”

Finally, water is critical. As What I want would do as a legislator is I want to hear from the experts. I want to hear from the geologists. I want to hear from the climate people. I want to hear from the hydrologists, not just politicians. 

• Do you support the expansion of Kids Care? 

“Yes.” To be your best at work, adults need healthy food, emotional security and to be free from worry about health care and paying the rent. Kids have the same needs, but they don’t have their own resources. If parents are distracted with rising costs and limited or no health care options, then the state needs to play a role in providing it for kids: they need to be their best selves, too.

• Do you support Universal Pre-K? 

“Yes.”

• Do you support funding the police?

“Yes.” This needs some more explanation: Police need funding to partner/hire specialists in social work, mental health, DV counselors, housing assistance, etc. If community services are not funded, then the burden falls to the police who should not be expected to master all of the complexities of citizen needs.

• Do you support a secure border coupled with immigration reform?

“That is an interesting one because I do support secure borders. Borders are the province of the federal government. So, there’s an intersection there that needs to be explored. What I want to listen to is the people who are on the border, who are tasked with securing the border.

What do they need?  From what I’ve read, is they need more technology. 

I think we need more infrastructure in the immigration process so that we have the judges or the clerks or the trained personnel to look at the people who are immigrating here to determine their asylum status. They shouldn’t be waiting months and months and months. That process needs to be funded. Immigration and border security is multilayered and multifaceted and it’s interwoven. I do want secure borders, but it needs to have some common sense to it. I think our immigration process needs to be overhauled and brought up to speed with the new technologies. I don’t have a yes or no answer to that.”

• One of my other important issues is privacy and healthcare. 

“I have a doctor and he has all kinds of technicians who look at my test results and say, here’s the data. And I have an insurance company that likes to play doctor and I have friends and that’s enough people for me to make a decision about myself. I don’t need the government saying you can or cannot have access to medical proceduresthese things. I have enough people who are trained to tell me what to help me make the best decision about what’s best for me.” 

• Is there anything that covered the first three questions that you’d like to readers to know about you and your candidacy?

“I would like people to know that is since I retired from education, I have been active in supporting democracy in multiple ways. I worked with Save our Schools on the referendums to restrict the ESA voucher expansion. I worked with the League of Women voters, which is. very political and very nonpartisan. We work on issues. I’ve run forums where the primary goal is to provide a civil arena for the candidates to speak on multiple issues. The entire forum is run with civility. Everybody has an equal opportunity where there is to speak so that nonpartisan and overall respect for all positions and sides. It’s one of the things that I loved about and I still love about the League of Women Voters.

In Chandler, I recently completed the CIVIC committed to the civic program, which is a new program in Chandler that you can apply for because I wanted to know my community better and I wanted to know the people who were behind the politicians that actually do the boots on the ground work and make Chandler run, like making sure my water’s clean, my roads are repaired, and my trash gets picked up. Who are those people? CIVIC gave me a bird’s eye view into that. It was excellent. It was an excellent program. 

I volunteered with Arizona Stand Down, which is an outreach for veterans. I am not a veteran, but I was raised in a military family. And so those issues are close to my heart too.”

Please click on the below social media links to find out more about Ms. Hans and her candidacy for the Arizona State Senate.

https://cindyhans.azurewebsites.net//