Sundareshan and De Los Santos Outline Democratic Legislative Agenda

When the new Arizona Legislative session begins in January, Democrats in both the House and Senate will continue to advance policy goals targeted to improving the lives of middle- and working-class families. 

With a laundry list of policy prescriptions including fully funding K-12 schools, free community college, reducing health care costs, making housing affordable, expanding Kids Care providing paid family and medical leave, protecting reproductive freedom, lowering the costs for childcare for working and middle class families, and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in programs like the welfare for the wealthy and grift laden Empowerment Scholarship Account Private School Voucher disaster, Democrats hope to steer several of these pro working and middle class measures to Governor Katie Hobbs desk for her signature. 

These pro working- and middle-class policy goals are in marked contrast to Legislative Republicans whose main policy agenda has been headlined mostly by tax cuts and welfare (the ESA program) assistance for the rich, voter suppression, curtailing reproductive freedom, discrimination towards the LGBTQ Community, and book bans at school libraries. 

Incoming Democratic Senate Leader Priya Sundareshan and soon to be House Democratic Leader Oscar De Los Santos graciously took the time to discuss Democratic pro working- and middle-class policy goals for the 2025 Legislative Session. 

The questions and their responses are below. 

What are at least three policies Democrats will promote at the Arizona State Legislature, and the next session that will help middle and working-class Arizonans.

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “I think that’s a great question because I think overall Democrats really are focused on trying to make Arizonan’s lives easier and improve their lives and that especially includes focusing on the Middle- and Working-Class Families. I think three priorities that we are really hoping to promote and hopefully move forward are some of the ones that we’ve had as our priorities for the last few years now.”

“That includes lowering prescription drug pricing where we have seen that prescription drug prices have risen, in some cases, by drastic amounts for medicine that people need that is potentially lifesaving. That’s one aspect that we want to be lowering those prescription drug prices.”

“We also know that there is an affordability of housing crisis in the state. We’ve had a number of proposals from the Democratic caucus that would make housing more affordable, and we want to really address some of the real underlying issues with the affordable housing problem, which is that we have a lot of housing supply that has been purchased by large corporate owners and large corporate landlords. So figuring out a way to cap the number of homes that a single entity can own and then be renting out, in some cases in at very disadvantages pricing because that’s what is leading to supply shrinking and prices going up. In some cases the pricing on these housing is rising so much that regular people in Arizona can’t keep up with the way that these large, corporate owners are able to just come in with cash offers and purchase a homes in ways that regular people can’t.”

“Number three is going back to kind of the personal freedom that we have been protective of these last few years like the right to contraception. We want to ensure that we are protecting the right to contraception in in the state. We know that this is a right that’s under threat. Thankfully, the voters have protected the right to abortion in the Arizona Constitution. This one is one of those that we know is at risk. It’s one that Democrats have taken action on including in the last year, when last year, I on the Senate side and Representative Stahl Hamilton on the house side, took action on the floor of our respective Chambers, to try to move the right to contraception forward. Because we view this, not only as protecting Reproductive Rights, protecting our personal freedom or right to privacy but it’s also an economic issue. If you cannot access contraception, you can’t really plan your life. You can’t really necessarily plan the career that you want to have and the career choices you want to make. Your ability to continue working in the workplace, should something happen that you were not planning for. So, we really view that as an economic policy as well.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “Helping working class families and bringing economic relief to the middle class is the top priority that Democrats are going to have in the coming session. We know that Republicans are the party of the special interests, and the wealthy and Democrats are the party of the working class. So, we’re going to be doing a couple things First, we’re going to make health care, more affordable and let me explain how we’re going to do that. We’re going to crack down on the pharmaceutical industry which is using what are called Pharmacy Benefit Managers that add make nobody healthier but just add a ton of profits to their bottom line while screwing over working families. They’re completely useless to actually delivering better health care and exist solely to make profit.”

“Number two, we’re going to crack down on big corporations out of state corporations that are jacking up the cost of housing here in the state of Arizona. Something like one in five homes in Arizona in recent years have been bought by these private equity and Wall Street firms that are taking homes off the market. It’s jacking up the cost of mortgages, but it’s also converting families who would be homeowners into renters, and these corporate price gougers are just increasing the cost of rent higher and higher and higher, and our families are suffering.”

“So, we’re going to make health care cheaper. We’re going to make housing cheaper and one other thing that I want to touch on is that we’re going to protect dollars from waste, fraud, and abuse. We’re specifically looking at the ESA program, Arizona taxpayers have been conned out of millions of dollars by this program that has zero accountability, zero, transparency. We’ve all seen the news reports of people buying luxury goods and straight up inventing children so they can steal money from taxpayers. Attorney General Mayes has indicted multiple people for scamming taxpayers using the ESA program, so we’re going to crack down on that.”

Based on the issue of contraception, are you worried about the Supreme Court invalidating, the Comstock Act. 

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “I think we must be worried about everything. We know that we’re entering into a very, very tough Federal space, and that the Supreme Court has tilted to the hard right.”

You and the party are in favor of promoting increased funding for Public K-12 schools?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Absolutely.” 

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “Yeah.”

How about free Community College?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “I think that’s absolutely something we have been supporting.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “You know that was my bill so it’s an issue near and dear to my heart.”

Paid Family and Medical Leave?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Yes.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “We introduced that bill year after year and plan to do so again”

Expanding Kids Care.

Senator Priya Sundareshan:“Yes.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “We’re fighting for it.”

Expanding ACHSS to include dental and eye care?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “I certainly support that. I know that that’s something a lot of our caucus feel strongly about.”

Please explain how the Democratic policy priorities in helping Arizonans, differ from the Republican ones. 

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “We’ve certainly seen this at the state level, and I think we will see will continue to see this difference reflected at the federal level. Democratic policy priorities are in favor of helping Arizonans and helping regular people whereas what we are seeing already coming from Republicans in these last few weeks setting up what their priorities are for the next session. They are in Interested in gutting voter access and making it more difficult to vote. They’re also interested in tipping the tax code in favor of the ultra-wealthy and the well-connected. We’ve seen the thesis of that be put into place over the last few years with the flat tax which overly benefited the most wealthy Arizonans and did very little at all to help regular Arizonans. Meanwhile, as we’ve seen, housing prices and the price of everything has only gotten worse. So we really have not seen a focus on the working class families and really what we’ve seen Republicans focus on is their the wealthy and the well-connected. We’ve also seen that with the way that the universal voucher program has really been used to benefit the super wealthiest ZIP codes in Arizona and not necessarily the people who they were supposed to be helped.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “Well, what we know is that state Republicans take their cues from Republicans at the national level and Republicans at the national level, their first two things are coming out of the gate with are number one, decreasing corporate taxes, and balancing the budget on the backs of the working class and number two, gutting Medicare and Social Security. So that is the exact Playbook that Arizona Republicans are going to run, which is more taxes for the working class and the middle class, less taxes for the rich and the corporations, and they’re going to cut programs that help working families. That again illustrates my point that it’s the Republicans that are on the side of the special interests and the donor class. And if you look at our priorities, they’re laser focused on helping everyday Arizonans.”

 Would you characterize the voucher program as welfare for the wealthy? 

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Absolutely.”

Would you support lowering the costs of Childcare at the state level?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Oh yeah, we would. I mean I think there’s a number of different ways that we want to help support the people who have children if we have money in the state budget, we would love to be supporting children with child tax credits. Last year, I introduced our hundred-million-dollar appropriations bill to help support childcare programs. Because, you know, that’s one way that we can ensure that we are providing childcare to working families who need access to childcare. And so, that, that Appropriations would support making sure that these childcare programs are able to continue and provide the childcare that every working in Arizona needs.”

And that childcare pre includes Pre-K and Full Day Kindergarten?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “I so absolutely support that. Yeah.”

Please explain how the Democrats will continue fight for the following: ESA reform, maintaining, and strengthening the state’s water supply, and providing safe communities. 

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Democrats continue to fight for ESA reforms. We have been supportive of the bipartisan recommendations that came out of the Governor’s Council that were recommended for ESA reforms. At the very least, we should be focusing on student safety by requiring, any anywhere that vouchers are being used to be subject to the same fingerprinting requirements that our public schools are supporting. There’s so much that we need to do to reform the ESA program. But the very bare minimum is for students’ safety and requiring these common standards apply.”

What about the grifting?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Yes, the grifting is also bad. That’s huge. That’s a whole another story with the recent news of the automatic approval of ESA expenses. I think that’s opening the door to fraud and abuse and with no care to the consequences.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “ESA reform again is going to be one of our top priorities. This is a scam that is stealing taxpayer dollars, period. I don’t care if you’re a Republican, a Democrat or an independent I think we can all agree that anyone who is illegally taking taxpayer, funding should be held accountable. We’re going to introduce legislation again to do that. Remember what these fraudsters are doing when they steal money from the ESA program is a crime.”

The state’s water supply?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: Democrats will absolutely continue fighting for maintaining and strengthening our state’s water supply. As, you know, I’m very heavily involved in a lot of the water negotiations. I know that it is a top priority of both legislative Democrats and Governor Hobbs to be protecting our rural groundwater. And we’ve also seen Attorney General Kris Mayes taking some really important actions to protect rural groundwater because we’re in an untenable situation right now where rural residents are losing access to their water with their wells drying up no longer able to access groundwater in the aquifers that they live in. That’s because of open access corporate pumping that has been allowed to go unchecked no matter what the consequences are to Arizona residents. I applaud Attorney General Maye’s actions but I do think it really further underlines the need for the legislature to act to protect rural groundwater.  Democrats are the ones who are making sure that anything we negotiate will be protecting regular Arizona residents and not privileging those large corporate pumpers. There’s also the protecting the urban groundwater as well because we have urban areas that have also been in the news in the last few years, for lack of water and that is shameful. We’re supposed to have groundwater regulations and so there’s there have been a number of recommendations from the Governor’s Water Policy Council that still the legislature has not taken up in order to even strengthen our urban water supplies. I have been engaged and fully supportive of introducing bills that would strengthen those water supplies. I will continue to introduce those and I hope we’re able to find some bipartisan consensus there as well.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “With regard to the state water supply, Democrats have been putting forward a bill for the past two years which was crafted with the Governor’s Water Policy Council, and it is being blocked by a small number of Republicans in the legislature. We actually have  bipartisan support, but you have one or two powerful Republicans doing the bidding of the massive water corporations while blocking progress. In the meantime, you have wells going dry and in Rural Arizona, you literally families who are turning on the tap and there is no water. The only thing preventing us from implementing a solution, is that these Republicans are doing what the big corporations and their donors are telling them to do, which is the block progress.  

Promoting safe communities:

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “We want to keep our communities safe. We want to make sure our children can go to school without the fear of gun violence, finding them there. There’s a lot of actions and proposals that Democrats support in the area of preventing gun violence, making sure that it keeps our kids safe. It also keeps our law enforcement safe to have the gun violence, prevention, strategies that we need to see.  I want to make it so that it our streets are safe for both Arizona residents and for law enforcement as well.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “We’re going to be looking at gun legislation. I know that there was a horrific shooting recently in Wisconsin, and we’re going to continue to advocate for gun violence prevention measures like safe storage or removing a prohibition on pediatricians being able to speak with families about gun safety. So, everything’s on the table there.”

In terms of policies and Republicans with their tax cuts, voucher program, support for a statewide abortion ban, discriminating against the LGBTQ community, making the deals with the Saudis for the unregulated water pumping, tax cuts that greatly helped the rich, and promotion of curtailing access to the ballot box have been on the wrong side of History. Given that. why did they despite a strong Democratic campaign and outreach efforts. how were they able to increase their margins? And what are at least two things Democrats are going to do to adjust and move forward?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Yeah, we ran a very strong campaign. We had a number of strong candidates in the battleground districts and unfortunately, we were met with a very strong opposing National Red Wave that was driven at the federal level and the federal ticket, and it had its down ballot consequences on our legislative efforts and, unfortunately, we did lose a couple seats. I will note that our legislative candidates on the Democratic side were still very strong. Our tactics were very strong. Even in the districts that we lost, we lost within the margin of the kind of national of the Trump wave. It’s cold comfort but it does let us know that we have the opportunity to bounce back in in the next cycle, when Trump is not on the ballot. Our candidates are the ones speaking to regular voters and are able to make those connections. And so, I do continue to have hope on the electoral side and both on the electoral side and on the legislative side, Democrats will continue to meet people where we’re at. We will be cutting through the lies, and the division that Republicans have continued to pump into every aspect of our lives, and we’ll continue to focus on the issues that matter like protecting the everyday Arizonans against unchecked corporate greed and making people’s lives better. We continue to see what Republicans are focused on at the outset of this session already. Voter suppression and bathroom bills. I mean, that’s not the areas that Democrats are focused on. We are focused on making people’s lives better.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “So, on the first point, you’re right, that Republican policies are actually not popular. If you look at the ballot, they put like a dozen things as ballot referrals. A lot of them failed. They tried to lower the minimum wage. That got killed and it got killed by a huge margin.  I think, frankly, the Republican party has done a fantastic job of branding themselves as the party of the working class, even though they’re actually the party of the wealthy. I have to give it to them. They have hoodwinked the American people, hook, line, and sinker. I think Democrats have to do a much better job of putting forward a bold and aggressive economic agenda, that is squarely focused on helping the working class, no matter what the donors say. We are here to serve the people, not the donors, not the wealthy, not the special interests, not the corporations, and We need to get back to that.”

One thing that was noted in the last election is that the more people who listened to credible news sources, the better the Democrats did. People that listened to like other less mainstream sources like Tik Tok or Joe Rogan, tended to vote more right wing. Please explain how Democrats will increase their outreach to non-mainstream news source areas.

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Yeah, that’s absolutely something that we have seen in the aftermath of this election cycle is the non-traditional media and non-traditional avenues for information. We will absolutely be trying to improve our ability to reach wherever they are getting their news. We’ve been seeing it over decades, a transition away from the credible and more historically traditional news sources. I think it just continues to mean that we need to be out there and talking to voters wherever they are and we will.”

Representative Oscar De Los Santos: “We got to barnstorm, the state, and frankly, the country and go everywhere, meet people where they are. We can’t expect them to come to the same, tired old places for news. This is a completely new media environment that we’re in. And so any podcast shows, anything like that, we’ve, we’ve got to go out and get our message out aggressively. We cannot be scared to communicate with the people.”

Is there anything not covered in the first four questions that you would like the readers to know about the Democratic agenda for the Arizonans in the next Arizona Legislative Session?

Senator Priya Sundareshan: “Democrats are focused on improving the lives of Arizonans. We will continue to focus on those issues that help reduce costs and make things more affordable. We’re not interested in the culture war issues.”

I think ever since the November election, I think there was probably a small period of time where Democrats were feeling dispirited or disillusioned, but I want them to know that at least the Arizona Legislative Democrats, we have a fire lit under us. We are not going to stop fighting for the working class and we’re ready to roll. The session is going to be a good one.”