Mark Finchem

Mark Finchem, LD11 Republican, supports domestic terrorists.

AZ’s Worst Legislator: Mark Finchem is Bad for Schools, Women, and Veterans

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Rep. Mark Finchem likes to dress up in cowboy hats, rawhide jackets, and Colonel Sanders ties. He’s from Michigan and imagines it’s a very “Western” look.
Rep. Mark Finchem likes to dress up in cowboy hats, rawhide jackets, and Colonel Sanders ties. He’s from Michigan and imagines it’s a very “Western” look.

Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem (R-Oro Valley) wants to sell the Grand Canyon to pay the state’s debt.

That’s not the only bad idea he’s come up with since representing Oro Valley and Marana in Legislative District 11 since 2015.

He injects his religion into legislation, he opposes gun safety measures, disputes reproductive freedom for women, votes against veterans, and fights against public schools.

Who represents Legislative District 11? The district has one state Senator, and two Representatives (all Republicans). One of them is Arpaio endorsed, 57-year-old Mark Finchem. Who is Mark Finchem and what motivates him to make that miserable drive to Phoenix three days a week? I found out.

He is running against retired Air Force Colonel Hollace Lyon. See Retired Air Force Colonel Hollace Lyon Offers a Consensus-Building Vision as a State Representative In LD11.

Professional Life: Mark Finchem has held many jobs. However, he spent most of his professional life (20 years) working as a cop in…. wait for it…. Kalamazoo Michigan. It was also here that Finchem earned an Associate’s Degree in criminal justice from Kalamazoo Valley Community College in 1984. Finchem also had a stint as a firefighter, public safety officer, and airline employee; he has four grown children.

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Retired Air Force Colonel Hollace Lyon Offers a Consensus-Building Vision as a State Representative In LD11

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❌ Do you think anyone regardless of credentials can teach special education children?
❌ Do you think taxpayer money should be used to help upper-income earners apply for tax credits to send their children to private religious schools?
❌ Do you think it is okay for the state to tell cities and towns the voices of their residents do not matter when they decide by a 90 percent margin to require the names of campaign donors to be publicized?
❌ Do you think people should be charged with a felony if they help senior citizens who cannot walk to their mailboxes to mail in their ballots?
❌ Do you think the process of getting citizen-sponsored initiatives on the ballot should be made harder?
❌ Do you think it is okay for people to carry concealed weapons near or on school and college campuses?
❌ Do you think people can buy weapons without a background check?
❌ Do you think tax credits for the coal industry are the best long-term energy investment strategies for the state?
❌ Do you think it is anyone’s business why a woman exercises her right to choose?
❌ Do you think there were once I.S.I.S. training camps in the northern Mexico deserts?

If you answered no to most or all of the questions above, Arizona LD 11 State Representative Mark Finchem may not be the choice voters should be making this November because he subscribes to all the views listed above.

There is, however, another candidate that voters in LD 11 may should vote for:  Colonel Hollace Lyon, who is running on a platform consensus-building and fiscal responsibility that emphasizes, “Investing in Our Future, Protecting and Preserving our Communities, and Securing our Liberties.”

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Hollace Lyon Sounds Alarm Over Redistricting Threat

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Candidate Hollace Lyon points out that SCR1034 overturns the voters' will in a 2000 ballot initiative to take away redistricting power away from the Legislature
Candidate Hollace Lyon points out that SCR1034 overturns the voters’ will in a 2000 ballot initiative to take away redistricting power from the Legislature

Arizona could be Gerrymandered into mostly Republican voting districts because of a dangerous GOP bill — SCR1034 — which has passed the AZ Senate and is awaiting action in the state House.

“Write and call your representatives that you want to stop SCR 1034 because it’s incompatible with citizen rights,” said Hollace Lyon, a Democratic Candidate for House in LD11. “If it were to pass, we would really be at peril,” she says.

The bill would pack the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (“AIRC”) with three additional people, handpicked by the majority Republicans with no proper screening or nomination process.

The AIRC draws voting district boundaries following the law, which requires equal populations, respect of communities of interest, geographic compactness and contiguity, respect for visible geographic features like highways, and competitive districts.

Lyon, a retired Air Force Air Force Colonel, spoke at Gerrymandering? Let’s call it what it is: Cheating! sponsored by The Arizona Ground Game civic organization.

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Campaign Finance Reports 7-1-16

Fun with Numbers: June 2016 Campaign Finance Reports

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Campaign finance reporting
Southern Arizona Legislative candidates arranged by the total amount they raised by June 1, 2016. The percentage of PAC funds is given at the top of each column. Green bars are Clean Elections candidates. (Source data: SOS Campaign Finance system.)

June 30 was the deadline for statewide and legislative candidates to file their campaign finance reports. Data nerds like me love slogging through the Secretary of State’s website for Ah-Ha moments of discovery. And there are some.

Campaign finance reporting
Remaining funds for each Southern Arizona Legislative candidate, after reported expenses have been subtracted. Green bars are Clean Elections candidates. (Source data: SOS Campaign Finance system.)

My primary reason for looking at these data was, of course, to gauge my campaign against others in Southern Arizona. For nearly a year, people have been telling me not to run as a Clean Elections (CE) candidate because “it’s just not enough money.” These two graphics show a somewhat different picture.

The top graphic shows that Daniel Hernandez (D-LD2) blew the doors off the fundraising barn by gathering $60,437, but Hernandez spent $25,489 to get there, leaving him with $34,948 on July 1. (Yes, of course, he can keep dialing for dollars every day from now until November 8, but that is a lot of time and manpower.) Ana Henderson (R-LD9) with $21,345 is the Clean Elections candidate with the most funds on July 1; she has spent only $1,367. You can see how the difference between these two candidates flattened out when you take into consideration the money Hernandez had to spend to raise $60,000. (Since Clean Elections has strict rules on how much we can collect in seed money and family money and how we receive once we have qualified for public funds, all of the candidates who have qualified for CE have roughly the same amount. Note the green bars on both graphs. (Fun fact: all of the qualified CE candidates in Southern Arizona are women.)

Let’s compare Hernandez to the other two candidates in the LD2 Democratic Party primary.

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