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- Checking In with AZ-07
Reader J sent in an email about the race to replace Raúl Grijalva, who died of lung cancer earlier this year. Tomorrow is the primary, which is basically the race in this D+13 district. My mom grew up in this district, in the border town of Nogales. I have relatives in South Tucson down to Nogales, all bilingual, all with strong Mexican heritage. I-19, which connects Tucson with Nogales, is the only road in the US with metric markings (until Trump reverses that). The food there is amazing, the people are great, the sprawl is sprawly, and it’s hotter than fuck this time of the year. Frankly, South Tucson and below, minus the retirement communities, are essentially Mexico in my mind.
Anyway, there are a number of candidates in this race. Let’s start with Adelita Grijalva, Raúl’s daughter:
[…]Questions over seniority and age in the party have loomed over the race – three Democrats died in office this year, and Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by only one vote. Grijalva’s opponents have attacked her “legacy” last name.
“The thing that I need to push back on is this idea that the three members of Congress died because of age,” Grijalva, 54, said. “They died because of cancer. My dad lived in a Superfund site and drank poison water for two decades.”
My mom died of lung cancer. If I lived in the district, I wouldn’t vote for Adelita in the primary on the strength of that answer itself. That said, if she’s elected, she’ll probably be a strong progressive vote, just like her dad. She’s been endorsed by Bernie, AOC, and both Kelly and Gallego. She supports Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
The second candidate in the race is Daniel Hernandez, who is positioning himself as the “guy who can work with Republicans”. Hernandez was an intern for Gabby Giffords and was present when she was shot. He’s positioning himself as “the only one that actually has experience delivering results in a Republican environment” because of his experience in the Arizona state legislature. That said, he’s also pretty progressive:
Elected to the Arizona State House in 2017, Daniel co-founded the House LGBTQ caucus and fought tirelessly to protect the rights of LGBTQ Arizonans from discrimination. He stood up to far-right politicians trying to strip away reproductive freedom, weaken gun safety laws, and undermine democracy. He worked to expand access to affordable health care because he knows firsthand what it’s like to struggle with serious illness and not have access to healthcare.
His work in the legislature to protect healthcare access earned him recognition as the 2019 Women’s Healthcare Champion from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. While extreme Republicans were playing political games with Arizonans’ lives during the pandemic, Daniel fought in the legislature to protect critical healthcare services and save lives. Daniel has always trusted science and worked on expanding healthcare research and services.
Finally, I’ve written about the third candidate, 25 year-old Dana Deja Foxx. Here’s the Guardian’s take:
Foxx, a gen Z Filipino American from Tucson, got her start fighting for better sex education in Tucson schools. She has nearly 400,000 followers on TikTok and more than 240,000 on Instagram and has created viral political moments since she was a teenager. When she was 16, she pointedly confronted then US senator Jeff Flake at a town hall over defunding Planned Parenthood, calling him a “middle-aged man” who “[came] from privilege”. In the decade since, she has worked on political advocacy, including on Kamala Harris’s 2020 campaign. She attended the Democratic national convention in 2024 as a content creator.
Her personal story plays heavily into her campaign: her family relied on food stamps, Medicaid and section 8 housing, all targets for Republican budget-cutting. She experienced homelessness as a teenager. She has worked a “normal-person job” and cleaned toilets at a gas station for $10 an hour.
“People are ready to question a political system that prioritizes legacy last names or big-dollar donors, and they’re looking for a candidate who reflects back their lived experiences,” Foxx said.
When she filed paperwork to run in the special election in April, she was alone in her bedroom – and she said she did it wrong. She, like other young candidates jumping into primaries across the country, is showing her followers how you run for office in real time.
“I am the only break from the status quo, the only change candidate that represents a difference in the tactics it’s going to take to stand up to this administration,” she said. “I would ask people to just imagine what we could do from the House floor. It’s going to take messengers like me who know how to reach the people we are losing.”
There are a couple of other candidates in the race, but these are the “interesting” ones. They all have essentially the same ideological views. The question is which one will be a fighter. Which one won’t become a pawn of special interests the moment they win the race (I’m looking at you, Gallego). Frankly, I’d bet that Adelita Grijalva would probably be pretty good, but at this point in time, I’d love to see Foxx win. Just like AOC and Maxwell Frost, it would be fun to see a young person grow into the job. And, hey, if she can’t, there’s always another election.
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