Latest / Arizona Unscripted / Episode 21: 🌵 Arizona Unscripted - Miranda Lopez talks Pima, Santa Cruz, & Cochise counties!!
Transcript
- Arizona Unscripted: Welcome to Arizona Inscripted. I'm your host, Bart, alongside my wonderful co-hosts, Diane, Jim, and Catherine. From time to time, we'll be joined by special pop-in guests from communities all across the Grand Canyon State. Arizona Inscripted is all about Arizona, its people, places, and events, and the local issues that shape our everyday lives, from small towns to big cities, from hidden gems and great local food to history, culture, and the challenges facing our communities. We're here to have a great time with and real conversations with Arizonans. Our goal is simple celebrate what makes Arizona unique while bringing together voices from every corner of our state. So whether you're a lifelong resident, a newcomer, or just someone who loves Arizona, we hope you'll feel right at home. And with that, I'm gonna bring in my co host ⁓ no, it could be Catherine today. Catherine. I'm here. Hi Bart. How are you doing? Good, Catherine. Good. Good. Well, ⁓ wanna Say hello to everybody and we have our co-host Jim is with us today as well. We're getting a little bit ⁓ monsoon weather here in ⁓ Mojave County where I am anyway. ⁓ once in a while in the middle of the night, we get a few drops of rain. That's that's what monsoons are these days. ⁓ And that's about the what we're getting. So and Jim is with us today. How are you doing, Jim? I'm doing pretty good. The rain here is more like three miles away. Yeah. Well, our guest today, we're so pleased to have Miranda Lopez with us. She is running from Arizona's Legislative District 21, running for house. ⁓ I did a little bit of looking you up, Miranda. You grew up in Phoenix and you went to University of Arizona and fell in love with Tucson. We can certainly understand that. So welcome, Miranda. Thank you so much for having me. Hey Miranda. And by the way, we don't have like a way to like so we might talk over you accidentally, so Well Well, we're happy to have Miranda here and also I would like to introduce Eric Robbins. Who lives in your district, Miranda, and I think you guys n may know each other, but we wanted Eric to come in today to kind of give us his perspective from where he's actually in your district, where we are ⁓ some of us are located up here in Mojave County. So welcome, Eric. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Hi, everybody. So Miranda, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to us, Miranda? Yeah, ⁓ so thank you again for having me on today. My name is Miranda Lopez. I am one of the Democratic nominees for the state house in District 21, which is a district that covers the southeastern part of Tucson. It goes all the way down to the border, so it includes Sawarita, Rio Rico, Tubac, Nogales, and then there's a little tail section that goes off towards the east that includes Bisbee as well. So it covers three counties. I am originally from Phoenix, but like you said, I went to the University of Arizona and Southern Arizona has kind of become my new home. I ⁓ in 2018 when I first graduated from the University of Arizona, I started working for the State Party coordinated campaign as a community organizer. And that's where I kind of got the political bug. ⁓ cool. And ⁓ I've been I've been involved ever since. I was a community organizer for a couple of cycles, eventually served as executive director for the Pima County Democratic Party. Then I was working for the Arizona Students Association as their Southern Regional Director for the last three years. While I was doing that, I decided to go back to get my masters in public administration. And while I was doing that, I got involved with my local union on campus, United Campus Workers, became Served as their treasurer and so ⁓ created this ⁓ sense of deep respect for for our unions, for our workers on campus, and wanting to make changes in the higher education system in general. And eventually decided that I wanted to run for office. So I I did, and we were ⁓ we worked very hard. We ⁓ I I knock doors every single day over the last however many months it's been, and ⁓ We we made it across the finish line and now we're excited to be the first ⁓ the campaign with the first openly democratic socialist candidate ⁓ that will be serving in the state legislature. Cool. All right, we're all about unions here. Indeed. Indeed. ⁓ yes. So I would like to ask you a question. ⁓ what do you actually how do you define yourself as a democratic socialist? There's that The term is being thrown around a bit in the media, and I would like to hear your idea of what that means to you. Yeah, to me the term democratic socialist means that I believe in a world where workers have the right to own the labor that they actually create. And that can take a lot of different forms, but ⁓ essentially what it means is that the the the private companies should not be allowed to own everything. There is a responsibility that the government has to collect revenue from a lot of these high earning billionaires and corporations, and then to use that revenue specifically for people in the middle class, people in the lower classes who cannot afford regular access to food, to health care, to housing. And the the government has a moral and a legal obligation to do that. All right. Thank you. That's a good definition. So I want to bring Eric into the conversation. Eric, you live down in Legislative District 21. So what issues do you see that you're hoping Miranda might address if she gets elected? ⁓ thanks. Yeah, let me that's a a that's a great question. Let me go ahead and full disclosure, and again, you know, as a prior guest of the show, some people will know this that, you know, I I currently serve in a volunteer capacity. ⁓ within Pima County Democratic Party, ⁓ where Miranda was the executive director, she predates me. ⁓ she actually worked here before I volunteered here. ⁓ but so we share you know those kind of roots. ⁓ and then the other thing that might be of some note is ⁓ I'm pretty sure I'm the first person in my position at the party who's ever been a resident of South Tucson, which is Miranda's ⁓ which is Miranda's legislative district. So ⁓ you know, that that's sort of a a connection too. ⁓ you know, I I have an arc that's not nearly as impressive as Miranda's, even though it's a lot longer. ⁓ but ⁓ you know, I was also, you know, sort of the a a person who grew up in Southern Arizona and Tucson and and came back to live here because I love it. And so hearing all that connection, I'm explaining that because that's important to me in my representation, right? Like Miranda has all those ⁓ organic. local connections to to my arc as a Southern Arizonian. So do I have faith that she would be representative just out of the gate? Yeah, I I really do. Like that that matters to me, just that base of connection. ⁓ and I'm not saying every legislative, you know, ⁓ does doesn't live in their district, but just her experience as she just articulated is worth it. And then the other thing that I would ⁓ like to ask Miranda if I may, because this is really where if I get the chance, and you know I see her at events and stuff, but since we're not a conversational frame. ⁓ here's what I'd ask you as a somebody who studied ⁓ public administration to get a master's degree in that. You know, we live in sort of a post expertise world, right? Where like if you're the loudest idiot on some social media platform, you can get elected to stuff. And yet we get some people who are legitimate experts running for office. And sometimes we kind of gloss over like, what does that mean? So let me ask you this, Miranda, you've been in the involved in the whole, you know, arc of politics locally for a long time. You're somebody who's literally made a educational commitment to studying public administration. What are two things that you think are like if you get up into Phoenix that you would really like to champion? And I know it's a tough market because there's a Republican-led legislature, but that may change. And even if it doesn't, I've heard you speak before and I've always been impressed with kind of your bipartisan framing on some You're very problem focused. I'll shut up now. Can you give me two things that you think are important? It's hard to narrow it down to only two, but I will accept the challenge. So definitely the first one by far would be the way in which we are funding public education and the voucher system that we currently have that is diverting a lot of public funds, as you as you well know, diverting a lot of public funds away from us being able to fully invest in our public education. And so something that I want to champion right off the bat is completely doing away with the voucher system because it is an individualist approach to what is a systemic problem and a societal problem. And these types of problems require social solutions. Social solutions. So we instead of providing a voucher that is one time that is per family per Based on per child. Instead, what we need to do is to rebuild how we fund public education so that the schools actually have the resources that they need to provide critical services to students who have learning disabilities, physical disabilities, which is initially why the voucher program was created. It was because there was this lack of resources that families had at their schools. And the lack of resources is because Republicans have systemically defunded our our public schools over the last 50 or 60 years. And so that would be kind of my my one of my main priorities. My other top priority would probably also be related to housing. We have an affordable housing crisis, not just in Arizona, but throughout our country. Just heard the Protect Ed initiative failed. Okay. It's been in court. Finish up on the housing and then we'll go back to that. Yeah, just real quick with the housing. So it's it's a it's a nationwide problem, it's a statewide problem, and there is no one particular solution, but we have to be able to attack this problem in a lot of different ways. So that means making sure that people who can't afford a home right now, so mostly tenants. Have the right to defend themselves if they are brought into eviction court, making sure that families are able to afford their their rent or being able to afford a house for the first time by making sure that pub ⁓ private equity is not buying up all of the houses in their neighborhoods, that there aren't just neighborhoods solely composed out of Airbnbs, and also. pushing for programs that would provide social housing, more social housing. Because right now, again, our state is spending a lot of money on things like the voucher ⁓ system that are they're very costly and they only serve a very small number of people. And so being able to divert those funds to programs that would be serving a larger, a larger amount of people. Got it. No, that's good. And I appreciate those answers. And again, as somebody who, you know, sees the housing crisis in southern Tucson, South Tucson, across Tucson, you know, I've deeply connected to that as well. And I've taught, I've been in the classroom, ⁓ both in public school and in private charter schools. ⁓ and ⁓ I think we just got some news on that that maybe require us to do some rethinking and retrenching. But ⁓ you know, again, that's part of it too, right? Like you have to play the hand that's on the table. So ⁓ I appreciate that. Thanks for giving me those answers, Miranda. I wanna know what started you in this down this path because this takes a lot of work. I mean, it's hard enough to get people just to get off the sofa and vote. Yes, it seems like you've you started one thing and then you got involved in another thing. It's kind of like a cascading event. A snowball. Or not in our case in Arizona. No, definitely. Yeah, not not in Arizona, but yes. ⁓ maybe like a tumbleweed that slowly grows. I I initially started as a volunteer. I had graduated in twenty eighteen and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was looking for a job, but I decided to volunteer in the meantime. I went to the county party office to try to see if there was something that I could do. And I actually ran into the there were a couple of ⁓ deputy directors for the statewide campaign. who they chatted to me for a few minutes and then they said, You know what? We actually have some paid positions up in Flagstaff. If you can, you know, move to Flagstaff tomorrow. And so I said, Sure. That sounds great. I'm game. This is what I w this is what I want to do and also I'll get paid for it. So ⁓ the two great things right there. Money and Well the the best thing though is to do something that you're passionate about. Don't you think? I mean, doesn't really matter how much money you make. If you're doing something that you love and that you're passionate about, obviously you have to have the basics. I love what you said about housing and certainly can agree with you everything that you said about education. I don't know what that little blurb was that came up on our chat, but we'll have to do some research and see what's going on with that Protect Education Act. Yeah. If if there if there is a problem with it, to me that's just more of a reason to elect people to office who understand the needs and why the Protect Education Act is an important piece of legislation that needs to if the people can't do it, then it needs to be done by the legislature. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And everything I think is going to depend on really the outcome of whether we can flip the either one chamber or both chambers this year. There's yeah. There's gonna be a lot writing on that. So Miranda, how do you deal with the conservative folks that that are, you know, are already don't like the word socialist in the in the title? I mean, what do you do? Or how do you approach them? Yeah. Ask them if they got a Social Security. Yeah, right. Yeah. Ask if they've ever gone to ⁓ gone to a library before. ⁓ I I've been thinking about this a lot. And I, you know, I've been to the Capitol before. I actually had been with ASA. We I I had ⁓ drafted a bill to try to put a cap on the salaries for university presidents so that they are not making, you know, more than a million dollars every year. And ⁓ I I had to find a sponsor for the bill and I had to find a co-sponsor. And I ended up finding those sponsors and co-sponsors actually with Republicans. There was a lot that yeah. So there was ⁓ a lot of work that went into that and it was one of those things where we both had ⁓ some common ground. And then there were other things that we talked about where, you know, for instance, one of the Republicans we were talking to said, you know, I think there should be a state holiday. So that people can go out and vote on election day and they don't have to worry about missing work. Just some random thing this was after a tirade. This was after a tirade about, you know, transgender people shouldn't exist, like they they're the devil, like blah blah blah. And then all of a sudden after this tirade, he talks about, ⁓ we should all have equal voting rights. So reasonable. Sometimes it it takes a little bit of conversation or it'll take multiple conversations to to find those areas of common ground. Well you can say they shouldn't have billionaires either. Yeah. That's for sure. Well ⁓ another issue that I know I'd like to hear what is going on with the border down in your district. I know there's a lot of news about the border wall that they're destroying Big Bend Park in Texas. What's happening with the border down in your district, Miranda? Yeah, so there are there's a couple of things happening. Right now, there have actually been some historic and beautiful ⁓ beautiful spots of nature that there are these, you know, hundreds of year old cottonwood trees that have just been destroyed to make way for the the new section of border wall that was approved. The Pono Autumn Nation is now has now posted signs everywhere on the reservation saying to keep out because there are these people coming onto the reservation to build the wall, which they're not supposed to do. We are also seeing in Nogallis in particular, there is a new port of entry, not a new port of entry, the the current port of entry, the D Consini port of entry, which that's the big entry that you see as soon as you drive into downtown Nogallis. They want to modernize it or update it so that there are 18 lanes that people will be going through. But in order to create this, what is really a giant monster of a site on paper, they're going to have to destroy a lot of the downtown area, which includes a lot of people living in low-income neighborhoods. There are businesses there that would be put out of business. They have basically submitted this plan to to residents who were able to comment on the plan up until a couple of weeks ago. But it doesn't say anywhere in the plan how much they expect the the the wait times to decrease because of the, you know, increased number of lanes. They don't say anything about what the environmental or the economic impact. there will be on these neighborhoods that will have to deal with all of this construction. So there is right now there is a push from a lot of folks that I know living in No Gallas to reach out to their their neighbors and to show up to city council meetings and to basically tell the federal government, hey, your plan needs to be a lot more thought out than this because these are our lives and we can't just move somewhere else. We we can barely afford to live where we are now. Is Mexico paying for that? Surprisingly, no. We all pay for it. We're paying for it every day. It's crazy. You got it. The taxpayers were the ones. Wow, that's ⁓ disturbing. You know, land protected by treaties, America's history of just pissing all over itself as far as being honorable. ⁓ you know with native p people is just horrible and this is just ratcheting it up to eleven it feels sick it feels gross I agree Eric I'm sorry I don't I agree it's just one what do you really mean it's really offensive it's so offensive yeah we do it to everybody we're going over to Greenland and drilling for their oil without their permission yeah how how can they do that That's that's the a good question. How can they do that? We're supposed to have laws that stop stuff like that from happening, but just without an environmental review, that alone is a huge issue to do something like that down on the border, plus the fact that people are going to be displaced. Yes. And then the capper, they don't even have any data to show that it's going to be effective. So And one of the big issues is that they did update the ⁓ Mariposa ⁓ entry, ⁓ point of entry or port of entry, and they don't even use half of the lanes that were added. And so the the fact that you have like eighteen full lanes, they keep basically implying that all eighteen of those lanes are going to be used. And we know from other ports that that's just not the case. It's not like they're going to add all of these other people to run all of these lanes constantly all the time. Yeah. I mean there's no yeah, they just but they just put it out there like, hey, eighteen line. Well, you can bet somebody's making a lot of money off of it, would be my thought. Hmm. Probably a no bid contract. Yeah, follow the money. Probably a no-bid contract for like four times the amount. Yeah. It's one of two Latin phrases I know. Qui bono. Who benefits? Who's getting paid? And that and every time you follow the money, like they don't I don't honestly don't think they care about any of these projects. They're all just pork pits for them to just throw all this inefficient. There's all this no bid stuff going on left and right, and they're in the nobody's gonna stop me phase of this presidency. It's just like the everything they can get away with that, you know, they're still they're robbing a burning house. It's crazy. They try to do it so as much as that can get funneled back to the politicians that approve it, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure there's lots of slushing money slushing around, right? Personal gain. Personal gain is just ⁓ I'm so tired of of people making decisions and policy being written ⁓ and laws being overlooked in the name of personal gain. I think Miranda's kinda shown that she's not ⁓ hasn't hasn't got a personal gain here 'cause she has been working on this for a long time just to be an activist, get out there and and and take that step. So it's like I mean your your game, you're we're all we're all like really going after your idea of the cow campaign should be run. Yeah, we we love what you have to say, Miranda. We love it. So we just have a couple We need more young people like you. Yeah, because but it it's making me feel like, yeah, come on, Miranda. Yeah. Let's go. Go Miranda. So we just have a couple minutes left. Did you have anything else that you wanted to ask or address, Eric or Miranda? I yield the floor. I think this is a part I think this is a part one, right? It's gonna be a part one. We gotta do more parts. Yeah, sure. We can definitely have you back, Miranda. We would love to have you back. And ⁓ Eric's well, he's already been here once, but we can have him again. That's okay. We like Eric. We like him. So Miranda, just one last thought here. Go ahead. yeah, if anyone would like to support me or my campaign, ⁓ you can go to Lopez for Arizona dot com. ⁓ we are going to start canvassing again in a couple of weeks to Talk to all of our neighbors, make sure that we can turn out as many people as possible because we do have one of the counties, Santa Cruz is one of the ⁓ lowest voter turnout counties in in the state. And so that's our goal for the general election is to turn out as many voters as possible. Yeah. Good. Good luck with that. That's great. Well, thank you so much, everybody, for coming on today. And it's been another great i edition of Arizona Unscripted. And we will see you all next time. Everybody have a great day. Thank you, Miranda. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.