Political Notebook: Third Dem joins race for former Giffords seat in Congress

The Democratic field running for the seat in Gabrielle Giffords’ old area will be populated by candidates connected to her.

Rep. Daniel Hernandez Jr. announced Thursday that he will run for the Democratic nomination in Congressional District 2, or whatever the district becomes when redistricting is complete. That’s the same area Giffords represented when it was Congressional District 8, before she stepped down in 2012.

Famously, Hernandez was an intern for Giffords on Jan. 8, 2011, when Giffords was shot in an assassination attempt at a Congress on Your Corner event on the northwest side. He helped stanch her bleeding after the shooting and before she and other victims were taken to University Medical Center.

UMC is where Rep. Randall Friese, working that day as a trauma surgeon, treated Giffords. He also is running for the Democratic nomination in CD2.

The other candidate in the race, Sen. Kirsten Engel, doesn’t have such direct connections to Giffords or Jan. 8, but her daughter goes to the same high school Giffords attended, University High.

For Hernandez and Friese, the Jan. 8 experience led them to start political careers.

Hernandez went on to write a memoir, “They Call Me a Hero: A Memoir of My Youth,” and become a public speaker, often on issues of gun violence. Later, he won election to the school board in the Sunnyside district, where he attended school. He first won election to the Arizona Legislature, representing District 2, in 2016.

Legislative District 2 stretches from the south side of Tucson to the Mexican border. Daniel’s sister, Rep. Alma Hernandez, won a seat in the state House in 2018 representing Legislative District 3.

Congressional District 2, currently represented by Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, includes about half the Tucson area and stretches south and east to include all of Cochise County.

In an interview Thursday, Daniel Hernandez described himself as a “pragmatic” representative willing to work with Republicans.

“Not only am I able to talk about getting stuff done on a bipartisan manner, but I actually get it done,” he said.

Among the three candidates in the race now, Hernandez could stake out a position as the more moderate one and perhaps expect to get business-community support. He has proven a prolific fundraiser in earlier campaigns.

One thing Hernandez is unlikely to get, though, is an endorsement from Giffords or her husband, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly. They have told the candidates they’re not planning to endorse anyone, at least for now.

Engel said, “I welcome Daniel to the race” and added, “I don’t see it changing what I’m going to work on.” Similarly, Friese, asked how his entry affects the race, said, “I don’t think it changes a thing.”

More candidates are likely to enter the race for the Democratic nomination. None has yet announced for the GOP nomination.

— Tim Steller

Finchem supporter facing a charge

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

A woman collecting signatures from Legislative District 11 voters outside the Oro Valley Public Library says a library patron began shouting at her, tore some of the petitions in half and chastised her for wearing a mask.

Aimee Carrillo was working for the campaign to recall Republican Rep. Mark Finchem on May 14. A man demanded to know what Finchem had done to violate his official oath and “aggressively reached over the table to grab a clipboard with petition signatures on it,” said recall campaign spokesman Tony Cani.

Witnesses intervened and called police.

Oro Valley resident Melvyn Hockwitt was later charged with disorderly conduct, a Class 1 misdemeanor. Hockwitt, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, told police Carrillo repeatedly asked him to sign the petition and “got under his skin.”

Carrillo declined comment through Cani and instead offered a prepared statement: “I am a mother of two young kids. Creating a better place for them to grow up was my motivation to get involved in the first place, but this incident makes me feel like I have to work even harder. Having voters’ signatures taken from my hand and torn up isn’t going to stop me from petitioning to remove Mark Finchem.”

The recall effort must collect 27,000 signatures from registered voters in District 11 by July 8.

— Patty Machelor

Leaked video making waves

Leaked video from a conservative group’s meeting at a Tucson resort last month is now at the center of an ethics complaint in the Iowa Legislature.

It also shows how the national group is spurring election-restriction laws in Arizona and other states.

The Heritage Foundation held its Annual Leadership Conference at the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain, from April 21-23.

During a speech at the event, Jessica Anderson, executive director of the foundation’s sister organization, Heritage Action for America, bragged about her group writing portions of Iowa’s new law restricting voting rights.

“We worked quietly with the Iowa state Legislature. We got the best practices to them. We helped draft the bills,” said Anderson in the video obtained by the watchdog group Documented and reported by the progressive magazine Mother Jones. “Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we’re like, ‘It can’t be that easy.’”

On Tuesday, Democrat Todd Prichard, minority leader of the Iowa House of Representatives, responded to the Mother Jones report by filing ethics complaints accusing Anderson and the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky of failing to register as lobbyists as required by Iowa law.

Top Republicans in Iowa have strongly denied getting any help from Heritage Action in drafting the law that restricts early and Election Day voting.

Heritage Action is in the midst of a $24 million campaign to push restrictive, so-called “election integrity” legislation in a number of battleground states. That includes Arizona, where, according to Mother Jones, the group did register as lobbyists.

— Henry Brean