Rep. Juan Ciscomani vs. Kathleen Winn in GOP primary: Here are the issues

Freshman incumbent U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani will face off against long-shot opponent Kathleen Winn in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District Republican primary on July 30.

After losing to Ciscomani in the GOP primary for the same seat in 2022, Winn says her doubts over whether Ciscomani can win in November prompted her to challenge him again.

“He’s under scrutiny that isn’t normal or typical, so that’s gotta be hard. He’s being judged in ways that I think are harsh,” Winn said in an interview with the Arizona Daily Star. “I think it created a vulnerability for him and I did not want to lose this seat to the Democrats. This is far less about him than it is about the seat itself and how important this border district is, especially for things that are near and dear to my heart.”

Congressional District 6 includes eastern Pima County, including most of Tucson, and most of Cochise County. The Republican primary winner will face Democrat Kirsten Engel in the general election.

Winn has portrayed herself as more conservative than Ciscomani, whom she’s criticized as too bipartisan.

“Everything Juan has voted on with the Democrats, he’s not getting them to give anything up,” Winn told the Star. “That’s not true bipartisanship. That’s not a compromise. That, some people would say, is a sell out.”

Ciscomani says his ability to find common ground with Democrats is a strength, not a weakness. He said he’s proud to have been ranked the most bipartisan member of Arizona’s House delegation in a May analysis from the Lugar Center and Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Bipartisan Index.

“You have to be able to work with people, that’s just the bottom line,” he said in a June 20 interview with the Star. “The attitude of ‘my way or the highway’ doesn’t bode well to actually get results, which is what we’re here to do.”

He pointed to a bipartisan bill he introduced in April expanding veterans’ access to educational opportunities, and legislation he co-sponsored targeting human smugglers engaged in high-speed chases with law enforcement, making it a federal crime to flee border agents within 100 miles of the border.

The latter bill passed the House with 56 “yea” votes from Democrats, he said.

“I’m glad that Democrats have seen the value of the legislation we’ve proposed,” he said. “I just ask people to look at the results we’ve been able to produce. … There’s a way to be true to your own values, in my case, my conservative values, and be effective at the same time.”

Ciscomani has made his status as a first-generation immigrant, born in Hermosillo, Sonora, a centerpiece of his political campaigns. His family moved to Arizona when he was 11 and he became a U.S. citizen 13 years later, in 2006.

He’s been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential candidate. Trump has described immigrants who enter the country outside ports of entry as “poisoning the blood of America,” echoing Nazi rhetoric. In April, Trump told Time Magazine that if reelected, he’d use the National Guard to deport millions of undocumented U.S. residents.

Ciscomani, who has endorsed Trump’s presidential bid, didn’t directly respond to the Star’s questions about his reaction to Trump’s anti-immigrant stance and language.

“It’s hard to compare the way I would describe (immigration issues) with anyone else, because my life journey is so unique on this issue,” he said.

Winn criticized her opponent for not participating in a June 5 debate organized by Arizona’s publicly funded Citizens Clean Election Commission. Veteran journalist Jim Nintzel interviewed Winn alone during the event, which gave her 30 minutes of solo airtime to make her pitch.

“If you have a job representing people, it’s important that people have access to you,” Winn said. “I’m confident that the voters are gleaning what they need from the fact that one of us is showing up, and one of us is not.”

Ciscomani said he didn’t attend the June 5 debate because of his Congressional obligations.

“I was in Washington, D.C. at that time, doing my job,” he said.

Winn told Nintzel that “securing the border” is a top priority.

Referring to immigration to the U.S., she said, “At what point do you say ‘this is a terrorist act and it needs to stop?’”

Winn’s language often reflects Trump’s inflammatory style, saying she’s fighting against “Joe Biden and the Communist Democrats who are working overtime to destroy our country” in a June 14 Facebook post.

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Winn, a former TV reporter and realtor, said she spent four years in then-Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne’s office as community outreach director, helping consumers avoid becoming victims of crime. She assisted homeless veterans; tackled mortgage fraud during the housing crisis, in concert with Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.; and helped families to protect themselves from scams and Internet crimes against children.

She later started a project to help find missing children, locating 28 missing children in seven years, she said.

“I believe my background, and my financial background — understanding what a budget is ... how to stop spending money we don’t have — all of those things will contribute to making me a good Congresswoman,” she said.

Winn said she didn’t plan to run for office again.

“I was hoping and praying Congressman Ciscomani would do what he said he would do, which is be a conservative,” she said. “But he’s not doing as he promised the people in this district.”

Border issues complex, Ciscomani says

Ciscomani said politicians outside the borderlands often talk about “the border” as if it’s a clear-cut issue.

But Ciscomani said border issues fall into three “buckets”: regular immigration through ports of entry, including those seeking green cards or citizenship, student visas, work visas and asylum processing; tourism, trade and commerce with Mexico, Arizona’s No.1 trading partner; and security issues, including border-related crime such as drug trafficking and human smuggling.

While all buckets need further investment, including bolstering resources at ports of entry, the priority should be security, he said. Legislative proposals, including Arizona Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s bipartisan border-security bill, have “not properly dealt with the issue at the border in the sense of security,” he said.

Sinema’s bill had “things I could get behind,” Ciscomani said, including pay boosts for border agents and technology for ports of entry.

But he objected to the inclusion of more funding for the federal Shelter and Services Program that supports the humanitarian work of NGOs like Catholic Community Services’ Casa Alitas in Tucson, but no funding for border-wall construction, and what he called the bill’s too-high threshold of 5,000 average daily apprehensions before access to asylum would be dramatically restricted under the bill.

“I would have been open to working on that bill and making amendments to it,” had it come to the House, he said.

Winn is also opposed to further funding for federal programs that assist asylum seekers released to U.S. communities by border agents. But she acknowledged the good intentions behind the work of NGOs, like Tucson’s Casa Alitas, to prevent legally processed asylum seekers from being left on the streets without support services.

“It’s the most humane thing we can do with a broken border,” she told the Star.

Ciscomani said he’d support reforms to make it easier to immigrate to the U.S. legally, which immigration experts say is almost impossible for most would-be migrants who face outdated caps on work-visa programs.

“I believe in the opportunities this country offers,” he said. “We have to be able to improve and speed up the legal entry into the country, so that more people can be attracted to that course of action,” rather than entering the country illegally.

He acknowledged legal immigration to the U.S. is far more difficult now than when his family immigrated decades ago, through a church-sponsorship program.

“There are so many things that have changed from when my parents did it. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t even exist,” he said. “The work visas haven’t caught up with that demand. … There’s a great opportunity here to improve the legal way to come here, and to work, and for some, pursue the American dream.”