Nothing comes between Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik and his morning run.
The Ward 6 councilman rises before the sun to run 12 to 15 miles every day. His work keeps him busy seven days a week, often until 11:30 p.m., when he walks home to decompress.
Those morning jogs, he says, keep him sane.
In addition to representing Ward 6 on the City Council since 2009, Kozachik works full time as the University of Arizona’s associate athletics director for facilities and capital projects. All day, he bounces between working at McKale Center and on City Council business.
“I’m out the door by about 6 a.m., and it’s the only time of day that I have mandated for myself that’s going to be inviolate,” Kozachik, 61, says. “If someone calls me and says, ‘We would like you to speak at a breakfast thing’ or whatever, it’s not happening.”
Ann Charles managed Kozachik’s two campaigns in 2009 and 2013 and is now his chief of staff. She learned early not to touch the morning run.
“There was one time during a campaign when I needed him,” she says. “I know his jogging routes, so I pulled up and said, ‘I need your signature.’ He signed it, and kept going.”
Kozachik runs for distance, not speed. In 1985, a car rear-ended him on his bike. He has been hit while bicycling multiple times, but this one was different. Ann Kozachik, his wife of 36 years, remembers the blood on the curb and the week he spent in the hospital recovering. He says the collision severed some of his muscles.
“He had to start over with walking,” Ann Kozachik says. “He is the most determined individual I have ever met.”
A CAREER IN SPORTS,
NOT POLITICS
Before running for City Council as a Republican in 2009, Kozachik never saw himself in politics. Sports, yes. Politics, no.
He grew up loving athletics. His brother Pete Kozachik, now an animator and visual-effects artist in the San Francisco area, remembers Steve tossing baseballs against walls.
“He was way, way into it,” Pete, 63, says. “Whether it was playing by himself or with other kids or watching on TV, he was a real sports guy.”
The brothers moved to Tucson from Michigan with their single mom when Steve was in eighth grade. He graduated from Catalina High School and got his bachelor’s degree in public administration from the UA.
After spending about 10 years working at ASACRO copper mines, he left his human relations job at the company and went back to the UA to pursue a master’s degree in higher education management. While there, he took a chance and asked Cedric Dempsey, the university’s athletic director at the time, if he could work for UA athletics for free. Instead, he got a job.
“I love college sports. I’s kind of my mecca,” he says. “It’s kind of cool to have a job where you really love what you have been doing.”
He has been doing it since 1988. That — not city politics — is his career, he says.
He adds that his work on projects such as the UA’s Richard Jefferson Gymnasium prepared him for the City Council job and what he calls “the Rio Nuevo mess.”
He gave his wife veto power over his decision to run. She chose to back him.
“I had no clue, seriously, how our lives would change,” says Ann, 59.
“If I was named ‘Smith,’ it wouldn’t come up,” she says. “I go to get my hair colored and they pull out my chart. ‘Oh, Kozachik.’ And then they start asking me questions. I don’t need to talk politics. I’m getting my hair colored.”
Kimberly Crossland, their 31-year-old daughter who lives in Vail, says her married name allows her more anonymity than her mother.
“It was a lot of fun at first, because I always secretly wanted to be a celebrity,” she says. “But I’m my dad’s daughter, and it’s weird to turn on the TV and radio and see him.”
Now, his sacred runs get interrupted by yells of recognition — three or four times every morning, Kozachik says.
“It’s a little bit weird, but local politics and public office, your neighbors are you constituents, literally,” he says. “So everything that we do, every position I take publicly, affects their lives, and they have a right to be able to express their opinions of the things I do that affect them.”
He hears a mix of, “Thanks for your hard work” and, “You’re a jerk.”
SWITCHING PARTIES
Steve Kozachik has never fit into a partisan mold.
Crossland says her father has always been frugal — she never had fancy clothes growing up.
“Fiduciary waste really gets him going,” says Charles, his chief of staff.
That mindset worked for Kozachik’s Republican campaign — until his stance on social issues and gun control legislation put a wedge between him and the Republican Party. Before running for re-election in 2013, he switched his party registration to Democrat.
“He hasn’t changed; he just changed his registration,” says Shaun McClusky, a Republican who ran alongside Kozachik in 2009 and lost to Democrat Richard Fimbres. Over the years, he and Kozachik have clashed on issues such as gun control. “We always knew he was a quirky Republican, but now he is a quirky Democrat. You can’t be normal to run for office. You have to be a little crazy.”
During that 2009 election season, McClusky says he and Kozachik compared notes. He still texts or emails the councilman about city issues and often honks on his morning commute when he passes Kozachik running.
The party switch felt like a betrayal, says McClusky, also a former mayoral candidate and designated broker and co-owner at Rincon Ventures Inc.
“When the rumors first came out, everyone was flabbergasted, because nobody thought he would be that traitor,” he says.
Frank Antenori, a former Republican state senator who has long opposed Kozachik, says he knew a party switch was coming.
“I believe that now, and seeing his views exposed on the council, that he was never a Republican, that he used the Republican Party (to get elected), and good for him,” Antenori says. “He pulled one over us.”
Antenori remembers celebrating when Kozachik won the first election.
“Everyone thought he was the great Republican hope for the city of Tucson,” he says. “When he got elected, we were in awe of Steve Kozachik, and then overnight, he went off the deep end.”
Kozachik says the Republican backlash he got for his 2013 gun buyback was the tipping point for his party switch.
“At some point, I just took the position that the Republican Party is a political outlier, and I am not,” he says. “I got tired of fighting them, so I just changed parties to where I’m more comfortable with the social issues, for sure, but even Democrats have to balance a budget.”
Carol West, a former councilwoman for Ward 2, is familiar with switching parties. She changed her registration from Democrat to independent during her second term. During the 2013 campaign, she served as an honorary chair for Kozachik.
West says she believes that serving the public often gets lost in partisan politics. “I think the City Council has very few issues that are partisan,” she says. “I think most of the time they should behave in a nonpartisan way.”
WHAT KEEPS HIM GOING
Ann Kozachik often accompanies her husband to dinners, galas and other functions. They go to plays together and watch movies at the Loft Cinema, squeezing in time when they can.
She sits through most council meetings, and if they don’t go too long, she walks her husband back to McKale before heading home. They often stop for gelato along the way.
“I’m thinking that I’m drained, and I’m just sitting there,” at the council meetings, she says, laughing. “All I have to decide is whether I want to clap or not. … I’m sitting there, and I don’t know how he’s going to vote. You’re going to make someone mad and somebody happy. There’s no way around that.”
Last week, Kozachik came under criticism for saying at a City Council study session that police might “just go in and start whacking kneecaps with billy clubs” at a downtown homeless camp. The Tucson Police Officers Association demanded an apology from Kozachik.
Crossland has come to terms with her father’s public — and, at times, polarizing — job.
“When he puts his mind to something, he goes 110 percent,” she says. “I think that’s important for what he does. You have to know what you stand for. He has his fair share of haters. I’m not immune to hearing about that, but that’s okay. If you don’t have people who hate you, you’ve never stood up for anything.”
Both jobs keep it interesting, Kozachik says, and that keeps him motivated, even as he scrambles to learn about anything and everything going on in Tucson.
He lists a handful of the issues he has dealt with in his ward: gun control, animal rights, downtown development, the rights of migrant families and issues between the Islamic Center of Tucson and off-campus student housing.
He describes himself as a “hopeful agnostic in that I don’t live in a place of things I don’t know.” This driving philosophy stems from trips around the world that began when Crossland was middle-school aged. Kozachik wanted his daughter to see the world, so the family traveled to destinations such as Africa, Thailand, China, Alaska, Israel and Egypt. Crossland remembers her father abroad, “video camera attached to his hand.”
On his own, Kozachik traveled to Sri Lanka after the tsunami of 2004 to help with relief. He has also volunteered multiple times in Zambia with orphans with HIV.
He sees a common theme in many faiths’ holy books. “You feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the prisoners in the prisons, and that speaks across religions,” he says.
So he tries to bring that to Tucson.
Charles says Kozachik “can be simultaneously the most heartfelt person that you know but also very stern.”
And like anyone would, he gets tired.
That’s when his staff hauls the chocolate chip cookies out of the freezer — homemade and not too crispy. Dogs are another weakness. If he has time, he will always stop a dog walker for some good puppy time.
Charles says, “If he can sit with a dog in his lap and have a chocolate chip cookie, you could probably ask him for anything.”
