Tom O’Halleran knows firsthand the price of putting the common good above party politics — and how he’s handled that experience is one of the primary reasons to send him to Congress.
Twelve years ago, O’Halleran was a Republican in the state House, representing a district in Northern Arizona. He had power and influence, but he went against his party leadership by working to increase funding for Child Protective Services.
The Republican leadership took away his chairmanship of the Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture. He lost the 2008 primary, and, two years ago unsuccessfully ran for the seat as an independent.
The party affiliation may have changed — he’s running for Congress as a Democrat — but his core values and priorities have not. This is a quality we look for in a candidate: allegiance to a moral center instead of political ideology or party labels.
He is running against Paul Babeu, a tea-party Republican who is now the Pinal County sheriff. Babea’s extreme right-wing views on government, social issues, gun rights and immigration are helping to cause gridlock in Washington. Electing another hardliner will make the problem worse.
O’Halleran grew up in Chicago and was a police officer and later a government bond trader there. He retired to Arizona in 1994, “got bored very fast and got involved in local community issues, like water.” He lives in Sedona.
He ran for the state Legislature and said he was disheartened by what he saw at the Capitol. “I saw how legislators treated citizens who had traveled hundreds of miles to speak” about the budget or other priorities.
Leadership should be about bringing people together, O’Halleran said.
He and fellow Republican Pete Hershberger of Tucson formed a coalition with Democrats and moderate Republicans to allocate more money to protect neglected and abused children through Child Protective Services (now known as the Department of Child Safety).
“The Republicans’ leadership didn’t want to do anything with it,” he said. Both men lost their chairmanships, but the legislation passed.
We see the spirit of service in O’Halleran. He is clear that success is a choice to make: “We need collaborate effort — and we make it a priority or not.”
Consistent with his approach, O’Halleran has identified infrastructure — including broadband in rural areas, possibly powered by solar — as a top priority. Infrastructure isn’t glamorous, but it’s a necessity. That’s the kind of nuts-and-bolts thinking that prompts us to endorse Tom O’Halleran for Congress.
