If Democrats in Legislative District 20 decide to censure their state lawmaker, Rep. Alma Hernandez, for straying from the party line, they’ll also be reopening a perennial fight: Where’s the line between party unity and expecting your lawmaker to actually represent your interests?
Local Democrats — more than 60 at one point during Monday’s virtual meeting — weighed whether the censure motion was a good idea as Hernandez faces a challenger in the upcoming Democratic primary for the LD20 state senate seat, former Tucson City Councilman Rocque Perez.
They ultimately didn’t take a vote on censuring her on Monday evening, but the issue could come back in the coming weeks.
Hernandez — and her siblings — broke with many local elected Democrats at the time by coming out against Proposition 414 in 2025. The measure would have increased local sales taxes by a half-cent, and voters overwhelmingly rejected it.
Love her or hate her, Hernandez has been a polarizing figure in Southern Arizona politics since she first ran for office in 2018. Her older brother Daniel, who was in the state Legislature from 2017 to 2023, was also a controversial figure in some Democratic circles.
We can make an allusion to a familiar divide in local Democratic politics — between the so-called “Hernandi” camp and the “Grijalvistas,” a term long associated with allies of former Rep. Raúl Grijalva.
However, in the last few years, Hernandez has been at the center of a number of political controversies that can’t be tied to that feud, including:
Also, she called for Grijalva to step down about three weeks before he died from cancer. And we probably missed a few controversies over the years.
Why now?
Hernandez was one of two Southern Arizona Democrats who recently sided with Republicans in the statehouse to call for a constitutional convention to impose congressional term limits.
While the U.S. has never convened an “Article V” convention, we came close in the 1960s when then-Republican Senator Everett Dirksen led a charge to overturn the Reynolds v. Sims U.S. Supreme Court decision. Some academics worry such a convention could lead to rewriting large parts of the Constitution, arguing that there are no clear rules governing it.
Political consultant and Democratic Party activist Matt Capalby pushed for the censure motion to be put on the LD20 meeting agenda shortly after Hernandez cast the controversial vote.
“Two weeks ago, when this Constitutional Convention issue came up after repeatedly being told, please do not vote for it, it can devastate our country, decimate the Constitution, she still did it,” Capalby said.
He also brought receipts, including a breakdown of how often Hernandez has broken with the House Democratic Caucus and sided with Republicans in the last four years:
2023: 24 times
2024: 49 times
2025: 39 times
2026: 39 times (session ongoing)
An average Democrat breaks with the party between eight and 10 times a year, he estimated.
“It’s 39 times (this year) and the session is still ongoing. That many times of breaking with the caucus and the Democratic objectives and values, you know, that’s not being a maverick, that’s not being John McCain and that would even make Kyrsten Sinema blush in my opinion,” Capalby said.
Democrats also faulted Hernandez for her support for Democrat Mario Garcia in 2024. Before running against a progressive Democrat for the state Senate, Garcia backed Republican Kari Lake in her gubernatorial bid and formally joined her “Latinos for Lake” campaign.
Garcia supported Republican Kari Lake in her run for governor in 2022. And Hernandez supported Garcia in his bid against a progressive Democrat.
It would be fair to say the room — which included a few guest speakers who didn’t live in LD20 — was split over the censure motion.
Not everyone in the room was receptive to the criticism, and some Democrats argued a censure motion shouldn’t be considered so close to the primary.
Others noted that the LD20 committee, the county party and the state party do not endorse Democrats in contested races.
“There isn’t anything in the (LD20) bylaws that say anything about censure. It does say, just like in the county party as well as the state party, that we are not to endorse or take a position on a candidate in a primary. And this, unfortunately, I think this is a precedent-setting thing where if we do this, it looks (like they are taking a position),” said Paul Eckerstrom, the former Pima County Democratic Party chair and the current first vice chair for the state party.
And still others argued the motion was purely politics designed to hurt Hernandez ahead of the election.
Yet some Democrats were quick to pile onto the criticism of Hernandez, asking questions about why the state lawmaker has failed to pay fines, why she has sided with Republicans on key votes and noting she doesn’t come to LD20 meetings.
Hernandez responds
Alma Hernandez and her rival in the LD20 Senate race, Rocque Perez.
At first, Hernandez declined to attend the LD20 meeting discussing the censure motion when invited. She then changed her mind and committed to attending. But on Monday around noon, she canceled and instead sent an email to precinct committee members shortly before the meeting began.
In the email, Hernandez called the whole scene a “circus” and blamed LD20 Chairwoman Rosemary Bolza for putting the item on the agenda.
She also made it clear that she didn’t like that the press was invited. Quick correction on that front: The Tucson Agenda approached Bolza over the weekend about attending the meeting, not the other way around.
“Inviting the press is unnecessary and, given how this has unfolded, undermines any claim that this is intended to be a respectful or good-faith discussion,” Hernandez wrote. “It makes the situation feel performative and turns a serious matter into a circus rather than a legitimate process.”
We aren’t taking sides, but we will note only one person objected to the press being at the meeting.
Perez said he had nothing to do with the censure motion, but said he has been attacked by Hernandez supporters who believe he orchestrated it.
“The committee’s consideration of censure makes plain what many Democrats in Tucson have felt for some time: Alma Hernandez’s voting record does not align with the values of our community,” he said in a statement to the press.
You gotta love long weekends: Administrators at Palo Verde Magnet High School on Tucson’s east side want to switch to a four-day school week, KGUN’s Athena Kehoe reports. They sent out a survey and most of the parents who responded said they support the idea, which will come up for a vote at tonight’s meeting of the TUSD governing board. Also on the board’s agenda is an agreement with the Arizona Schools for the Deaf and Blind to use two TUSD schools, Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock writes in his roundup of local school board activity.
The budget battle has begun: Tucson’s Rio Nuevo is in the crosshairs of GOP lawmakers at the Arizona Legislature, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. The Republican budget proposal would strip $19 million in sales tax revenue from Rio Nuevo, which doles out that money to businesses in downtown Tucson and along Broadway. But Democratic lawmakers don’t give the GOP proposal much of a chance of becoming law, including Tucson Sen. Priya Sundareshan, who told the Republic’s Ray Stern and Helen Rummel that “we don’t anticipate that this is any real budget intended to be signed.”
Someone please mention the Kemper Marley building: The University of Arizona is hosting a public forum tomorrow about renaming the César E. Chávez Building, per a press release. If you’re interested, the event is from 4-5:30 p.m. at the Manuel Pacheco Integrated Learning Center, room 120 (map). At the behest of UA President Suresh Garimella the discussion will “include perspectives on the farmworker movement, community impact, support for survivors, and considerations for next steps.”
Now, we wait: Now that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s tariffs, businesses in Southern Arizona are figuring out how to get reimbursed, Jeff Chew reports for the Green Valley News. Produce importer Jaime Chamberlain’s company only paid tariffs for three days, but they still racked up nearly $100,000 in tariff payments. He expects it will take at least six months to get that money back.
Luckily, we didn’t have to pay any tariffs, but we still need financial support from readers to stay in the black.
Facing off with bulldozers: The Project Blue developers broke ground on their data center project on Friday near the Pima County Fairgrounds, where they were met by dozens of protesters from the No Desert Data Center Coalition, Stephanie Casanova reports for CALÓ News Arizona. The protesters held signs saying “We said no!” and “Not one drop for data.” A few even stood in front of the developer’s vehicles, which prompted Pima County sheriff’s deputies to push the protesters out of the way.
After spending much of yesterday talking about what’s actually going to be on the ballot this November, we figured we’d take a detour to highlight amateur street racer and former Tucson state Sen. Justine Wadsack’s pick for Tucson’s next mayor — in November 2027.
Mark Griffith, the owner of Griffith Automotive Repair and Restoration, kicked off his mayoral campaign on Sunday, with Wadsack boosting the launch on Twitter. His website doesn’t list a party affiliation, but it does promise that “Change is Coming 2027.”
Whether he runs as a Republican or an independent not tied to any political party, it’s tough to muster much excitement for a campaign that’s still 18 months (and a midterm election) away. But at least he’s proactive.
Griffith’s platform includes the usual word salad of promising to “clean up” Tucson, fix the roads and make streets safer, with little in the way of specifics.
We’re more interested in learning about his company’s contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, which may be a tougher sell in a heavily Democratic city like Tucson.