Sunnyside to the US House?
Trump’s nightmare? … The race for second place … And Joe might be a Luddite.
As a young adult, Daniel Hernandez spent time training as a nursing assistant and as a phlebotomist. Jumping into the world of politics — and never looking back — would come later.
“I actually did two years of cancer research at the University of Arizona Cancer Center thinking I would go into healthcare,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez got into politics in 2008 while attending the University of Arizona, lobbying as a part of the Arizona Students Association. In 2011, he became an intern for then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and he rushed to her side seconds after a gunman shot her and 18 other people during the January 8, 2011, mass shooting
That same year, he joined the governing board for the Sunnyside School District, and in 2016, he was elected to the state Legislature. Now, he’s the associate executive director of Stand for Children, an advocacy group, and he’s making his second run for Congress in Tucson.
”This is my 17th legislative session where I've been working on a variety of difficult issues. Guns, gays and abortion, which are not easy things to work on here in the state of Arizona, and public education,” he said.
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While this is not his first run for Congress, Hernandez said he believes he can make a tangible difference in Washington.
”They taught us from a very young age a very important lesson that actually our grandmother used to teach - poniendo tu granito de arena - which for those that don't speak Spanish, means putting in your grain of sand. The idea that we all have something to contribute, whether it is big or small, whether you're rich or you're poor, we all have a responsibility to make the world a better place,” Hernandez said.
He’s most widely known for rushing to help Giffords, which he wrote about in his book, “They Call Me a Hero: A Memoir of My Youth.”1
But Hernandez says most people don’t know about his advocacy for reproductive rights while on the school board or while working for Planned Parenthood during Donald Trump’s first run for president.
“I actually helped pass comprehensive sex ed when I was a school board member in Sunnyside, but I've been working on abortion rights for a really long time and abortion care and abortion access, not just in Arizona, but around the country,” he said.
In 2016, Hernandez’s work with Planned Parenthood eventually landed him in the hospital, which put him in hot water with Republican legislators.
”I almost died because I got a blood clot from flying so much around the country and missed some votes because it was something where I was in the hospital for a couple of days,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez is pragmatic about the current state of Democratic politics, saying he was hopeful that the judicial branch would serve as a check on the Trump administration in his second term. But he has been disappointed with some of the rulings from the Supreme Court.
“Right now we're in the minority, so it's going to be playing a lot of defense. But I think there's a really good shot that Democrats take the House in 2026. And I think once we have power, we need to stop being complacent,” he said.
The former state lawmaker, who is now a member of the Hernandi Group consulting firm, says Democrats should have fought much harder to protect a woman’s right to choose nationally after the fall of Roe v. Wade. But he knows it would require an act of Congress — and likely a Democratic president — to protect those rights.
“I think this is one of the biggest failings of the Democratic Party in the last 50 years, that in spite of us knowing that at any moment a Supreme Court could come in and alter the Roe v. Wade decision, we did nothing to codify Roe,” Hernandez said.
Asked about the House’s passage of the budget bill, Hernandez said there is hope that the Senate will make some changes, but says the public needs to hold the House accountable.
“I think that we're going to see a lot of pushback in the Senate. But I think we cannot on the Senate to be the be all, end all. And I think we really need to do a better job of pushing on the House side, especially folks in those competitive congressional districts, because this could have been killed by one vote. One dissenting Republican could have done something to stop this, and they didn't.
Ballots will start arriving in mailboxes on June 18 for the July 15 primary election.
In the meantime, we’ll be hustling to make sure you know everything you need to know ahead of the election.
Any honest Republican will tell you that their chances of winning the Congressional District 7 special election is a long shot.
Democrats might be nationally in the tank in terms of popularity, but former Congressman Raúl Grijalva always got a lot of love on election day — races were rarely close in his 22 years of service.
But three Republican candidates — Daniel Butierez, Jorge Rivas, and Jimmy Rodriguez — are still are vying to be the GOP nominee in this solidly blue district.
Last night, Butierez and Rivas took the debate stage on “Arizona Horizon” to discuss their backgrounds, policy positions and what they would do in Congress. Rodriguez declined at the 11th hour.
Joe watched the debate and live-blogged about it on Bluesky.
Back in March, President Donald Trump riled up the education world when he started dismantling the Department of Education. A ton of people sued, including Arizona’s attorney general.
In this week’s Education Agenda, we zoomed in on a federal judge as he eviscerated the legal arguments coming from the White House.
The 88-page ruling from U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun read like a middle-school teacher grading a book report that obviously was written the night before it was due.
In the end, Joun, a Biden appointee, blocked the Trump administration from cutting the department’s workforce by half, which he said would have stopped the department from completing the duties set by Congress.
He also blocked the administration from moving services, like protecting the rights of special needs students or handling the student loan portfolio, to other federal departments.
“None of these statements amount to a reasoned explanation, let alone an explanation at all,” the judge wrote.
It got worse from there.
Elsewhere in education news, Arizona’s voucher program is getting the deep dive treatment, international students are once again in crosshairs, and the race to be Arizona’s top education official is heating up.
Who gets to regulate artificial intelligence? For now, states are taking the lead as Congress dithers.
But that could change soon, as we detailed in this week’s A.I. Agenda.
AI moves fast. Congress doesn’t.
But if Congress gets its way, they’d be the only ones who can regulate AI.
A proposal to block states from passing any AI-related laws for 10 years was tucked inside the “big, beautiful” budget bill that made it out of the GOP-led U.S. House earlier this month.
In effect, the same people who move at a glacial pace want to hold the reins of a technology that makes breakthroughs every day. And each one of those breakthroughs generates serious, and largely unknown, implications for society as a whole.
Meanwhile, a “compute city” is coming to Arizona, an East Coast-West Coast battle is brewing among AI intellectuals, and AI might be good at massages, but not so much as a reviewer of job applications.
And the Water Agenda landed an interview with Attorney General Kris Mayes, who offered a behind-the-scenes look at one of the biggest water lawsuits going on right now.
Come for the water nerdery, stay for Mayes’ war stories as a former journalist.
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The most important water news stories in the state?
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We’ve spent this week crying in our beers for all the dead news organizations we miss (and for those bought and gutted by terrible companies).
But we wanna close out this sales gimmick with something different.
In the wake of the Citizen’s death, multiple rounds of layoffs at the Star and the Weekly, the consolidation of TV and radio news, and the shuttering of many other local publications, something cool has happened.
Small, local, independent news organizations are sprouting — and they’re run by actual journalists.
We’re still not big enough to fill the void left by the giants.
But we’re trying. And we need your help.
So today, rather than dwelling on what we’ve lost, let’s celebrate a couple of the new, independent news sources that are popping up around Southern Arizona.
The Tucson Sentinel isn’t exactly new — they were among the early independent news sources in Southern Arizona, having been born out of the implosion of the Citizen. But they do great work, and they could use your support.
The Arizona Luminaria was started by a couple of Star refugees and has grown into a local powerhouse. They’re a very needed addition to the local news scene, and they could also use your support.
And we’re big fans of the Border Chronicle, a newsletter that came on the scene at the same time as our sister ‘sletter, the Arizona Agenda. We’re sure the two veteran border journalists running that would really appreciate your support.
And if you’re not reading David Fitzsimmons’ strange Substack, you’re missing out.
Each one of those publications is journalist-owned and doing important work in these trying times. And they all need your support to keep doing it.
So please subscribe, donate, or just tell a friend about them.
Trust us when we say that each dollar, each click, and each mention helps.
“Thanks so much for having me. Not Nicole Ludden, but Joe.”
This was the start of Joe’s interview with Congressional District 7 candidate Daniel Hernandez earlier this week.
It was good-natured teasing. Joe forgot to change the screen name in Zoom.
While this is a good reminder to change your name before sending out that invite, it also shows that no one is off limits in this space.
Upgrade your subscription today and we’ll buy Joe his own Zoom account.
Joe is reading Hernandez’s book and will have a book review at some point before the election.