A Democratic lawmaker from Southern Arizona is teaming up with a political newcomer in an attempt to oust her Democratic seatmate in the July 21 primary election.
Legislative District 21, the shape of which kind of resembles a salamander running along the U.S.-Mexico border, covers Santa Cruz County and chunks of Pima and Cochise counties, and includes portions of Tucson and Nogales, Benson, Rio Rico, Sahuarita and Naco. It’s a strong Democratic district where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by almost 17 percentage points.
Rep. Consuelo Hernandez is teaming up with bilingual children's book author Maritza Higuera rather than her own seatmate, Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton.
Meanwhile, Stahl Hamilton is seeking reelection, and a fourth Democrat, Miranda Lopez, is also running for one of the district’s two House seats – though those two are not running as a slate.
All four have committed to a debate tonight at 6 p.m., which will be streamed live on the Citizens Clean Elections Commission YouTube channel and moderated by Joe.
Hernandez fended off a legal challenge to her candidacy this spring when a constituent filed a lawsuit alleging she was ineligible to run due to unpaid fines for late campaign finance reports. Shortly before the trial start, Hernandez cut a check for $24,840 to pay off outstanding fines.
And she’s the target of a semi-anonymous campaign website against her and her sister, Rep. Alma Hernandez, who is seeking a Senate seat in the Tucson-based Legislative District 20.
The website accuses the sisters of backing the priorities of Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for reshaping government. Financial backers of political advertising and electioneering are required to disclose themselves, but the website says it is sponsored “by an individual and not by any political committee.”
Hernandez’s political career began in 2018, when voters elected her to the Sunnyside Unified School District Governing Board, where she still serves. She lost a 2020 race against Adelita Grijalva for a spot on the Pima County Board of Supervisors. In 2022, she won a seat in the state House alongside her sister and following in the footsteps of her brother, former Democratic Rep. Daniel Hernandez.
Voters in LD21 will be asked to choose between Consuelo Hernandez, Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, Maritza Higuera and Miranda Lopez.
Hernandez is going for her third consecutive term in the House, where she has managed to get three bills passed during her tenure in the Republican-controlled chamber and signed into law. This year, she sponsored two bills related to mental health that have passed both chambers of the Legislature.
Hernandez’s running mate, Higuera, is making her first run for political office.
Higuera and her husband run an orchard and horse boarding business in Rio Rico, an unincorporated area about 60 miles south of Tucson, and she writes bilingual children’s books.
“I was in school in Nogales, Mexico, so when I came to the United States, I didn’t know the language, I didn’t know English,” Higuera said in a KGUN9 news report in 2024 about her second book, “If I Eat My Fruits and Vegetables.”
She said there’s a need for more bilingual children’s books in the border areas so children can start mastering English.
Higuera was on a shortlist last year to be appointed as the Santa Cruz County school superintendent, but was not ultimately chosen.
She has also worked for Head Start as a teacher and health and nutrition coordinator, and for various nonprofits, according to her candidate bio on the Secretary of State’s Office website.
Education, public safety and creating opportunities for families are her legislative priorities.
“As a firefighter’s wife, author, and mother – including a valedictorian daughter now serving in the Arizona National Guard – I live the values of service and sacrifice daily,” she wrote in the bio.
Lopez, a self-described democratic socialist, has been politically involved since 2018 as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. She’s worked behind the scenes to get out the vote for various campaigns, and she served for almost two years as the director of the Pima County Democratic Party.
She also worked for the Arizona Students Association, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for college students at the Legislature.
While getting her Master’s in Public Administration, Lopez became the treasurer of United Campus Workers, a union for university workers.
In a March interview with the Democrats of Greater Tucson, Lopez said her top issues include housing affordability, public education and environmental protection.
“These are like the basic building blocks that make Arizona really great and could make it even better,” Lopez said.
She said she wants to eliminate the empowerment scholarship account program, or school vouchers, and move that money toward teacher raises and school infrastructure.
And she noted that her position on affordable housing comes from personal experience. She said she and her fiancé just bought their first home, but they had to drain their savings and now live paycheck to paycheck.
She said it was worth it, though, because she has a home that will earn equity even though “it doesn’t feel that way right now.”
“I know that there are a lot of folks that are my age that have not had that opportunity and may not have that opportunity for a very long time, if ever,” Lopez said.
Lopez said that Tucson City Council hearings on Project Blue, a $3.6 billion data center proposal the council rejected last year, shaped her environmental protection platform. While the council rejected it, the project is moving forward.
Stahl Hamilton first won election in 2020 to the House, switched to the Senate in 2021 to fill a vacant seat, and returned to the House the next year.
She has gotten only one bill passed in the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law, but it was historic: a 2024 measure to repeal the state’s 160-year-old ban on abortion.
A year before, she made lots of headlines, but not for making laws.
Stahl Hamilton made the formal request for an Ethics Committee investigation that led to the expulsion of Republican Liz Harris for inviting false testimony at a committee hearing in which so-called election deniers accused the House speaker and others of rigging elections and other crimes.
Less than a month later, three Republican lawmakers clapped back with an ethics complaint against Stahl Hamilton, an ordained minister, for a prank in which she hid Bibles that she took from the members’ lounge. A hidden camera in the lounge caught her in action.
The complaint alleged she engaged in disorderly behavior, committed theft and created a hostile work environment.
She apologized on the House floor for her actions, and her attorneys argued that she engaged in “peaceful protest regarding the separation of church and state, and in response to the weaponizing of religion in politics.”
House Republicans first attempted to expel Stahl Hamilton for her actions, but when several Republicans dissented they settled for a censure instead.
The two winners of the primary will advance to the general election in November to face Republican Christopher Kibbey. Kibbey also ran in 2024, but came in third place in this solidly Democratic district.
Democratic Sen. Rosanna Gabaldon has no opponent in the primary, but she’ll face Republican Esteban Flores in the November election.
“Do I hear $0?”: The auctioneer who helped sell property after it was seized by the Santa Cruz County Attorney’s Office was indicted for stealing $190,000 from the anti-racketeering fund, the Nogales International’s Alessandra De Zubeldia reports. Victor Huerta Jr., a property specialist at the county attorney’s office, also was lauded by the local Rotary Club in 2019 as a “standout individual” who protected the public’s wellbeing. The alleged theft came to light after the county put stricter auditing requirements in place after former Treasurer Elizabeth Gutfahr embezzled $38 million.
Windshield (s)wipe left: Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller has a theory about why some people say “Tucson is a cesspool,” a phrase he’s heard more than a few times lately. When people drive on the city’s main arteries, Steller theorizes, they look through their windshields and the only people they see on the street are unsheltered people. Everybody else is either walking or riding bikes on side streets or driving in cars themselves on those main arteries. It’s a “tangled complex of real-life issues” that range from individuals getting addicted to drugs to the country getting addicted to cars.
The nitty-gritty: Tucson Electric Power customers could see their rates jacked up by 13% if state officials sign off on TEP’s proposal. It’s a technical, complicated process, but the Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff breaks it down for you, complete with links to the main filings with the Arizona Corporation Commission. And if you don’t understand who’s to blame for all these rate hikes from your monopolistic utility companies, we’d recommend checking out this explainer of the Corporation Commission that our sister newsletter, the Arizona Agenda, wrote last week.
Civics homework: Cochise County voters made a lot of big choices last week, including approving a new process to verify officials live where they’re supposed to live, and Benson voters kicking out three city council members, Matt Hickman reports for the Herald/Review. It was all part of a lengthy ballot that included 15 amendments to the Douglas City Charter, which Hickman called “less an election than a homework packet with bubbles.”
Anti-drone hub: The University of Arizona is going to play a role in the U.S. military’s strategy to combat drones, the Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. Starting this summer, professors at the UA’s College of Engineering will work with military officers for eight-month sessions to create products and ideas to deal with the rise of cheap, mass-produced drones that are changing how wars are fought, most notably in Ukraine and Iran. Earlier this month, Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista was selected for a pilot program to develop directed-energy weapons, like lasers or microwaves, that could be used against drones.
Many of us remember when the Green Shirt Guy made the country crack up as he laughed uncontrollably at right-wingers trying to take over a Tucson City Council meeting in 2019.
It was a funny, cathartic moment at a time when immigration hardliners were ramping up their political influence.
Since that video went viral, Alex Kack (the real name of Green Shirt Guy) has been active in local politics. Right now, he’s the executive director of the Pima County Democratic Party.
But Kack ran into some health trouble recently.
If you want to lend him a hand, his family and friends organized a GoFundMe campaign to help cover medical costs.