With just two women among the five Democrats seeking to unseat Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally in Southern Arizona’s Congressional District 2, EMILY’s List had to make a choice between a former congresswoman in Ann Kirkpatrick and a retired Pentagon accountant in Mary Matiella.
The D.C.-based fundraising titan is going with Kirkpatrick.
Emily List President Stephanie Schriock called Kirkpatrick “a trailblazer who loves Arizona. Arizonans need her leadership and courage so she can continue fighting for opportunity, shared economic prosperity, and safe and thriving communities.”
It’s another sign—beyond Kirkpatrick’s third-quarter fundraising haul of $350K and her recent endorsements from former Southern Arizona representatives Gabby Giffords and Ron Barber—that the D.C. establishment is coming together to back Kirkpatrick, who previously represented another competitive Arizona district, the sprawling CD1.
But Matiella, who grew up in Tucson and beat the odds to build a long career as an accountant for the federal government, peaking as a United States Assistant Secretary of the Army in the financial arena during the Obama administration, has picked up her share of endorsements from Southern Arizona Democrats, including Congresswman Raul Grijalva, Pima County Supervisors Sharon Bronson and Richard Elias, Tucson City Councll members Regina Romero and Paul Cunningham.
The other Democrats vying for the nomination are former lawmakers Matt Heinz and Bruce Wheeler and political rookie Billy Kovacs.
Democrats hope to take back Congressional District 2 next year from McSally, who is in her second term. The former A-10 squadron leader is a rising Republican star who has been one of the top fundraisers in Congress, but also represents one of the most competitive seats in the nation. She won her seat by just 167 votes in 2014 when she unseated Barber, but easily cruised to reelection against Heinz last year.
This article appears in Oct 5-11, 2017.
I was initially planning to back Kirkpatrick as she seemed like the most formidable opponent for McSally, especially given her ability to go toe to toe on fundraising. Listening to her early rhetoric and reflecting on the weak campaign she ran against McCain, my plan now is to listen closely to her four opponents to see if they can serve as starker contrasts and more engaging foes to the incumbent. If we fail to beat McSally in 2018, we may be stuck with her for a while. We have time to choose wisely and avoid a mad rush to the choice others have made, even if that seems like the popular option.
Both candidates favor a continued high immigration / low wage regime. Not much to choose from here.
EMILY’s list is wrong. Kirkpatrick is not running to represent ‘Arizona’, she is running to represent CD1 and in that context she is a carpetbagger who moved to Tucson only a few months ago as a stepping stone for her political career. She does not care about Tucson or CD1 in any broad sense beyond what it means for her own political ambitions. If this were only a race between Kirkpatrick and McSally, it would be easy to choose Kirkpatrick but this is a preliminary between Anne and many other Democrats who have roots here, actually live here and care about the community. The other candidates deserve a closer look and should not be written off because of Anne’s national political clout and more importantly the PAC money and party money she is getting. She is just another big money candidate trying to carpetbag our CD1 seat for her own ambitions. Sounds a lot like McSally but with a D next to her name….
oops I meant CD2! Don’t post before coffee, lesson learned….
“the D.C. establishment is coming together to back Kirkpatrick” Wonderful. And we all know the backing of establishment Democrats means everything. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s sad that the Democrats have learned nothing from 2016 or from the preceding eight years when they lost 1,000 seats at all levels of government nationwide. Ann Kirkpatrick’s website is a joke – no positions, a short video with a lot of empty platitudes. People are tired of ‘lesser of two evils’ choices in elections. As I said when she ran against McCain, her role in the insidious Oak Flat land swap disqualified her for me. Unless the Democrats nominate a Progressive – Matiella and Wheeler have both posted some Progressive policy positions on their websites – we are likely to see a second term for McSally.
I agree with the posters above. Kirkpatrick did not seem to do a great job of representing the interests of the majority citizens in CD1, the Dine (Navajo/Apache).
Much like Barber’s long list of compromising on key social programs like reducing unemployment benefits after the Lehman crash in 2008, or drug testing for welfare recipients. His endorsement almost encourages me to look elsewhere for a candidate!
If CD2 is going to elect a democrat, they are going to have to offer something more than “McSally light” and Clinton-era policy, or democrats won’t bother showing up to the polls as usual.
Which is all to say that following the lead of the democratic establishment has been a great recipe for electing republicans this decade. I hope they keep up their ‘great’ work…
I have a whole lot more faith in Maggie’s List endorsements: http://www.maggieslist.org/about
I would strongly encourage Ann to make a change and run for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat. She would be opposing Kyrsten Sinema in the primary election. Kyrsten Sinema is lacking in accomplishments and was for restoring the Glass-Steagall Act before she was on the Financial Services Committee. The Financial Services Committee is widely known as the Whore House of the US House of Representatives. Once in the Financial Services Committee, Sinema quickly rolled over and joined with her fellow committee member, Republican David Schweikert and refused to support the Glass-Steagall Legislation.
Kirsten Sinema’s lame excuse for not co-sponsoring was that she only co-sponsors legislation that she knows will pass. Is she the kind of person that we would want to represent the state of Arizona. One who only supports legislation that she knows will pass because to do otherwise would affect her statistics?
Ann Kirkpatrick was a co-sponsor of Glass-Steagall while she was in Congress. If we want to make America Great Again, we have to first understand what made America Great in the first place. We can do that by looking at the policies of FDR and JFK and return control of the currency to the Hamiltonian Banking System. We need to abandon the current system wherein usury for the benefit of the financial elite is the rule and the former system of building infrastructure for the benefit of the “Common Good” has been abandoned.
Many may think that Donald Trump is a slow moving train wreck and a broken clock. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. We need to take the initiative and use the opportunities to put forth our policies. Trump has stated that he is for Restoring the Glass-Steagall Act. Let’s make that our first step in implementing our initiatives. An outline of those proposed policies is in the following Youtube video. https://youtu.be/4ajdrW-m01I