In a midterm season full of historic wins, Arizona’s primary election results are another chance for a candidate to make history.
David Garcia, a veteran and education professor at Arizona State University, won the state’s Democratic nomination in the race for governor on Tuesday night. His victory sets him up to run against incumbent Gov. Doug Ducey, former CEO of Coldstone Creamery, who has been in office since 2015 and received the Republican nomination on Tuesday. If Garcia wins in November, he could become the first Latinx governor in Arizona since 1974, and the second in the state’s history.
“Arizona made a choice,” the 48-year-old candidate said after learning he won with 49% of the democratic votes, according to the Arizona Capitol Times. “They said we are ready for vision over division. We want hope over fear. We want trust over dishonesty and as of today, the Trump/Arpaio/Ducey playbook. … That playbook is coming to an end.”
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Garcia’s campaign is rooted in rebuilding Arizona’s public education system, especially after abhorrent classroom conditions and low pay led state educators to participate in #RedforEd protests this spring (the largest teachers’ strike in U.S. history). Although Gov. Ducey signed a budget bill to begin increasing teacher salaries on May 3, New York Magazine reported that the bill did not meet teachers’ demands for “a sustainable revenue source, raise for non-instructional school staff, or restoration of 2008-level education funding. ”
Garcia believes that his extensive background in education policy best prepares him for the job; he previously served as Associate Superintendent of the Arizona Department of Education and as a research analyst for the Arizona State Senate, according to his website. His platform supports increasing taxes for the 1%, who he says pay less than low and middle-class families, in order to restore education funding. He even campaigned in a converted school bus.
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“People have been frustrated with education for a long, long time,” he told Mother Jones. “The legislature would cut public schools, create obstacles for teachers… and there was this thought that there was nothing that you could do about it—or at least there wasn’t an organized effort to. I think what Red for Ed has done is given us some hope that collectively we can do something.”
The fourth-generation Arizona resident is also planning to set forth initiatives for tuition-free community college, investments in renewable energy, and tighter gun legislation. He faced widespread backlash from Gov. Ducey and the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in July after calling) for the replacement of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with “an immigration system that reflects our American values, values I and so many before have served to protect.”
Garcia has vowed not to accept corporate PAC money and has returned a donations from a lobbyist, gearing him up for a tough race against the $9 million in air-time funding that Gov. Ducey has received from the RGA. But in a state with the sixth largest Latinx population in the country, Garcia knows he has the opportunity to bring previously unengaged voters into the conversation.
“We have not had something for the Latino community to vote for in a very long time. We believe that our campaign is going to be a combination of, yes, people running from either the Trump administration or the current environment today—but the path to getting over the top is adding to those numbers an inspiration, maybe an aspiration, something the people can vote for,” he told Mother Jones. “And that is education and that is representation in Arizona.”
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