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May 7th , 2023 Political Note #558 Kirsten Engel Arizona 06
2024 General Election
I was in high school when I learned the meaning of the word peripatetic. Peripatetic people move frequently and are rarely great political candidates. To succeed in Arizona politics, Kirsten Engel has had to overcome what was initially a peripatetic career. Despite her travels, her 5,232 vote loss to gubernatorial aide Juan Ciscomani has made her a popular choice to run for Congress again in Arizona’s 6th District. That same narrow loss makes Ciscomani #10 in Len’s List of vulnerable House Republican incumbents.
Because this is Arizona, Kirsten Engel’s task is a little easier than it would be in other states. Based on 2020 census figures, about 68% of the residents of Arizona were born out of state. That is up from a previous report of 60%. Like a lot of people in Arizona, she was born in the Midwest, in Chicago. She went east to college to Brown where she graduated Magna Cum Laude. After Brown, she went home for law school to Northwestern.
Kirsten Engel did not stay home. She clerked for Judge Myron H Bright in Fargo, North Dakota. He was serving on the Eighth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals, a Circuit that covers an enormous range of states in the Midwest – from Minnesota and the Dakotas in the north to Arkansas in the south. She moved from Fargo to Washington, DC to work for the Environmental Protection Agency and then for the Sierra Club’s Legal Defense Fund, now known as Earthjustice. From there she moved north and east to be an assistant to the Massachusetts Attorney General.
In 2005, Kirsten Engel settled on Arizona as a place to live and work. Is a nearly 20 year commitment to Arizona and a second run for Congress enough to make her a local? It might be in Arizona where so many of the residents were not born in the state. Kirsten Engel had been offered a job teaching at the University of Arizona’s Law School. Now she is a full professor – teaching environmental and administrative law and doing what professors do.
Kirsten Engel wrote books – four of them. One each on climate change policy and environmental law in 2011, another edition of her environmental law book in 2016, and one on the Crisis of Global Ethics in 2019. She wrote numerous articles and book chapters ranging from how Arizona’s groundwater is managed to a piece on air quality titled “Smoke isn’t Smoke.” She has even written articles with her husband Scott Saleska – an MIT graduate with a PhD from University of California Berkeley. He is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.
Like many of the women in Congress, a personal, family experience led Kirsten Engel to politics. Volunteering in her daughter’s school, she saw how badly the school was in need of resources, how little in the way of resources the state legislature provided. In 2016, she ran for the Arizona House of Representatives and won. In 2020, she resigned to run for the State Senate. She fought for more education funding in the legislature and was a leader in the field for which she was best known – moving Arizona toward clean energy.
In 2022, she resigned from the State Senate to run for the US House of Representatives. Arizona’s 6thCongressional District was open because longtime Democratic Representative Ann Kirkpatrick was retiring. Though this had been a Democratic seat, Kirsten Engel was facing redistricting in 2022 that had put Democrats at a disadvantage throughout the state. She lost that race. Can she win in 2024?
Kirsten Engel begins her 2024 campaign with the need to invest in infrastructure. Arizona’s jobs depend on that. She goes on to describe climate change as Arizona’s, the country’s, and the world’s more important problem. Federal support for a transition to solar energy and limiting water pollution from power stations were Arizona’s most important priorities. She promised increased funding for public schools, a reform in the asylum seeking system and an improvement in policing by shifting certain crisis responses to services other than the police are major issues. In one of her most interesting statements, she points out that the source of the greatest complexity in the rules imposed on all of us rests with Republican and corporate resistance to regulations.
Her opponent in 2022 was Juan Ciscomani. Now the incumbent, she will be facing him again. He is not a slouch. Son of Mexican immigrants, he graduated from a local community college before continuing on to graduate from the University of Arizona. After graduation, he stayed at the University developing programs before catching on with Governor Doug Ducey. Earning Ducey’s regard, he became a principal aide of the governor for the last years of his final term in office. In Congress, he has been an ally of Kevin McCarthy. The Tuscon Sentinal followed Ciscomani nominating McCarthy to be Speaker in the 10th round of voting and noted Ciscomani’s error in his claim to be the first naturalized citizen to represent Arizona. The newspaper described the one previous Arizonan in Congress who had been a naturalized American citizen.
As befits a representative from a swing district, Ciscomani has joined what was once called the Tuesday Lunch Bunch, the Republican moderates’ caucus. He demonstrates his moderation by favoring exceptions for rape and incest along with otherwise absolute prohibitions against abortions and by being open to citizenship for people who (like him) came to the United States when they were children amidst proposals for draconian prohibitions of immigrants. His capacity to connect with the leadership is demonstrated by his appointment to the appropriations committee as a freshman.
Ciscomani’s campaign focus is on what he calls the immigration crisis, his complaint that Democrats want to take over all elections, and what he sees as the problem of “crushing” taxes and regulations. There have been few crucial votes in the House since the 2022 election. Most of Joe Biden’s achievements that required legislative votes, such as the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Plan, the gun safety legislation, the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act (largely a climate crisis bill), and budgeted support for Ukraine required votes before the new Congress with a narrow Republican majority took its seats. Ciscomani was, of course, one of the Republican votes favoring the extortionate contingent lifting of the debt limit, a plan that would drastically reduce services to the American public.
Some readers are old enough to remember Jack Benny. The famously tight fisted, comedian Benny pauses, says he needs time to think, when a robber confronts him with “your money or your life.” Joe Biden is as careful as Jack Benny when faced with the Republicans’ debt reduction bill. Ciscomani has joined McCarthy in the extortion: “your money (the programs you have created and love and believe are crucial to American progress) or your life (the economic life of the country and the free world based on trust that America pays its debts).” So far as we can tell, Ciscomani has no problem with Kevin McCarthy’s explanation that it did not matter what was in the bill. He knows, as McCarthy knows, the bill will never become law. What was important to Republicans was their ability to pass something so they could attempt to confront Biden.
Can Kirsten Engel make Ciscomani be seen as the extortionist he has become? Can she make him a full fledged member of the political party that loses moral authority every time it raises the profile of the man who may be Ciscomani’s presidential candidate – the insurrectionist, fraudulent rapist of a past president?
Help Kirsten Engel make her case for normal budgeting in Congress. Help her create an economy that works for everyone, a healthcare system accessible to all, protection for reproductive choice, protections for seniors and their reliance on social security and medicare. Support her campaign against the 10th most vulnerable House Republican.
Vulnerable Democratic Incumbents in the Southwest
Incumbent Yadira Caraveo Colorado 08, a child of undocumented immigrants, a physician and former state legislator, she is in her first term in Congress in a newly created seat because of Colorado’s growth. She is #2 on Len’s List of vulnerable Democratic incumbents. See Len’s Political Note #537
Incumbent Susie Lee Nevada 03 was a water specialist who got a job in Las Vegas, married a gambling mogul, and became a philanthropist on behalf of the education of needy children. She is in her third term in Congress and is #11 on Len’s List of vulnerable Democratic incumbents. See Len’s Political Note #553
Incumbent Steve Horsford Nevada 04 became the adult in the family at a young age, caring for his single, addicted mother, working his way through high school and college, becoming a member of the staff of the powerful culinary workers union and eventually state senate majority leader. He is in his fourth term (third consecutive term) in Congress and is #12 on Len’s List of vulnerable Democratic incumbents. See Len’s Political Note #375 from the 2022 campaign.
Vulnerable Republican Candidates in the Southwest
Republican David Schweikert Arizona 01 is #8 on Len’s List of vulnerable Republican House Members. Criticism by the House Ethics Committee makes him perpetually vulnerable. Four Democrats have announced their candidacy so far – Former CEO Adrei Cherny, Orthodontist Andrew Horn, former Red Cross figure Kurt Kroeme, and State Rep Amish Shah. We will probably not have a Democratic candidate until the primary is over.
Republican Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez TX 15 is #20 on Len’s List of vulnerable Republican House Members. A realtor who is deeply conservative and anti-abortion, she defeated young, progressive Michelle Vallejo who had won her primary by 35 votes. So far, neither Vallejo nor any other Democrat has expressed interest in running for this seat.
