Below are excerpts of Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’s remarks at the LD18 Democrats on July 25, 2023:
This is not just a call from the Secretary of State. This is a call from one of the state’s leading Democrats.
Listen carefully, Democrats, we need to get it together. We need to register voters, as of yesterday, we need to be raising money for our candidates’ funds as of yesterday, because we’re going to have a hell of a fight on our hands if we’re going to take the majority in the House and in the Senate, we need strong county parties.
We need strong legislative districts. We need a strong state party, and only you can make that happen. You are the only ones that can do that. This is a clarion call. We have a Democrat in the governor’s office, in the secretary’s office and in the Attorney General’s office, and a couple of those races were very close.
We are going to be hard-pressed to fight hard. So, we’ve got to meet the moment, folks. We’ve got to dig in deep. We’ve got to register voters. We’ve got to organize across the entire state. So, start with the postcards. Start with the door knocking. Start with the registering of voters.
Do not do the traditional thing that Arizona’s Democrats do, and wait. Many of you don’t do that. We are almost a year away from the primaries. We’ve got some great primaries in a few congressional districts here in Maricopa County. This is really the moment we’ve got to give our governor the legislative majorities that she needs in the Senate and in the House to beat back this nonsense.
We need to fight
I want to see Democrats running Arizona because we’re the ones who want everyone to vote. We want our elections to be fair and square, and we want to win. We’re going to win. We need to fight.
If you could, please go to ElectFontes.com. We need a little bit of help as well. I want to have $300,000 in the bank by January so that I can focus all my efforts on helping Democrats in Arizona and across the country get elected.
Please go and pitch in, and help us build that little bank account so that I can get out of the way during 2024. Otherwise, I will have to continue to fundraise so I can do the necessary things that I have already been doing.
For example, helping get our state party chair paid full-time. We have found some funding. I helped with the negotiations on that to make sure that we could have a full-time paid party chair. That doesn’t come easy, and it doesn’t come cheap. So Yolanda Bejarano will be able to do work across Arizona because of those efforts.
I need your support just like all the rest of our candidates do. So if you can pitch in, I certainly would appreciate it. I want to help Democrats win up and down the ballot, but we’ve got to have resources so that I can get out there and do that work as well nationally to bring money and attention and resources into Arizona.
The most important issue
The most important issue that Democrats should emphasize in the upcoming elections is abortion.
It’s women being able to choose whatever the hell they want to do with their own bodies. This is a question of liberty, it’s a question of freedom, and it goes to all the rest of the issues. This is really critically important, and I don’t see any reason why we should run away from that at all.
The vast majority of our voters across the political spectrum are about choice. So if you were asking me a political question, I would say abortion should be number one in 2024, particularly after Roe v. Wade fell.
Attract young voters by listening
Let’s not tell young voters what’s important. Let’s listen to them. Let’s listen to what young people have to say. What should we tell young people? How do we recruit young people? How do we turn out young people?
Listen to them. Give them the power and the dignity of their own experience. Figure out what’s important to them. That’s theirs. They own it. But the bottom line is this. I never had to go through live shooter drills in my school to figure out how to survive, knowing that kids my age had been killed.
I never had to lose a year and a half or two of socialization due to a global pandemic that killed millions of people globally. I never had to deal with that paranoia as I was growing up. I never had to deal with the notion that some American cities would be completely underwater, if not vanished.
I never had to deal with a world that looked like the world they have to live in. So who am I to tell them anything?
Because as far as they’re concerned, I’m part of the problem. So I’m going to give them a little bit of grace, and I’m going to exercise a little humility, and I’m going to listen to voters under 30.
By listening to them instead of just telling them what we think is important, we’ll get more of them to come out and exercise that very fierce power that they have.
But we don’t have to do a hell of a lot of it because they’re coming out. Young people are starting to get engaged. They are starting to get involved because their lives are not looking as good as our lives did. They don’t have the upward trajectory that we had — I’m 53 — as we were growing up. So we need to listen.
Why you should run for office
Everyone on this call can be a candidate. And I don’t want to hear any, “Oh, I can’t run. Can you imagine if any of the founders were like, “No, we’re not going to give up everything. We shouldn’t have a republic.”
What about if I didn’t run? Who would be the Secretary of State right now? What about if Katie Hobbs didn’t run? Who would be our Governor right now?
Why are you exempt? And I’m talking to you every single one of you. Really, what does it mean to be a citizen? Is it only voting? Is it just being engaged? Or do you sometimes have to stick your neck out and take a chance and be brave, be courageous, and engage and actually do those things?
10 two-letter words to live by
There was an old man named Marshall, and he’s a 92-year-old World War II vet. He was on a ship in the Pacific, and he said they had a mantra that they spoke. It was the 10 little two-letter words that they worked on, and the whole ship knew the 10 little two-letter words
They did their fighting, and after the war, these 10 little two-letter words kept everybody moving. Those 10 little two-letter words kept every single one of them on their mission.
Those 10 little two-letter words kept every one of those men on that ship. It kept them focused, it kept them on their mission, and it kept them moving forward. And it should motivate every single one of you. And you should say these 10 little two-letter words to yourself and ask yourself: if it is to be, it is up to me. Say those 10 little two-letter words to yourself and empower yourself.
Because when we talk about going and looking for candidates, you might not have to look any further than the mirror in front of you. If it is to be, it is up to me.
That’s what got me moving to become Secretary of State. I had just lost the Maricopa County Recorder’s race, which is big enough to be a statewide race. I knew I could make a hell of a lot more money with three daughters going into college. Why would I stick myself with a $ 70,000-a-year job and all the headaches that accompany this?
Because if it is to be, it is up to me. If you’re not saying that to yourself, every time you decide to pick up the phone and call, every time you decide to knock on a door, every time you decide to write a postcard, every time you decide to write a check to a candidate, every time you think about whether or not you can actually do this, you can become that candidate.
If it is to be, it is up to me. Democrats, Arizona needs every single one of you to do your level best to help us create an environment where our LGBTQ-plus brothers and sisters and others we’ll feel safe and we’ll feel at home. Our elderly population will have what they need to live peacefully. Our young people will be able to be happy, healthy, and safe because there are economic and educational opportunities in their communities.
If it is to be, it is up to me. As Democrats, every single one of us, think about it, repeat that mantra, and let’s go win in 2024. Folks, our future depends on it.
NO Single-shot election campaigns
I don’t like the single-shot election strategy because it allows for an automatic loss. You never get a chance on that second seat. It’s okay for the one candidate who will be the single-shot candidate, but what about the possibility of engaging two different campaigns in that district, engaging two different sets of friends, families, and social networks in that district?
Maybe we should stop playing for a close second in Arizona. Maybe we should start playing to win in 2024. What if we fielded enough candidates to mathematically win the legislature in the House and possibly win in the Senate? We didn’t even have enough candidates to win in 2022.
No advantage with single-shot election strategy. In several U.S. states, legislative districts for the lower chamber are structured to elect two or more candidates (employed in AZ, ND, NJ, SD). Sometimes, parties in these states field only one strong candidate in districts where they have a registration disadvantage, believing this “single shot” strategy improves the election odds. Our research casts doubt on this tactic. It finds that lone Democrats in a pooled sample of three states see a noted disadvantage by widening the electoral gap by 3.3 percentage points on average, meaning that parties are better off running two candidates regardless of their relative quality. — Julia Marin Hellwege and Ed Gerrish, November 2021
That kind of leadership is of yesterday. Not on my watch. We’re going to fight to win. We need to field candidates in every office, in every seat across the entire state, and don’t give this nonsense about, “Oh, that wastes resources.” Wrong. And that’s a wrongheaded way to look at things. You’re not wasting anything when you’re bringing more people and engaging more folks in the process in these legislative districts.
Think about it. You have one candidate that people know. You have another candidate who might be coming in, and they might have a tougher shot, but guess what they bring along with them.
They bring their friends, they bring their families, they bring their social networks, and they bring their business networks. They bring all the folks who know them. A lot of people, who may not ever get involved in politics, all of a sudden find themselves with a reason to get excited about a candidate because this is somebody that they know. Why in the world would we not engage more people in politics?
No, it’s balderdash. It’s silly. The president says it’s malarkey. I think it’s a loser strategy. It’s what kept us in the minority in 2022. I hope anybody who’s talking about that pulls their head out of their ass because it’s wrongheaded.
Let’s not forget we’ve got big races on the ticket. We’ve got a Senate race and a Presidential race. We will have a bigger turnout than normal, and Democrats turn out in presidential cycles. So why would we single-shot anything?