Raquel Terán (D-LD30), the State Sen. Minority Leader until February, launched her congressional campaign on Wednesday.
Terán is gunning for the seat currently belonging to Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03), who announced his Senate bid in January.
Terán’s initial campaign video cited her past leadership roles within the Democratic Party and the legislature, as well as her stint working at Planned Parenthood.
“Arizona is facing many challenges. Our housing prices are out of control. Our reproductive freedoms, including legal and safe abortion, are under attack. Our democracy is in jeopardy,” said Terán in the video. “The super wealthy continue to rig the system against our working families, and we desperately need comprehensive immigration reform.”
It's official: I'm running to represent Arizona's 3rd District in Congress!
For over 20 years, I've been fighting to make it easier to get ahead and provide for our families. I've taken on bullies like Joe Arpaio, Donald Trump, and Kari Lake — and won. pic.twitter.com/cMusvoHzmV
— Raquel Terán #BlackLivesMatter (@RaquelTeran) April 5, 2023
Terán repurposed her state senate campaign website into her congressional campaign website.
According to records available via the Department of Justice (DOJ) Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Terán received funds for her congressional campaign, “Raquel Terán For Congress,” as early as 2020 and 2021: $100 on December 1, 2020, and another $100 on January 2, 2021. Both amounts came from Felipe Carlos Benitez Rojas, who runs a political consultancy firm called Benitez Strategies.
Terán hadn’t announced a run at the time.
This latest announcement from Terán reflects a quick succession of career shifts to position herself for the congressional bid. Most recently, Terán stepped down as Senate Minority Leader in late February. State Sen. Mitzi Epstein (D-LD12) took over Terán’s leadership role.
Terán became the Arizona Democratic Party (ADP) chair in early 2021. Then that September, she advanced from the House to the Senate by taking over the seat from former State Sen. Tony Navarrete, who was arrested for alleged sexual abuse of a male minor.
Terán was appointed State Senate Minority Leader for this session in November. Then in December, she gave up the ADP chairmanship.
Terán has also been carving out a political pathway that differs from the state’s top leader. She opposed Gov. Katie Hobbs’ pick for ADP chair, shortly after she’d stepped down for the role. Hobbs backed Maricopa County Board of Supervisors member Steve Gallardo.
Prior to ascending into a leadership role in politics, Terán served as a political activist with a major nonprofit backed by leftist dark money networks, Mi Familia Vota, as well as Promise Arizona. Terán joined Mi Familia Vota around 2006 to combat statewide efforts to combat illegal immigration.
Terán claimed victories over former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former President Donald Trump, and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
This past week, Pima County began offering mental health services for minors without parental consent required, through a new program called “Not Alone.” Arizona law requires written or oral consent of a parent or legal guardian prior to a minor receiving mental health screenings or treatments.
Children under 13 years old must have their parents reach out to join the program. However, the program states that children 13 years old and older may obtain services without parental consent.
The program also will withhold information from parents. Clinicians won’t disclose information about a minor’s sexuality or gender identity, or any “consensual” sexual activity for minors aged 14 through 17, and will only inform parents if their child engages in a new form of self-harm.
Only in cases of suicidal intent, sexual or physical abuse, or expressed intent and planning to harm another then the program disclosed that a clinician will break confidentiality — but the program’s confidentiality protocols didn’t explicitly state that clinicians would inform parents.
According to the Parents’ Bill of Rights, the “liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, health careand mental health of their children is a fundamental right” (emphasis added). Statute also dictates that attempts to “encourage or coerce a minor child to withhold information from the child’s parent shall be grounds for discipline[.]” Pima County’s webpage for the new program encourages those 13 years old or older to independently contact the program partner, COPE Community Services, for help, information, or “just to talk.” The program also offers to come meet minors wherever they’re located to assist them, or to work with them virtually.
The Pima County Health Department announced the program, “Not Alone,” last Thursday. The program receives existing Epidemiology Laboratory Capacity (ELC) K-12 Schools Reopening Grant funding provided by the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS).
The program specifically offers mental health services for both students and teachers diagnosed with COVID-19 after May 2021. Initial public statements on the program implied that the threat and experience of disease itself, and not the mitigation strategies such as forced school closures and distance learning, caused mental duress.
Theresa Cullen, the department director recently rejected by the Arizona legislature in her nomination by Gov. Katie Hobbs to lead the Department of Health Services, described the program in a letter as necessary to not only combat suicidal ideation in students but “compassion fatigue” for teachers.
“According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide remains the third leading cause of death for adolescents and 1 in 3 high school students reported that their mental health was not good. Teachers and staff often experience compassion fatigue, stress, and anxiety,” stated Cullen. “The ‘Not Alone’ campaign is designed to provide brief intervention treatment services for K-12 students and school faculty who have tested positive for COVID-19 since May 1, 2021,” stated Cullen.
Cullen was first appointed to the Pima County Health Department in June 2020. Senate Republicans called Cullen’s administration “repressive,” citing the curfew she imposed as one example, and noting that her policies to mitigate COVID-19 weren’t supported by science.
Overseeing the program is Matthew Schmidgall and Michael Webb, part of the department’s Youth and School Communities program. The program will also partner with several school districts to deploy an advertising campaign through social media, movie theaters, billboards, and radio.
The program also receives partnership assistance through pop star Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation. The nonprofit offers a free mental health course online that awards a certificate upon completion, the “Be There Certificate,” which asks an individual which gender they “identify with,” with the option to select multiple genders and identities and if they’re transgender.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
As the threat of a Ranked Choice Voting ballot measure grows, Arizona lawmakers are increasing their warnings about the future of elections under this proposed new system.
This week, the Arizona Freedom Caucus released a statement to note its members’ extreme disapproval over the prospects of Ranked Choice Voting governing future elections: “The Arizona Freedom Caucus unequivocally opposes Ranked Choice Voting. The problems with RCV are numerous and well-documented, the least of which is the erosion of the one-citizen, one-vote principle which has long guided American elections. In jurisdictions where it has been tried, RCV has caused the exact outcomes which election integrity legislators have sought to eliminate, such as disenfranchisement, voter confusion, delayed results, and the unnecessary complication of our elections process.”
The Caucus announced its formal support for the passage of HB 2552 and SB 1265.
HB 2552, sponsored by Representative Austin Smith, passed the House on March 1 with a 31-28-1 vote. On February 28, SB 1265, sponsored by Senator Anthony Kern, passed the Senate with a 16-13-1 vote.
Ranked Choice Voting is most prominently featured in Alaska, where voters rank their preferences in each election until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. If RCV were to be successfully pushed by special interest groups in the 2024 election, Arizona’s primary and general elections would be effectively eliminated in favor of this new progressive system.
According to the Pew Research Center, “62 jurisdictions nationwide have adopted the voting method” – and more are on the way in the near future, including the attempt to airdrop it into Arizona.
Representative Smith issued the following statement in the Arizona Freedom Caucus’s press release: “Ranked Choice Voting is an unmitigated disaster as seen recently in Alaska and local municipalities races. Arizona—Maricopa County specifically—already has a bad record of voter tabulation and counting process. Between voter confusion, high rates of ballot exhaustion and the difficulty of tabulating the results, RCV increases voter disenfranchisement, distrust in the process and deters candidates from taking stances on issues important to every Arizonan. The bottom line is RCV is a scam that destroys integrity in elections.”
Senator Kern also provided a quote for the release, saying, “RCV may not always result in the candidate with the most first-choice votes winning the election. I am aware that there are groups in Arizona advocating for RCV, but this will only lead to chaos, and we must ensure that our constituents have easy and fair access to the ballot box.”
Another Freedom Caucus member, Senator Justine Wadsack, also weighed in on the Ranked Choice Voting debate: “RCV introduces voter disenfranchisement perpetrated by its ‘exhausted ballots’ because the effect is the silencing of significant portions of the electorate. Exhausted ballots are those that do not rank any continuing candidate, contain an overvote at the highest continuing ranking, or contain two or more sequential skipped rankings before its highest continuing ranking.”
The Arizona Freedom Caucus, along with other Republican members of the State Senate and House, hosted a press conference on Wednesday, at 11:00am, in the Senate Appropriations Committee Hearing Room to announce their formal opposition to Ranked Choice Voting. These efforts take place under the unfriendly shadow of the Ninth Floor of the Arizona Executive Tower, where the legislation has little chance of being signed into law by Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Planned Parenthood of Arizona (PPAZ) expanded its services last week to include vasectomies after months in limbo awaiting court battles over the state’s existing abortion laws.
The medical director of PPAZ, Jill Gibson, revealed that vasectomy requests increased following the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling last June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade.
“We just started hearing that these patients really wanted to step up at this time,” said Gibson. “They recognized that, with their ongoing protected bodily autonomy, they still had a right to participate in preventing pregnancy in ways that maybe didn’t have the same importance as before the Dobbs decision.”
Planned Parenthood’s Southern Arizona Regional Health Center in Tucson will be the first clinic to offer these expanded services. PPAZ plans to roll out these services to other locations in the near future, with the Phoenix area slated to receive them next.
Gibson told The Arizona Republic that PPAZ hadn’t offered vasectomies for at least a decade. The renewed service costs $750 without insurance; PPAZ won’t offer reversals of these procedures.
@pparizona now offers vasectomies! #Vasectomy is a safe & extremely effective form of permanent #birthcontrol. We offer the no-scalpel, no-needle vasectomy procedure.
— Planned Parenthood Arizona, Inc. (@PPArizona) March 1, 2023
PPAZ expanded their services despite the move of Arizona’s major cities to effectively decriminalize abortion. Tucson, Phoenix, and, most recently, Flagstaff all passed resolutions opposing the SCOTUS decision and encouraging their local law enforcement to deprioritize violations of abortion law.
Additionally, both the governor and attorney general support opposition to any restrictions on abortion. Gov. Katie Hobbs said on the campaign trail last October that she wouldn’t put any limits on abortion, even up to birth. Attorney General Kris Mayes has repeatedly promised to not uphold the law and go so far as to prevent county attorneys from enforcing abortion law, even as recently as last week.
State law currently bans abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation. The pre-statehood law banning abortion completely was nullified in the Arizona Court of Appeals in December after it declared the law unenforceable, though the court refused to repeal the law.
While PPAZ has modified its business model to offer more services, other abortion providers have resorted to crowdfunding to stay afloat. Desert Star Family Planning, an independent Phoenix abortion clinic, has requested $80,000 to remain open.
They have raised over $9,200 so far from just over 100 donors since launching the crowdfunding effort in early January.
— Planned Parenthood Arizona, Inc. (@PPArizona) March 6, 2023
Brittany Fonteno, the president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona (PPAZ), said in a January interview that despite the ruling nullifying the pre-statehood abortion ban, lawmakers were infringing on constitutional rights, which she claimed included abortion.
“They don’t want people to know what their rights are, they don’t want people to be able to make their own decisions about their bodies,” said Fonteno.
The number of Arizona children poisoned by cannabis ingestion has more than quadrupled since the state legalized recreational marijuana.
Last year, there were 394 pediatric cases of cannabis poisoning; 60 percent of those required a hospital visit. This year-over-year spike in poisonings prompted the Arizona Dispensaries Association (ADA) and the Arizona Poison Centers to create a partnership to raise awareness. One of the campaigns will work to place signs in dispensary windows containing a QR code guiding consumers to the ADA website with information and education about safe cannabis usage.
Steve Dudley, Director of the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, claimed that increasing public education and encouraging safer storage of cannabis products would lead to a reduction in these types of poisonings.
“Thankfully we know that with proper education and safe storage we can dramatically reduce these exposures and hospitalizations,” said Dudley. “We must do a better job at distinguishing toxicity from regulated products purchased at dispensaries and unregulated products from the black-market including spice and delta-8 THC.”
Yet, other states to legalize marijuana in recent decades haven’t seen increased public awareness make a dent in the ever-rising number of child cannabis consumption.
Colorado has similar regulations to prevent children from consuming cannabis products: barring the manufacture of edibles in the shape of a human, animal, or fruit; requiring sales in child-resistant packaging; prohibiting the words “candy” or “candies” on cannabis product packaging; prohibiting cartoon characters in cannabis product advertising; and requiring the inclusion of the universal THC symbol on all packaging and stamped on all edible products.
Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division indirectly admitted in an interview with KHN that these regulations do little to curb the increasing number of children ingesting cannabis products.
“When asked whether the mandates are effective, [Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division spokesperson Shannon] Gray said the Marijuana Enforcement Division has ‘observed material compliance with these regulations’ among marijuana businesses,” stated KHN.
For children, marijuana results in problems walking, sitting up, and breathing; some develop seizures. The CDC declared that child marijuana poisonings have increased wherever marijuana has been legalized. Colorado’s marijuana exposures nearly doubled the year after they legalized it, 2015; these numbers reflected a five-fold increase from 2009. In 2021, the Maricopa County Poison Control Centers reported 163 pediatric cannabis poisonings, 108 of which warranted hospital admission or emergency treatment, compared with 86 reported poisonings in 2020.
The CDC warned that children are more susceptible to the brain-damaging results of marijuana: memory, learning, attention, decision-making, coordination, emotion, and reaction time.
The CDC also notes that long-term or frequent marijuana use has been linked to psychosis or schizophrenia.
According to America’s Poison Centers (APC) National Poison Data System (NPDS), the nation’s warehouse for the nation’s 55 poison centers, there were over 7,000 children under 5 exposed to cannabinoid in 2021, over 2,300 from ages 6-12, and nearly 4,700 from ages 13-19.
Arizona legalized recreational marijuana in November 2020 through Proposition 207, which included guardrails that were supposed to prevent these pediatric poisonings: requiring manufacturers and dispensaries to use child-resistant packaging and banning the sale of cannabis products in the form of gummy worms and gummy bears. Yet, the number of pediatric poisonings has steadily increased.
Ninth Circuit Court Judge Roopali Desai authored the ballot initiative summary for Prop 207 while she was a lawyer in Phoenix. The Biden administration nominated her to the court last year.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
