Dems Garcia, Brill hold town hall in Yuma
candidate David Garcia and congressional hopeful David Brill held a rally in Yuma Friday evening as the two Democrats concluded a two-day “barnstorming” tour through 11 Arizona cities.
They headlined a town hallstyle gathering at Littlewood Fine Arts and Community Co-Op and drew about 50 supporters as the general election looms just two weeks from Tuesday.
Garcia is opposing incumbent Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, and continued his emphasis on education funding, both in a brief interview with the Yuma Sun and on the stage.
“This is one where the entire state is suffering from a lack of investment. It looks different in different communities because what works in Yuma doesn’t work in Phoenix or Navajo, but the consistent message is lack of education funding,” he said.
Though a statewide teacher walkout pushed the Legislature to raise teacher pay levels, which have been among the lowest in the nation, he said the message he’s been getting is most other aspects of schools are still underfunded.
“I think that’s why teachers have been taking this issue into their own hands, getting out there themselves and changing leadership. The ones who came out for #RedForEd understand that what they saw was a need for change in the state leadership, and are working hard to do just that,” he said.
He said he also wants to push back against what he sees as the state’s over-emphasis on standardized testing, “and let teachers teach again, put more creativity back into the classroom.”
His four-step plan to bring more money into the classroom is to bring new revenue in, eliminate tax credits he said moves money away from public schools into private, eliminate some tax cuts and pursue a statewide ballot measure similar to the “Invest in Ed” proposal that collected enough signatures, but was thrown off the ballot by the state Supreme Court.
The deepening crisis on the Colorado River is going to take center stage with the Legislature early next year, but Garcia said he’s not satisfied with the Drought Contingency Plan process, with a slew of committees trying to put together a statewide conservation plan.
“Some people are not at the table but not everybody’s at the table, so that’s created a lot of distrust,” Garcia said.
“It’s being done more by the Bureau of Reclamation than by state leadership, and that to me is an abdication, a shunting of our responsibilities. This is an Arizona discussion,” he said.
Garcia and Brill’s tour traversed Congressional District 4, where Brill is running against GOP Rep. Paul Gosar.
About the same size as North Carolina, it includes Florence, Apache Junction, Payson, Cottonwood, Prescott, Kingman, Parker and Yuma, which were all visited on the tour.
Brill, an MD who has worked for the Veterans Administration and owned small businesses, gave more of an emphasis to health care and border policy as he spoke before both took questions from the audience. But Brill said water use and conservation have come up in his conversations too, and he said western Arizona is already defending its water supply from what it sees as waste in the Phoenix metro area.
The whole Colorado River Valley says the same thing in unison. The ‘great state of Maricopa’ (County) should not get more water from the Colorado River, until it exercises more sustainable water use,” he said.
Early voting has begun for the election, which is Nov. 6. Other Democratic elected officials at the rally included state Rep. Charlene Fernandez and state Sen. Lisa Otondo, Yuma County judicial candidate Jorge Lozano and state mine inspector candidate Bill Pierce.