Q&A: Not Taking Corporate PAC Money Was An Easy Decision for Congressional Candidate Adelita Grijalva

We talked to the Democratic nominee for Arizona’s 7th Congressional District about how money in politics influences policy.

Adelita Grijalva served as a member of the Tucson school board for twenty years and as a member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors for four. She is now running to represent Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, the seat that’s been vacant since her father, the late Congressman Raúl Grijalva, died in March.

Adelita has been endorsed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Mark Kelly, End Citizens United, and many others, and won a very competitive five-way Democratic primary with an impressive 61% of the vote. She’s running on protecting Medicaid, workers’ rights, fully-funded public education, civil rights, and environmental justice, and she’s promised not to take corporate PAC or fossil fuel money.

I talked with Adelita about how political corruption affects Arizonans and how she’s going to fight back.

Meaghan: Why did you decide to not take corporate PAC money?

Adelita: It was an easy decision. When you look at what company, let’s say DoorDash, is supporting some of the funding initiatives, it gives you pause. I'm also not going to take any fossil fuel donations. I will take money from those organizations that are very transparent about where their funding is coming from and where it goes. I will take union PAC money; I have a connection with so many union organizers, and unions have an endorsement process.

As a candidate, there’s this sense that if you don’t get these people on your side, if you don’t take their corporate PAC money, their dark money, then they're not going to support you. That makes it really hard to entice and encourage really strong local candidates when they have to combat millions of dollars that can just be dropped in any race at any given time.

An important part of this is that the Democratic Party in general has to support candidates that really love being in community. We have to provide more support for candidates who are going to be good ambassadors for the community. Right now, we have this litmus test that has to do with how much money you can raise, and that is just the wrong direction to go in. That’s not how to inspire people.

What are some of the ways you see money in politics affecting people in Arizona?

The big one is oil and gas. Fossil fuel mining is really harmful to our environment, and my district has several areas where mining has already polluted the water. Those environmental impacts really resonate, because polluters just come in, do what they’re going to do, and walk away. Climate change is also a really big issue here, because we know that we live in Tucson, we were always over 100 degrees, but I mean, 117 degrees, come on. I think people are connecting the dots between that and all the cuts Trump is making to the sciences, and we have to keep making that connection. We have to keep talking about how these policies hurt us. That education piece is something that we have to work on as a party.

Immigration and private prisons is also something that people get their backs up about. I see Border Patrol trucks that I never, ever saw before, ever, and now they’re in our restaurants and walking around the Home Depot. Our parks are empty on the weekends. A friend of mine said his mother, who is 80, is afraid to take out the trash. What's going to happen when our families don't feel comfortable coming down to register their kids for school?

As a member of Congress, what would your priorities be?

I just want our communities to see us fighting for things that make sense. I want people to see how their members of Congress are unwilling to figure out a pathway [to solutions]. So, let’s say you’re a farmer. I want to make sure we let communities know that hey, you own a lot of property, you’re a proud Republican, but your Republican member of Congress didn’t want to help with H2 [immigrant visas for workers], didn’t want to help out with water protections making sure we get what we need from the Colorado River.

I feel very strongly we're going to see a change after the midterm elections, and so we have to look to that, and we have to have more leaders that are not as worried about getting re-elected as doing something when they’re in office. To me, that’s why my dad was so successful. He didn't always get all the things he wanted, but he was unapologetic about his positions. When I recently went down to D.C. and I talked to people, they were like, we miss your dad so much, not because it would have made a difference in the vote tallies, the votes are the votes, but because he was a consciousness that we all needed to hear.

Democrats should be able to say: I stood up for my people. Once the Democrats do more of that, then I think that we're going to win other people over. We lost sight of ourselves. I think that the 2024 campaign was too much about shiny baubles. We need to support local candidates, and we need to make sure that these national races don't look the same everywhere, because what resonates everywhere isn’t the same. What we should’ve learned is that saying about our candidates, “They might not be great, but they're better than that one” doesn't motivate people to get out and vote. “Not evil” doesn't cut it.

With so much happening in the country, how are you coping?

One thing that I've learned being here in this community, by watching my dad in Congress, is that you have to have hope. Everything is cyclical, and we have to learn from our own histories. When we give up is when we lose. And there are so many people that we have to fight for that deserve us to be on our game. That motivates me a lot, because I'm a mom of three kids.

Sometimes I need to take a break. My daughter plays in a mariachi band, I love getting to go watch her. I go to the movies and watch bad TV. We do community cleanups, and I'm canvassing for other candidates. You have to love that.

Maybe it’s weird, but when people underestimate me, I get very strong. I feel like, let's go! It really fuels me. I think that for me, it's always about how I can best represent myself, my family, the people that have supported me, all of our volunteers, the people that vote for me. It’s been ingrained in me that we have to do a good job because we’re supporting all of these other people, our voices are representing them. People deserve us to be loud for them.