AZ-03: Meet the Dems vying for Gallego's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives

[RandySF]

Laura Pastor

The most recent addition to the race is the daughter of Gallego’s predecessor, Ed Pastor, who held the CD3 seat from 1991 until his retirement in 2015. The younger Pastor has a long career in elected office herself, with three terms on the Phoenix city council representing the West Valley and areas slightly north of downtown. Those areas lie firmly within the boundaries of the state’s 3rd Congressional district after she oversaw redistricting changes in 2021 that shifted district lines to include them.


Ylenia Aguilar

If elected, Aguilar would be Arizona’s first formerly undocumented congresswoman. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was just a toddler, and suffered repeated housing and food insecurity. Aguilar attended as many as 20 different schools. She discovered her undocumented status in high school, while considering a career in the U.S. Air Force that she was forced to abandon. The single mother of two credits her early adversity with inspiring a personal imperative to voice the struggles of others.


Yassamin Ansari

Phoenix’s Vice-Mayor was one of the first to throw her hat in the ring after Gallego announced his challenge to U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Ansari’s election as the city’s youngest council member in 2021 followed a career in climate change advocacy that included a stint as a policy advisor for the United Nations. Her work on the council includes helping to draft and pass a citywide resolution that deprioritized abortion-related arrests and spearheading efforts to electrify Phoenix’s public transportation.


Hector Jaramillo

Jaramillo traces his activism back to two pivotal incidents that happened at very different times in his life. When he was 4, his father was deported, which he said “opened (his) eyes to the injustices of our current system,” and in his early twenties, while protesting the killing of George Floyd in 2020, a gun was pointed at his head. Jaramillo was disappointed to find not much had changed after the nationwide movement against racial injustice, and realized that things would only improve if more people were allowed at the decision-making table.


Raquel Terán

With a 17-year-long career in Arizona politics, tenures in both the state Senate and House of Representatives and the title of Democratic Party Chair under her belt, Terán is perhaps one of the most experienced candidates in the race to capture Gallego’s seat. Born and raised on the Arizona border in Douglas, she attributes her catapulting into politics to the anti-immigrant rhetoric she grew up around.





https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/meet-dems-vying-gallegos-seat-us-house-representatives