Our Work

Coconino County Democratic Party

4 years ago

Voter Registration

Our first job is voter registration and we are hard at it.

We have registered a phenomenal number of new, young voters since the June 24 Supreme Court Dobbs decision. The Republican Party is suddenly not talking about abortion – they may be that legendary dog who caught the car.

Our main project for July involves a lit drop to encourage voter registration — new and updating — as well as to call attention to the need to vote in this critical midterm election. We expect to reach 9000 voters who either need to update their voter registration or need a nudge to get out in vote in a year when there is no Presidential race on the ballot.

Our support of the Northeast Native Democrats and their Matriarchs Program continues, including regular tabling at the Tuba City flea market.

Citizens Initiatives

We’ve been working hard to collect signatures for ballot initiatives — this effort not only supports the issues raised in the initiatives, it gives us opportunities to… you guessed it, register voters! Three of the initiatives we worked on for the last many months gathered enough signatures to make the ballot — subject to audit by the county recorders. And, as in the past, Coconino County “punched above its weight” in hauling in signatures.

Referendum Campaign

Now we are on to the next signature collection effort. On Saturday, Save Our Schools launched its campaign to repeal HB2853, which would expand vouchers to every student in Arizona, draining billions from our public schools. Read the details of this nefarious bill here. Ducey signed the bill Friday. We received our first 40 petition sheets in a handoff in Camp Verde on Saturday night. We ran out by noon on Sunday.

However, this great campaign resupplied us with 70 more sheets by late Sunday afternoon and we proceeded to distribute them to volunteer circulators that evening. We’re now in the process of organizing tabling events to support this campaign and register more voters.

Recognition

Here’s an article about Tom O’Halleran’s race in the national paper Roll Call, featuring a photo of Tom walking with us in the Flagstaff Independence Day Parade. Tom and Pat joined our volunteers for the ice cream social and stayed until they had talked with most of the crowd. That pizza mentioned in the article must have filled them up after the ice cream cones they ate with us!

Our entry in the parade got a lot of statewide recognition because we had nearly every statewide candidate with us: Mark Kelly (and Gabby Giffords), O’Halleran, Katie Hobbs and Marco Lopez, Reginald Bolding and Adrian Fontes, Lauren Kuby, Kathy Hoffman, and Martin Quezada. We also showcased more local candidates like State Senator Theresa Hatatlie, State Senate Candidate Kyle Nitschke, and State House Candidates Mae Peshlakai and Dey Scott, and County Superintendent Cheryl Mango-Paget. Check out our full album of parade photos.