Tempe City Councilman Ben Arredondo, who announced last week he will run for the state Legislature in 2010, said education, immigration enforcement and abortion were among the most important issues driving his decision to switch from the Republican to the Democratic party.
Arredondo, who spoke at a Friday meeting of the Tempe campus Young Democrats, shocked members of his own party Tuesday when he announced he was switching parties and running for a state House of Representatives seat which will be vacated when Rep. David Schapira, D-Tempe, runs for the state Senate in 2010.
Arredondo said the Republican Party is moving too far away from the center, alienating moderate members of the party in the process.
“If you’re a Republican, you’d better be really to the right,” Arredondo said. “The tent they claim they want to get bigger is really getting smaller.”
The councilman said he made the decision after talking with members of both parties and deciding he was more in line with Democrats philosophically. The former schoolteacher said education is particularly important to him and criticized large-scale cuts to the state’s K-12 and university systems, which he said could keep people and businesses from moving into the state.
“[Businesses] want to know, ‘What are you doing in education? How many people are you graduating?’” Arredondo said.
Also present at the Young Democrats meeting was state Rep. Ed Ableser, D-Tempe, who will run alongside Arredondo for District 17’s two seats in the House of Representatives in 2010. Ableser said the experience and name recognition Arredondo brings to the party is crucial to keeping Democrats in office after the retirement of Sen. Meg Burton Cahill, D-Tempe.
“If [politics] was comparable to sports, this would be one of the biggest free agent signings in our history,” Ableser said. “I am thrilled that Councilman Arredondo will be running alongside me.”
Brian Kaufman, chairman of the District 17 Republican Party, criticized Arredondo’s decision as impractical — Arredondo will not have enough sway as a member of the Democratic minority to secure more funding for the universities, Kaufman said in a phone interview.
“They don’t really have a seat at the table for the budget,” Kaufman said. “There’s no way for the Democratic representatives to really pull for their district and [secure] funding.”
Young Democrats member Erica Pederson said Arredondo may have more influence with Republican legislators as a former member of the party, something that could have been useful in the negotiations surrounding the fiscal year 2010 budget.
“Having been a Republican, I think he can use his ties to create more bipartisanship in the state House,” Pederson said.
Arredondo said he also hopes to foster bipartisanship in a Legislature that has been completely divided by this year’s budget debate.
“Here are the R’s, here’s the D’s, and over there is the governor,” Arredondo said. “When are they going to communicate with each other? … They ought to come to a room like this and say, ‘Don’t leave until we get this settled.’”
Reach the reporter at derek.quizon@asu.edu.
