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Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva's 'voice of conscience' will be hard to replace
I should have grasped the depth and inspirational mission of Raúl Grijalva sooner. That feeling of regret came crashing down on March 26 as I watched the funeral Mass of the Southern Arizona congressman. He died on March 13 at 77. I've known about his legislative work and his personal struggles or flaws, as political rivals would call them. But it'll be Grijalva's essence, the cultural heritage that he personified and the causes he relentlessly pursued that will be hard to replace. Whoever takes over his seat in Congress later this year will have a huge void to fill, not in the halls of Capitol Hill but in the hearts and minds of the people of this border region and beyond. 'We mourn the loss of a voice of conscience,' said Deb Haaland, secretary of the Interior under former President Joe Biden. Haaland paid tribute to Grijalva as 'powerful advocate for tribal communities' and a fighter for environmental justice. That was especially touching because the plight of Indigenous communities is often forgotten, at best, with few willing to spend political capital to stand with them. Arizona has 22 federally recognized tribes, but it was clear that Grijalva's sympathy for Native Americans had no boundaries. The son of Mexican immigrants first got into politics with the Raza Unida Party, part of the Chicano movement that sought political representation by staging boycotts, protests and walkouts. Some at the time called them violent, though Chicanos rejected that characterization. Grijalva later toned down his most radical instincts, but the movement's political culture stayed with him and apparently guided him throughout his long career advocating for immigrants' rights, environmental protections, public education and expanded health care. Grijalva, a Democrat, served 13 years on the Tucson Unified School District school board in the 1970s and '80s. He later served as a Pima County supervisor for 14 years, where he was instrumental in launching the county's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. He began serving on Congress in 2003 and quickly aligned himself with the left wing of the Democratic Party, a stance he carried until his passing. Grijalva was an unapologetic liberal who was never afraid to make 'good trouble' and 'necessary trouble,' as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis used to say. He wasn't afraid to call for an economic boycott against Arizona after the state implemented the anti-immigrant Senate Bill 1070 or to get arrested while protesting outside Trump Tower in New York in 2017. His challenges included notorious alcohol use and an ethics complaint by a former female staffer over creating a hostile workplace, which ended with a $48,000-plus settlement. None of that should minimize his lifelong work, which should be judged in its totality. Grijalva was an everyman in service, as my colleague E.J. Montini put it. And he leaves a legacy of a mentor and tireless champion for the 'unseen and overlooked,' as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told those gathered at his funeral in Tucson. Anyone charismatic enough to gain public support can go to Congress. But not everyone has the heart and affinity to put people first over their own financial and political ambitions. Too many go to Washington to forge their own fortunes, quickly forgetting who sent them there and why. The list is growing of those who are considering a bid to replace Grijalva. Gov. Katie Hobbs has set a special primary election for July 15 and the general election for Sept. 23 to fill the vacancy. Opinion: Grijalva is brave and blunt about it: Biden has to go The 7th Congressional District covers parts of Tucson and southwestern Arizona and cuts a bit into the West Valley. Former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez has launched his candidacy, and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, also a Democrat, said he's strongly considering throwing his hat in the ring. Others are expected to compete for the seat. The hardest part about Grijalva's death isn't filling his seat. Whoever wins surely will put up a fight in Washington to represent the predominantly Latino district. What Southern Arizona lost with Grijalva is a sliver of the Chicano movement that grew out of the desperate need for representation and a fight for a sense of belonging. We don't have to like the tactics of the movement that jump-started Grijalva's trajectory to appreciate the struggles and cultural contributions of Mexican Americans. Grijalva leaves a void that I doubt anyone can fill. Elvia Díaz is editorial page editor for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Reach her at 602-444-8606 or Follow her on X, (formerly Twitter), @elviadiaz1. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Raul Grijalva fought for the underdog. We need more like him | Opinion
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Raul M. Grijalva, a Democratic Progressive in the House, Dies at 77
Representative Raul M. Grijalva, a former political radical who became a Democratic stalwart of Arizona's congressional delegation and who was one of the most left-leaning lawmakers on Capitol Hill, representing a majority Hispanic district, died on Thursday in Tucson. He was 77. Mr. Grijalva (pronounced gree-HAHL-vah) disclosed last year that he had lung cancer and would not run for a 13th term in 2026. He died of complications of his treatment, his office said. He was absent from Washington for nearly a year, missing hundreds of votes in the narrowly divided House. The son of a Mexican immigrant father who labored on Arizona ranches, Mr. Grijalva as a young man was an activist in the Raza Unida Party, a hard-left movement to gain political power for Mexican Americans. He eventually mellowed and became a Democrat, moving up in Tucson politics for nearly 30 years before running successfully for Congress in 2002 at age 54. In Washington, Mr. Grijalva was an advocate for tough labor and environmental protections, earned an 'F' rating from the National Rifle Association and opposed a fence on the Mexico border. He was known for an informal style that favored bolo ties over neckties, and he once offered in jest that his campaign slogan should be 'Grijalva: Not just another pretty face.' A co-chairman of the Progressive Caucus in the House for a decade, Mr. Grijalva was the first member of Congress to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president in 2015. After President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s poor performance in the presidential debate against Donald J. Trump last June, Mr. Grijalva was one of the first House members to call for Mr. Biden to leave the race. 'What he needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat — and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race,' Mr. Grijalva told The New York Times. In 2018, when Democrats won majority control of the House in an electoral rebuke of Mr. Trump's first term, Mr. Grijalva assumed the chairmanship of the Committee on Natural Resources, which oversees issues he cared strongly about. In that role, he pressed for stricter regulations on mining on public lands and on offshore oil drilling. And when the Trump administration proposed weakening the Endangered Species Act at the behest of landowners and industry groups, Mr. Grijalva said, 'The Trump administration doesn't seem to know any other way to handle the environment than as an obstacle to industry profits.' Joining Native American leaders, Mr. Grijalva sought federal protection of historically tribal lands near the Grand Canyon. In August 2023, President Biden designated 1,500 square miles in the region as a new national monument. As a progressive, Mr. Grijalva was often out of step with his generally conservative state, including on immigration. When Arizona lawmakers in 2010 passed an immigration crackdown known as SB 1070, which opened the door to what critics called racial profiling by law enforcement, he called for national groups to boycott the state. That unpopular stance resulted in the tightest re-election race of his career, in which he eked out 50.2 percent of the vote in November 2010. Otherwise, Mr. Grijalva was easily re-elected from his deep blue district, which includes parts of Tucson and a long stretch of the southern border. His career survived accusations by a female staff member that he had created a hostile workplace because of his alcohol use. The woman was paid more than $48,000 by the Natural Resources Committee to settle her complaint in 2015. The House Ethics Committee reviewed the case in 2019 and determined that the payment was acceptable. Before his election to Congress, Mr. Grijalva acknowledged that he had a drinking problem. He pleaded guilty after he was charged with drunken driving in 1985 and spent 12 days in an alcohol-abuse program. In 2018, Mr. Grijalva told a TV interviewer that he had had a drinking problem years earlier but had overcome it. 'Once you wrestle the demons and you beat them, you beat them,' he said. Raul Manuel Grijalva was born on Feb. 19, 1948, in Canoa Ranch, south of Tucson. His father, Raul, came to the United States under the Bracero program, a midcentury agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that allowed Mexicans to work as farm laborers; his mother, Rafaela, was from the copper mining town of Ajo, Ariz., and spoke no English. His survivors include his wife, Ramona, and their three daughters, Adelita, Raquel and Marisa. He lived in Tucson. Mr. Grijalva graduated from Sunnyside High School on the south side of Tucson in 1967 and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from the University of Arizona, also in Tucson. He traced his political awakening to the shame he felt as a teenager over his Chicano heritage. 'I was actually made to feel I wanted to be an Anglo,'' he told a Tucson newspaper in 1975. 'I realized what I was doing, and my embarrassment turned to anger.' His early activism included pressing the University of Arizona for a Mexican American Studies program and leading protests to carve out a 'people's park' from a city-owned golf course in a Mexican American neighborhood. Some of the protests turned violent. In 1972, Mr. Grijalva lost a Tucson school board race as a candidate of the Raza Unida Party, which had been founded in the Southwest to advance Chicano nationalism. He began to cultivate a more moderate image, engaging in outreach to non-Hispanics. Two years after his defeat, he won a school board seat in 1974 and remained a member through 1986. He was elected to the Pima County Board of Supervisors in 1988 and served for 15 years, resigning in 2002 to run for Congress.
