The Democratic House primary in Arizona is attracting attention from GOP donors and a super PAC funded by cryptocurrency industry leaders, who are throwing their weight behind one side.
Former state senator Raquel Terán (D), Phoenix councilwoman Yassamin Ansari and doctor Duane Wooten are running to replace Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is running for Senate.
Protect Progress, a crypto-funded super PAC, spent more than a million dollars on independent ads supporting Ansari, whose campaign also received nearly $200,000 from Republican donors.
“It’s disgusting to see outside millionaires and billionaires trying to buy this seat. It’s truly abhorrent to see this more and more – rich people in California and New York think that Latino politicians and Latino voters are just pawns in their power games that they can simply move around a game board or a spreadsheet,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democrat. strategist.
“The entire community and the [Congressional Hispanic] The Caucus has come together for Raquel and we will stand up and fight to keep this place.”
Terán is supported by Bold PAC, the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), and has been endorsed by Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), the senior statesman and highest-ranking members CHC level, respectively.
“This is a blatant effort by an outside group to silence the voices of more than half a million Latinos in a majority-Latino district in order to buy a seat in Congress. Raquel Terán has dedicated her career to defending the rights of Latinos across the state,” said Bold PAC President Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.).
“Instead of supporting an exceptionally qualified Latina and the only one in the race, this group decided to work against the Latino community by investing over 1 million dollars against her. This undermines the ability of Latinos to choose their own representative and undermines the progress that Bold PAC has spent decades fighting for.”
Bold PAC leaders are especially sensitive to interference in the Democratic primary via cryptocurrencies, after a super PAC backed by Sam Bankman-Fried pumped millions of dollars into the 2022 Oregon primary, forcing the CHC group’s wallet to open .
Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.) won the race, where her opponent received about $13 million in outside support and Bold PAC invested about 10 percent of its disbursements for this cycle, supporting a well-positioned state legislator in the primary against Carrick Flynn. , an unknown political novice.
Terán is a senior figure in the Arizona Democratic Party — she resigned as minority leader of the Arizona Senate in March to focus on her run for Congress.
But Ansari, while less experienced, is no Carrick Flynn.
In March, she resigned from the Phoenix City Council she had held since 2021, also to focus on her congressional race.
It’s unclear why Republicans and crypto PACs favor Ansari: both candidates profess progressive records and have posted similar crypto policies on their websites.
Ansari says some of her support comes from Iranian-Americans who, regardless of party, want to see her elected, while Terán says Republican Party donors fear her and will try to influence Ansari.
“I think these Republican donors… know that I will stand up to Republican donors, as I have done throughout my career, whether it’s unseating the sheriff [Joe] Arpaio or when he was in the state legislature, when he was chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party,” Terán said.
“My trajectory shows how I confront Republicans and Republican extremists. But Ansari will be by their side. I think they’re making that case.”
Although both candidates call themselves progressives, they come from very different backgrounds.
Terán got her start in politics as a grassroots organizer fighting the SB1070 immigrant crackdown in Arizona, grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Douglas, Arizona, and had her citizenship challenged after winning the 2018 election.
Ansari, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, studied Stanford and Cambridge, and her first job as a graduate was as an advisor in the executive office of then-United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
In a debate in May, Terán accused Ansari of taking money “from MAGA donors” and said Ansari “is herself a millionaire landlord who benefited from a loan from her father, has an investment property and is charging above the average rent . .”
Ansari dismissed Terán’s “personal attacks” and went after his legislative record.
“In the last two weeks of the elections, it is disappointing to see Raquel Teran continue to resort to misleading attacks. Teran and her supporters are the only ones in this race who have presented false and negative attacks against Yassamin, with dark money groups supporting Teran by spending over $1.5 million,” said Pasquale Luz, Ansari spokesperson.
“Teran accepted money from one of Kari Lake’s closest advisors and aggressively sought support from the same organization she condemned today. This desperate strategy does nothing to serve voters. That’s why Yassamin is focused on his progressive record of real achievement.”
Both candidates would mark significant firsts if elected: Terán would be Arizona’s first Latino federal lawmaker and Ansari would be the first Iranian-American Democrat in Congress.
But in a district that is more than 60% Latino, Hispanic Democrats are pushing for representatives who share their lived experience.
“The outside money coming in to defeat someone who is from the district, for the district, by the district, happens every cycle,” said Kristian Ramos, a Democratic strategist.
“But it’s very sad to see in this case, again, Raquel Terán organized in these communities, knows these communities, would be an incredible member of Congress, I think, on behalf of these communities, and it’s shameful that outside groups linked to cryptocurrency and Republicans would spend money to remove her, to prevent her from becoming a member of Congress.”
The weakness of Latino Democrats in defending so-called “Latino districts” goes far beyond the Arizona and Oregon primaries.
Bold PAC defines its success by two metrics: defending Latino incumbents and electing new Latinos to Congress.
This attitude stems from the perennial bogeyman of Hispanic underrepresentation in government.
“[Terán] has been a strong advocate for Latino families, immigrant families and [progressives] we want to make sure that they keep – we all want to make sure that we keep that chair as a Latin, Latin chair, since Ruben was there, and we can’t afford to lose any representation,” said María Cardona, a Democratic strategist.
“In fact, you know, we want to continue to gain representation. And so this is a critical, critical, critical place for us.”
Although Hispanics make up about 20% of the U.S. population, they only make up about 10% of Congress.
There are currently four Hispanic senators in the U.S., although Sen. Bob Menéndez (DN.J.) is expected to resign following his corruption conviction.
Gallego would keep the Senate representation figure at four in 100 if he wins in November.
Representation aside, Hispanic Democrats argue that it is bad form to associate with Republican Party money and groups like Protect Progress, whose sister organizations support Republican candidates.
“We in the Democratic Party are open to primaries. I think this is because we can discuss issues. Having healthy competition is something we embrace. I embrace that. I know that. But I also – what I don’t accept is Republican meddling in the Democratic primary, Republicans trying to buy a seat, Republicans trying to silence the voices of Latino voters,” Terán said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
