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With early voting a week away, five Democrats vying for Arizona’s 7th Congressional District seat debated key issues including the deployment of the military against protesters, Medicaid and Medicare cuts, immigration reform and the future of the Democratic Party.

Candidates Deja Foxx, Daniel Hernandez, Aldelita Grijalva, Jose Maldivo Jr. and Patrick Harris Sr. were all on hand for the June 10 Clean Elections/Arizona Media Association debate, and all disagreed with many of President Donald Trump’s decisions.

While the candidates were cordial with each other, Hernandez had plenty to say about Grijalva’s past decisions after she fielded a question about the recent protests in Los Angeles and Trump’s decision to send in the military to assist.

“We just heard a second ago that there is a threat to democracy when people are suppressing those in opposition to them, and yet Ms. Grijalva, when she was on the school board and board of supervisors, repeatedly and illegally shut people down,” Hernandez said. “When we’re talking about standing up for folks and making sure we are allowing protesters to come, we have to make sure we’re holding ourselves accountable.”

Grijalva was prepared for Hernandez’s criticism, saying that the First Amendment doesn’t allow for hate speech.

“When you are on a public body, it’s important to make sure that everyone in the room can feel safe and unafraid, and the person he is talking about was targeting my colleague, who is a gay man, and using it to spread homophobia,” she said. “That’s not something I’m willing to accept.”

All candidates said they were in support of comprehensive immigration reform and agreed that immigrants shouldn’t have to wait years to become a citizen. 

“Let's talk about an actual process that people can go through to get citizenship,” Grijalva said. “We have people here in the country that have been waiting for 20 years for citizenship, and the reason we have officers coming to the court is because people are showing up for their hearing, and that is a travesty.”

Grijalva said that if she’s elected, she’ll call for increased staffing at the border and a streamlined process for people with an H-2A visa.

“The process is really bogged down, especially in our border communities, and I think that is critically important,” said Grijalva. 

Candidates also addressed potential cuts to Medicaid included in House Republicans’ tax bill, dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which proposes reduced federal funding and stricter eligibility requirements.

Critics say the bill would result in millions of Americans losing coverage, particularly in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. In CD7, 200,000 people depend on Medicaid for health coverage.

“There is nothing pro-family about these policies, " said Foxx. “I sat with a woman whose mother was diagnosed with cancer, and they had to make a decision between making bills and delaying care, and she lost her mother due to delayed care.These are the kind of stories that will be all too common in our families and neighborhoods if we see cuts to Medicaid.”

The issue is personal for Hernandez, who was diagnosed with Graves’ disease when he was 17. Graves' disease is an autoimmune disorder that causes the thyroid gland to become overactive.

“If I hadn’t been able to get on the state Medicaid program, I wouldn’t be here today, so it is deeply personal for me to fight for these things,” Hernandez said. “If I get elected to Congress, the first non-negotiable is no cuts to Medicaid.”

The final topic of the night was the state of the Democratic party in the wake of last year’s presidential election, with candidates asked to weigh in on whether the party should adopt more progressive policies or try to build trust in the more moderate voter base.

“What we’re not doing is focusing on the core issues. With the hundreds of phone calls and doors I’ve knocked on, what I am hearing is the disappointment of people getting elected year after year and not delivering results,,” Hernandez said.“When you’re in the minority, you just can blame it on the Republicans, and that’s not acceptable.” 

The youngest candidate of the group, at just 25 years old, Foxx had a different take.

“I’m a member of Gen Z, the working class and a woman of color. I’d be the first in my generation to be elected, and races like these are hard to win for people like me, and hard to even get into,” Foxx said. “We need to have a hard conversation in our party about policies.”

The party’s policies should work for working families, Foxx said, calling its aging membership an issue.

“We have three vacancies in the House, from Democrats who have died while in office,” Foxx said. “It is families like mine that suffer from the consequences of these vacancies, three vacancies because we failed to have the hard conversation about age and failed to bring in a new generation of leaders, and now families have to deal with the consequence of cuts to their healthcare, and food taken off their tables.” 

Colton Allder is a journalism major at the University of Arizona and Tucson Spotlight intern. Contact him at callder1995@arizona.edu.

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