A Democrat lawmaker who piloted the Senate’s success in rolling GOP leadership to repeal the near-total abortion ban wants to trade the Legislature for the Phoenix City Council.
She said the change is because she wants to move on from the “gridlocked” state of Arizona politics, even though she procedurally broke through the gridlock to get the repeal passed.
Sen. Anna Hernandez, D-Phoenix, won election in 2022, and she has focused on police reform, abortion access and housing in her short tenure as a lawmaker.
Hernandez said that serving as a Democratic senator in a Legislature ruled by Republicans has not allowed her to enact as much change as she had imagined.
So, her plan is to wrap up her current term in hopes of representing District 7 in the Phoenix City Council. Yassamin Ansari previously held the seat, but she resigned on March 28 to pursue her campaign for Congress.
Hernandez will leave an impressive legislative legacy.
Bills that are introduced by Democrats rarely get a hearing because of the control Republicans hold in both chambers. But Hernandez a lawmaker who has been a loud supporter of housing reform since taking office saw a few of her proposals pass out of the chamber. Most notably, she led Senate Democrats' effort to roll GOP leadership to pass the repeal of the state’s near-total abortion ban.
The Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld the 1864 law banning all abortions except to save the life of the mother put pressure on pro-choice Democrat lawmakers to repeal it. The ruling came on April 9 and by May 1, the Senate passed a one-line bill to repeal that abortion ban.
Hernandez spearheaded the effort by using a combination of procedural maneuvers to circumvent the GOP control over the chamber. Two Republican senators voted with the Democrats to pass the repeal bill and procedural motions that allowed the legislation to be voted on. However, her insistence to bring forward counter-motions and calls for division, which is a head count instead of the usual voice vote, are what made the repeal possible.
“I’ve been able to build relationships on both sides of the aisle and that was huge to be able to lead the repeal,” Hernandez said.
The state is also facing a housing shortfall, thus decreasing affordability of available homes. One solution Hernandez brought to the table this session was the legalization of accessory dwelling units, commonly known as casitas.
One of the bills she introduced this session would set up provisions for further construction of casitas, which used to be permitted in historic neighborhoods but dissipated due to increased building regulations. Her bid garnered a scatter of bipartisan votes and is one of the few housing solutions that might make it out of the Legislature this session.
Another housing bill that she advocated for was HB2570, dubbed the Starter Home Act. The legislation was triggered by the lack of affordable homes for first-time buyers.
The proposal would scrap municipal zoning rules by preventing towns with more than 70,000 residents from regulating the size of building plots for single-family homes. Moreover, it would regulate HOA requirements by allowing homeowners to decide whether to participate if they interfere with the “right to choose the features, amenities, structure, floor plan and interior and exterior design of a home.”
Similarly, the bill got bipartisan support. However, Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed it because she said it would “put Arizonans at the center of a housing reform experiment with unclear outcomes.”
Despite the veto, Hernandez said the bill sponsors and stakeholders are still in communication with the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, which opposed the proposal. She said housing is an important issue because of how the topic intertwines with criminalization.
“What we know is that if people have safe, stable, secure housing, the likelihood of class interaction for random reasons doesn’t exist,” Hernandez said. “There's such a direct connection between the housing situation and interaction with police.”
Hernandez also introduced SB1074, a bill which took aim at expanding the rights of families of those who have been killed by police . Coined the Family Bill of Rights, the legislation would grant the loved ones of a victim of police violence access to paid legal counsel, mental health services, return of personal belongings and access to police records, such as body camera footage.
“The Family Bill of Rights was really what has come out of years of work, families like mine and other families that have lost their loved ones to police violence,” Hernandez said.
Her brother was shot and killed by Phoenix police in 2019 . Through sharing her story with others who had similar experiences, Hernandez said she saw it was common that individuals were not notified by police when their loved ones had been slain. This spurred another aspect of the bill which would require law enforcement to notify victim’s families before releasing reports to the public.
Hernandez said that the legislation was brought by shared experiences of those whose loved ones were killed by police officers. After they faced the loss, they then had to navigate law enforcement to find answers. Reports and personal belongings were hard to come across quickly, Hernandez said. Further, she said that the way law enforcement notified family members of their loved one’s passing was often further traumatizing.
“My brother’s death will not be in vain,” Hernandez said at a press conference to announce the legislation. She was joined by individuals who shared similar experiences.
That day, her bill was set for a hearing in the Senate Judiciary committee chaired by Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale but it was held.
Though Hernandez is leaving the Legislature, she said she plans to hand off her legislation to other lawmakers. She has a few other bills relating to criminalization that she hopes to keep alive in the chambers. One measure would repeal the felony murder statute, which allows the state to charge accomplices to a crime to be charged with first-degree murder even if they weren’t directly involved in the death. For example, a getaway driver could be charged with murder if someone shot and killed someone in a bank robbery.
“I'm really hoping that my colleagues will pick that up and continue to work forward,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said that being a member of the City Council was always her long-term goal, but she had originally planned to stay in the Legislature for a few terms.
“As things have shaken out in the Phoenix City Council, there's an opportunity to go to run for the open seat, and really take a lot of the policy work we're doing here down to the local level,” Hernandez said.
She said that her recent work involving housing and police accountability has proven she has more opportunity for change at a local level.
“The biggest reason for me is the opportunity for immediate impact,” Hernandez said. “At the state level, we're working on a lot of things that are going to have an impact down the road, maybe not so immediately, and that's important. But it's also important to start connecting the dots . . . so that our city levels or county levels are working alongside the state level.”
For instance, when it comes to housing reform, among the first actions she would take as a councilmember would be to provide resources to people who had recently faced eviction from their homes.
“Can we get some resources into neighborhoods quicker?” she asked. The slow legislative process of introducing and vetting bills often blocks immediate impact, as it takes most bills over a year to go into effect after having been introduced.
Further, there is more opportunity for her to advocate for the city’s funding of affordable housing projects on the local level, she said.
“I'm leaving with a lot of my colleagues still here, and the relationships that I built are going to encourage all of us to have more of those conversations, to make sure that we are working properly with our city elected officials and county officials,” Hernandez said.
Leaving her Senate seat after just one year in office was not the original plan, according to Hernandez. She said her friendship with her seatmate, Rep. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, has provided her an opportunity to exit the Legislature and leave her seat in good hands.
Ortiz, another Democrat, has had similar legislative priorities to Hernandez since taking office in 2022. She introduced the House version of Hernandez’s Family Bill of Rights and was also a proponent of the Starter Homes Act.
Ortiz said she acknowledges that the state’s housing crisis is “going to be a long-term fight.”
“There is still far more work to be done and I’m committed to carrying out that work,” Ortiz said.
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