Get ready to vote for State Senator in District 10

Meet the candidate

Employer and position: Chief Development Officer at La Frontera Arizona

Education: Bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, master's degree in counseling from Old Dominion University, master's degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix

Political experience: State Senator 2013-present, State Representative 2003-2011

Top priority: My focus will continue to be the well-being of children, focused on robust economic development and a well-funded education system.

Meet the candidate

Employer and position: Aviation consultant for RSP Logistics, retired U.S. Army Reserve Major

Education: Associate's degree in aviation management from Georgia State University

Political experience: First-time candidate, legislative liaison for the Military Officer Association of America's Tucson branch

Top priority: I am committed to supporting our military both active and retired, improving public education and maintaining our infrastructure.

Here’s the choice for voters in Legislative District 10: a longtime Democratic party leader and advocate for children, or a Republican newcomer who is a citizen soldier and an advocate for veterans.

Democrat David Bradley is seeking a third term as state senator, and Republican Randall Phelps is running for the first time.

Bradley has raised about $35,900, with large donations from Pinnacle West’s political action committee and from Daniel Ranieri, CEO of LaFrontera Arizona. Phelps has raised about $2,935.

MEET THE CANDIDATES

Bradley’s political life began when he was a teenager; his father ran for a State House seat and lost by 10 votes.

His political career has included serving as chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party, four terms as a state representative, a lost race for Corporation Commission, and two terms as a state senator.

Bradley says the job is often about answering constituents’ requests for help with regulatory red tape, such as problems with professional licensing. He tries to look at every bill through the lens of how kids would be affected, Bradley said.

“One of the cooler moments” of his career came on the last day of the most recent legislative session, when a bill he’d worked on for a year and a half to expand school choice vouchers for disabled kids up to age 22 from the current limit of age 18 became the “center of a storm of hubris.”

A measure to reinstate KidsCare was tacked on to the bill, leading to a close vote that restarted the KidsCare Medicaid program for about 30,000 children.

Phelps said he, too, would have voted for KidsCare.

Phelps grew up with Mike Oxley, who went on to become an Ohio congressman. They imagined a future in which Oxley was president and Phelps was the Air Force One pilot. When Oxley died on Jan. 1, it was a turning point for Phelps, who’d been on the periphery of politics as a pilot for a number of candidates, and he decided to get involved.

He’s had mixed results in his dealings with politicians in his personal life.

When he got turned down for a V.A. home loan and lost an appeal, he wrote to his then-senator and got dismissed. But Sen. John McCain helped him get his benefits back when he retired one day short of his 20 years in the Army Reserves, and McCain also helped him resolve a spat with the IRS, he said.

But “why do we have to go through a senator to get anything done in the government?” Phelps wondered aloud.

“It’s just a stalemate. It’s just sad what’s going on,” he said. “Blue” or “red,” people want politicians to work together, Phelps said.

VETERANS ISSUES

Phelps, who served in Vietnam and in Operation Desert Storm, said his top issue is helping veterans get jobs and start businesses.

Phelps said the average age of a military retiree is 47. “We need to keep veterans here” and working in the aviation industry for employers such as Raytheon, he said. Whether he’s elected or not, he said he plans to work with Startup Tucson to help veterans start their own businesses.

He supports exempting $5,000 of military retirement pay from state income taxes, up from the current $2,500.

Bradley, who served in the Navy for eight years as a cryptologist, warned against a piecemeal system of tax cuts and exemptions.

EDUCATION FUNDING

Phelps supports more funding for K-12 schools and career and technical education. He said the Legislature should look for efficiencies in state government to pay for teacher pay raises.

Bradley supports more funding for early childhood education programs and community colleges. He said for-profit colleges need more oversight by a state agency.

He proposes making a portion of in-state college tuition tax deductible. Phelps agreed that proposal should be on the table.

Bradley also proposes replicating the community schools model used by Flowing Wells to add existing social services and nonprofit resources to schools. He said he’s trying to get conservatives to buy in by demonstrating long-term savings and teacher retention.

Campaign season is filled with big promises of sweeping change and lofty but generic goals — the kind of rhetoric that gets supporters energized.

So it’s particularly refreshing to hear candidates speak in specifics about how to be effective in meaningful, doable ways.

This is the mind frame of the candidates the Star endorses in Legislative District 10: David Bradley for Senate; and Stefanie Mach and Kirsten Engel for the House.

Bradley and Mach are incumbent Democrats and Engel, also a Democrat, is running for the first time.

Republican Randall Phelps is challenging Bradley, and Republican Todd Clodfelter is making his third run for the Legislature.

Bradley is running for his second term in the state Senate, and served from 2003 to 2011 in the state House.

His professional experience leading child welfare and family agencies makes him a knowledgeable and much-needed voice for the most vulnerable. He brings real-world practical experience to policy and operational discussions that make him a valuable asset for not only his district, but for children across Arizona.

That work informs his legislative approach. He told the Star he’s learned to focus on “things that chip away around the edges” instead of waiting for massive changes to happen.

Bradley is pragmatic, a desirable quality in an elected official, especially one who is in the minority in the Maricopa County-focused and Republican-dominated Legislature.

He’s worked to expand community schools, a program that brings social services and sometimes health care into schools. Reinforcing schools’ importance in neighborhoods and residents’ lives helps strengthen bonds between campuses and families, which is to the good.

Mach, who describes her achievements in the Legislature as being “more behind the scenes,” puts public education and sentencing reform as her top priorities.

We appreciate Mach’s ability to frame big issues, such as public education, in a compassionate way that also conveys urgency and knowledge. Relying on crushing loads of homework and teaching to the standardized test doesn’t help students, she said.

“We need to change our attitude about what is education,” Mach said. “For example, things like learning how baking cookies is science.”

Mach’s focus on criminal justice and prison conditions and sentences makes sense. She wants to address the roots of some criminal behavior, rather than only deal with the results after a person has been arrested, convicted and sentenced. Better and more drug treatment programs, could help people stay out of the court and corrections system in the first place, she said.

“Prison reform is needed not only to save money, but to have a safe system,” Mach said. “Everything is connected.”

All three candidates make the connection between Arizona’s paltry investment in public education and the state’s economic health and the number of people living in poverty.

Engel, who is a professor of environmental law at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, said she was moved to advocate for public education from early childhood programs through the university level.

Her expertise in environmental and water law will also serve Southern Arizona well because she isn’t motivated by ideology, but by facts and laws.

The conversation about improving education, and the funding for it, often centers around K-12 schools. Engel, however, expanded her target to community colleges and Arizona’s three state universities. She makes a convincing argument about the necessity of a strong education system.

Engel cited the Legislature’s decision to end all state funding to Pima and Maricopa community colleges as a particularly harmful decision. Making it more difficult for people, particularly adults, to go back to school for re-training or an associate’s degree damages the economy.

The same is true at the university level, she said. Employers have a hard time finding qualified local employees, companies don’t want to relocate to a state with an anemic education system and recent college graduates have a hard time finding a good-paying job, so they leave Arizona.

Engel said she would close corporate tax loopholes, because “we’re not getting the benefit” as a lure to companies.

“The money in the budget is there, it’s a matter of priorities,” she said.