Many people find political canvassers, or volunteers who scout neighborhoods knocking on doors for political candidates, tiring as the election rolls around.
But what would you do if you opened your door and two-time Academy Award-winning actress Jane Fonda was on the other side?
That has happened for some Arizonans. Fonda, the longtime political activist, has been in Arizona for three days campaigning for down-ballot Democrats, including state Senate candidate John McLean and Corporation Commission candidates Joshua Polacheck, Jonathon Hill and Ylenia Aguilar.
Longtime activist and actress Jane Fonda greets two of three Democratic candidates for the Arizona Corporation Commission Jonathan Hill, left, and Joshua Polacheck, right, during a door-to-door campaign event in Tucson.
“The fact that Arizona doesn’t have the kind of laws and protections that it needs is unconscionable,” Fonda told a crowd of 30 volunteers who were setting up to canvass in Tucson on Friday morning for Democratic candidates. “You guys are really suffering.”
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Fonda, who said her daughter is a teacher in Tucson, has made some key endorsements in Arizona races through her Jane Fonda Climate Political Action Committee.
“We focus on down ballot,” she told the crowd. “The reason is that this is where the robust climate work happens; the kind of climate work that affects your daily lives.”
Fonda said her endorsements, which she said are given through a “rigorous” process, are meant in part to give the candidates more media attention. While she endorsed all three Democrats running for the Arizona Corporation Commission, Fonda was only joined by Polacheck and Hill on Friday morning. Aguilar was in Phoenix canvassing with a different group.
Fonda with a group of local politicians and activists during a canvassing event Friday in Tucson.
“The fact that we’re endorsing these chaps means that they are true climate champions,” Fonda said enthusiastically. “They are going to work for you. They are not going to be working for corporations, right?”
The endorsement was exciting for Polacheck and his campaign, he said.
“This is a PAC that really understands that the power to change our society for the better doesn’t happen just at the White House and the presidential level, but it happens all the way down,” he said. “One of the things that we say a lot is the lower down the ballot, the closer to your body.”
The Corporation Commission race is important, Polacheck said, because it “not only determines how much you pay every month in your utility bills, it determines what sort of future and what sort of policies we have for Arizona.”
Hill echoed Polacheck’s points.
“The presidential race is taking up so much of people’s attention and time, we don’t want people to forget about the down-ballot races,” Hill said. “Getting not only their endorsement, but their funding to go with it as well, is really helping us get out the word about how important the Corporation Commission is and why we need people to vote for the office in general, but the three of us in particular.”
“The Corporation Commission is so important because it touches people’s everyday lives in so many ways, with their electricity, with their water, their natural gas, they own a business, if they invest it,” he said. “All those are regulated by the Corporation Commission.”
Hill added: “Although the higher-up ballot races, you know, get a lot more attention, it’s these down-ballot races that affect people so much in their day-to-day lives.”
