Local opinion: I've spent my life defying expectations. Now I'm ready to deliver more.

For most of my life, I have been told what I could not do.

At 14, after being caught up in the juvenile justice system for a crime I did not commit, I was told I would never go to college. However, I became a professor, I earned two masters and a law degree. When I first ran for the Arizona Legislature, I was told I was too young to serve. I became the youngest woman ever elected at 25. I did not listen. I got to work, and I have never stopped.

I am running for the Arizona State Senate because Southern Arizona is not waiting. Families are struggling. One in five residents in Legislative District 20 lives in poverty. Thousands live with disabilities. People need a senator who has already proven she can deliver, not someone still learning how.

I grew up on Tucson's South Side, the daughter of a construction worker who became disabled after a workplace injury and an immigrant mother from Mexico who sold cakes to keep a roof over our heads. Their sacrifices shaped everything I believe about public service: show up, do the hard work, and deliver results for the people who sent you.

That is exactly what I have done.

In eight years representing this community, I have passed 10 bills signed into law, including union legislation signed by Governor Katie Hobbs, more than any Arizona Democrat has accomplished in decades. In a Republican-controlled Legislature, that does not happen through social media posts or political theater. It happens through persistence, relationships, and the unglamorous work of actually governing.

I have secured millions of dollars for Southern Arizona: including $1 million for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe's early childhood center, $1 million for falls-prevention programs protecting Arizona seniors, and $1 million in emergency rental assistance through Jewish Family and Children's Service. I have fought for mental health funding, defended reproductive freedom, protected vaccines, and stood up for workers and education as a proud AFT union member backed by more than 10 labor organizations, nurses,

I am the first Mexican-American Jewish woman elected but I have never treated that as the job. It is the starting point. The job is delivering for the people who trusted me and have continued to support me over the eight years.

That commitment has earned the trust of leaders who know what it takes to fight for Arizona. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, one of the most respected voices in our state, has endorsed this campaign because he has seen firsthand what real results look like.

Now, the stakes are higher than ever. Trump's cuts to Medicaid, Social Security, and critical senior services are not abstract policy debates. They are threats to real people I love and real neighbors I have known my whole life. My father relied on those programs before he passed. Seniors across Southern Arizona rely on them today. I will go to the State Senate to fight like hell to protect them.

That fight starts with our comunidad. It always has. Since I was 14 years old, I have knocked on doors to hear directly from my community, and I am still doing it, one eegee's and one raspado at a time, in over 100 degree Tucson heat, because that is where the real conversations happen. Not on social media. Not in press releases. On front porches and in living rooms, with the people I work for.

My opponent has a story and real pain in it. But a story is not a record, and right now Southern Arizona cannot afford to send someone to the Capitol who refuses to take accountability for their words and inappropriate actions. This moment demands someone fueled by the determination that only a Mexican-American woman who has spent her whole life being told she can't, and proving them wrong, can bring to the State Senate.

Four times, Tucson voters have sent me back to the Legislature. I am asking them to send me to the Senate, because the work is not finished, and I am just getting started. I look forward to earning their votes.