Deedra Abboud stood in the dimly lit back room of the Red Rooster Cafe in Old Town Cottonwood on Friday, Aug. 10. To go with the restaurant’s crimson logo, she wore a bright red pantsuit, accessorized with a pink headscarf. She spoke with a strong Arkansas accent — she moved to Arizona in 1998 — before a room of voters from all over the Verde Valley, many of whom have been more involved in politics since the election of President Donald Trump.
“This is the first election I’ve gotten involved with the Democratic party,” said Babe Gerstner, an organizer of the event for the Yavapai Democratic Party. “I vote every time, but that isn’t enough.”
Abboud, a longtime civil rights lawyer in Arizona, said she hopes to harness that energy to become the first Democrat to represent the state of Arizona in the U.S. Senate since Dennis DeConcini retired in 1995. But unlike her opponent in the Democratic primary, Krysten Sinema, Abboud is not positioning herself as a centrist Democrat that will gel with Arizona Republicans. She hopes to represent the state that gave the United States Barry Goldwater as a true-blue progressive.
Abboud listed a litany of progressive goals that have captured the imaginations of the rising left wing of the Democratic party: A universal health care system that provides coverage for everyone regardless of ability to pay, based on the principle of Medicare for all; funding for public education including college, not only as a responsibility of the government to its citizens but as an investment for future workers; net neutrality, which she phrased as a “freedom issue” relating to the access people have to data on the internet; a federal minimum wage increase to go with Arizona’s recent one; and a more welcoming immigration system, coming out of her years working as an immigration attorney.
That progressive platform was framed as part of a broader message about needing to change how campaigns are run. She told of how she had entered the race — her first for elected office — in spring of 2017 after finding that outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake was not attending events with constituents, and feeling that she needed to do better. She presented her campaign as being based on “accessibility, accountability and transparency.”
“It all comes down to money in politics,” Abboud said, while criticizing the recent tax bill passed by Republicans in Congress as a giveaway to the rich, blaming it on politicians relying on big corporations for campaign donations. “A lot of these corporations are their major donors and they have to look at their next drop, where they’re getting their next meal.”
Abboud has sworn off of corporate fundraising and political action committees, hoping to run a race based on grassroots support, which she’s crisscrossed the Grand Canyon state to meet with voters. She called for a two-term limit on senators, wants to legislate stricter limits on money in elections, and has promised to ensure that all speeches she makes to anyone are live-streamed “so that everybody knows what I’m saying to everybody at all times. There’s no secrets.”
In Abboud’s view, her progressive platform should not be seen as an impossible reach for Arizona.
“I think a lot of these positions are moderate positions,” Abboud said. “I think everybody being covered by health care is a moderate position because everybody is having a problem with health care right now. I think having a supported public education system is also a moderate position. I think having net neutrality is a moderate position. It astounds me that people consider them progressive.”
She views her campaign’s focus on the grassroots as a way of bringing Arizona into a new political paradigm.
“I think that we’ve never tried to run on our values and let people know what our values are,” Abboud said. “I think we’ve spent a long time trying to suppress who we really are in order to get people to vote for us, and mostly have lost as a result.”
Where Abboud’s rival Sinema comes with endorsements from national Democrats such as Joe Biden and Emily’s List, as well as from the Arizona Republic, Abboud’s support comes from grassroots progressive groups such as Justice Democrats, the Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution and the Democratic Socialists of America, though Abboud stops short of calling herself a socialist, saying that she feels the label has become meaningless in current discourse.
Beyond trying to be the first progressive to win in Arizona, Abboud has the potential to make history in another way, since she would be the first Muslim woman to be elected to U.S. Senate, having converted from Southern Baptism nearly 20 years ago. At the meeting, one constituent brought attention to her headscarf, which he called “a token of oppression,” and asked whether she would feel any difficulty dealing with foreign policy, especially with regard to U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war in Yemen.
Abboud called out that U.S. support, calling the situation in Yemen a “catastrophic humanitarian crisis,” and expressing opposition to financial or military support for Saudi actions there. But she also highlighted her own stance that while religion influences her personal life, it should not affect her views as a politician.
“When I was Baptist, I don’t feel like I went around making decisions based on what my baptism said, and I don’t feel like I do that as a Muslim,” Abboud said. “I have all kinds of experiences, all kinds of knowledge that I’ve received over the years, and I believe that my religions decide how I conduct my life, but that my religion has nothing to do with how other people conduct their lives.”
Abboud said that while she understands that her faith makes her stand out, especially in a state like Arizona with a small Muslim population, she has not encountered too many serious anti-Muslim attacks, which she attributes partially to being white and speaking with her Arkansas accent. In her mind, her faith is far from the most interesting thing about her campaign.
“I’m definitely a trailblazer, 100 percent, and I used to actually have that in my speeches because Arizona is a trailblazing state,” Abboud said. “I’m not trying to be the first Muslim woman that wears a scarf in the U.S. Senate. However, I am trying to be the first Democrat that ran as a full-fledged Democrat with transparency, accountability and accessibility to get in the Senate in Arizona. I am trailblazing to change the conversations in Arizona and therefore potentially change the reputation of Arizona.”
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
