Two candidates are running for the Republican nomination for Legislative District 6 in the Arizona State Senate. The winner of that primary, held on Tuesday, Aug. 4, will face off with Felicia French, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination to the seat.
French, a former MedEvac helicopter pilot for the Army and Arizona National Guard, is running to be the first Democrat to represent the rural Northern Arizona district. She previously ran for Arizona’s House of Representative in 2018 in the same district and came within just 700 votes of securing a seat in the legislature.
French has highlighted education and health care as two issues she aims to focus on in her run for senate.
“It’s pretty embarrassing when you make national news not only for the lowest paid teachers but also for the outbreak,” French said of the state of Arizona. French has halted her in-person campaigning during the pandemic and argues that the state needs to be putting more effort into contact tracing in order to stop the spread of the disease.
“If we’d been testing, tracing and had everyone wear masks, we wouldn’t have needed to shut down the economy.”
French points to her time as a nurse — both in the military and later as a civilian in the area near Pine, where she lives, as experience that has made her especially invested in health care.
“I think we need to start bringing down the pharmaceutical prices and making sure that the price for medications is reasonable,” French said. She also believes that investing in preventative medicine would be a valuable way to keep costs down while allowing for quality care for patients.
On education, French argues that a fundamental challenge for rural communities comes from the reliance on local property taxes for the bulk of school district funding, arguing instead that funding should be pooled together at the state level and distributed “so that all Arizonans benefit.” She points to her own hometown of Pine as a small rural community that would benefit from increased funds instead of having to rely just on its property taxes.
French also blasted her opponent, incumbent Senator Sylvia Allen, for what she believes is a conflict of interest in chairing the Senate Education Committee while owning a charter school in Arizona.
“She says she’s pro education, but not public education,” French said of Allen. “The problem is [charter schools] don’t have the same accountability as our public schools… No one should be making a profit off our students.”
French describes herself as a gun owner and speaks of not only her military experience, but also of growing up in Arizona shooting guns. However, she has taken a stance in favor of increasing gun control within the state, voicing support for a red flag law allowing guns to be taken away from individuals a court has deemed dangerous to themselves or others, and suggesting that assault rifles like AR-15s be made more difficult to purchase.
“Nobody that’s deemed unsafe that has a domestic violence incident on their record should be having a gun,” French said. She suggested that ready access to guns among veterans is one of the reasons that the veteran community has seen such a high suicide rate. French highlighted the clause in the Second Amendment calling for a “well regulated militia” as reason to believe that regulations comply with the right to bear arms.
“Our forefathers could not have envisioned the amount of carnage that one assault weapon — a military style weapon — can do,” French said. “I’ve seen first-hand what a military-style weapon can do to someone.”
In February, the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors voted to make the county a SecondAmendment Sanctuary, barring local law enforcement agencies from participating in a red flag law.
With the area facing an economic blow due to a drop in tourism to the area, French believes that more work must be done to diversify the economy beyond a base in the tourism industry. She also feels that as a rural area, District 6 is entitled to more money from the state to deal with its economic difficulties.
“I want the government to be more accountable with our funds to Northern Arizona,” French said. “Right now Maricopa is getting more funding… The rural areas, the tribal areas, the areas that make up our communities are not getting funding compared to Maricopa.”
