MW: They are...good. I, in fact, had written about the Phoenix LGBT Pride Day event in 2010. It was published in OpEdNews and was redistributed around the country on, you know, LGBT movement websites...because Arizona is caught in a right wing stereotype of red neck belligerence, especially against minorities, gays, immigrants -- you know the people who are long time marginalized anyway. It's like an old school culture trying to come to terms with the 21st century. So, because of my longtime association with LGBT issues, I've been speaking around the state this year and was asked to be a speaker at the Tucson pride day event yesterday. Coincidentally we get the Supreme Court ruling, and so in the middle of this joyful pride day event it's even more joyous because they're having weddings on stage.
Rob: That's beautiful.
MW: Yes, it was. It was the kind of thing that we stand on street corners for, you know? The kind of thing you write columns and send 'em out to who knows, just in case, for.
Rob: So I'm looking at your website and it looks like your district that you're running in is kind of one of those gerrymander districts but it's kind of up in the western side of the state, including cities Mohave, La Paz, Yuma, Maricopa, Yavapai, Gila...
MW: There's 7 counties in my congressional district...
Rob: So those are counties? Okay.
MW: Yeah. The prominent cities, if you call it prominent, are Kingman (which is where I live near)...people might recognize that from Route 66; Prescott, Arizona; Yuma, I'm in Yuma today in fact; Apache Junction; and an unincorporated area called San Tan Valley; in Mohave county there's 3 cities actually... Bullhead City (that's why I moved to Arizona), Kingman, and Lake Havasu, but there are no cities that are over 50,000 people in the congressional district. It was gerrymandered to be a rural-focused district.
Rob: Okay.
MW: Yeah, that actually kind of works for me because I've been country my whole life -- grew up in a small town and live out in the sticks these days.
Rob: So, what are the issues that you're campaigning on?
MW: Well, my main issues...education, legalization and immigration; all rather border-focused issues. Arizona is one of the states that has fallen consistently to the bottom of the educational ranking...in fact, one year we were even 51st behind everybody and Puerto Rico. So...
Rob: Wow.
MW: Right now...
Rob: And how does your district score within Arizona?
MW: It's poor. We have rural population and, in America, that's an oppressed minority. Rural in Arizona is in specific an oppressed minority. We have all the social problems that you have in the big cities except without resources to solve them. Instead of people getting strung out so much on heroin, they're strung out on meth. They have high rates of alcoholism, domestic violence, poverty, homelessness; people don't see that because the media is centered in big cities and that tends to be what gets focused on. But rural equality, I'd say, ties into all three of those campaign issues and that's the thing that people complain about....roads that you can't drive on; there's whole neighborhoods that haven't had running water; schools with 35 kids in the classroom and they're trying to figure out how to cut another teacher. That kind of stuff is prevalent in rural American and especially in my congressional district so that's a lot of what I work on.
Rob: How about the elected officials in this county and cities -- are they mostly democrats or republicans?
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