A Tohono O’odham woman at the forefront of justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Arizona has thrown her hat in the ring for a recently vacated seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
If selected, April Ignacio would be the first Indigenous person to ever serve on the board and lead District 3, which encompasses most of her tribe’s 2.8 million acres of land. The district, as of 2020, had the county’s largest population of Indigenous people and was described by officials as a “mostly rural district (that) covers 83% of Pima County.”
“The Nation is the center of my universe so it would be an honor to be able to represent my fellow tribal members,” Ignacio told Arizona Luminaria.
Ignacio is one of eight people to submit letters of interest for the vacant seat in District 3 following the Nov. 21 resignation of Sharon Bronson due to health reasons. Bronson had served on the Board since 1996.
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).
“My knowledge of the Tohono O’odham Nation, Native communities and rural areas within Pima County is invaluable,” Ignacio said, later adding that it takes years to build relationships and understand the uniqueness of working with tribal communities.
“I will be the best person to appoint because my experience with the Native community stands alone,” she said.
County spokesperson Mark Evans told Arizona Luminaria he didn’t definitively know if an Indigenous person served on the board in years past but said the assumption was none had. County Administrator Jan Lesher also said she was not aware of an Indigenous person ever serving on the board.
“Is there a possibility that someone in the late-1800s had Indigenous blood? Perhaps, but certainly not anyone who has identified as being an Indigenous person has been on the board,” she said. She added the information was based on her experience working for Pima County since 2010 and living in Tucson for nearly 70 years.
Furthermore, Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly made history in 2020 by becoming the first Indigenous person to hold a countywide seat in Pima County and the third to hold a county-level office in Arizona, according to various local news reports.
“There’s been an overall lack of representation in spaces where decisions are made, period,” Ignacio told Arizona Luminaria. “I think it’s neither here or there in terms of what was done in the past. This (appointment) actually creates an opportunity to have a larger lens in how we are making sure that all constituents are thought of when the decisions are made.”
At the Dec. 19 public meeting, the board is expected to announce its District 3 appointee, who will fulfill the remainder of Bronson’s term through the end of 2024. Voters will elect a new candidate next year to serve District 3 for a full four-year term.
Four people as of Dec. 7 already filed preliminary candidate paperwork for the seat: Democrats Jennifer Allen and Kathryn Mikronis, Independent Iman-Utopia Layjou Bah and Republican Janet Wittenbraker, who ran for mayor of Tucson this year.
Leading the way
The first words Ignacio spoke on Monday during an online public forum for the District 3 appointment were in the Tohono O’odham language. She went on to introduce herself in English, saying she was born and raised on Tohono O’odham Nation in District 3, where she also raised her six children.
Ignacio currently works for the Tohono O’odham Ki:Ki Association as a warehouse and fleet manager, but said she’s been involved in community organizing “for as long as (she) can remember.”
She’s been the Tohono O’odham Nation’s Traditional Women’s Games Coordinator for more than a decade and facilitates an online book club called the RezBabes Book Club, according to supporting documents submitted to the board.
Ignacio became involved in politics in 2017, and serves as a Pima County precinct committeeperson, vice-chair for the Arizona Democratic Party and member of the Arizona Commission on Appellate Court Appointments, the documents showed. She is also a co-founder of Indivisible Tohono, a grassroots and community-based organization that focuses on state and federal legislation impacting Tohono O’odham Nation.
“I was raised with the concept that love is an action word, that providing service and exemplifying our gratitude and love by doing,” Ignacio wrote in her letter of interest to the board.
Indivisible Tohono has played a vital role in bringing awareness to and addressing the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Arizona. Even before the group formed – and at a time when data on the issue was nearly nonexistent – Ignacio was compiling stats and interviewing families about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls on the Tohono O’odham Nation, she told Arizona Luminaria.
Ignacio and her organization’s efforts helped to spur government action, beginning with the state’s creation of a study committee in 2019 to investigate and gather official data on the issue for the first time. Ignacio, who was also chair of the Arizona Democratic Party’s Native American Caucus at the time, was appointed to the committee by former Gov. Doug Ducey and sat on its data subcommittee.
The committee released its report the following year, which indicated murders of Indigenous women and girls had been steadily increasing over the last 40 years, and 160 Native women and girls in Arizona were known to be missing from 1976 to 2018.
Gov. Katie Hobbs has since created the state’s first Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Task Force, and the city of Tucson and Pima County soon followed suit by joining forces to create a regional task force of its own. Ignacio has been appointed to both.
“All of that has prepared me for this position,” Ignacio said, reminiscing on the times she testified before lawmakers and helped to pass a bill and write policy.
“I think that this (appointment) actually helps center the issues that are very close to my heart,” she continued. “For a lot of the families that I have been working with, a lot of the people in the community who really carry on this work, it actually allows them further access to finding solutions on how to combat these issues.”
‘I feel like this is a duty’
Ignacio told Arizona Luminaria the District 3 seat had been on her radar for years. She even encouraged tribal members to run for the position in the past because she said she recognized the need for Native people to be included in decision-making processes.
“How could I continue to advocate and ask for people in my community to seek those positions when I myself have the opportunity to do so,” she said. “I feel like this is a duty.”
She also emphasized that her connection to District 3 extended beyond the reservation’s borders and that she planned to address issues affecting all of the district if selected to fill the seat.
Ignacio explained during the forum that roads throughout the rural district are either made of dirt or eroded, making it unsafe and susceptible to flooding. There’s also a need for behavioral health services that include addiction resources and housing in District 3, she added.
“Personally, I’ve been on the waiting list for affordable housing for about 18 years,” she said during the forum. “There are simply few resources for families in rural Pima County.”
Ignacio said she intends to run for the District 3 seat in next year’s election, and a one-year appointment would allow her to become better acquainted with the position, board processes and any plans already set in motion before the vacancy.
About 100 people tuned into the online forum on Monday to hear from District 3’s pool of applicants: Ignacio, Jennifer Allen, Brian Johnson, Matthew Kopec, Sylvia Lee, Joe Machado, Kristen Randall and Edgar Soto.
Apart from Ignacio, none of the applicants identified themselves during the forum as being Indigenous.
More on the applicants
Jennifer Allen said during the forum her history with Pima County began in the 1990s when her family visited Southern Arizona, fell in love and then moved to the area.
For more than 25 years, she has held senior and executive leadership roles in nonprofit organizations, most recently as the executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, she said. She’s held various positions within the League of Conservation Voters and was the founding executive director of Border Action Network, according to documents submitted to the board.
“My experience is around centering equity and bringing folks together,” Allen said. “Centering equity from an organizational perspective, from a policy perspective, I am bilingual, I’m a Latina.”
“My career has been about figuring out ways to bring folks out from the shadows into the light, to be able to stand up and assert some leadership around the issues and policies that affect their lives,” she continued.
Allen said she would run for District 3 in the 2024 election and is, so far, the only appointment applicant to file preliminary candidate paperwork for the seat.
Brian Johnson said during the forum he was a 25-year resident of District 3 and lives in Picture Rocks.
He had a 14-year career at Pima County before retiring in 2020, according to documents submitted to the board. For five of those years, he worked in the Finance and Risk Department and for nine years in the Assessor’s Office, he said.
“My experience in the administration has also given me a direct, hands-on working knowledge, really the nuts and bolts of how it works,” Johnson said. “How to make things work is just as important as wanting to make things work, so I think that’s what I can contribute in the upcoming year for this office.”
Johnson said he wouldn’t run for the District 3 seat in the 2024 election because he was already a candidate for County Treasurer.
Matthew Kopec said during the forum that he lives in the Ward 3 part of District 3.
He’s a recruiting and retention coordinator for the Pima County Health Department and serves on the Amphitheater Public Schools Governing Board, according to documents submitted to the board. He was previously a city of Tucson council aide for Ward 3 and in 2016 was appointed by the Pima County Board of Supervisors to the Arizona House of Representatives for one year.
“My interest in seeking the appointment is really kind of born out of the uniqueness of the situation,” Kopec said. “I know what it felt like working for a local elected official that resigned for health reasons and then not knowing what was going to happen next in terms of what my own career or ability to have a job in the next few weeks.”
“I saw firsthand what it’s like for senior county leadership to have to onboard and bring somebody up to speed; the government doesn’t stop just because one person left,” he continued. “Fundamentally, I just think I can be helpful.”
Kopec said he would not run for the District 3 seat in the 2024 election.
Sylvia Lee said during the forum she was born in Tucson, but that her family’s history in Pima County began “at the turn of the century” when her great-grandmother was documented as one of the first Chinese women to settle in the area.
Lee previously served on the Pima Community College Governing Board, according to documents submitted to the board. She was employed at the college for 15 years and was its community campus president from 2009 until retiring in 2011, documents showed. In total, she’s had a nearly 30-year career in higher education.
“What motivates that fire in the belly for me to want to run for the one-year appointment is because I want to make lives better and that’s why I ran for Pima College board because I knew I could make a difference,” she said.
Lee said she would not run for the District 3 seat in the 2024 election.
Joe Machado during the forum said he was born and raised in Pima County and lives in the Silverbell-Ina area.
He’s currently the city attorney for the city of Nogales, according to documents submitted to the board. Machado said he’s practiced law and appeared in court at various levels over the years, and was elected county attorney for Santa Cruz County from 1985 to 1993, documents showed.
“I believe that I’ve acquired a breadth of experience, a wide range of experience in my professional career. This will allow me to hit the ground running, to apply that expertise, the experience into areas that I think are more needed in our district,” he said, adding that while District 3 faces some of the same challenges as the rest of the county, it was “hugely amplified because of its rural nature.”
Machado said he would not run for the District 3 seat in the 2024 election.
Kristen Randall is an administrator for the Green Valley Justice Court. She previously served as Pima County constable, owned a newspaper in Arivaca and worked for more than a decade for the U.S. Department of Interior’s Geological Survey and Fish and Wildlife Service, according to documents submitted to the board.
“As some might know, the Prosperity Initiative was just passed last week, this is a really big deal for the county, I’m really excited about it,” Randall said. “The three-legged stool of the Prosperity Initiative is crime reduction and prevention, climate resilience and environmental justice and kind of a whole family approach to address poverty.”
“In my various pieces of my career, I’ve touched on all of those,” she continued. “I do think I have a lot of real-world experience, hands-on experience to offer especially for the upcoming opportunities that we’re going to be seeing in the next few years.”
She did not indicate during the forum if she would run for the District 3 seat in the 2024 election.
Edgar Soto has been vice president of Pima Community College’s Desert Vista campus since 2018, according to documents submitted to the board. He was also a U.S. Marine reservist from 1993 to 2001.
“Right now I think we got some great momentum with the county going, we got some really exciting initiatives and really exciting opportunities and I want to keep that momentum going,” Soto said during the forum.
“We’re trying to create pathways to prosperity,” he continued. “What we’re really trying to do here is create economic impact so people can get good jobs and live lives of meaning and purpose, and I think my experience as the vice president of Pima Community, that’s what I do, I help create pathways to prosperity.”
Soto said he didn’t plan to run for the District 3 seat in 2024 but was open to reconsidering.