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Two years ago, I came to the legislature with a belief: that your zip code should not decide your fate, your children's opportunities, or our future.

That belief was shaped by growing up in Tucson, the daughter of a construction worker and an immigrant mother who gave up her career because we could not afford childcare. Those experiences were not abstractions for me. They were Tuesday mornings at the kitchen table, decisions made in hushed voices about which bill could wait.

When I look at the communities I represent across Pima, Cochise, and Santa Cruz counties, I see those same Tuesday mornings playing out. That is why this race matters, and why walking away from this work is not something I am willing to do.

In my first term, we delivered. Working alongside SMART Union, we secured the first legislative hearing on long train safety. We fought and won $6.7 million in funding for community health centers to maintain on-call OB-GYN. That funding means a pregnant woman experiencing complications does not have to gamble on a 1h drive to the nearest hospital. That is not a talking point. For some families, it is the difference between life and death.

Across the district, we secured millions in targeted investments: meal delivery for seniors through Meals on Wheels, fresh food boxes for Bisbee families, $1 million for adults with developmental disabilities in Santa Cruz, $1 million for a senior health promotion and prevention program in that same county, and funding for Ruby Road infrastructure. We supported PCC, the UofA, and local health and safety programs that hold our communities together.

On mental health, we moved the needle in ways that rarely make headlines but change lives. We updated Arizona’s court-ordered treatment guidelines for the first time since the 1970s. We passed a bill requiring counties to cover mental health evaluations for low-income individuals showing signs of severe mental illness. We created the Inmate Mental Health Study Committee in honor of Joshua Fox, who died by suicide in a state prison. We passed protections for guardians of individuals with serious mental illness.

We also stood up for workers. HB2742 created real accountability for people who commit aggravated assault against our public transit employees. And we passed HB2779, requiring schools to immediately notify parents when their child is taken into temporary on-campus custody and mandating training for school security personnel.

For all of this, I was recognized as Legislator of the Year by the March of Dimes, Arizona Community Health Centers, First Things First, Stand for Children, and the Arizona Public Health Association. I am proud of those honors. But I am prouder of the families in every community in between who no longer have to drive 60 miles to see a doctor, or wonder whether their loved one will get a mental health evaluation, or whether their senior parent will have a hot meal delivered this week.

The work is not done. Access to reproductive healthcare and childcare is still out of reach for too many working families.

I also want to be honest about a hard vote I took this year. I voted no on the state budget. That budget had real investments in it, things I had fought for and genuinely supported. But when the deal was struck, some Democrats went to the negotiating table and came back empty-handed on the things that matter most. Republicans walked away without a single meaningful reform to the ESA voucher program. And tucked into that same budget was money to help enforce Trump’s immigration agenda. Some Democrats voted yes anyway. I could not.

I represent a minority-majority district. My constituents are overwhelmingly Latino. I am a school board member who has spent years in the trenches fighting for public education. When you sit across the table from Republicans and give them a pass on the two things that most directly harm our community, our schools, and our families, you have not cut a deal. You have handed them a win. I was not sent to Phoenix to do that.

The stakes are real. The record is there. And I am asking for your vote.