Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
State Rep. Raquel Terán will be moving from the Arizona House of Representatives to the Senate.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday appointed Terán to fill the vacant Senate seat in legislative District 30. Terán, who also serves as chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party, was first elected to the House in 2018.
Terán told the Arizona Mirror that she’s grateful to the board of supervisors and the citizen committee that selected her as one of the finalists for the vacant seat.
“I’m ready to go into the Senate and make sure we have representation for the residents of LD30 and make sure that our priorities are front and center. There’s a lot that we are expecting this legislative session. I believe that it’s going to be a harsh session, an extreme session as much as it was last session, so we have to make sure we’re ready to fight for those in the district,” Terán said.
Terán replaces former Sen. Tony Navarrete, who resigned last month after being charged with counts of alleged child sex abuse.
The supervisors selected Terán from a list of three finalists that also included Flavio Bravo, the director of the Arizona Democracy Collaborative who is running for state representative in the district, and Harry Garewal Jr., a consulting company CEO and an Isaac Elementary School District governing board member.
“I know Raquel will do a tremendous job in her continued service to LD30,” Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the board’s lone Democrat, wrote on Twitter.
Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix, lauded Terán’s appointment.
“I know she will bring the same energy, drive and vision to our caucus and we’re excited to work alongside her in the upcoming legislative session,” Rios said in a press statement.
The Board of Supervisors will now have to repeat the appointment process to fill the House seat that Terán is vacating.
State law dictates that when a legislative vacancy occurs, the district’s precinct committeemen — the elected, voting members of a political party’s district-level organization — select three candidates for the supervisors to choose from. But District 30 doesn’t have at least 30 elected precinct committeemen, which is a statutory requirement for the replacement process. In such cases, the supervisors appoint a citizen committee to choose three finalists, as they did after Navarrete’s resignation.
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