Arizona's nine House members are all up for reelection on Nov. 3, and most of them are expected to coast to easy victories. One exception appears to be the 6th District, which covers Fountain Hills, parts of Scottsdale and north Phoenix.
Rep. David Schweikert is seeking his fifth term in the district. And in a typical year, he'd be the clear favorite. The Republican registration advantage there remains, and Schweikert won in 2018 by 10 points. But President Donald Trump's handling of the pandemic and fundraising challenges have some congressional observers and analysts calling it a toss-up between Schweikert and his Democratic challenger, Dr. Hiral Tipirneni.
The Show talked with both candidates about the election.
→ Race To Represent Arizona's 6th Congressional District Mirrors National Concerns, Divides
Rep. David Schweikert
STEVE GOLDSTEIN: We'll hear from Dr. Tipirneni in a few minutes. But first, my conversation with Rep. Schweikert, which began with a question about whether President Trump is helping or hurting the congressman's reelection chances.
DAVID SCHWEIKERT: What you find is so much of the voting public in Arizona is already locked in. So you go knock on doors, you do these telephone town halls and you find out people that are with you or with the president or against or against. There's not a lot of movement out there. And we've seen that now in multiple polling in Arizona, where if you're voting for the president, you're locked in, nothing's going move me. If you're voting against, nothing's moving you. So the marginal votes that are available to all of us as candidates has become very, very slim.
GOLDSTEIN: Knocking on doors obviously become harder because of the pandemic. So tell me about how you think that is as an issue for folks. Because it comes up to competence in terms of how it's been managed, whether it's been overhyped or under-addressed.
SCHWEIKERT: COVID is, is at — near the top of the list, but it's actually not the top of the list. Economic survival, wanting to get back to normal, having your children back in school safely, but back in school seem to dominate both the conversations, but also what we're seeing in, in even the survey data.
GOLDSTEIN: You've often seen as someone who takes a very logical approach to things. And we are certainly in a time that is fraught with emotion on both sides. How does that affect how you run as someone who tends to not be part of the so-called culture wars, I would describe it?
SCHWEIKERT: Steve, it's you're actually sort of hitting something I think about a lot. And that is for so many of the issues that are thrown at us that are poll-tested and focus-grouped in the wording is organized to maximize emotional impact. And then you have someone like me who comes up and says, "Could we talk about the actual solution?" It's frustrating because there's so many of the issues around us, whether it be changing the cost curve for health care or the environment. And those of us who have sort of a belief that there's technology breakthroughs that solve so many of these problems. And where there's so much sort of ginned up emotion and the political class gins it up because that's how we raise money. That's how we motivate our voters. You know, it's theater. But then it drowns out often the discussion of here's the actual solutions.
GOLDSTEIN: Take me back to the, the ethics violation admissions. Why did you go ahead and do that? And do you think that will affect the race?
SCHWEIKERT: At some point, you, you know, when you're a member of Congress, you get 100% responsibility for everything. So you step up and say, "Look, I can battle this out and spend a bunch more money and explain it over and over and over. Or I can step up, pay the fine because you have to step up and take responsibility anyway and move on." And so that's what we did. The voting public seems much more interested in issue sets than even discussions about our — us personally or our personal lives or anything of those natures.
GOLDSTEIN: Early in the conversation, we talked about the pandemic and I want to come back to that because of the economic impact that has had. How hard is it going to be to dig out of this? Let's say we're lucky enough to have a vaccine that works on a huge majority of Americans; a huge majority of Americans are willing to actually be vaccinated for it. How long will it take to, to dig us out of this economic hole? How quickly can we bounce back?
SCHWEIKERT: It's something we work on almost every day. You know, I'm the senior Republican on something called the Joint Economic Committee, and we're working very hard with our counterparts to try to build a model. For Arizona, it's complicated. Some of our industries, some parts of the state are doing remarkably well. But hospitality is of a real concern. So those who — businesses based on restaurants and tourism and those are under great stress. There's parts of our economy that are going to be scarred for a very long time. There's some jobs that are never coming back, but there is a rotation. There's a number of ways we're going to work economic opportunities that didn't really exist robustly six, seven months ago. A good example is look at the adoption of things like telemedicine in our community. It was complicated. We were fearful. We were worried about it. And it has just been embraced and adopted, particularly by our seniors and numbers that we never expected. That's a good example of sort of an economic rotation, both by necessity and technology.
GOLDSTEIN: I'll ask you one more issue question, and that is related to health care. Should the [Affordable Care Act] (ACA) be scrapped and started over? Or does that lead us down to something that we may never get real reform? Is it more about tweaking or do you want to see something completely torn up and started again?
SCHWEIKERT: I want us all to be sort of intellectually robust on this. What's the goal? Because understand — the ACA, as it operates today, is very different than as it, when it was passed. I like to think we've made some real adjustments to deal with the issues. 'Member for how long Arizona's costs were exploding or how we had only one provider in our counties? Let's take a step backwards and remember: The ACA and even our Republican alternative — they were financing opportunities. It's who got subsidized, you know, who had to pay, if you really looked at it. It wasn't community rating because there were different tiers. Our entire society and the political class, I believe, are now committed that you cover preexisting conditions. That's a positive. Now, what we really need to focus on, Republican and Democrats, is cost. What technologies? What things can we do to begin to crash the cost of delivering quality, accessible health care instead of the sort of these insane conversations and debates we have where this person should be subsidized, this person should pay. We're not having the conversation of what we should pay.
GOLDSTEIN: David Schweikert is a congressman representing Arizona's 6th District. Congressman, thank you for the time, as always. Take care.
SCHWEIKERT: Thank you, Mr. Goldstein.
GOLDSTEIN: Rep. Schweikert is being challenged by the Democratic nominee, former emergency room physician Dr. Hiral Tipirneni. She began by talking about why she considers Schweikert to be tone deaf when it comes to what voters in the 6th District want from their representative.
Hiral Tipirneni
HIRAL TIPIRNENI: I will tell you, the number one issue I still hear every single day is health care. And the choice here is very clear, right? I am somebody who not only has a background in health care, and that's what prompted me to run in the first place, because as an emergency physician, I know those struggles of people without access to the health care system firsthand. But on top of it, I —my motivation for running was because I was terrified that that threat of repeal would go through. That 20 — as we stand now — 23 million Americans could lose their health care coverage. And this is in contrast to somebody, Mr. Schweikert, my opponent, who has repeatedly voted for the repeal of the ACA with, let's be clear, no plan of replacement. And now currently is supporting this case that's about to go in front of [the Supreme Court of the United States] (SCOTUS) by this administration to fully repeal the ACA — which, again, 23 million Americans would lose their health care if that goes through. And that means losing protections for preexisting conditions, Steve. We're talking about one in almost every two Americans has a preexisting condition. And now we have added almost eight million Americans to that list because of coronavirus. So in the middle of a pandemic, I don't think that the choice could be any clearer.
GOLDSTEIN: What we've seen with President Trump being diagnosed with the virus himself, that so-called super-spreader event at the White House. Do you think people, voters in your district are seeing things like this and saying, "Yes, I was worried about the pandemic. Yes, I'm obviously worried about my jobs and the economy, but I also just want to know that that people are moving in the right direction to try to solve it?"
TIPIRNENI: Yeah. I mean, look, I think we need our leaders to lead by example, right? And we have clear public health guidelines. Look, we've got our own little case study here. We know that the public health guidelines, when implemented, that they work, and they, they show us that in the numbers — the number of cases down, the number of positivity down in our communities and the number of deaths down. So we need leaders that will, will mirror those guidelines, that will wear a mask, that will implement social distancing, that will encourage everybody else to do the same. We've got people who are stuck at home who haven't seen their grandchildren or their grandparents in months because of this virus. We have people who are out of work because of this virus. We have kids who are not back in school because of this virus. And then you have people that are in leadership that are supposed to be keeping us safe and showing us the way through this crisis. And instead, they are flouting these public health guidelines and just throwing, you know, caution to the wind, and it is at the risk of our communities. We have a vulnerable population in every community in this, in this district. I mean, we have seniors. We have folks with preexisting conditions, specifically respiratory ailments.
GOLDSTEIN: When I spoke with Congressman Schweikert recently, we brought up the admission of the ethics violations. Have you found that to be almost as significant an issue as the issues that people care about when it comes to the economy and health care? Is that something that is resonating with voters you talk to?
TIPIRNENI: Yeah, absolutely. People, I mean, look, people care whether their elected officials are working for them or if they're abusing their position. People want to know that they're electing people who will be honest, who will be forthright and who will be transparent and accountable. And when they make mistakes, to own those mistakes, take responsibility and correct that behavior. And Mr. Schweikert, unfortunately, downplays it. He doesn't accept full responsibility. And let's, let's remember, these are 11 violations that he has committed. He was reprimanded on the floor of the U.S. House unanimously. So this is, you know, we talk about all the divisiveness and partisanship in Congress. His ethics violations brought the entire House of Representatives together to unanimously reprimand him, to say, "This is not what you should be doing. This is not good. This is not what we want in our leaders."
GOLDSTEIN: Another topic that comes up a lot when it comes to Arizona congressional races — immigration, border security. What have you heard from people in the district about those issues? Are there some, for example, who think DACA recipients should be citizens, but at the same time they want more border security? What have people been telling you so far during this campaign about that?
TIPIRNENI: When I talked to people all across our district, one of the things that frustrates them is this lack of ability to work on a bipartisan manner, right? Bring — putting together legislation that will get bipartisan support. And look, I'm old enough to remember a time when there was bipartisan support for immi — comprehensive immigration reform. And specifically, you know, from Sen. John McCain. So I know that there are solutions we can build on. And I'll tell you, one of the issues about our Dreamers is something that's very clear. Arizonans are proud of the diversity in our state. Everybody I talked to is very protective of our Dreamers. They want to make sure that we can give them, you know, a chance to live their lives in the light and a path to ultimately, you know, for citizenship. But it's really important to make sure that we are valuing our diversity. And I mean, let's remember, Mexico is our largest trading partner. We have to maintain thoughtful, you know, immigration laws that will not only keep our nation safe and follow those principles, but also make sure that they don't in any way negatively impact our economy. And as far as border security goes, look, I want border security. We all want border security. We want our borders to be safe and secure. There's no doubt about it. But we also know that there are cost-effective, thoughtful ways to go about doing that. That is not necessarily the wall. That is technology. That is using more drones, more surveillance equipment, having more boots on the ground, you know, expanding and more — making more efficient our ports of entry, having more X-ray equipment so that we can more efficiently move people through those ports of entry. But all of these things are data-proven to work. They are more cost-effective than the billions of dollars allotted for a wall that is not going to keep us safer.
GOLDSTEIN: That is Dr. Hiral Tipirneni. She is the 6th Congressional District nominee for the Democrats, and it's been great to talk with you. Thanks so much and good luck.
TIPIRNENI: Thank you, Steve. I appreciate the chance to speak with you.
