Last week, Arizona state Rep. Analise Ortiz won the Democratic primary to represent parts of Maricopa County in the Arizona Senate, and with it, the seat — she faces no Republican opposition in the general election in November in the safely blue district.
Ortiz, 31, was ebullient when we spoke a few days later as she was driving around town “shopping and getting caught up on life stuff.”
The soon-be-senator and native Arizonan is the fifth child among six in her family, raised by educators. Ortiz studied journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, where she graduated summa cum laude.
Ortiz was “liberated” from work as a journalist at two conservative local TV stations when she dove into politics at the ACLU and embarked on her first, successful run for office soon after, in 2022. She was just 29 years old.
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One skill Ortiz picked up in TV news, she says, was “how to work a camera,” which has translated to a healthy following on TikTok.
LGBTQ Nation: You’re 100% engaged in social media with about 40,000 followers on TikTok, which swamps your following on X and Insta. What makes you more relatable on that platform compared to the others?
Rep. Analise Ortiz: I think I’m filling a void on TikTok, because you don’t see so many politicians using it, and I’m able to reach a much different audience and give them a behind the scenes look of what goes on at the Capitol and people really enjoy that.
And I think it’s really important to have representation for our LGBTQ+ community, and particularly those communities that are not as represented or as talked about, such as the pansexual community.
You identify as pansexual. Can you define that for our readers, and what role does it play in your public image, online or otherwise?
I would define that as being attracted to people regardless of their gender, and it was something of a journey for me to come to the discovery of who I am as a person.
I was born and raised in a very Catholic household, and it actually wasn’t until my brother came out as gay when I was in high school that I started to really have my eyes opened to different lifestyles where it’s important to have acceptance and tolerance, and I saw how that impacted my brother in his life.
I came to the realization that I, too, was part of the queer community in my early 20s, and it has been a journey of trying to reconcile what I had been taught through the faith that I was raised in, and then really being able to come to my own discovery and decisions about who I am and the kind of person that I want to be, which, above all, is a tolerant, loving person.
It’s been a journey that I’ve been really happy to have with my brother alongside me, living our authentic lives.
You spent a couple of years working at two local TV stations in Texas and Las Vegas, both owned at the time by conservative-leaning media companies, Sinclair and Scripps, respectively. What’s your assessment of the quality of journalism coming out of local TV news outlets controlled by conservative media conglomerates?
Well, I will say the fact that I worked at these two conservative outlets was one of the key reasons why I decided to leave my journalism career, especially working at Sinclair during the 2016 election and seeing how the media was complicit in the rise of Trumpism.
I think at this point, there have been a lot of lessons learned. There are many news outlets that I highly respect, including the Scripps-owned ABC-15 here in Arizona, which I feel is one of the only media outlets that does an incredibly fair job of holding politicians accountable.
But the industry was not for me, because I was someone who was so incredibly political and really wanted to be making a change, and I was not happy with the way my producers were crafting the narrative on many of my stories. That was something I just couldn’t sit with.
After your time in TV news, you joined the ACLU, and I was trying to think of a description of that shift or evolution in your career. As a former journalist, how would you describe it, and can you share the difference between the culture of a local TV newsroom and the offices of the ACLU?
Oh my gosh, yes. It was an incredibly liberating change. I think that is the word that I would use. For the first time in my career, I was allowed to express my political beliefs. But the second thing was just, you know, the ACLU of Arizona was a place that valued time off, it valued self-care. It valued constructive conflict resolution. And these were all things that in a TV newsroom with the run-and-gun and the high expectations and the high workload and low pay, that was something I never, ever had in my career.
So it was so liberating to be able to, you know, not have to be scared to tell my boss that I had a doctor’s appointment in the middle of a shift, to be able to just have a boss that understood that my humanity and who I am as a person comes before the work and the job. And that was a big, big change.
Like you, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake worked in local TV news before she got into politics. What are some of the similarities and differences that your shared experience in TV news brings to your two campaigns?
(Laughing) Well, that’s what I think is so bogus about Kari Lake, is she claims she left the news because it was the liberal media. That is not true. She worked at Fox News, and the vast majority of editors in these news stations are people who definitely align with the status quo or align with more conservative ways of thinking.
The one thing I would say that I guess we do share is that we both know how to work a camera, and I wish that, you know, more people could see her for who she is (laughing). But I actually think in the last primary election, they did make it clear that they see her for who she is.
As the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee in the Arizona House, you’ve defended reproductive rights, and you played a key role in overturning Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban. What’s next in the fight for abortion rights in Arizona?
Well, we have this extreme 15-week abortion ban that’s currently on the books, and it was only passed in 2022 and it has continued to cause people to have to travel out of state to access abortion care.
So the next big fight is to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, which is a ballot initiative that will be on the ballot in November and that would effectively render the 15-week ban obsolete. The Arizona Abortion Access Act would restore protections to the same way that it existed under Roe v. Wade.
Kamala Harris has talked about abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights as among a group of fundamental freedoms at stake in the face of a right-wing conservative majority on the Supreme Court and a possible second and more radicalized Trump presidency. What are some of the ways that LGBTQ+ rights are under threat in Arizona?
Arizona has always been an extremely hostile state to LGBTQ+ rights. Another pivotal moment for me was when I was a student journalist at Cronkite and I was sent to cover S.B. 1062, which would have allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ couples. And that was a kind of a moment where I wanted to be more political and out front, but I had to be impartial as a journalist.
Republican Governor Jan Brewer, at the time, actually vetoed that bill, but we continue to see those same kinds of attacks. We had some anti-trans legislation that really targeted trans youth pass and made it to the governor’s desk this year — Governor Hobbs did veto those. But if we do not flip to a Democratic majority in the Arizona legislature, we are going to continue to see these malicious attacks.
What we really need is proactive legislation, like a statewide non-discrimination ordinance making sure that our LGBTQ+ community has equitable access to affordable housing and to health care. Those are the kind of positive, proactive measures that I would like to really focus on, instead of constantly being on defense.
You’ve brought in millions of dollars for affordable housing in your district and dedicated a lot of time to addressing homelessness. I’ve read about a religious organization called Phoenix Rescue Mission, which is dedicated to fighting housing insecurity and substance abuse, but it also requires employees to sign an oath to follow the organization’s Christian values, including its disapproval of same-sex marriage. Are you aware of the group and the pledge, and how do you view an organization with a laudable mission like theirs that forces employees to adhere to discriminatory policies?
I think those kinds of policies are unacceptable in a workplace and I’m working on that statewide non-discrimination ordinance which would prohibit businesses from doing that kind of thing. It’s so critically important.
We are at a juncture right now where our LGBTQ+ community is disproportionately impacted by homelessness, so for someone experiencing, maybe, being pushed out of their childhood home because their family doesn’t agree with who they are, and then to have to face potential discrimination in a shelter? It’s just horrible, and we are so much better than that as a state and as a society. I just have absolutely no tolerance for a policy of that nature that would exclude and potentially cause real harm to people.
Have you worked with that group?
I have not had any direct conversations when it comes to that policy. I have asked them about the resources that they offer on behalf of constituents before, but that is a great thing to add to my to-do list.
What’s the single most important thing the world needs to do to address the climate crisis?
Oh my gosh, that’s hard. We need to completely rethink how we approach our everyday lives, when it comes to the forms of electricity we use, the cars we drive, how we get to and from places, and how we build our cities. Building denser cities is a way that we can have a greater impact on our water conservation, on the climate crisis, and on just sustainability in general, and that’s something that we kind of leave out of the conversation a lot. What can we do to make it denser and more sensible?
Phoenix is like a laboratory for the heat that’s plaguing the country this summer. What kind of lessons does the city have to offer?
That we need to get on this now. We should have taken action 50 years ago but because we have lost that time, we need to get to work now if we want to preserve our way of life in the places we live in, the places we love and call home. I am inspired by some of the heat mitigation efforts that have been happening at the City of Phoenix level. I would like to see them expedited and going much faster when it comes to implementing the cool pavement program and additional trees and shade coverage for our communities and electrifying our bus system, which is something Phoenix is working on. But the time of denying the science is over. We have to get to work now.
You co-sponsored a bill in the Arizona House to establish a Space National Guard. What is it, and why do Arizonans need it?
That was a bill for creating a Space National Guard in Arizona in order to do research and study the progress and innovation that we need to plan for our future, whether that’s relying on different kinds of satellites in space, our internet usage, the potential for space travel, and the potential for humans to explore the universe in ways we never have before. Arizona has always been a leader on space innovation. Pluto was discovered here! It’s a frontier that we’re always excited to explore.
Speaking of astronauts, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is under consideration as Kamala Harris’s running mate [when this interview was conducted]. Have you met or worked together and what can you tell us about him?
I helped to get Kelly elected, knocking on doors here in our community of Maryvale. What I can tell you is that people love Sen. Kelly. They love that he’s approachable. I’ve had many conversations with him about different issues that are impacting our Latino community. He listens. He’s great with our veterans and making sure their needs are met. I also think that the legacy that he and his wife have contributed to our state is one that we are all so proud of. And so if he is to be the VP pick, I do believe that Arizona would, without a doubt, support the Kamala-Kelly ticket. So I’m excited about that potential. We’ll see what happens.
I couldn’t glean too much about your personal life from online sources. Are you in a relationship?
Yes.
(Laughing) Do you want to share anything about this person?
I’m in a relationship. My partner is a journalist, and he is just a great source of strength for me on this journey in politics, which is something I only started in 2022 and I couldn’t do this without him.
How did you two meet?
We met when I was still at the ACLU and he was reporting on the criminal justice beat. He’s just an incredible person.
OK, so let’s say you’re not in a relationship.
(Laughing) OK.
And you’re out to dinner on a date with Kari Lake.
(Laughing) Oh, no.
What’s more likely to happen? A) She’s accosted by MAGA fans looking for selfies, B) The maître d’ can’t find her reservation, C) She returns from the bathroom with an even smoother forehead.
(Laughing) Well, I would never get into this situation in the first place? So let me just put that on the record. I’m gonna say A), the MAGA of fans would be trolling, and I would be gone within the first two minutes.
Would you rather A) Be locked in a closet with Meghan McCain complaining for 10 hours or B) Go clothes shopping with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for an inauguration outfit?
(Laughing) I think I would enjoy an opportunity to go clothes shopping with Sinema. I think I would have some advice that could probably benefit her.
Who would you rather count the votes with? A) Drunk Rudy Giuliani, B) The two election workers he defamed and owes $148 million to, or C) Arizona native Stevie Nicks.
Oh, Stevie Nicks, without a doubt!
What’s the best thing about representing your constituents in District 24?
I love being able to take members of my community to the State Capitol, especially those who’ve never been to the Capitol before, to show them that they do have a seat at the decision-making table, and that their voices matter. That is always the most rewarding part of my job. The other most rewarding part of my job is when I get to speak to students, young people. They give me so much hope for the future, and they’re brilliant, and I just absolutely love any opportunity I have to speak and engage with our youth.
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