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Honne: Vote to restore integrity, accountability to Legislature

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Mary Kathleen Honne is a lifelong Arizonan who grew up in Southern Arizona and has been married to her high school sweetheart for 27 years.

At an early age, Mary Kathleen learned the values of citizenship, responsibility and service to her community through 4-H and Future Farmers of America. As a wife, mom and grandmother, she knows firsthand the challenges that face Arizona families and each generation.

As an educator having served for more than 20 years in either the classroom or administration, she has counseled children, colleagues and families, balanced multimillion-dollar budgets, and navigated bureaucratic red tape.

As a community leader, she knows our strengths and our struggles. As your elected representative, she will use all of these skills to magnify and increase our strengths and compassionately confront the struggles for our common good, our communities and our state.

Currently our economy is in spasms caused by the public health crisis of Covid-19. Hopefully you have returned to a more “normal” daily life and your loved ones are doing well.

Unfortunately, for the families of over 5,000 Arizonans, life is forever different. This disruption brought into high relief the inequities of the previous status quo, in unemployment, housing, health care, and education to name a few. It is not news that there is inequality, what is news is that it is now more clearly seen. And what is now seen should not be unseen.

As a lifelong Arizonan, Mary Kathleen recognizes our individual welfare is woven tightly with our collective well-being.

Favoritism and special-interest groups have starved our schools, fragmented our health care, filled our private prisons, and left too many behind without a path forward. As a teacher, her students learned about the five “Cs” that define Arizona’s economic history — cattle, cotton, copper, citrus and climate.

As your representative, she will honor that history by making sure our political future is defined by the three “Cs” of competence, character and compassion. It is her mission to end the sixth “C” at the Capitol — corruption.

Mary Kathleen will implement a code of ethics at the Capitol, for all elected officials, to restore trust in our democracy.

Representatives should serve the public interest; not their private/special interest, be accountable for their voting records, and listen, respond, communicate and meet with constituents.

Now, more than ever, we need to look out for each other. You deserve to know someone has your back. As your representative, she will work with Republicans, Democrats, independents and others to always find a responsible resolution. Mary Kathleen will continuously remember who she works for — the residents of Legislative District 22, not private/special interest groups. She is a strong leader who is financially responsible.

With your vote, you can restore confidence that your family is represented at the Capitol by our shared values of integrity, equity and accountability. You can find our more about Mary Kathleen Honne’s mission at www.honneforarizona.org.

Mary Kathleen Honne is a Democratic candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives representing Legislative District 22. Daily Independent has invited all candidates from LD22 to participate in this discussion by submitting guest commentaries in support of their campaigns for the upcoming Tuesday, Nov. 3 election. Learn more at BeBallotReady.com.