“Ciscomani Voted to Cut SNAP and Medicaid. It Could Cost Him His Seat” [Copper Courier]

Ciscomani’s opponent, Navy and Marine Corps veteran JoAnna Mendoza, grew up on the same programs he gutted to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. She knows that SNAP and Medicaid are “survival” for countless families, just like it was for her own.

REMINDER: Ciscomani openly admitted that his health care and manufacturing cuts would devastate Arizonans. In the ultimate surrender to his party bosses, he voted for the Big, Ugly Bill anyway.

DCCC Spokesperson Lindsay Reilly:
“Juan Ciscomani is a spineless fraud who sold Arizonans out to his campaign donors and D.C. party bosses. Votes will fire him this November in favor of Marine Corps veteran JoAnna Mendoza, a single mom and patriot who understands what families are going through.” 

Read for yourself…

The Copper Courier: Ciscomani voted to cut SNAP and Medicaid. It could cost him his seat

• Arizona has absorbed the consequences quickly: more than 400,000 Arizonans, including 180,000 children, have lost SNAP food assistance, hundreds of Casa Grande workers have lost their jobs after cuts to clean energy tax credits, and as many as 246,000 people in Arizona could lose Medicaid coverage.
• Arizona’s 6th Congressional District has been hit particularly hard since the bill’s passage. An Arizona Mirror analysis found that Southern Arizona hospitals are at risk of losing $110 million a year from Medicaid cuts, and one Tucson hospital has already closed its doors — Select Specialty Hospital, which shut down July 31 and laid off all 99 of its workers. 
• In Pima County, 77,000 SNAP recipients have been thrown off the program, all while food banks across the state struggle to fill the gaps. 
• The megabill axed Biden-era tax credits aimed at spurring the sale of electric vehicles, laying off hundreds of Casa Grande workers. Lucid Motors, an electric vehicle company in Casa Grande, said the end of those tax incentives was directly responsible for its decision to lay off more than 1,000 workers.
• In August, GOP consultant Chuck Coughlin told the Arizona Mirror he predicts the district will flip blue because of Ciscomani’s vote and Arizona’s shifting demographics. 
• Ciscomani’s Democratic challenger, JoAnna Mendoza, has pointed to Ciscomani’s vote as a reason to oust him from his seat. For Mendoza, who served 20 years including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and grew up on SNAP, the vote is “very personal” to her.

• A lifelong resident of the district, Mendoza told The New York Times that she used to wake up at 4 a.m. in the summer and wait at a gas station alongside her parents waiting for a bus to drive them to cotton fields where they would pick weeds to make money. Without a car, Mendoza would ride her bike to the grocery store and use food stamps to buy food for her family. 
• Now raising a ten year old, Mendoza said she questions if the next generation will be able to afford the American dream as costs continue to rise and social services decrease.
• “Voters want people who understand the struggles and share their concerns. Growing up on SNAP, it was for a really long time that I thought it was somehow a failure of my parents, that they weren’t working hard enough, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized that it’s a huge failure of the government,” Mendoza said. “For me and my family, that benefit was survival.”
• “When you’re elected to represent your community, that’s what you should be doing. Unfortunately, Ciscomani has not been doing that. He hasn’t been listening to his constituents,” Mendoza said. “He didn’t hold any town halls or listening sessions to hear what the impact of the bill would have on his constituents. It just gives the impression that [he] could really care less.”
• Ciscomani’s office did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.