John,
It's Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
People ask me all the time: "Kris, why did you switch from Republican to Democrat?"
Well, let’s start from the beginning…
I grew up in Prescott, helping my family with our tree farm. My father co-founded the local Sierra Club. My mother was a teacher. Both of them taught me about the world beyond our tree farm and the importance of giving back.
My first exposure to national politics was in high school. I interned one summer for AZ Rep. Bob Stump, who started out as a Democrat but by then had become a Republican.
That experience made me believe that the GOP was the right place for my values and my commitment to public service.
For over three decades, I remained a loyal footsoldier as the party of Reagan gradually became the party of Trump. Still, I called myself a Republican.
But in 2019, everything changed when I saw kids in cages at our border.
I watched Trump tear families apart. I knew I couldn't be part of a party that would do that to children. That's when I switched parties.
Two years later, January 6th happened. As a former Republican and newspaper reporter, I understood what the party I had left behind was becoming — and I knew I had to do something bigger.
So, in 2022, I left my job at ASU, took a 50% pay cut, and ran for Attorney General as a Democrat.
And we won, by just 280 votes out of 2.5 million cast. Every single vote mattered.
Since you get my emails, I’m not going to repeat my record here. But I want to emphasize how close my margin of victory in 2022 was…
280 out of 2.5 million votes is the equivalent of about 7 fans at a sold-out Arizona Cardinals home game. That’s the difference between having an AG who is effectively a rubber stamp for the Trump administration versus one who will give all she’s got to defend your rights.
In honor of that margin, can you contribute $7 to help me keep standing up for Arizona?
Thanks for having my back,
Kris
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