What Arizona voters need to know about the 2024 election
Arizona voters will play a key role in deciding the next president of the U.S. Here’s everything to know about the upcoming November election.
The Republic
A Republican Arizona lawmaker and nurse who criticizes Kamala Harris’ border record in a political ad understands the “challenges” in the industry, said the CEO of a hospital chain where she previously worked.
Saeed Mahboubi, a Dallas-based architect who co-founded Exceptional Healthcare, praised Rep. Julie Willoughby’s experience when asked if executives at the company support her message in the TV ad. The spot has run this month in states expected to be critical to Donald Trump’s reelection.
“Representative Willoughby’s background in healthcare brings a critical perspective to the Legislature, one that is deeply rooted in the realities of patient care and the challenges faced by healthcare providers,” Mahboubi told The Arizona Republic in an Aug. 19 email.
Mahboubi said the healthcare chain, which runs hospitals in Arizona, Texas and other states, needs nurses like her in elected positions.
“Their firsthand experience ensures that the laws and policies enacted are favorable to patients and support the ongoing efforts of hospitals and doctors to treat patients and save lives,” he said in an email.
Dressed in scrubs, Willoughby tells viewers she’s seen the “damage that Kamala Harris caused” and that “hospitals everywhere are overwhelmed.” The Chandler Republican doesn’t identify herself as a lawmaker in the ad.
“My patients are covering the health care costs for people here illegally while their own care is jeopardized,” she says in the ad. “Kamala Harris is weak and dangerous.”
Ad part of super PAC’s support for Trump’s reelection bid
The 30-second spot was produced by the Trump-supporting Preserve America PAC. It began running in early August on TV and digital sources in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as a Washington Examiner article first reported. It’s part of an independent expenditure campaign by the group to help Trump this year.
The super PAC is largely funded by the late billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson. It spent more than $104 million on Trump’s unsuccessful 2020 run, data compiled by OpenSecrets.org shows. Miriam Adelson gave $5 million to the PAC in May, according to Federal Election Commission data.
Super PACs can collect and spend unlimited amounts of money from unions, corporations, and individuals but can’t give directly to or coordinate with candidates.
The ad has drawn some backlash against Willoughby on social media and elsewhere, mostly by Democrats or apparent supporters of the Democratic Party.
“What Willoughby’s doing is antithetical to everything that nursing stands for,” said Arizona Sen. Eva Burch of Mesa, a former emergency room nurse and Democrat who’s running for reelection this year against the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate she beat in 2022, Robert Scantlebury. “We are an industry of inclusion.”
Burch, who now works helping people with opioid disorder, said she understands the “complexities” of the health care system but that nurses should prioritize people, not “political posturing.”
Health care for undocumented migrants a political, social issue
The uncompensated cost of health care for migrants has become a bigger issue since President Biden took office in 2021, with record numbers of asylum seekers and undocumented border crossers entering the country.
Harris, who was never named the official “border czar” but was tapped by Biden in 2021 to lead efforts to reduce migration surges to the United States, has taken the brunt of Republican anger on the problem since beginning her run for president.
Robert Trenschel, CEO of Yuma Regional Medical Center, wrote in a May 2023 op-ed published in The Republic that the hospital he oversees incurred $26 million in costs for migrant care in the previous 18 months, without reimbursement from the federal government. While a federal law requiring hospitals to treat patients regardless of immigration status or their ability to pay was “commendable,” he wrote, “the mandate poses a grave threat to the hospital’s financial viability.”
In Texas, where Mahboubi’s company is based, Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month ordered public hospitals to begin collecting data on the cost of treating undocumented immigrants.
Yet others have argued health care for asylum seekers and people without legal immigration status is not a drain on American society as a whole. A 2022 investigation published by health experts in JAMA Network Open, an affiliate of the American Medical Association, found undocumented immigrants “appeared to subsidize the health care of other US residents, suggesting that concerns that immigrants deplete health care resources may be unfounded.”
The study asserts that U.S.-born citizens paid $67.2 billion less than insurance or government sources paid for their health care, while immigrants − 89% of whom were undocumented − offset that amount by $58.3 billion they contributed in payroll deductions and taxes.
Undocumented immigrants can’t enroll in federally subsidized health care programs like the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. But as a 2008 AMA op-ed by Dallas physician Ron Anderson pointed out, paying for undocumented residents’ health care can often make “good business sense” by preventing long-term costs and controlling the spread of infectious diseases.
Who is Julie Willoughby?
Willoughby worked as chief nursing officer for Exceptional Community Hospital in the city of Maricopa for about a year and a half before leaving the position two months after being appointed to the state Legislature in May 2023. She replaced Liz Harris, a conspiracy-minded House member expelled for lying about her role in a bogus presentation before a House and Senate Joint Special Election Committee.
Willoughby ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature in 2018 and 2022 but was beaten in Republican primaries, coming in close enough to Harris to trigger an automatic recount in 2022.
After resigning from Exceptional Healthcare, she continued working as a nurse “in another organization” after leaving the company to focus on serving the Legislature, Mahboubi said. The Republic couldn’t verify that information and Willoughby didn’t reply to phone and text messages for this article.
Willoughby, a graduate of Arizona State University, also worked for eight years as a trauma nurse for HonorHealth. A spokesperson there declined to comment on the ad.
The Chandler Republican is trying to win her first election this year for the Legislature in one of eight districts considered competitive.
Mahboubi contributed $1,439.70 to Willoughby’s 2024 campaign in January, a state campaign finance report shows. He also spent $5,000 for independent expenditures to help Globe lawmaker David Cook, who lost his bid in the July 30 primary election to unseat incumbent state Sen. Wendy Rogers.
But Mahboubi doesn’t just fund Republicans: Federal and state campaign finance information show this year he gave $3,300 to Democrat Yassamin Ansari, who won her primary race for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District, and $5,500 to state Rep. Analise Ortiz, a Phoenix Democrat who won in the primary for state Senate. Ortiz refunded $100 of that because $5,400 is the limit that can be given by individuals to legislative candidates.
In 2020, he gave $350 to help Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and $200 to ActBlue, a fundraising platform for Democratic candidates.
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Publish date : 2024-08-23 03:00:00
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