Yuma’s fly problem takes center stage at half-empty LD23 debate

Four of six candidates in an expansive, rural battleground legislative district skipped a debate on Wednesday, leaving two Democratic House candidates to make their case to voters.

The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission invited Republicans Michelle Altherr, Gary Garcia Snyder and Rep. Michele Peña to debate Democratic candidates Emilia Cortez, Rep. Mariana Sandoval and Sen. Brian Fernandez.

Only Cortez and Sandoval, who are seeking Legislative District 23’s two House seats, showed up. Their opponents are Snyder and Peña, while Altherr will challenge Fernandez’s bid for reelection to the Senate.

Although Democrats have more registered voters in the district, which runs from Goodyear in Maricopa County to Yuma and includes parts of Pinal and Pima counties, voters have elected Peña twice to the state House. She won by snagging independent voters in Yuma and Maricopa counties in 2022 and 2024.

Early ballots go out Oct. 7 and voters will hit the polls Nov. 3.

With only two candidates from the same party, the scheduled debate became a question-and-answer session in which the two Democrats largely agreed throughout, including whether they agree with the state’s recent decision to cancel AgTech LLC’s state land leases over its biosolids operations.

The company imported treated sewage sludge to apply to agricultural land.
Yuma residents brought the matter to the Attorney General’s Office in July, complaining about fly infestations, odors and potential contamination tied to the operations.

“We are not California’s dumping ground for biosolids, and nor should any other state be,” Sandoval said.

Cortez described the flies as like a school of fish “infesting your eyelids, your hair.”

“And especially having someone else’s biosolids getting dumped in your backyard is kind of rough to accept,” Cortez said.

The company said in a written statement that the state’s cancellation violated “due process provisions of its own leases and the statutory protections granted under the Regulatory Bill of Rights,” and it was looking at whether to sue.

The company also suggested Attorney General Kris Mayes and Gov. Katie Hobbs played politics by canceling the leases weeks before Election Day.

Cortez said she considered the business a nuisance.

“It’s all about protocol and policy and how they maintained that land. It was a nuisance on how they were taking care of it,” Cortez said.

The candidates agreed the state should ban local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Sandoval said the Trump administration and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio violated the rights of legal residents and citizens, and she expects local and federal authorities to respect the constitutional rights of all, even people living here illegally.

“We have to make sure that these law enforcement agencies are … not just going nilly-willy picking up people just because they look like me or they speak Spanish or they have a last name that, in their eyes, is Latino,” Sandoval said.

Cortez said ICE needs to revert to practices of previous administrations. She said that living near the border, she sees the way the agency now instills fear.

“I don’t agree with what they’re doing within our communities and scaring our Latino populations,” Cortez said.

The candidates had different answers on whether they think the state should impose water restrictions on Arizona households, such as per-person limits on lawn watering or higher prices for heavy users, to solve the state’s water crisis. Drought has gripped Arizona for decades, and the federal government finalized a plan in August to slash Arizona’s, Nevada’s and California’s use of Colorado River water over the next two years to keep the river’s reservoirs from drying up.

The Colorado River provides water for the sprinklers, showers, swimming pools, golf courses and fountains of 40 million people in seven states.

Cortez rejected the idea that the issue could simply be reduced to a yes-or-no question. She said there are practical ways to use water.

Sandoval isn’t ready for restrictions.
“I don’t think we should be imposing (restrictions) on anyone. I do think talking and educating our entire state on the water crisis that we have in Arizona and plan on conservation,” Sandoval said.