Cheers For Kiana Maria Sears: Keeping Elections Clean

For a newbie candidate challenging that old questionably corrupt political machine here in Arizona, Kiana Maria Sears stands out a fresh outsider from New Orleans who moved here to Mesa with her family in 1995. She's in the race to join the taunting mission to change the Arizona Corporate Commission as a female Democrat up against a cast of all-male Republicans in the November 6 General Election. 
Your MesaZona blogger first met Sears two years on the ground for Free Speech in front of the Mesa Public Library in the midst of paid petitioner-signer collectors doing her own gathering of supporters to get elected to the governing board of the Mesa United School District. She won then. According to this report by Elizabeth Whitman in Phoenix New Times last week on September 20, 2018
". . .  Sears has passed major milestones on her way to potentially becoming a Corporation Commissioner next year. In August, she defeated former commissioner Bill Mundell, who campaigned with Sandra Kennedy as “The Integrity Team,” in the Democratic primaries. Sears took 219,011 votes to Kennedy’s 351,561, with both of them beating Mundell, who received just shy of 209,000 votes.

Come November 6, in the general election, Sears will be one of four candidates competing for two seats on the five-member commission. She’ll be up against Kennedy, a longtime Arizona lawmaker and former commissioner, as well as Republicans Rodney Glassman, who received 218,130 votes in the primary, and Justin Olson, a current commissioner who got 240,825 votes. . .
During a period when the Corporation Commission is beset with allegations of corruption, Sears and her passions could represent a glimmer of possible change. A shortlist of those allegations include: bribery charges against former commissioner Gary Pierce, although the case ended in a mistrial; suspicions that APS funneled $3 million to two Republicans running for the commission in 2014; and the resignation in July of the commission's executive director after regulators discovered that his wife worked for a lobbying firm hired by APS.
“Most Arizonans don’t know the duties of our Arizona commissioners and how it affects their pocketbook,” Sears said. “The Corporation Commission determines how much you’re paying for regulated utilities. The company doesn’t raise your rates — it’s our commissioners.” She added, “This office is actually supposed to be protecting you. . .
Sears is a relative newcomer to politics in Arizona. To her advocates, she’s a breath of fresh air. A black woman, she became the first person of color to win a seat on the Mesa Public Schools Governing Board, on which she began serving her four-year term in January 2017. She bills herself as a champion for children and consumers, a staunch advocate for the people. In her messaging, she promises not to cater to special interests and instead to advocate for impoverished and minority communities. That idea, and especially the authenticity with which she delivers it, has clearly resonated with her supporters. Sears seems earnest, eager, and filled with idealism. . .
If elected to the Corporation Commission, she’d certainly bring a different perspective to a five-member board that, right now, is solidly white, male, and Republican.
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The four of them will took the stage in a 59:00 minute debate

Arizona Corporation Commission Debate

uploaded from https://azpbs.org Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018 

 

Republicans Rodney Glassman and Justin Olson will face off against Democrats Sandra Kennedy and Kiana Maria Sears in November’s general election as they vie to gain the two available seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission. The four candidates will debate for an hour about commission issues such as utility regulation on Arizona Horizon.
This debate is sponsored by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
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 Cathy Nichols, the political director of Arizona List, a network that supports pro-choice Democratic women candidates and which endorsed Sears, said that Sears’ commitment to renewable energy was one of the reasons the List endorsed her.
“She had extraordinarily strong preparation for this race and her platform resonated with our endorsement committee,” Nichols said. “What I see in Kiana is somebody who works very hard, and so if there is an issue that she’s not familiar with, she will educate herself.” Nichols added, "She’s never run a statewide campaign before, but she’s running an excellent campaign. She beat a former commissioner based on pure hard work.”
Others praise her ability to collaborate, like Dennis Kavanaugh, a former Mesa city councilmember who endorsed Sears for school governing board and is endorsing her for Corporation Commission. . .
Kavanaugh argued that Sears’ weakness — her lack of history as an elected official in a partisan position — was, in fact, her strength. It meant that she didn’t have “some of the baggage of the past,” especially during a time when public trust in the Commission has faltered.
Last August, two-thirds of 400 voters surveyed by HighGround Public Affairs Consultants answered “yes” when asked whether they believed that the Corporation Commission had been “corrupted by outside influences and contributions to their election campaigns by the utilities they are supposed to regulateREAD MORE from these excerpts >> Phoenix New Times