Roughly one hundred people gathered in Paradise Valley over the weekend to celebrate the campaign launch of Legislative District Four (LD4) house candidates Kelli Butler and Karen Gresham.

The event was held on Saturday, June 22 to “celebrate the progress made and get inspired as the candidates move into the next phase of their campaign.” 

A handful of Arizona politicians were in attendance, including Attorney General Kris Mayes, United States Representative Greg Stanton, Democratic candidate for Maricopa County Recorder Tim Stringham, Scottsdale City Council candidate Maryann McAllen and candidates for Arizona’s First Congressional District Andrew Horne and Connor O’Callaghan. 

Voters and campaign staff socialized over food and drinks before A.G. Mayes made the first speech of the night. She shared her support for Butler and Gresham and discussed the local democratic party’s priorities — getting justice for missing and murdered indigenous people, enforcing ground water legislation, ensuring the safety of election workers, implementing antitrust laws and promoting sustainability. 

Reproductive healthcare was also an important topic at the event, just as it is across the state as the 2024 election quickly approaches. Arizona’s Democratic candidates have made it clear that they will use their positions in the State House and Senate to fight for women’s right to choose.

“If there was something that motivated me [to advocate for pro-choice legislation], it was having my own children and seeing how transformative that is to your entire life,” Butler told Northeast Valley News. “I just can’t imagine someone taking away your right to choose whether and when to have a child. It’s abhorrent.” 

Butler and Gresham are running together to fill two seats in the house and flip the Arizona legislature. Both candidates have extensive backgrounds in education that are reflected in their passion for helping students and teachers. Arizona has the second largest class sizes in the nation, one of the lowest high school graduation rates and is in the midst of a critical teacher shortage. 

Karen Gresham, the first of the two to speak to the crowd, is the President of the Madison Elementary School District’s governing board. After volunteering in her kids’ classrooms and helping out as treasurer of the school’s parent teacher organization (PTO), she saw firsthand the issues within the public school system. Gresham realized that the one thing preventing school districts from making much-needed improvements is a severe lack of funding. “We’re funding three systems right now: charter schools, public schools and the ESA system”, Gresham said. “So, we need to consolidate those and bring the funding back under the public school umbrella because it all falls into place after that. If our teachers were paid well, they would stick around.” 

Gresham decided to step up and run for office to make a difference on a larger scale. Some of her goals are to decrease class sizes, eliminate the threat of gun violence, and ensure students have access to healthy meals and mental health resources. She believes that these are not particularly partisan goals and should instead be regarded as common sense. 

Kelli Butler served in the State House from 2017-2022, but felt compelled to run again this year after a short retirement for reasons similar to Gresham’s. Her mission is to fund public schools, make quality healthcare more affordable and accessible and combat republican efforts to restrict early voting. She also owns a dental practice with her husband, giving her an insight into what it’s like to be a small business owner in Arizona. 

Butler, At-large, serves as a Governing Board Member for the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCD). When asked if she has any goals related to MCCD that she’d be working towards as State Representative, Butler said that she is “so excited” to shed a light on the “amazing work that our colleges are doing” by providing new opportunities to students with specialized training and certification programs. “We had all of our operational funding cut from the state way back in 2015 and it has not been restored, so we need to have some serious conversations about funding levels and how we can utilize those resources to directly impact careers and our workforce in Arizona,” Butler said. 

Also in attendance was Senator Christine Marsh, 2016 Arizona Teacher of the Year running for reelection. She spoke to the value of having educators in the government by recounting her own experience transitioning from the classroom to the Senate. “It has given me the ability to read a bill, and only look at the bill — not who sponsored it or whose name is attached to it — because that is what you have to do in teaching. 

You have to give every student’s essay a fair read, even if yesterday the student was trying desperately hard to get under your skin, that child still deserves a fair reading. It’s the same way with bills, you can’t be influenced by politics,” Marsh said. 

It is the time spent with voters at events such as Saturday’s that inspire Arizona Democrats to continue their work towards the betterment of their communities. The three women, along with Kris Mayes, all believe that LD4 can be the district that flips the Legislature