In early March, Yassamin Ansari won the runoff election becoming the new councilmember for District 7. She will be sworn in on April 19.
Ansari recently sat down with Downtown Devil to answer some questions about her goals as a city councilmember.
Downtown Devil: I know connecting with your constituents is a huge part of your mission and that you are starting a mobile office, could you tell me a little bit more about that?
Ansari: Throughout the campaign we really made an effort to engage residents as much as possible because districts have, in historic ways, the lowest performing district when it comes to voter turnout. So we knocked on well over 150,000 doors throughout the campaign about 90,000 since November. It really made me realize the importance of continuing door to door efforts. So, definitely intend to continue that through my term as a council woman around various issue items.
So for example, one of the first things we’re hoping to do is bring more COVID vaccinations to District 7. And we’re planning to do door-to-door efforts that focusing specifically around folks who might only speak Spanish or folks who might be older and don’t have access to technology. We want to use canvassing as a way to reach them and make sure that they get educated about the vaccine, know where to go and help them get vaccinated.
The idea was to bring City Hall to the people just given that District 7 again is so large and diverse. It’s not really convenient for everyone to just come to City Hall. I’m not entirely sure what form that will take, whether it means setting up shop at local city buildings like libraries for a certain day and I’m having engaging the community and letting folks know that I’m there and they can come talk to me, or whether that physically means like some sort of mobile like RV type thing, it depends on funding so we’re currently looking into options of what it will look like.
Downtown Devil: How Did COVID change the way you were doing your door-to-door operations? Do you think you would have been able to do more canvasing COVID wasn’t happening?
Ansari: We absolutely would have. I had been knocking doors since January of 2020. We definitely took the pandemic extremely seriously and completely cut off door-to-door efforts from March to about September. Through that period we really changed to no contact literature drops to phone calls. We made probably another 100,000 phone calls over the summer to residents. But then, once September hit, you know, we decided to equip the team with masks and PPE and just developed safety guidelines for canvassers who were going door to door and resumed our efforts.
Downtown Devil: How did your understanding of the community change throughout your campaign?
Ansari: I would say… I just got a much more nuanced perspective on the differences of each and every area and the district, and I got a much better sense of really the reality that District 7 has been left behind for so many years. So when it comes to the issues that people really care about a lot of it is around the basic day to day needs and things that city hall is supposed to do. So I think depending on where you are, you know, whether it’s Maryvale or South Phoenix, I think there’s a lot of just infrastructure needs and investment needs. And then when you’re talking about Levine in Australia, you know, you hear a lot about public safety, a lot of amenities that are needed in the districts.
We’re currently working on our 100 day plan, which will be focused on our three main campaign issue areas, which were COVID-19 relief, climate action and affordable housing, and then it will also be based on each of the regions of the district and focusing on those specifics.
Downtown Devil: How did you feel when the runoff results came in?
Ansari: I was just really excited honestly. I was screaming, crying, laughing like kind of a mix of all three I was relieved. It was a very intense campaign, especially at the end. I was just really happy that all of our hard work paid off and, yeah, it was definitely one of the happiest proudest days of my life.
Contact the reporter at etutora@asu.edu.
Elinor Tutora is a staff reporter at Downtown Devil. She is currently a sophomore at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
