Under the coronavirus, the Jewish mayor of Phoenix walks the tightrope in swing state

The typical appearance of Gallego on July 12 in “Face the Nation”. When asked about her frustrations for federal aid, she slid beyond the White House plane and instead said she was grateful to the federal government for intervening.

“The term they used for me was “false,” he said. But the good news is that they nonetheless made the decision to introduce that federal evidence into our community, and that can’t happen too soon.”

Gallego also had to force participants at a Trump rally in June to wear masks.

“We made the decision to start schooling and why dressing in the mask is vital and why the city demanded it,” the mayor said. “And so, until the president came, we hadn’t published any appointments and it was too political to start with a political event.”

Helen Holden, a Phoenix attorney who is the outgoing president of a local synagogue, Temple Chai, said Gallego had “done a great job of combining disparate elements.”

Gallego says it’s partly due to his Jewish identity.

“Our confidence in saying that each and every user has price and dignity is vital and has guided the way I approached COVID,” he said.

His Jewish identity has also shaped some of the reactions he has faced and the Galician has worked with other leaders to respond to them.

“There has been some setback in the use of Nazi terminology opposed to all elected officials, but Jews in particular,” he said. “I was able to tell some of my fellow Jewish mayors how they react, and we also looked, for example, at Governor [Jared] Polis of Colorado, who spoke eloquently about his inadequacy. He’s using comparisons to the Holocaust. »

Gallego has lived in Phoenix since 2004, when she moved there after graduating from Harvard with a degree in environmental studies to be with her then boyfriend, Rubén Gallego. (He also holds an MBA from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania). He arrived at the same time as another Harvard graduate, Pete Buttigieg, but he nevertheless returned to his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, Gallego. planted roots in the city.

She and Ruben Gallego, who was later elected to Congress, married in 2010. (Until then, her call was Kate Widland.) In 2013, after an era of paintings in urban development, she was chosen for the Phoenix City Council at the age of 32, where she lobbied for civic innovations of the kind she once built in Sim City, adding a smooth rail formula that would allow for sustainable expansion in the expanding city.

She and Gallego divorced in 2016 while they were pregnant with their son, Michael, and their parents moved 400 miles west of Albuquerque to enroll in it and share their care. After the mayor of Phoenix won a congressional seat in 2018, Gallego embarked on a fierce race to update him, and Michael enrolled on it on the polls. She was chosen in March 2019 on a platform that included making a sustainable growth investment, adding public transportation and preparing the city’s finances for a recession that would occur much faster and hastily than anyone could have imagined.

Gallego is Phoenix’s third Jewish mayor – he said it was a “source of pride” that Emil Ganz was the first in the late 19th century – and is deeply linked to its Jewish network of some 100,000 people.

Paul Eckstein, an amateur historian of Jewish Arizona, gave a lecture about a year ago on “The Jewish Connection to Modern Arizona Politics” at the local Jewish Heritage Center. He was surprised to see Gallego arrive. He was even more surprised when she contacted him a few months later.

“She borrowed my documents,” Eckstein said, so she can come with the data in her own speeches to the Jewish community.

Gallego prides itself on Phoenix’s Jewish network for joining other communities in the fight against coronavirus through organizing the distribution of non-public evidence and protective apparatus, and by repelling anti-Chinese racism.

“The Jewish network has been pushing conversations about justice and the fight against racism, but also helping me fight COVID,” he said.

Gallego Rabbi John Linder of Temple Solel in the phoenix suburbs said his openness to others is transparent in his conversations.

Possibly he wouldn’t say, “You know, the Talmud of Babylon, treated Eruvin, where you have Hillel and Shammai…” but the fact is that it recognizes the Jewish culture that there are many truths.

“You may not be able to say, ‘You know, the Babylonian Talmud, Aruvin treatise, where you have Hillel and Shammai and are chosen and chosen,” Linder said, referring to an ancient Jewish text in which the ancient rabbis concluded that two positions be considered as the Torah also divine. “But the fact is that he recognizes, according to Jewish tradition, that there are many truths.”

This technique will be essential if Gallego chooses to pursue a political career in Arizona, where Democrats have enjoyed good electoral fortune in recent times, but remains a purple state in general. She is gaining the national profile that helped propel Buttigieg among the pioneers of the Democratic presidential primary, and her appearances in the national news are already causing some resentment at home.

But to look for the future, Gallego maintains an exact focus on what Phoenix wants to succeed over the pandemic.

He’s smart,” said Ron Ober, a lobbyist who campaigned for Dennis DeConcini, an Arizona senator for three terms.

“People who succeed in running for a political workplace do so because they do smart work, not because they make plans,” he said. “People who do policy projects are doomed to be potentially disappointed.”

Does Gallego see a long time in which he can put his negotiating skills into practice in a broader field? It is currently aimed at re-election: it is in a position for a full four-year term this autumn, and faces two determined powers and COVID-19 rates that, while in decline, remain among the highest in the country. Country.

“I have my paintings now,” he says.

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