ABOUT Sam
My family moved to Arizona 30 years ago, and I’ve been a resident of District 6 for the last 4. I am a small business owner, sports nut, and a policy geek. For the last four and a half years, I served as current Councilman Sal DiCiccio’s chief-of-staff, helping craft and guide policy for the office – serving you and our residents to the best of my ability. I have previously served as the Director of the Civics Education Initiative at the Joe Foss Institute, and run a number of local and federal candidate campaigns. Currently, I am the host of the Breaking Battlegrounds radio show and podcast.
I don’t look like other candidates. I don’t act like other candidates.
I am a geek and I’m obsessed with public policy. Not talking points, policy: the stuff that really matters, and how it gets done. I have never wanted to run for public office, and I still don’t. But I am because I believe, after everything I’ve seen over the last few years, that Phoenix is at a tipping point. The sensible, forward-thinking politicians of the past have been replaced by reactionary ideologues who are more interested in advancing their careers than improving your lives. They are working hard every day to turn Phoenix into San Francisco; pushing the same massive array of failed but compassionate-sounding ideas that are ruining lives and driving hundreds of thousands of people to leave California, many to come here.
It doesn’t have to be like that. We can be compassionate, and protect our most vulnerable citizens, without destroying the lives of everyone else. We can have great public transportation, and great streets. We can take real steps to combat our rising temperatures, without gutting our economy. We can have the best of all worlds – and isn’t that the idea at the very heart of our city? Our city was raised from the dusty desert as a shining example of what could be, and still can.
There is a way forward.
Over the coming months you will hear a lot of platitudes. They’re what most campaigns are built on, including those of my opponents. Not mine. I won’t waste my time, or yours, blowing sweet-smelling smoke in your face, because at the end of the day, it still causes cancer – the cancer that is rotting our country from the inside out. The policies of the past decade have failed. It’s time to chart a new course.
That’s why I’m going to put forward a broad array of ideas, covering every part of the city and its operations. Some of them are simple, some are complex, others can’t be achieved without the help of the state, or even the federal government. But we have to try. I’m asking for your vote, and let’s make the attempt together.