Republican Paola Tulliani-Zen sees campaign for Arizona governor as chance to give back

The recipe for Paola Tulliani-Zen is one part businesswoman, one part political outsider, 100% Italian grandmother.

The Scottsdale rancher moves steadily — almost softly by comparison — through the cutthroat world of Arizona politics. She wants to use the business acumen from what she describes as her "cookie company," a term too casual for the national biscotti empire she built over two decades, to run Arizona as the state's next Republican governor.

From sweet success to state office is her goal.

Tulliani-Zen, 73, is serious about leading the state but doesn't take the political path it requires to get there too seriously.

Perhaps the highest-profile moment of her campaign so far was the recent release of an advertisement filmed in her luxurious, HGTV-worthy home kitchen. Slapping a hunk of prosciutto that cost $149 (she bought it wholesale), the screech of a pig edited into the video, she promised to "cut the fat off the government just like I cut the fat off my prosciutto."

It seems to fit that one of her goals, if elected, is to boost morale among the state government workforce. She wants to look for efficiencies in government by conducting audits, boost manufacturing in the state and provide workforce training to help businesses that can't find workers.

In a plan unique among candidates for governor of either party, she wants to reform juvenile justice, reshaping what she views as a punitive system into one that trains and educates children for success later in life, including by promoting religious instruction.

On the 2020 election, a divisive issue within the state's primary for governor, Tulliani-Zen said she believes Donald Trump won based on the attendance at his events but notes she hasn't seen concrete evidence of his victory. Dozens of lawsuits have not found widespread fraud, and the state Senate's ballot review has confirmed Joe Biden's win.

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Tulliani-Zen said she thinks the review, which has cost taxpayers nearly $5 million, was inefficient and that as governor, she'd seek to limit mail-in ballots to only those who cannot vote in person, naming senior citizens as one example.

And on education, she wants to improve opportunities and outcomes, a goal rooted in her own experience as a young immigrant who didn't finish school.

"I don't care if you're Democrat, Republican, Catholic, Jewish," she said in an interview. "Bottom line, we all want the same. We want our security. We want to make enough money. We want to have some joy in life. It's not all gloom and doom."

No job too small: 'I like to work'

Tulliani-Zen, her parents and four siblings immigrated to Chicago from Italy when she was 7 years old. She didn't speak English but credits strict nuns at Catholic school for teaching her the language and the basics such as reading and math. Of meager means, her mother traded cleaning and cooking at the church for tuition.

At about 16 years old, her father died of cancer, forcing Tulliani-Zen to leave school and find work. She worked at a dime store, a paint store, and a deli cutting ham. Later she found work in sales and insurance.

"I never saw anything as beneath me. I like to work," Tulliani-Zen said. "That's how I was and still am. I get embedded in whatever project I get into."

At the deli she learned marketing, though she didn't know it at the time. When customers ordered ham, she'd give them a little extra.

"I did that throughout my businesses, you've got to give something," she said. "You please your customer, they stay with you."

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She married and had two children, moving to Arizona when she was about 25. Tulliani-Zen began work making draperies, though she said she had no experience: "I was at the library every weekend" to learn how to measure and sew drapes, she said. A few years later, she opened an interior design shop.

A divorce forced Tulliani-Zen to recalibrate her path and in the 1990s, a friend noted she made good biscotti and suggested she try selling it commercially. She began her business selling the almond cookies then, tweaking a recipe she found in a library book.

Tulliani-Zen took two cellophane bags of biscotti tied with a red ribbon to a meeting at a Price Club, before it was enveloped by Costco, a tasty enough enticement that landed orders for three stores. She went from hand-slicing biscotti to, roughly 15 years later, rolling out a fully automated bakery occupying 60,000 square feet in Glendale. Her bakery grew from two employees to up to 160; from her own home oven to 22 commercial ovens making 50,000 pounds of cookies a day.

That's enough cookies to fill a semitruck each day, as Tulliani-Zen likes to say. Her La Dolce Vita brand confections were sold at Costco, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, among other clients.

Despite success, the uncertainty of business prompted Tulliani-Zen to sell the company to a competitor in late 2012, though she stayed on in a leadership role for several years.

After leaving business behind her, Tulliani-Zen spends her days at her ranch in north Scottsdale, where she keeps three mini horses, two Arabian horses, two Anatolian shepherd dogs (they protect the horses from coyotes) and three fluffy Morkies (a cross between a Maltese and a Yorkshire Terrier) that greet visitors at the front door.

Tulliani-Zen said she never had time for animals when she was working. She got the first horse for one of her three grandchildren, but that slowly grew into her full stable.

'There's a lion inside of here'

She's running for governor because she believes she has time now to contribute to the state, and as her campaign signs suggest, she wants to run it like a business.

"If I can contribute to Arizona, I want to," she said. "I mean, I succeeded. Another thing, people need to serve when they have succeeded in their own life and made the money."

Candidates who seek office for fame or a platform are her opposite, she said.

"I'm not that way. I don't even like the camera. Just put me in a room, put me in meetings. I'm a good negotiator."

Her business-first attitude won over Scottsdale real estate agent Stephanie McNeely, who supports Tulliani-Zen's campaign and donated to her bid last year. For the most part, Tulliani-Zen is self-funding, loaning $1.1 million of her own fortune to her campaign account.

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McNeely met Tulliani-Zen through another real estate agent roughly 18 months ago. She's helped out with events since then, seeing Tulliani-Zen as self-made and driven by common sense.

“I liked her because right away she started to give us little talks about what she stood for," McNeely said. “I feel like she has the experience of being in business and she has the logical brain, I like that about her."

Sometimes, voters question Tulliani-Zen about not having experience in government and politics, wondering if she's ready to lead a state in a world of political division.

"I can learn this political chess game real quick," she said. "I had to learn everything in my life. ... You know I look at it and sometimes you stand back and say, 'God, how did I get here?' It evolves. You just keep working. You learn."

Put another way: "Some people say I'm mild mannered, but I'm gonna tell you, there's a lion inside of here. I do what's right, and I never never give up."

Reach reporter Stacey Barchenger at stacey.barchenger@arizonarepublic.com or 480-416-5669. Follow her on Twitter @sbarchenger.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Governor's Office primary 2022 candidate: Paola Tulliani-Zen