Tiffany Shedd, Republican candidate for Arizona attorney general, says border is most pressing
Tiffany Shedd, a lawyer who specializes in water and other environmental resources in Eloy, wants to be Arizona's next attorney general and is seeking the Republican nomination in the August primary election.
Shedd also is a farmer who, along with her husband, operates several small businesses. They have three children.
She has twice run for Congress, in 2018 and 2020, both times unsuccessfully against Democratic Rep. Tom O'Halleran, who represents Arizona's 1st Congressional District.
In her quest for the Attorney General's Office, she will have to win out over her five Republican challengers in the primary Aug. 2. They include Lacy Cooper, a former border security section chief for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, attorney Rodney Glassman, former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould, Karsten Manufacturing corporate counsel Dawn Grove and former Maricopa County prosecutor Abe Hamadeh.
Shedd believes border security is the most pressing issue facing Arizona and has said that she would not have certified Arizona's 2020 presidential elections with Joe Biden as the winner had she been attorney general.
Arizona primary is Aug. 2: Everything you need to know to vote in the election
What distinguishes Shedd from others?
Shedd says what distinguishes her from the other five Republican attorney general candidates is that she has "skin in the game," as she lives 90 miles from the border.
"I go home to a border smuggling route every night. I've been talking about the border and trying to get solutions to stop smugglers for about 18 years now and other people in the race just aren't being impacted in the way that I am personally," Shedd told The Arizona Republic.
"We've had illegal aliens being arrested by border patrol with the sheriff's deputy assistance in our front yard."
"We can't have that level of lawlessness. It's causing an absolute breakdown in our culture, our safety," she said. "We just had two young high school girls who didn't graduate because they got in the middle of a cartel firefight and were murdered in cold blood."
She also noted the murder of her friend, Robert Krentz, in 2010 on his ranch by what some believe was a smuggler, though the killer is still unknown. His death helped lead to the passage of the controversial Senate Bill 1070, also known as Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, the state's hard-line response to illegal immigration.
While the law was partially struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Justices upheld a provision that permits law enforcement to ask anyone for documentation on legal status in the country if they believe that person is not here legally.
She noted support she has received from ranchers in southern Arizona.
"They know I will work every single day to make sure that Arizona does what it can to declare war on cartels and secure the border so that our failed federal policy doesn't destroy both Arizona and Mexico," Shedd said.
She also says her work in education, as a bilingual kindergarten teacher, serving on the Toltec Elementary School Board and homeschooling her kids for 20 years, distinguishes her from the other candidates. She said parental rights are a priority.
"I have seen every side of the education issue and I really believe that that experience gives me insight and a strong voice as to why children belong to family and not the government," Shedd said.
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'I have tougher skin than I realize'
Shedd said the campaign trail has made her impervious to personal attacks.
"I've learned that I have pretty thick skin and I'm a person who bases their actions on principle. And if I believe those principles are the correct thing to do, policy-wise, ethically, morally, legally, then it pretty much is water off my back when people attack you personally or go after your children, which I've had happen."
Shedd said some of her Republican challengers have pushed a false narrative that she would not be an effective attorney general because of a lack of criminal prosecutorial experience.
"There has been a strange assumption that my experience living where I'm living, my experience working on major water issues, my experience helping people build businesses somehow is not as valid as working for the government as a prosecutor," Shedd said, noting that the vast majority of the attorney general's work is in civil law.
Tara Kavaler is a politics reporter at The Arizona Republic. She can be reached by email at tara.kavaler@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @kavalertara.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona attorney general primary 2022 candidate: Tiffany Shedd
