House Minority Leader Charlene Fernandez led a wartime caucus. Besieged by a majority that alternated between hostility and indifference, a public health crisis and a state in general disarray, the Yuma Democrat did what she could to rally her 28 colleagues and fight off tax cuts and immigration bills, bolstered by increasingly powerful activist groups who helped run interference on the ground. The minority, by definition, was often not successful. But now they’re gearing up for what could be a watershed election that could for the first time in decades instill Democratic rule in the House. Will new blood make a difference in a famously unruly chamber?

Obviously, there was no shortage of challenges this year – from being in the minority, to COVID-19 and so on. What moments were the most challenging or frustrating for you?

I don’t want to make this just about the minority, but I think most challenging was the fact that we’re treated like the minority even with a 29-31 split. I mean, just with 600 more votes, that could have been 30-30. And I thought this 31-29 would have been an opportunity for us to come together, because obviously Arizona is trying to tell us something. And yet I think we were probably further apart than when we were 23-37.

What do you think that’s a function of?

In general, loss of power is a scary thing. As a parent, when your kid is going off to college, you’re no longer in control of what time they go to bed or what time they come home in the evening. And it’s a scary time when that child leaves for college. And that’s what I feel like the majority was facing. It was that loss of power. We walked in there in 2019 with a thought in our head that we were no longer going to act like the minority. And I’ll tell you that second session of 2018, when we went back, we had an effort to act like we were in the majority. I think it made a difference when November rolled around and we picked up four seats and we became 29-31. So we expected to be treated that way. Maybe the expectation was too high.

What do you feel you were able to accomplish in spite of that?

The bad legislation that we fought off – but it had nothing to do with “in spite of” – it was just the right thing to do. And one of them was the sanctuary city bill that was obviously an issue that Governor Ducey sanctioned, and for us to come together and be able to get the governor to back down, and to get the speaker pro tem to back down, that was monumental. And that was because the people in Arizona want something different. They don’t want the same old thing.They didn’t want SB1070, and they’re ready to move on and they’re ready to move Arizona forward.

If you guys take the majority, do you think that your relationship with what would then be the Republican minority would look different? Or do you think that this is just sort of the nature of the House, that the parties are always kind of diametrically opposed like this?

I don’t think we can work alone. I don’t think that’s what the people, the voters want. They want us to work together. Do they want us to be walked over? No. But even if the Democrats came back with a super majority, I think it is incumbent upon us to work with the minority party. They represent people. And this is what we kept trying to tell them. We represent almost 48% of Arizonans. How can we shut them out? We have to remember that even the minority represents Arizona and we have to include them. So I’m hoping that whoever’s in leadership will remember that.

Also for practical reasons, right? The fact that there would still be a Republican governor and possibly a Republican majority in the Senate would at least necessitate working with the Republican minority in the House, just because you’re going to have to deal with Republicans at some point down the line. 

Absolutely. We don’t know what the Senate is going to look like. It could go Democrat, we’re hoping it will, but we will still have a Republican sitting in the Governor’s Office for two more years. And so we have to work together. We have to make sure those lines of communication are open.

It was pretty clear this year that even within the Republican Party, things were not running particularly smoothly. There was a fair amount of discord and dissatisfaction with Speaker Bowers among Republicans. I think a lot of Republicans felt that they were left out of the loop with the governor as much as the Democrats are. What’s the way to overcome that? 

It’s gotta be communication. A lot of the discord was the fact that people didn’t know what was going on. People had no idea what was happening – when are we going to come in and when are we not going to come in? What kind of chaos? It was just unbelievable. I would hear from our caucus all the time – have you heard from Speaker Bowers? Has he called you? I would remind them that, as you said, a lot of the Republican members were feeling the same thing. We have to have open lines of communication.

How do these things affect the ability of the chamber to actually craft effective policy and govern – not just the discord, but also scandals like (Rep. David) Cook?

It cast a shadow on everyone. You brought up Cook as a scandal, but then you have to remember, we had (Rep. David) Stringer before that. It cast a shadow, and I’m thinking that maybe that is what hindered the work that the majority was doing – or I should say, not doing. They were focusing on individual members, rather than the greater good. So I think when you’re focused on trying to get something in order over here, something on the other side will suffer. And we were the something on the other side.

Obviously there was not a ton of cooperation, but even beyond that, I think the tone of debate in the House was. Obviously there are legitimate ideological differences, but when you look at the Senate, they’re much more conciliatory. Was being loud and aggressive part of an overarching strategy for debate? Or is that just a function of how the House operates?

The Senate is a much smaller group, right away you can see that. And we have 29 members, they have their constituency that wants to be heard. Some people can call it loud and unruly. But when you don’t have your bill heard, what else do you have? The only thing we have is the microphone and our voice. I think we were doing what we should have been doing for years and years and years. I think Democrats have finally found their voice. They have their constituencies to represent.

If the Democrats take the House, is your plan to make a bid for speaker? Where do you see yourself in that mix?

Where I see myself right now is getting us to the majority. That’s what I’m working towards. Once we get there we’ll figure out where the cards fall. All 29 of us, our focus should be on getting re-elected and bringing more Democrats, taking over and being in the majority.