A Dedicated Community Activist on the Move!
"Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet."
— Alice Walker
Equal Rights, Health Care, Elections, Social Justice, Women's Issues, Writing, Speaking ... Real Leadership for the 21st Century!
Claudia Ellquist has lived in Tucson since 1962. She graduated from Palo Verde High School in 1966, worked her way through the University of Arizona to graduate in 1973 (with a break to work as an urban community organizer for her church), and then graduated from the University of Arizona law school in 1976. Yes, she was a classmate of the incumbent, and her first task upon deciding to run was to call and say, "Barbara, I don't want you to read this in the newspaper."
So, who is Claudia Ellquist?
Claudia Ellquist's leadership has been acknowledged with numerous community honors. But more than being a recitation of a lifetime of good works on behalf of women and families, her special kind of leadership is as someone who shares your understanding of what is important, who has the vision and creativity to plan how to get from here to there, and who can inspire people and organize institutions to take those steps toward a better way of doing things.
Claudia has been an elected leader with the National Organization for Women since 1977
As an elected leader with the National Organization for Women (NOW) since 1977, she has given continuous service and counsel on local, state, and national NOW boards. She chaired Tucson NOW's Silent Witness project, which chronicled domestic violence deaths, and she and husband John marched with the Witnesses in Washington, DC. She has worked on employment discrimination, the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive rights, child care, anti-racism, elderly women's issues (such as pension and health care), stopping violence against women, and stopping hate crimes.
In 1994, Tucson NOW honored Claudia as its 4th annual Woman of Courage, after she lead the largest successful recall in the history of Arizona, the recall of Pima County Assessor Alan Lang. In Lang's first year of a four-year term, he was charged with sexual harassment five times and arrested twice for domestic violence. Neither the County Attorney nor the Board of Supervisors could remove him from office, so Claudia organized NOW activists to collect 91,000 signatures in four months and decisively ousted Lang.
She was a key organizer in the campaign, that began in 1995, to expand AHCCCS health care to all Arizonans living in poverty. As a member of the Healthy Arizona PAC (now Healthy Arizona ), she created and oversaw the signature-gathering campaign, directing hundreds of volunteers, for both 1996's Proposition 203, and 2000's Proposition 204. She helped design and run the ballot campaign, including successfully suing the state—twice. Subsequently, she worked to monitor implementation, write budgets and get grants, organize AHCCCS outreach forums, and assess institutional follow-through and proposed additional legislation and ballot measures.
Claudia's activism in health care campaigns has helped more than 130,000 new people, mainly women and their children, have health care through AHCCCS
More than 130,000 new people, mainly women and their children, have health care through AHCCCS as a result. In 2001, Claudia received the Spirit of Service award from the Arizona Season for Nonviolence Interfaith Committee in recognition of this work. But the real stamp of approval was the overwhelming vote, twice, but the citizens of Arizona enacting these measures into law. Voters in every county in the state, including Pima, agreed with the values of fairness and equity involved in seeing that working people got access to health care.
Her collaborative work challenging the death penalty, through the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty, led in 2001 to the end of executions in Arizona for persons with an IQ of 70 or below. This effort was strategically timed to assist the U.S. Supreme Court in recognizing the evolving standards of decency against such practices and in abolishing the practice nationwide. She was honored as the 2003 Abolitionist of the Year.
Her concern with the issue of mental illness led her to befriend and be private fiduciary to a Tucson woman with schizophrenia for 13 years, until her death in 1994. A member of AMISA, she organized last year's CWU forum on congregational responses to mental illness.
As a founding commissioner for the Citizen's Clean Elections Commission, Claudia oversaw the collection and management of millions of dollars in surcharges on court-ordered civil and criminal fines, hiring administrators, drafting and enforcing rules, and sitting in judgment on allegations of law violations
In civic service, she has registered thousands of voters, has spoken at LWV forums, and has been appointed as a founding Commissioner on the powerful Arizona Clean Elections Commission, serving from 1999–2001. Clean Elections has made it easier for more candidates to run for office, on an even footing, and meant more and better choices for voters. As a founding Commissioner, Claudia helped create the institutional underpinnings for a system that withstood five court challenges from unhappy, nonparticipating politicians. Her shared responsibilities on the Commission included overseeing the collection and management of millions of dollars in surcharges on court-ordered civil and criminal fines, hiring administrators, drafting and enforcing rules under the statute, distributing appropriate amounts to qualifying candidates, sitting in judgment on allegations of law violations, and designing an enduring and sustainable institution that has not lost its focus.
Claudia organizes the annual Christmas cookie drive with the chaplain at the Pima County Jail, testifies at clemency hearings, cooks a meal for her congregation (where she is an Elder) 10 times a year and for Primavera once a year, and carries forward in her personal life the values of her public life. In particular, she has helped create opportunities in Tucson for women's growth, leadership, and power on issues of peace, justice, freedom, and dignity.
She is a prolific writer, editor, and e-alert sender. She speaks at rallies, conferences, and high school classes in discussions of Feminist Issues, or Cooperative Leadership, or How the Legal/Political System Works/Doesn't Work (and How to Do It Better). She speaks to WILPF, PHASE, Southern AZ Rural Network, AZ Rural Healthcare Conference, NOW, LWV, AAUW, the Green party of the United Statesm and Church Women United. She taught classes for Pima College for five years on Women and Society. She brought YWCA anti-racism training to the local and state Church Women United and to a free banquet for 100 Disciples women meeting at First Christian Church. The YWCA presented her with its prestigious "Woman on the Move Award" in 2003 in recognition of her lifetime achievements on behalf of women and families in our community.
For 15 years she has served as a local, state, and national leader for Church Women United (CWU) in ecumenical action. This action involves training and organizing women of many denominations—Catholic, Orthodox and protestant—on legislative and societal issues, especially affecting women and families. Her projects include expanded access to health care, religious response to domestic violence, ending the trafficking in women and children, and challenging images of women and children in the media. She received the 1999 CWU Valiant Woman award. She has spoken at conferences across the nation and has authored articles in the CWU national publication about clemency hearings, making peace, and taking steps to create and honor diversity. As the elected chair of the national Action and Global Concerns Committee, she currently leads the organization's efforts toward human rights, justice and "Making the world a place fit for children," supervising staff in the CWU Legislative Office in Washington DC, and volunteers at the CWU desk at the United Nations.
Claudia Ellquist understands and articulates the best of our community values
Over her career, Claudia Ellquist has recruited countless women, and men, of all ages and backgrounds to discover their own style of leadership and gifts, to address those who hold power, and to claim their voice in remaking reality so it fits them, rather than being compressed into boxes by the barricades of limitation. She is behind the scenes more often than out front because she has convinced someone else: "You can do it, here are some tips, it's easier than you think ... you were great!"
The key to all this is that Claudia Ellquist understands and articulates the best of our community values. She is hard-working and is a consensus builder because she is effective in complex and demanding environments, in recognizing what change is needed and beneficial, in moving the pieces that make it happen. It is time for a change, and here is the candidate who has made change and who can make the change we need.