Frustrated Arizonans have waited more than a month for their new congresswoman to be seated
By Steve Contorno, Ashley Killough, CNN
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) — For years, immigration attorney Rachel Wilson has relied on her local congressional office to help untangle bureaucratic knots that threaten her clients’ ability to live and work in the United States.
That aid used to come from the staff of longtime Rep. Raúl Grijalva, until his death in March. When his daughter, Adelita Grijalva, won a special election on September 23 to replace him, Wilson expected a seamless handoff.
Instead, more than a month later, the local congressional office in Tucson is shuttered and the phones ring unanswered. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to swear in Grijalva, a Democrat, while the government is shut down, leaving the residents of her sprawling southern Arizona district without a vote in Congress — or help back home.
“Here I am paying taxes to the federal government,” Wilson said from her Tucson office this week, “and not only is it closed but I don’t have a representative either.”
Grijalva spent much of the week in Washington unable to access government email and federal systems. While most congressional offices are buzzing with activity, her suite on the Hill remains mostly quiet and many desks sit empty. She doesn’t have the resources or authority, she said, to staff a district office or assist constituents who try to contact her. Without security privileges, she’s barred from bringing so much as a hammer into the Capitol for hanging pictures. It would be considered a weapon, she said.
“I am basically a tourist with an office in DC,” she told CNN this week.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to force Johnson to seat Grijalva. But the Republican leader has remained adamant he won’t administer the oath until the House is back in session — which he said won’t happen until the Senate passes a spending bill to reopen the government.
“I’m willing and anxious to do that,” he said this week.
Meanwhile, frustration in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District is mounting as residents enter a second month without a voice in the country’s halls of power. At a weekend “No Kings” rally in Tucson opposing President Donald Trump, chants of “Swear her in!” echoed throughout the crowd.
“We’re all shocked,” said Ross Sheard, a retired schoolteacher and administrator in Tucson. He and his wife, former principal Susie Cervantes Sheard, voted early for Grijalva, who they knew from her two decades on the local school board, and eagerly awaited her swearing in. They’re still waiting.
“It’s a damn shame,” Sheard said.
A massive district without a voice
The lack of representation comes as Arizona’s 7th Congressional District is at the frontlines of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Its boundaries include nearly all of the state’s border with Mexico — hundreds of miles Trump has vowed to close off with a wall. When Republicans stage appearances at the US-Mexico border in Arizona — as Trump and Vice President JD Vance have over the past two years — they’re almost always standing in the 7th District.
It’s a massive district, jutting into parts of the Phoenix suburbs, Tucson and Yuma that are only reachable after hours of driving through cactus-lined two-lane desert roads. It includes a 1.9 million-acre Air Force range, multiple ports of entry and a large veterans’ hospital. It’s home to several Native American reservations and the University of Arizona. One-in-six residents are seniors on Social Security and nearly half are covered by Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for lower-income individuals.
Raúl Grijalva represented the district in Congress for more than two decades. Weeks after his death, Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva announced she would seek her late father’s seat. Running on the strength of her family name, she sailed to victory in the Democratic primary this summer and then defeated Republican Daniel Butierez in the special election, capturing 70% of the vote.
A vast gulf divided Grijalva and Butierez on most issues, but they both committed to sign onto a bipartisan House effort to release all records related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Grijalva would be the decisive 218th member to support a discharge petition and force a House vote on the Epstein files over the objections of Johnson and Trump.
Grijalva has asserted the delay is an attempt to block a vote on the Epstein files. Among her supporters, that’s a given.
“If Donald is innocent, then why wouldn’t he want them totally out? Expose everybody, Democrat, Republican, whomever. It’s time,” said Doug Hayden, a homebuilder from Green Valley, Arizona. “Just gotta swear her in and let her do her job that we elected her for.”
Johnson has denied the saga is related to the push to release the Epstein files, which has support from a handful of Republicans in addition to House Democrats. He claimed he is following a precedent not to swear-in new members during a recess set by his predecessor, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. However, earlier this year, Johnson seated a pair of Florida Republicans less than 24 hours after their special election victories at a time when the House was not in regular session. The move filled two House vacancies and bolstered Johnson’s narrow majority at a critical time.
Butierez, who is planning to challenge Grijalva again next November, said the congresswoman-elect has made the shutdown personal and created an adversarial relationship with Johnson out of the gate that won’t benefit her constituents. He contended her concerns about not getting a paycheck or an email address are minor compared to the problems facing Arizonans after decades of her leadership in local government.
He also suggested that the district is no worse off now than the past two years, when her father missed more than 500 votes while battling cancer.
“Why didn’t anybody care then?” Butierez said.
Government 101
Some Republican voters in the district are unbothered by not having a vote in Congress for the time being and they support Johnson’s reasoning for the delay.
Tucson machine shop owner Jerry Ward dismissed Grijalva’s concerns and he anticipated that as a Republican “we’re not going to have much of a voice” once she is seated.
“But she definitely needs to get her seat, and if she’s patient, it will happen,” he said.
Dangling a fishing line into a community lake in Sahuarita, a union worker named Steve supported Johnson’s position.
“If she’s anything like her father, I don’t blame (Johnson),” he said.
Steve, who declined to give his last name, accused the elder Grijalva of ignoring the hunters and outdoorsmen in the district. “He didn’t do anything. He was a joke.”
That’s not how Wilson, the immigration attorney, remembers Grijalva’s time in government. Over the years, his office assisted her clients when green cards failed to arrive, citizenship applications faced unexpectedly long delays and other challenges caused by a cumbersome immigration system. She noted the award he received in 2018 from the Congressional Management Foundation for outstanding constituent service.
“That’s the level of service we’re accustomed to,” Wilson said.
Some of that work continued even after his passing as his staff kept up constituent services. But his office stopped taking new cases in August and it shut down entirely when Adelita Grijalva won her special election. A Tucson address is still listed as the local point of contact, but notes in English and Spanish taped to the window encouraged residents who come by to instead call one of the state’s two senators.
When Tucson resident Kent Barter cast his ballot for Grijalva, he thought it marked the end of the district’s time without a representative and offices like the one in Tucson would reopen. The former high school government teacher said Republicans in Congress were failing civics.
“Representation is guaranteed by the Constitution, and party politics should be below that,” Barker said. “If you’re voted in, you should have a seat.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.
