Email records show Engels maintained a close working relationship with far-left groups.
As part of her bid to unseat first-term Representative Juan Ciscomani (R.) in Arizona’s Tucson-area sixth congressional district this November, Democratic former state legislator and environmental attorney Kirsten Engel is promising to “make our communities safer.”
But her close ties to several anti-police activist groups during her time in the Arizona statehouse could undercut her centrist pitch in a tossup race that may determine the balance of power in Washington come January.
While serving in the state legislature, Engel spent years developing close relationships with two progressive groups that have expressed support for defunding the police, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and prison abolition — American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Living United For Change In Arizona (LUCHA) — as well as Creosote Partners, a firm that has a history of lobbying for both groups.
Email records show that throughout her time as a local legislator, Engel maintained a close working relationship with both groups. She asked them for help crafting criminal-justice reform and budget-related policies and promoted their work to constituents and Democratic lawmakers.
“Marilyn and Nate, the House Dem JUD committee has drafted the attached letter to Dir. Shinn,” Engel wrote in an email to AFSC’s lobbyist Marilyn Rodriguez on March 27, 2020, obtained via a public records request and shared with National Review. She was asking them to assist her with a prison-reform letter that would be signed by state lawmakers.
“Do you have any suggested edits/comments on this before we send out? Thanks for keeping us up to date on what ACLU, etc. is suggesting we do.”
Three days later, Engel sent a follow-up email to Rodriguez, AFSC’s Caroline Isaacs and Joe Watson, and others, saying: “I can’t thank you enough for your help last week in crafting this letter.”
Her close ties to AFSC are curious given the group’s controversial views on Israel and criminal-justice reform. While the Quaker-founded social justice organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 for its work helping victims of Nazi Germany, AFSC has gotten flak in recent years for what critics say is anti-Israel and anti-police activism.
In 2008, for example, the group came under fire for co-hosting an interfaith dinner with Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ten years later, the group’s leaders were blacklisted from Israel for its support of the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for “companies that support the occupation, settlements, militarism, or any other violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.”
AFSC also has a history of anti-police rhetoric, including an article in October 2020 titled “6 reasons why it’s time to defund the police,” echoing the policy agenda of the Black Lives Matter movement during the racial reckoning four years ago.
Email records show that Engel has been eager to collaborate with the group. In December 2020, Engel invited AFSC and its lobbyist to “present at the Senate Democratic Caucus” with a PowerPoint on Democrats’ criminal justice reform priorities as well as “gun violence prevention bills,” among other agenda items.
A December 2020 congressional newsletter Engel sent to supporters promoted the panel she spoke on alongside AFSC and its lobbyist at a Senate Democratic retreat. At the time she was ranking member of Arizona’s senate judiciary committee.
Engel’s close ties to AFSC date back to at least 2018, when she thanked an AFSC staffer for sending her a recap of a drug-policy bill. Later that year, Engel sought to arrange a presentation by an AFSC-led criminal justice reform coalition to the state legislature.
In 2021, her final year in the state legislature, AFSC thanked Engel for being an “ambassador” to the organization because she promoted the activist group’s post-card campaign for sentencing reform legislation. Engel had her communications director reach out to the press to spread the word about the postcard campaign.
Engel also attended private meetings with LUCHA, a group that has said the “police do not protect or serve us,” demanded that the Phoenix “defund police and invest in communities,” and posted social-media hashtags supporting the abolition of ICE and “#ChingaLaMigra, which loosely translates to “#F***BorderPatrol” in Spanish.
“Senator Engel, Thank you for accepting our invitation for LUCHA Lobby Day! During this time you will hear from your constituents about issues that they are trying to address at the state legislature,” the group’s lobbyist Natalya Brown emailed Engel on February 24, 2021. Attached in Brown’s email were one-page policy briefs on LUCHA’s priorities and a Zoom link to join the “lobby day” event.
A month later, speaking out against a criminal-justice bill, Engel read aloud “very eloquent and articulate” testimony from a LUCHA representative who strongly opposed the legislation. LUCHA did not sign up in time to speak at the committee hearing, but Engel spread the organization’s message nonetheless.
In April 2021, Creosote Partners, the lobbying firm for AFSC and LUCHA, sent a Google calendar invitation to Engel’s email address for an event titled: “HP: LUCHA Budget Priorities with Sen. Engel.”
She attended another meeting with LUCHA in June 2022 at the group’s new Tucson office. Posting about the meeting on social media, Engel thanked LUCHA for its voter-registration efforts. Before that, Engel applauded LUCHA on social media in March 2021 for its activism and celebrated the group’s endorsement of her 2020 state senate campaign.
Concerns surrounding the Democratic congressional candidate’s left-wing criminal justice views are not new.
During a September 2020 candidate debate for legislative district ten, a moderator asked Engel about “defund the police” and whether she’d support “a reduction in police budgets to fund social programs and including a shift of some of police responsibilities to social workers?” Engel responded: “Yeah, Hank, the way you’ve asked that question I agree with. I agree with it. I don’t — what I see is a shifting. What we need to do is shift where the money is going. Not every call to 911 requires a police officer to show up at your door.”
Now, less than one in five Americans publicly support defunding the police, and Engel claims to reject the once-popular activist demand.
Press for comment, Engel said that as a state legislator, she “believed in getting things done.”
“That meant listening to people I disagreed with on a wide range of issues, including Republicans and Democrats, so we could identify and pass solutions that make life better for southern Arizonans,” Engel added in her statement to National Review. “Unfortunately, that’s a stark difference from Juan Ciscomani’s time in Washington, where he has blindly followed his party bosses and voted to raise costs for Arizonans and reject a bipartisan border security deal backed by the Border Patrol that would have made us safer.”