If you had asked Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona 20 years ago if she would ever serve in the House of Representatives, when she was just starting out as a volunteer for the GOP in Glendale, she would have said no.
Lesko, who has established herself as a fierce critic of “Medicare for all” and illegal immigration in her first term, didn’t immerse herself in politics until 2008. Thanks to encouragement from fellow community and party volunteers, she ran for a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives and won. After six years in the House, she joined the state Senate and served as president pro tempore.
Her plan was to become the second woman to serve as Arizona’s Senate president until her congressman, Republican Trent Franks, announced in December 2017 that he would retire after coming under fire for asking two female staff members if they would carry his child as a surrogate. Lesko said she liked Franks and never intended to challenge him in a regular election.
Once again, colleagues and friends encouraged her to throw her hat in the ring. Lesko successfully ran for the seat in the special election, beating out 11 fellow Republicans and two Democrats. She was sworn in just five months after Franks’ announcement.
“Like all special election congressmen and congresswomen, I had no orientation, no time to find a place to live. I had to hire a whole bunch of staff kind of fast. I’ve just been running ever since,” Lesko laughed.
She now represents the 8th Congressional District, an area in which 20% of the population is over 64 years old and eligible for Medicare. Lesko said citizens in her district don’t like Obamacare, but they dislike the sound of Medicare for All even more.
“I think that’s why Joe Biden is kind of staying away from that because he realizes it’s a political loser,” Lesko said. “I was surprised when the Rules Committee put [the Medicare for All plan] through, not only because it’s politically bad, it’s just bad.”
The Medicare program works for many seniors who need health coverage, Lesko conceded, but she said it’s a flawed program. She said her father had gotten a severe infection in the hospital years ago and had to be on an IV drip with a strong antibiotic. An independent man, Lesko’s father wanted to undergo treatments in the comfort of his home, but Medicare wouldn’t pay for it.
Lesko said, “They would pay for him to go into this assisted living center where you’d have to live there, stay there, eat there, and that’s ridiculous. It’d be so much cheaper to the taxpayer and the government to have him stay home.”
Her views on Medicare for All don’t stray too far from those of her conservative colleagues in Congress. She supports protections for pre-existing conditions, though, which became a major point of contention in the 2017 GOP effort to replace the Affordable Care Act.
Lesko was an early supporter of Republican Congressman Greg Walden’s Pre-Existing Conditions Protection Act of 2019. Even before she signed on as a cosponsor in March, Lesko kept busy drafting several bills of her own.
Most of the bills Lesko has drafted pertain to immigration reform, an issue that her constituents on the outskirts of Phoenix bring up often in town halls. While she has spent much of her first term focused on immigration, Lesko recently turned her attention to another issue that hits close to home for her.
Lesko wrote a bill, the Protecting Women Act of 2019, to extend programs through the end of the fiscal year that aid victims of domestic abuse. Some of the aid programs she wishes to extend include providing legal assistance for women, as well as access to treatment and counseling.
“I am a survivor of domestic violence myself from a previous marriage,” Lesko said. “This is a subject I know about. It’s a subject I’m involved in. I’m involved in some domestic violence shelters [in my district] and help them raise money here. This is something I know about and am passionate about.”
As co-chair of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues and one of 15 Republican representatives in the organization, Lesko plans to make advocacy for women one of several focal points in her legislative agenda, which hones in on healthcare and immigration reform as well.
Lesko is up for reelection in 2020, and in addition to the myriad immigration bills she’s working on, she said she will forge ahead with her agenda on women’s issues.
Despite the slower pace at which bills and resolutions move at the federal level compared to that of the state level she’s accustomed to, Lesko said, “I continue to support, cosponsor, and sponsor legislation that I believe in and a majority of my constituents believe in.”
