Dr. Nina Luxenberg is a Green Party candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission.
A radiology specialist, Dr. Luxenberg touts her more than forty years in health care as instrumental in her belief in people over profits.
A fairly recent Arizona transplant, Dr. Luxenberg says she took up hiking in the Tucson area and fell in love with the landscape. But she couldn’t help noticing the impacts of a mining operation in the Santa Rita Mountains as she got more familiar with the local environment. She joined a local organization drawing attention to the issue and says her political activism flowed from there.
"The first thing I did is I joined Save the Scenic Santa Ritas and it all kind of snowballed from there. It was after that that I joined the Green Party." Dr. Nina Luxenberg
Dr. Luxenberg says the ACC has a role in oversight of companies that supply residents with water service, but questions why the state continues to approve operations, particularly mine permits, that will use millions of gallons of local groundwater, even as many small water companies across the state struggle to maintain operations and seek rate increases from the ACC to cover their expenses.
Concerns over mining and other corporate activities that maintain a state dependence on fossil fuels need more exposure, says Dr. Luxenberg. That’s why she joins her fellow Green Party candidate for the ACC, Mike Cease, and Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Eduardo Quintana in protesting rules that kept them out of the Arizona Clean Elections debate cycle this election season.
"One of the things that's missing is the public accessibility to the rate hearings between the Commission and the utility companies." Dr. Nina Luxenberg
Dr. Luxenberg says voters miss out on an honest and revealing discussion of issues impacting Arizonans when Green Party candidates are not participants in public election events like debates. But Luxenberg says that is par for the course in how some state agencies conduct business. She says the public is not engaged, information is not easily available, and scattered hearings are not enough to ensure transparency.
It matters, says Luxenberg, because she doesn’t see much difference between the two major political parties, whose representatives speak in talking points in a political back and forth that reveals nothing about the issues.
Portions of this interview aired on KAWC's Arizona Edition Friday.
