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The district’s previous supervisor was Democrat Sharon Bronson, who won the post in 1996 and went on to serve six full terms. She was re-elected to her seventh term in 2020, but resigned late last year citing a fall and health issues. Sylvia Lee was appointed by the board to the seat in December, not only for her decades of administrative and governing experience in the Pima Community College system, but because she also committed to not run for the seat in this year’s election.

Come Nov. 5, District 3 residents will be casting their votes for their third supervisor in less than a year.

Three candidates are vying for the post: Jennifer “Jen” Allen, who handedly won a crowded Democratic primary in July; Republican Janet “JL” Wittenbraker, who unsuccessfully challenged Tucson Mayor Regina Romero last November; and Iman-Utopia Layjou Bah, a Senegalese-born author and Independent candidate who ran for Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District in 2020.

The victor will represent District 3 on the board through 2028. The county’s largest district at about 7,400 square miles, it shares 130 miles of border with Mexico, and if it were a state, it would have a larger footprint than Connecticut and Delaware, according to .

While the candidates see many of the same issues confronting the district, they have difference perspectives on how to resolve them, as well as on what the office entails.

Allen

Jen Allen’s campaign, in the third quarter of this year — July 14 through Sept. 30 — raised more than $35,500 and spent $47,618, according to her latest campaign finance , making her the fundraising leader among District 3 candidates.

Some notable contributions she received in that quarter include $6,000 from the Jane Fonda Climate PAC and $3,325 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees PAC. Since her campaign organized in November of last year, it has raised over $193,000 and spent over $167,000.

Allen said her campaign expanded its outreach since the primary to hear from not only Democrats, but the same issues come up: affordable housing, higher bills, homelessness, those struggling from addiction or mental health issues or trauma, climate change, water scarcity and “ensuring that the county resources, services and infrastructure are getting beyond the urban areas.”

If elected, she told the Star, one of her first priorities in office would be to help develop and contribute to long-term planning, such as the county’s long-range development plan and its climate action plan, as well as ensuring her future office sets its own four-year plan. A top priority would be a robust outreach campaign to residents, she said.

“I think the best sort of community participation is when you take it to the whole community. District 3 is so big, you can’t just have an event at a library in Tucson and expect to get robust participation. So we have to ensure that we are getting out to places where people are,” Allen said. “We need to be reaching to the labor unions, folks who are working outdoors, folks who work in different sectors and who experience the impacts of climate change differently.”

Allen said she wants to begin looking at ways the board can support more community solar growth despite limits “that have been imposed by the state Legislature” and the Arizona Corporation Commission. Ideally, she said, this would include incentivizing new homes and commercial buildings that incorporate solar in their construction, as well as retrofitting older structures.

Housing should be viewed as a basic human right, something that is fundamental to a community, not a luxury, especially as climate change accelerates, Allen said. Changes need to first come from the state level because the Legislature “has preempted the county from making changes” to its zoning that would allow it “to really adapt and provide for the complexity of needs,” she said. But there are a few things the county must do in the meantime, she said, such as keeping prices of apartment rentals and other rents in check.

“Rent can’t, shouldn’t just be able to be jacked up at any rate, to people out to flip it (a complex or house) and charge higher rent. ... We can’t survive here without having four walls and a roof over our head, but it needs to be safe. It needs to be dignified,” Allen said. “I’ve knocked on doors of people whose landlords have not fixed their air conditioning when it was peak, sweltering, humid heat. ... That’s what housing starts to look like when housing is not seen as a human need and a human right, but it is left to be thought of as an investment.”

Allen said she would look into options she called “rent stabilization,” like pegging rent prices to a consumer price index.

Bah

Iman-Utopia Layjou Bah, the Independent candidate, said he sees an opportunity to help bridge the partisan divide.

“We’ve got to make it so (people aren’t) forced to play this game where things are black and white, blue or red, so on and so forth,” he said. “I’m hoping to actually get in there and just stand on my own two feet, hold my convictions close to my heart and serve the people without thinking about party speak (or) having the backing of people in my party. I just want to be my own man, and serve the people.”

Bah raised more than $1,800 in the third quarter and spent over $2,200. Since July, he has raised over $2,600 and spent $2,564, he .

His election bid centers on a few issues Bah sees as crucial: eliminating hunger and food insecurity, cleaning up neighborhoods, and fighting the “scourge” of hard drugs. But the biggest problem facing Pima County, he said during the hosted by the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson, is “the struggle to get comfortable living.”

He told the Star this isn’t just about affordability, but about promoting empathy and compassion of community members for their neighbors.

While there are “macro forces” influencing the affordability of living here, Bah said, something he would push the county to do if elected is begin a program that essentially operates as a nonprofit. It would take county-owned land, develop rental units on it, then charge tenants just enough to “break even” so that “the county is its own investor,” instead of heavily relying on private developers to bring more housing units.

Food insecurity “should be a thing of the past” at the current state of our society, Bah said. He said government involvement, such as spending tax dollars to supply food banks, should be limited, but that the county can easily allow pantries that give away food, and food drives operated by charitable organizations, to set up in county-operated spaces.

Such incremental changes will allow the county to “set its sights” to greater goals, like tackling the housing crisis, he said.

Bah said improving the physical state of neighborhoods will be a point of pride for residents and will set those areas up for success in the long run.

“You go into some neighborhoods, obviously in Tucson... some are just ugly, just filthy, just dirty. It’s almost embarrassing, and shameful,” he said. “One (reason) is esthetic, but that’s just one aspect of it ... (also) the aspect of wealth. Property values, of course, are very much tied to how an area looks.”

To combat the opioid epidemic locally, Bah said, the county needs to stop jailing drug users; instead, “attack the supply” by expanding undercover law enforcement operations to go after dealers and distributors, he said. “I don’t think there’s enough pressure being applied. I think it’s too easy for these people to find small dealers to make these transactions,” he said.

Wittenbraker

Since organizing in January, Janet “JL” Wittenbraker’s campaign has raised $31,714 and spent $29,196 through September. In the third quarter she raised $12,101 and spent $10,576, according to the latest campaign finance .

Wittenbraker, a Republican, said she is vying for the seat because she isn’t comfortable “with how my local government is being run.” It’s time for career politicians to “step back” to let “everyday guys and gals” step up to make a difference, she said.

“I’m not comfortable with the expenditures and I believe we can do better through fiscal responsibility as well as understanding the role of government. Our government has gotten really, very big,” she said. “They’re providing services that are not mandated by the state statute.”

“The primary focus of the Board of Supervisors is in fact the budget, allocation of that budget and ensuring that the (county administrator) is running the services.”

Wittenbraker said that despite the size of the county’s budget, “we’re not seeing significant improvements in our community” in areas including economic development, crime, homelessness and housing affordability.

The first step, Wittenbraker told the Star, is to hone in on core services like improving roads and infrastructure, increasing support and funding for law enforcement, and improving public spaces such as parks and their amenities. Doing so will attract economic growth to Pima County by making it a cleaner, more attractive prospect for new businesses to move in, she said.

In addition to attracting economic growth, Wittenbraker’s priorities are listed on her : fighting “rising crime” and “ending the border crisis,” fixing the county’s “failing infrastructure,” collaborating with other local governments here and ending the homelessness crisis.

The county can “foster growth” and reduce crime recidivism, she said, by holding space in the county’s employee pool to hire people once they get out of prison.

“What we tend to do as a society and a government is, once people get out of prison, we continue to punish them. We don’t allow them to heal,” Wittenbraker told the Star. “Now, I don’t think prison should be a country club. You’ve committed a crime, you’re in prison. But should we have tools for people to actually begin redevelopment, that rehabilitation process? I absolutely think so.”

While immigration at the southern border is a federal issue, Wittenbraker said, the county taking federal funds — “that’s your taxpayer dollars” — to help alleviate the prospect of street releases of migrants “concealed a problem from the eyes of the people.”

Wittenbraker said she has a feeling that “if we had 500,000 street releases, then the attention would have been focused on that, and perhaps the problem (would have been) solved sooner.”

“Instead we hid the problem from the people. It was hidden from them, so much so that now it has an impact on our inflation, our community (and) our housing prices,” she said. “This is a failure by the federal government, but it was enabled by your local government. ... It was irresponsible for them to accept the money.”

The first step towards fixing “failing infrastructure,” Wittenbraker said, will be voters casting their ballots for or against the second iteration of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) plan, which the for a November 2025 election date.

Wittenbraker said at an Aug. 31 forum that homelessness is an issue for the society it’s happening in, not the government, and that “it’s on you to work towards ending homelessness, it’s not necessarily on your government. It’s fundamentally that simple.”

In an interview with the Star, she said government cannot simply walk away from the issue, but “I think the idea would be to phase your government out of it.”

“It sounds cruel to say, and again it breaks my heart to see people suffering on the street, and they are suffering ... but what we’re doing is not working. And when the government got involved,” she said, specifically with the housing first approach, “it actually got worse.”

Wittenbraker said she wants to see the public get more involved in tackling the issue alongside its government, through charitable and volunteer work.

“A call to the public and ask for involvement is fine, but any kind of incentive must be felt within that individual, spiritually and emotionally,” she said. “I guess you incentivize (the public) by not putting the entire burden on the government. I’m personally incentivized to volunteer. I work. I spend a great deal of time in the disabled community as well as within the veteran community, and that’s where I receive fulfillment.”