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Isabel Araiza
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Isabel Araiza ran for election for Mayor of Corpus Christi in Texas. She lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Araiza completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Isabel Araiza was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. She earned a high school diploma from Mary Carroll High School, an associate degree from Del Mar College in 1994, a bachelor's degree from the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in 1995, and a Ph.D. from Boston College in 2004. Her career experience includes working as a professor.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Mayoral election in Corpus Christi, Texas (2024)
General runoff election
General runoff election for Mayor of Corpus Christi
Incumbent Paulette Guajardo defeated Michael Hunter in the general runoff election for Mayor of Corpus Christi on December 14, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Paulette Guajardo (Nonpartisan) | 50.6 | 14,283 |
| Michael Hunter (Nonpartisan) | 49.4 | 13,933 | ||
| Total votes: 28,216 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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General election
General election for Mayor of Corpus Christi
The following candidates ran in the general election for Mayor of Corpus Christi on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Paulette Guajardo (Nonpartisan) | 47.6 | 46,759 |
| ✔ | Michael Hunter (Nonpartisan) | 34.6 | 33,966 | |
| Isabel Araiza (Nonpartisan) | 11.3 | 11,058 | ||
 | Joshua Fraedrick (Nonpartisan) | 4.6 | 4,554 | |
| Anthem Powers (Nonpartisan) | 1.0 | 949 | ||
| John Calkusic (Nonpartisan) | 0.9 | 848 | ||
| Total votes: 98,134 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Araiza in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Isabel Araiza completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Araiza's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I was born and raised in Corpus Christi. I'm a graduate of Carroll HS, Del Mar College, and TAMUCC. I earned a PhD in Sociology from Boston College. Eight years ago, I co-founded a local grassroots group called For the Greater Good that has been advocating for quality of life issues in the Coastal Bend since 2016. I decided to run for mayor out of concern for the way special interests are driving our city's policies and priorities, to the detriment of residents' well-being. Our local government has been working quite well for the rich, the powerful, the well-connected. It's time for government to work for the people, their families, and our future. In order for that to happen, Corpus Christi needs a mayor to who will prioritize the lives of workers, their families, and the vulnerable in our community. I will be that mayor for Corpus Christi.
- I will prioritize public needs before corporate greed. We need to stop slashing the budgets for city services that directly impact our quality of life. We need to invest resources in our neighborhood roads and sidewalks, neighborhood parks, libraries, senior and recreation services. We need to adequately fund and staff vector control, solid waste, and animal care services.
- We can invest in the resources by requiring rich corporations to pay their fair share. Right now billion-dollar corporations don't have to pay taxes, they pay fees which only account for 9% of our general fund budget. They've been getting sweetheart deals from the city for decades; these handouts need to stop because they come at the expense of the people.
- We need to protect our environment--the water, air, and soil. The city's desalination plans will destroy the bay and threaten local economic sectors that rely on the bay. The desalination plans are to recruit more polluting industries to our areas, which will harm our health and well-being. Our asthma, cancer, and other illness-related statistics are already too high. We don't need more industry that will make our community sicker. Not only is desalination bad for the environment and our health, it is bad for our utility rates as well. Moreover, we need leadership willing to monitor these industries. I will prioritize collaborating with universities and non-governmental organizations to monitor our air, water, and soil.
The area of public policy I am most passionate about is policy that focuses on public infrastructure. The issues related to desalination and our city's water supply compelled me to run for office. I also think that public institutions and spaces like libraries, recreation programs, senior centers, and parks are critical to quality-of-life issues, so I find myself thinking and reading about that often too.
I admire Dolores Huerta immensely. She's served as an inspiration to me for a really long time. She was a teacher, but when she saw that her students were starving and cold and she concluded that the children would not be able to learn effectively because their parents, who were farm workers, were not getting paid enough, she left her teaching job to try to help the farmworkers. To me, that was so admirable. She is so smart and tenacious, and even into her 90s, she's still trying to make a difference. I love her so much.
The books that immediately come to mind that can help the public understand my political philosophy are: _Palaces for the People_ by Eric Klinenberg; _American Society How It Really Works_ by Eric Olin Wright and Joel Rogers, _The Rich and the Rest of Us_ by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West; and _Wealth and Democracy_ by Kevin Phillips. There are more, but I think this is a good list with which to start, and you will see their ideas and even phrasing when I talk about my priorities and platform.
A willingness to view items that come before the council from multiple perspectives, especially from vulnerable and marginalized segments of the population.
I'm smart. I'm hardworking. I believe in government and its power to act affirmatively for the community. I'm thoughtful, and I think my sociological imagination and the way I was trained as a sociologist will help me be a successful officeholder.
Important core responsibilities are to listen to constituents, to also try to learn from those who don't have the time or resources to make it to council meetings. Most recently, I've come to appreciate that the mayor needs to know Robert's Rules of Order and to use them, otherwise they lose control of the council meetings.
I want people to feel hope with the way I work and serve the community. I would like to hope that I can inspire them to feel that they deserve better than what they are getting from our public institutions.
All events in the past are historical. Personally, I would say the birth of my brother, Juan, was a major event in my life. I was four. I remember getting to carry him and was so excited the first time I carried him. I remembered trying to prepare myself, so I would carry him safely. The first historical major public historical event I remember as a child was going to Buc Stadium to hear Presidential candidate Walter Mondale speak. I don't remember him speaking, but I remember going and that being a big deal because this might be the next president of the United States. I think I was about 8 or 9.
My first job was working at my grandmother's store, the TexMex Newstand. I used to scrape gum off the ground, clean the display cases and store front window, sweep the store front, and cut herbs. I did that work for years. I lived in the house that was connected to my grandma's store
Please look at my list of books related to my political philosophy, as I love all those books.
As a leader, the mayor is in charge of the agenda and running the council meetings which means they play an influential role in setting the priorities and vision for the city. They also can send important messages to the community by the type of people they appoint to committees and by the choices they make in which events and meetings to attend and not attend.
In this instance, the mayor's top priority is to read, review, and reflect on the memos, agendas, updates, presentations given and to ask questions on behalf of different interest groups and segments of the population within the community.
I love and admire the people. I collected over 900 signatures from registered voters to get on the ballot. During that process, I met a lot of people. A lot of them shared with me their concerns about the community, but also shared with me what they are doing to make their community better. They were so well-informed and thoughtful about the challenges we faced. They inspired me and gave me hope for our city's future. I really feel like we need to be listening to them AND to the city staff about our issues. And... absolutely love the bay. So, those are the two things I love most about the community.
Our greatest challenge over the next decade is changing the philosophy that has been driving our council's decision-making for decades. We've been letting corporate interests drive our decision-making. This philosophy has led to city officials giving away our water and the water we secured in the 1990s to help us when we experienced droughts. This philosophy has led to these industries not paying their fair share, to losing our public hospital, to having a failing public infrastructure. This philosophy has lead to gross inequality in our community and to starved public institutions.
It should be collaborative.
The federal government has so made resources available to local governments. We really need to be pursing that grant dollars.
The mayor's office needs to have a balanced approach with law enforcement where she listens to the concerns of the community as well as collaborates with law enforcement so that law enforcement can fulfill their mission for the community.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 278, Coastal Bend Labor Council, the National Association of Letter Carriers Union, Texas Campaign for the Environment, Sierra Club's Texas Lone Star Chapter, Moms Demand Action Gun Sense
We need to have it!!! The current council has members who have violated the Open Meetings Act without consequence. Moreover, we don't have agencies, departments, or officials in other levels of government who are holding people accountable. This undermines the public's trust in our public institutions and leaders, which is terrible.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on October 9, 2024
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