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M. Pendleton Spicer
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
M. Pendleton Spicer (Libertarian Party) ran for election to the Tucson City Council to represent Ward 2 in Arizona. She lost in the general election on November 7, 2023.
Spicer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
M. Pendleton Spicer was born in Washington, D.C. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona in 1968 and a graduate degree from John F. Kennedy University in 1989. Her career experience includes working as a musician, teacher, veterinary technician, technician, child welfare worker, and psychotherapist. As of 2023, Spicer was affiliated with the John Birch Society.[1]
Elections
2023
See also: City elections in Tucson, Arizona (2023)
General election
General election for Tucson City Council Ward 2
Incumbent Paul Cunningham defeated Ernie Shack and M. Pendleton Spicer in the general election for Tucson City Council Ward 2 on November 7, 2023.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Paul Cunningham (D)  | 63.4 | 59,972 |
 | Ernie Shack (R) | 32.8 | 30,980 | |
 | M. Pendleton Spicer (L) | 3.7 | 3,513 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 115 | ||
| Total votes: 94,580 | |||
| = 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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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Tucson City Council Ward 2
Incumbent Paul Cunningham defeated Lisa Nutt in the Democratic primary for Tucson City Council Ward 2 on August 1, 2023.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Paul Cunningham | 76.6 | 6,728 |
 | Lisa Nutt | 23.1 | 2,027 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.3 | 26 | ||
| Total votes: 8,781 | |||
| = 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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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Helena Owens (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for Tucson City Council Ward 2
Ernie Shack advanced from the Republican primary for Tucson City Council Ward 2 on August 1, 2023.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Ernie Shack | 98.3 | 5,222 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 1.7 | 90 | ||
| Total votes: 5,312 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Libertarian primary election
Libertarian primary for Tucson City Council Ward 2
M. Pendleton Spicer advanced from the Libertarian primary for Tucson City Council Ward 2 on August 1, 2023.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | M. Pendleton Spicer | 95.8 | 46 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 4.2 | 2 | ||
| Total votes: 48 | |||
| = 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 Spicer in this election.
Campaign themes
2023
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
M. Pendleton Spicer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Spicer'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 have lived in Tucson since 1946 and currently live in the house I grew up in. When I was 10-11 years old, my family lived in Oaxaca, Mexico for a year. I went to a Mexican school and became fluent in Spanish. (I am not fluent at this time though I can converse in Spanish.) Other than that year in Mexico, I attended TUSD schools, and then graduated from the University of Arizona majoring in secondary education. After having negative experiences teaching, I started my own business in home repair. I did my own bookkeeping and subsequently added a business as a bookkeeper. In 1985, I moved to Oakland, California to go to graduate school. I received a master's degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, earned a license as a Marriage, Family, and Child Counselor and worked as a Child Welfare Worker in Oakland. I returned to Tucson and the Old Fort Lowell Neighborhood in 1996. I became involved in my neighborhood, The Old Fort Lowell Neighborhood, was elected to the Neighborhood Council and subsequently elected president, was appointed to the Fort Lowell Historic District Advisory Board by the Pima County Board of Supervisors, co-founded of the Old Fort Lowell Live-At-Home Program and later hired as Coordinator of the Program. A few years ago, I joined Tucson Organic Gardeners and was later elected president. One and a half years ago I joined the Libertarian Party of Pima County and was elected Secretary, a position I now hold. I am a musician in my retirement.
- All your freedoms all the time. I believe that people need to be allowed to take responsibility for their own values, thoughts and behavior. That responsibility does not belong to the government. When government assumes that responsibility, our freedoms are usurped.
- Reduce government in general and government intervention in citizen’s personal lives in particular. The role of government should be to protect citizens from assault and/or murder, from robbery, and from fraud. Too much government means that individual freedoms are diminished. Reducing the reach of government allows taxes to be reduced or even eliminated. Inappropriate government interference in the activities of peaceful people offering their goods and services to willing consumers needs to be eliminated.
- Unity in our community. We can disagree with each other and still live peaceably together. Let’s have peaceful dialogue about our differences and work out the issues together.
Community Question Featured local question
First of all, I don't believe there was a pandemic. Yes there was a disease called Covid that was exaggerated by the powers that be with the help of mainstream media to make people so afraid that they would do whatever they were told and could be easily controlled. I would have worked to get the truth out to the public and calm down the media rhetoric. I would not have created any of the mandates and I would have insisted on the truth about how many people were dying and why they were dying and how many people were actually getting sick.
Community Question Featured local question
I think it is extremely important to involve residents in the government's decision-making process! I believe in government for the people, by the people and of the people. I will have an open phone line and an open office door for all residents, especially residents of Ward 2. I will have town halls, open meetings and any other way I get suggestions about how to help local people make this a local government.
Community Question Featured local question
I just want the truth to be told. We are not getting the truth.
Community Question Featured local question
The police need to know that their services are appreciated. I believe that the role of the local police is to protect the public from murder/assault, robbery, and fraud. They need to be paid sufficiently for the danger they may be in as they perform their duties. They need to know the public appreciates them. The leaders of our community appear to want to get rid of or at least reduce our police force. The force is reduced and then they ask the force to do way too much with too few resources and low pay. This seems patently unfair to me.
Community Question Featured local question
I like the planting of trees and the city's encouragement of this. I would hope that the recycling of the contents of our blue barrels is really happening. There is a possibility that those contents are going to the landfill and not being recycled. I would like to look into that. There is so much concrete and building happening that the sun's rays are being soaked up and then put out as heat. As a result, I believe that Tucson is hotter than it was when I was growing up here. I would look into other building materials that don't radiate so much heat and find ways to reduce the amount of concrete and other heat absorbing/radiating materials that are currently used and have been used.
Community Question Featured local question
I would make sure that staffing was adequate to perform the job of protecting the citizenry of Tucson. I would make sure the pay was commensurate with the job being performed. I would make sure the staff all knew they were appreciated by government leaders as well as the public. I don't feel that any of that is currently being done.
Community Question Featured local question
First and foremost I would not create mandates of any kind, especially regarding masks and distancing and the shots. I would have discouraged all the fear created around the Covid. Why? Because I listened to the scientists who I felt were telling the truth and I could see that there was an unseen picture beneath all the hype which is now proving to be correct. However, you would not know this if you listened to the very, very biased mainstream media. That unseen picture is a plan to control our every movement, thought, idea and belief. The mainstream media calls it a conspiracy theory. The conspiracy is those who are working to do the controlling. Slowly but surely they are getting us used to losing one freedom at a time until they have taken all our freedoms. And then it is too late. Please wake up folks before it is too late and all our freedoms are gone!!!
Stop the government usurpation of our freedoms with their 15-minute cities and mandates. I am passionate that government leaders tell the truth about their intentions and stop lying to us about “climate change”, Covid and the “vaccinations”, election integrity, 15-minute cities, the death toll from both Covid and the Covid shots, how they are manipulating our food to make it unhealthy for us, all the chemicals they are creating to make us sick. Our government is out-and-out lying to us and I want to change that in whatever way I possibly can!
This office can be the place where constituents can voice their opinions and help to create a truly local government of, for and by the people.
I don't look up to any one person. I look up to various aspects of a lot of people. I look up to my father who was a person who encouraged his students to follow their own path and not his. I look up to my mother who was often termed a Renaissance Woman. She was multi-talented and did whatever she did well. I look up to Dru Heaton, Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Pima County, because she is so well-read and she can say what is true and be genuine and kind even if the truth is not. I look up to Peter Norquest, my campaign manager, who is incredibly well-read and isn't afraid of researching anything. And I could go on and on with people in my life. There is something about each of them that I admire and would like to emulate.
I would recommend that anyone who wants to understand my political philosophy read about Jacob Hornberger, a Libertarian candidate for President of the U.S. and the organization he founded, The Future of Freedom Foundation,
The Future of Freedom Foundation – Advancing an Uncompromising Case for Libertarianism
and his website, https://www.jacobforliberty.com/
To have ideas of one's own and be open-minded about other's ideas and willing to take in all sides of an issue to come up with the best solution.
I have the ability to hear all sides of an issue and help others to do the same. I am able to help people understand what they believe and open their vision to understand and appreciate what others believe. I have a strong sense of responsibility to my commitments and will follow through with what I commit to. I have a good BS detector and can see when I am being lied to. I can see the good and the good intentions in others.
To be open to all ideas, to be strong in one's own ideas, to want to reduce government and be a true representative of the people in Ward 2 by bringing all ideas to the table to be contemplated. Then all decide what is most important to folks and work at implementing what is decided.
I would love to help wake people up to the truth of what is happening in our city, our state and our country. I hope to provide a standard of morality that people can return to so we can all live peaceably together whether we agree or disagree with each other.
When I was three years old, I remember my first day at preschool. My parents helped start the parent coop with a few other parents. They rented a house on Pima Street and I remember walking down the sidewalk holding my mother's hand as we walked toward the building. I remember going inside and seeing the the tree that was growing in the middle of the room. It was an exciting day.
Horseback riding instructor at a summer day camp. I had the job two summers.
I love books. There are too many favorites for me to list. I enjoy spiritual books. I really like books that tell the truth and debunk the garbage we have been fed in school and through the media. I love human interest stories. I love reading about animals. I love reading to educate myself about any and every thing.
No. In fact, I think it might be a detriment.
To be willing to tell the truth and be transparent!!! The ability to listen to other people's ideas, especially constituents, and synthesize them to help create the solution that best fits the situation. To be able to encourage the citizens affected by any decisions to participate in the process.
Libertarian Party of Pima County
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Note: Community Questions were submitted by the public and chosen for inclusion by a volunteer advisory board. The chosen questions were modified by staff to adhere to Ballotpedia’s neutrality standards. To learn more about Ballotpedia’s Candidate Connection Expansion Project, click here.
See also
2023 Elections
External links
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Candidate Tucson City Council Ward 2 |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on July 4, 2023
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