Athena Eastwood is running for Congress in Arizona, at least officially.
Besides having her name on the ballot, she’s made few public appearances, doesn’t have a campaign website, and until Arizona Luminaria showed up at her doorstep in late October, and later had a phone conversation with her, a photograph of her was so hard to find online that her own political party accidentally posted an image on social media of the wrong Athena Eastwood.
Shortly after Arizona Luminaria published this story on Oct. 25, Eastwood created a social media account on X, paying the fee to get verified and using the photo of herself she had sent a reporter.
The Green Party candidate from Oro Valley made it onto the ballot by winning 26 write-in votes from Green Party voters in the July 30 primary election, according to the canvass of election results from the Arizona Secretary of State.
In a wild national election season, Arizona’s Green Party’s saga has been Southwestern-style wild. Think prickly-cactus challenges. The third party lost its status in 2019 and has been fighting to get it back. After a series of law changes that party leaders say made it harder to claw back, they staked their claim this past year by winning official status for the 2024 election.
They took on candidates whom they see as interlopers with no Green Party affiliation, major parties that they thought were backing Green Party “spoilers,” and a public fight to ensure their actual endorsed candidates qualify for statewide debates. Some of their candidates, including Eastwood, were initially left off the primary ballot. The Arizona Secretary of State’s office had to issue a correction for its primary election results on Aug. 17, saying a “clerical error” affected the results for the Green Party.
All those Green Party candidates are reinstated and you can choose to vote or not vote for them in the general election on Nov. 5.
Eastwood’s path to the ballot stands as an example of the circuitous and sometimes surprising way a less-recognized name can make it next to candidates spending millions of dollars and drawing national attention.
Athena Eastwood’s name appears next to Republican Juan Ciscomani and Democrat Kirsten Engel on the ballot in the closely-watched battleground Congressional District 6. But public records show that Eastwood changed the name on her voter registration on Sept. 17, according to voter registration documents.
Her previous name was Karen Maria Eastwood, according to court records. Before that, her legal name was Karen Maria Foti.
She also changed her party affiliation on her voter registration on June 30, three days before early voting began. Before then, she was sometimes registered as an independent voter and sometimes as a Democrat.
She legally changed her name to Athena on July 3, according to Pima County Superior Court records. That was the same day early voting began for the primary election on July 30. The reason she listed for changing her name was “preference as a professional name.”
She told Arizona Luminaria in an Oct. 23 phone interview she lamented the fact that the name Karen had become something of a slur or meme in recent years. “My God-given name became a joke where I was muzzled,” she said.
In about 2020, “Karen” became a widely used slang word and negative stereotype for an angry, entitled and often racist White woman.
“If that was one extreme of the spectrum, the name that came to me at 3 a.m. from the opposite end of the spectrum: a female symbol of democracy. If I was going to run, I wasn’t going to run with a popular meme name and not a name that could be ridiculed,” Eastwood said.
So when 26 Green Party voters wrote her name on their ballots in the primary election as a write-in candidate, she had only just become Athena Eastwood of the Green Party.
According to a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State, “When folks file with our office — the name they write to get on the ballot is what is printed. It is not a legal or official name, and does not change what is on the ballot if they get married, for example.”
Michele Forney, former attorney with the Arizona Secretary of State and a former election official in Pinal County, now works as a consultant for the Elections Group, a nonpartisan consultancy made up of former election officials. Forney told Arizona Luminaria that Eastwood changing her name right as primary voting began sounded like “a rare occurrence, but not particularly bizarre.”
“It’s a little odd, but it doesn’t strike me as illegal,” Forney said.
Forney added that parties don’t always “take a large role in vetting candidates before they run.” You have to be a member of that party, Forney explained, but that’s one of the few legal requirements to actually get on the ballot.
Shortly after Arizona Luminaria published this story on Oct. 25, Eastwood created a social media account on X, paying the fee to get verified and used the same photo of herself she sent for this story.
About Eastwood
Eastwood was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1966, according to court documents. She has been registered to vote in the United States since at least 1997.
The Arizona Secretary of State’s candidate platform has a short statement from Eastwood. It says, in part: “I seek to be a voice of unity, understanding, and to work for effective multi partisan solutions that serve the public’s needs and the Nation’s Interest.”
Eastwood told Arizona Luminaria she’s always had an independent streak, and while she supports the Green Party platform, “I’m not going to compromise myself to toe the line on something.” She gave the example of ecosocialism, which is a Green Party proposal that ties a critique of capitalism to a call for better environmental stewardship.
Eastwood said she would rather see something like “ecopopulism.”
“I mean, we need an environment. We need clean air, clean water, sustainable industry and agriculture, etc. We need an environment to live in,” but she said she doesn’t value the planet over the people.
“I’m a humanist,” she said.
Because she was a write-in candidate, Eastwood did not file a statement of interest, as most candidates do, for the primary or the general election. She filed a Declaration of Qualification form on June 20.
Eastwood has not filed finance reports with the Federal Election Commission, the federal agency that oversees campaign finance. That may be because she hasn’t raised or spent enough money. Once a candidate raises or spends $5,000, they must file paperwork with the FEC.
Kory Langhofer, a Republican attorney who worked on Trump’s 2016 transition team and is an elections expert, told Arizona Luminaria that it’s not all that unusual for a candidate not to raise that much money.
“It’s almost exclusively with third party candidates,” Langhofer said.
Eduardo Quintana is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona as a Green Party candidate. He is the chairperson for the Green Party of Pima County, according to the party website. In an Oct. 22 phone interview, he told Arizona Luminaria that while the party initially endorsed Eastwood after Quintana conducted a phone interview with her this summer, she “just disappeared.”
Eastwood told Arizona Luminaria one day later that they have since been in contact. Arizona Luminaria reached out to Quintana multiple times to confirm that and has not received a response.
Green Party troubles
In all of Arizona, there are 4,187 voters registered in the Green Party. And there are 602 registered Green Party voters in District 6, according to Arizona Secretary of State data.
Statewide, there are an estimated 4.3 million registered voters as of this month, the data shows.
The party gathered enough signatures to get on the primary and general election ballots this year. They had not filed in time to be on the presidential preference election in March.
In 2019, the Green Party lost official status in Arizona after voter registration numbers revealed that it had less than the requirement, under Arizona law, to be recognized. Legal requirements for recognition include filing a petition with the secretary of state with signatures from eligible voters that amount to at least “one and one-third percent of the total votes cast for governor” at the most recent election in which a governor was elected.
The party has had other troubles in this election cycle.
This spring, two candidates running for Arizona’s open Senate seat were accused by the Green Party of co-opting the party name. Scottsdale resident Mike Norton and Yuma resident Arturo Hernandez both qualified for the ballot after collecting the minimum signatures, but Green Party leadership said neither was previously affiliated with the party.
Cody Hannah, co-chair of the Arizona Green Party, suggested to KJZZ that the candidates could have been spoilers, plants from one of the major parties to help possibly sway the election. The party lost its lawsuit challenging Hernandez’s petition signatures.
The party endorsed Quintana for U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate.
Green Party candidates were initially not included in some of the debates, including the debate for the congressional seat Eastwood is running for, hosted by the Arizona Media Association and the Citizens Clean Elections Commission. Ciscomani and Engel debated on Oct. 8. Watch the replay here.
About not being allowed into statewide and federal debates, Quintana argued in a national Green Party blog that the commission “put its thumb on the scale in favor of the Democrat and Republican candidates and denied the democratic rights of 4.5 million Arizona voters including 63,000 petition signers who put the Green Party on the ballot.”
High-stakes race
Independent Luis Pozzolo also is running, as a write-in candidate, for Congressional District 6.
Pozzolo is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Uruguay. He was in banking and finance before he migrated to the United States, where he started working first as a dishwasher and now is a business owner, according to his campaign website. “America saved us in every possible way,” Pozzolo writes on his site, “and now it is time to give back and focus our efforts, experience and knowledge to help others to achieve their dreams.”
The other candidates in this race took a harder but more standard route to the ballot. The Democrat and the Republican candidates were required to collect signatures from party members to qualify for the ballot. Ciscomani collected 5,364 signatures and Engel collected 3,273.
And Ciscomani and Engel are required to submit personal financial disclosures in addition to campaign finance reports to federal offices as part of their runs for office. Personal finance forms are only required for candidates who raise or spend more than $5,000 in a campaign for election to the House.
Ciscomani has raised $6.3 million and Engel has raised $7.7 million, according to campaign finance documents that cover fundraising and spending through Oct. 16. Additionally, independent expenditures have poured into the race, including spending by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to oppose Ciscomani and by the Congressional Leadership Fund to support him.
Ciscomani is a first-term, moderate Republican who holds an important position on the House Appropriations Committee, which is involved in federal budget and spending decisions. He was previously a senior advisor to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
Ciscomani has made border security one of his priorities. He has repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for rendering the U.S.-México border “completely broken.” His proposal is to hire more border patrol agents, construct more surveillance along the border, and finish the wall.
Engel, meanwhile, has frequently focused on reproductive rights in her campaign. The Democrat also lists as a priority tackling “the water and climate crisis that threatens Southern Arizona’s future.” Engel previously served in the state Senate and state House, has worked as an environmental lawyer and held a position with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Ciscomani vs. Engel is a rematch from 2022, when Ciscomani won with 50.7% of the votes.
Congressional District 6 is a battleground district sometimes described as a toss up. As of this month, the voter registration in this district is 36% Republican, 32% independent, 30% Democrat, and 2% other parties, according to Arizona Secretary of State data.
District 6 is in the southeast corner of Arizona and includes parts of Pima, Pinal, Cochise, Graham and Greenlee counties. Check which district you live in.
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