Oscar De Los Santos says Democrats need to stop bowing to billionaires.
Before running for the Arizona House of Representatives, Oscar De Los Santos organized for the 2012 Obama campaign and taught sixth grade English and social studies through Teach for America at a public charter school in the district he represents today. He later led public policy for the Association of Arizona Food Banks.
De Los Santos was making $29,000 a year as a teacher, and could not afford health and dental insurance, so he traveled to Mexico to get his wisdom teeth removed.
“I think that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, it is ridiculous that a teacher needs to leave the country and go to Mexico to get a basic dental procedure done,” De Los Santos said.
The experience led him to ask why teachers in Arizona are so underpaid and classrooms are so underfunded.
“The answer led back to the state legislature and the decisions being made in this very building, and they were bad decisions, so I decided I wanted to have a voice here,” De Los Santos said.
While leading public policy for the Association of Arizona Food Banks he met many parents who were skipping meals so that their child could eat, and families working two jobs who still couldn’t put food on the table.
De Los Santos was first elected in 2022 to represent District 11, Downtown Phoenix, Laveen, Guadalupe, and South Phoenix in the Arizona House of Representatives—one of the most diverse and working class legislative districts in the state. In November 2024, he was elected as the Arizona House Democratic Leader—one of the youngest Democratic legislative leaders in the nation, according to his website.
The district is home to nearly a fifth of Phoenix’s population, with a nearly 60% Hispanic population, and more than 15% Black population. It ranks third in the state for child poverty, and South Phoenix’s overall poverty rate hovers around 31%.
“I have had a constituent sit in [my office] and tell me that he works 100 hours a week, and struggles to pay rent on a two bedroom apartment for his wife and kids. That’s wrong. That is morally wrong. Nobody should be working 100 hours a week, and on top of that, struggle to pay the basic necessities. That’s horrific,” De Los Santos said.
From working-class LA to Arizona statehouse
De Los Santos grew up in Los Angeles. His parents came to the United States in the 1970s from a small town in rural Mexico fleeing poverty. His father spent years as a migrant farmworker along the California coast, before landing a factory job in Los Angeles, where the family settled.
Education was instilled in De Los Santos and his four other siblings. In a single generation, his family went from his parents not receiving a formal education, to De Los Santos earning degrees from University of Southern California, Oxford—where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, the only Latino selected that year—and Yale law.
“That kind of transformation over the course of a single generation is possible only because we have made investments in public education,” De Los Santos said. “I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, my parents worked hard.”
De Los Santos’ upbringing guides how he votes on nearly every bill in the State Legislature, and he asks himself, “does this bill help working families like the one I grew up in? Or does it help the billionaires and the corporations?” he said.
Leading the minority party
Leading the House Democratic Caucus in the minority means his party’s bills rarely get scheduled for hearings, and when they do, they’re voted down by the Republican majority. The Legislature has been under Republican control for over 33 consecutive years.
A number of bills that he has proposed several years in a row that address lowering the cost of living, have been blocked by Republicans.
One would limit how many single-family homes corporations can buy in a given census tract in a calendar year and another would ban companies from using AI to price-gouge renters.
Neither bill received a committee hearing. Democrats have introduced similar corporate landlord caps for several sessions running—none have made it out of committee, according to the Arizona Capitol Times.
READ MORE: Arizonans continue to struggle as Democrats’ affordability bills stall at state capitol
“It enrages me, because these are pieces of legislation that [would] change people’s lives for the better, it would make their lives better, and so it really upsets me that Republicans, because they’re in the pockets of these corporations, don’t want to hear them, don’t want to pass them,” De Los Santos said.
But, despite Republicans blocking every bill De Los Santos has pushed in the State Legislature, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs used one of his proposals as the basis for an executive order erasing the medical debt for millions of Arizonans. He also helped negotiate last year’s state budget to win free school meals for low-income children, scholarships through the Arizona Promise Program, and $45 million for child care subsidies.
De Los Santos also helped repeal Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban in 2024—even facing censorship from the majority party for speaking out against Republicans delaying a vote on the abortion ban.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of just stomping my feet and saying, all right, I’m going home, I have a responsibility to deliver for working class people, to deliver for my constituents,” De Los Santos said.
De Los Santos wants to see his party grow into one that has a spine, stop following the status quo and playing establishment politics—this is beginning at the state level, he said. “I think far too often Democrats, especially at the national level, are weak and ineffective, and I strive to be the exact opposite.”
Republicans have controlled both chambers of Arizona’s state Legislature for decades, and there has never been a Democratic trifecta—where the party controls the governor’s office, the state Senate, and the state House —in the state’s modern history.
Republicans currently hold a slight majority, 33-27, in the Arizona House; Democrats need to gain four seats to flip it in their favor. In the State Senate, Republicans also hold a majority, 17-13, and Democrats need to gain just three seats this November to flip. National Democrats have made flipping Arizona a top priority for 2026, but a record spending effort in 2024 fell short and Republicans expanded their majorities.
De Los Santos is confident Democrats will flip the Arizona Legislature in November—after which, he says, every bill Republicans have blocked will pass within a matter of weeks.
“I think we need to be fighters and brawlers for the working class people of this country. I want to see us stop bowing down to billionaires,” De Los Santos said. “I want to see us stop bowing down to the corporate donor class, and I want to see us stand up and fight like hell for working people.”
