Two lifelong educators want to bring education reform to Arizona’s Legislature

Keith and Stacey Seaman, a father and daughter duo, are contesting Republican control in a central Arizona district covering Pinal County. 

Public service is a family affair for two candidates running in a Pinal County-based legislative district. Stacey Seaman, Democratic Senate candidate for Legislative District 16, is fighting to unseat longtime incumbent Sen. TJ Shope, who has represented the area since 2012. She’ll share the ballot with her father, Democrat House incumbent Keith Seaman, who is vying to keep his seat in the House. 

Keith Seaman won his House seat two years ago by just a few hundred votes, where he campaigned as a single-shot Democratic candidate in a highly competitive district that leans slightly Republican, and in an area that a Democrat had not represented for decades. An Air Force veteran, he has been an educator for over 40 years, from teacher to superintendent, and he served on the Coolidge Unified School Board.  

Stacey Seaman is a public school music teacher in Casa Grande, and she has served on the Casa Grande Arts and Humanities Commission and Recreation Advisory Board. 

LD16 is made up of mostly Pinal County and parts of Maricopa and Pima County, covering Casa Grande, Coolidge, Eloy, and several other rural parts of the state. 

Keith Seaman is again campaigning as a single-shot Democratic candidate, just as he did in 2022, where he won his seat by just over 600 votes and became one of a handful of districts that was split with Republican and Democratic representation.

RELATED: What to expect in Arizona on Election Day

In Arizona, each state House district is represented by two candidates, but parties can also opt to run only one candidate—a “single-shot candidate”—in an attempt to dilute the opposing party’s political power. This is a strategy to get core supporters to only cast one vote for one candidate, and persuade other voters to split their ballots between the candidate and an opponent, ultimately maximizing the candidate’s numbers. 

He is running against Republican incumbent Teresa Martinez and Republican Chris Lopez, who is running for the first time. 

Lopez lives in Casa Grande and is a small-business owner—he operates a concession business and a trucking firm—who is running on a platform of heavily conservative values. He is an advocate for private school vouchers.

Martinez has worked in Republican politics for 20 years, and was previously a substitute teacher in Casa Grande—she is also running on heavily conservative values. 

Martinez and Lopez both did not respond to a request for an interview from The Copper Courier. 

Both Stacey and Keith Seaman’s message is that they are there for all of the voters in LD16, not just the Democrats—something they believe their Republican counterparts may not be able to say.

“I think it’s time for the people of our district and the people of Arizona to have leaders who are able to go in and try some new and different ideas and really work towards the benefit of the people of the state,” Stacey Seaman said. 

Making public education a top priority 

As lifelong educators, the two are tired of a lack of support for public schools from the current majority, and they want more guidelines and regulations on ESA vouchers.

ESA vouchers are taxpayer-supported vouchers in Arizona that allow parents to use public money to pay for private school tuition and other educational expenses, but have cost the state roughly $332 million due to a lack of oversight and accountability from the Arizona Department of Education.  

“As a public school teacher, and as both a principal, a superintendent and on the school board, I saw what was happening to public schools, they were not being funded,” Keith Seaman said. 

At the Legislature, Keith said there was always talk about schools getting more funding—but in the actual schools, teachers are leaving by the dozens, classrooms are overcrowded, and teachers are not getting the materials they need. 

“We’ve (Stacey and I) been there (in public schools), we’ve seen what’s happened,” Keith Seaman said.  

Teachers would leave in December, or only work for a year and then go teach somewhere else because of the lack of respect and the lack of a salary, Keith Seaman said.

“If you’re going to have legislators who are going to be talking about the intricacies of what it means to be in the classroom, then they should be listening to those of us who have been in the classroom, who understand from a very fundamental point of view, exactly what that entails,” Stacey Seaman said. 

Education should be a bipartisan issue, Stacey Seaman said. “I’ve never met a parent who didn’t want good schools for their kids.”

Stacy and Keith Seaman don’t use their background in education to their advantage, it just is to their advantage, they said. 

Getting ahead of the district’s growth 

In recent US Census data, Casa Grande was ranked the eighth fastest-growing city in the United States. 

Shope, Martinez, and Lopez are all running on the idea of lowering taxes as much as possible, but that could undercut needed new services in a district that has grown so much the past several years.

Keith and Stacey Seaman are prioritizing bringing more resources to rural Arizona, from medical facilities to water availability, and improving major highways—but they have to balance that with taxes, they said. 

With more people comes the need for more services, meaning more tax revenue is needed to pay for police, fire, parks, and other services, Keith Seaman said. 

Pinal County is Arizona’s third-largest county, and it makes up the majority of the district. Stacey Seaman said it’s growing quickly and needs leadership that is looking to get ahead of that growth, rather than always trying to play catch up, which is what has been going on in the district for the past 30 years.

Infrastructure in LD16 has not been addressed in the manner that it should have been in the past several decades, Stacey Seaman said. 

“One thing that we both feel very strongly about is getting elected and moving forward with leadership that will help us [to be] where we need to be in five years, in 10 years and 30 years,” Stacey Seaman said. 

The Republican Legislature has been complaining about Arizona’s state of education, high prices, and poor infrastructure for years, but they are the party that has been in control, Stacey Seaman said. 

“If you’ve been in control of something, then fix it. Don’t come out every two years and campaign on the fact that you have the opportunity to fix it again in the future. So I do think it’s time for a change of leadership,” Stacey Seaman said.  

On affordable housing, Stacey and Keith Seaman believe that what works for the rest of the state, especially more urban areas, won’t work for more rural communities like LD16. 

Making housing more affordable is not a one-solution type of issue, and Stacey and Keith Seaman both plan to focus on what they can do with the smaller aspects of the larger solution, like builder incentives and changes in zoning, while keeping local control in mind.  

Reproductive rights

Abortion is a topic that both Keith and Stacey Seaman have heard brought up often at doors—and they have overwhelmingly heard that the government has no business telling a parent or a family what to do in their own medical situations. 

Stacey said she will introduce herself at doors, and sometimes the first question asked of her will be, “What’s your stance on abortion?” which often dictates how the conversation will go. 

For years, Shope has been strictly anti-abortion, but in May he was one of two Republicans who voted to repeal the 1864 abortion ban. Stacey Seaman says he voted this way because he was up for reelection. 

“I absolutely stand for my values. I’m not going to go away from the fact that we absolutely have to have reproductive freedom for women in Arizona,” Stacey Seaman said. 

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