Raúl Grijalva facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Raúl Grijalva
Official portrait, 2021
Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee
In office January 3, 2023 – January 3, 2025
Preceded by	Bruce Westerman
Succeeded by	Jared Huffman
In office January 3, 2015 – January 3, 2019
Preceded by	Peter DeFazio
Succeeded by	Rob Bishop
Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee
In office January 3, 2019 – January 3, 2023
Preceded by	Rob Bishop
Succeeded by	Bruce Westerman
Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
In office January 3, 2009 – January 3, 2019
Preceded by	Barbara Lee
Succeeded by	Pramila Jayapal
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona
In office January 3, 2003 – March 13, 2025
Preceded by	Constituency established
Succeeded by	Vacant
Constituency	7th district (2003–2013) 3rd district (2013–2023) 7th district (2023–2025)
Personal details
Born	Raúl Manuel Grijalva (1948-02-19)February 19, 1948 Pima County, Arizona, U.S.
Died	March 13, 2025(2025-03-13) (aged 77) Tucson, Arizona, U.S.
Political party	Raza Unida (before 1974) Democratic (from 1974)
Spouse	Ramona Grijalva ​ (m. 1971)​
Children	3
Education	University of Arizona (BA)
Signature

Raúl Manuel Grijalva ( RAH-ool-_-grih-HAL-və; February 19, 1948 – March 13, 2025) was an American politician and activist who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Arizona between 2003 and 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, Grijalva represented Arizona's 7th congressional district from 2003 to 2013, Arizona's 3rd congressional district from 2013 to 2023, and the 7th district again from 2023 to 2025. The two districts included the western third of Tucson, part of Yuma and Nogales, and some peripheral parts of metro Phoenix.

In October 2024, Grijalva had announced that he would not run for re-election in 2026, amid treatments for lung cancer, but he died before he could complete his final term.

Early life, education and career

Raúl Grijalva's father was a migrant worker from Mexico who entered the United States in 1945 through the Bracero Program and labored on southern Arizona ranches. Grijalva was born on Canoa Ranch, 30 miles south of Tucson. He graduated from Sunnyside High School in 1967 and was a 2004 inductee to the Sunnyside High School Alumni Hall of Fame. He attended the University of Arizona and earned a bachelor's degree in sociology.

Grijalva was an Arizona leader of the Raza Unida Party. According to Armando Navarro's history of the party, "Grijalva was so militant that he alienated some members of Tucson's Mexican-American community. After losing his first bid for elective office, a 1972 run for a seat on the school board, he began cultivating a less radical image."

In 1974, Grijalva was elected to the Tucson Unified School District board and served until 1986. Grijalva Elementary School in Tucson was named for him in 1987. From 1975 to 1986, Grijalva was the director of the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, and in 1987, he was Assistant Dean for Hispanic Student Affairs at the University of Arizona. Grijalva was a member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors from 1989 to 2002 and served as chair from 2000 to 2002. He resigned as a supervisor in 2002 to run for Congress.

U.S. House of Representatives

Arizona's 3rd congressional district, which Grijalva represented from 2013 to 2023

Tenure

108th Congress (2003-05)

Grijalva was elected as a Democrat to the 108th Congress in 2002, representing Arizona's seventh congressional district. As a freshman congressman, the first bill he sponsored was H.R. 731, the Tohono O'odham Citizenship Act of 2003. Although the bill was not passed into law, it sought to grant American citizenship to all members of the Tohono Oʼodham. This federally recognized tribe has land that stretches from their reservation in Arizona across the U.S.–Mexico border into the Mexican state of Sonora, resulting in some of its members not being U.S. citizens.

116th Congress (2019–2021)

For his tenure as the chair of the House Natural Resources Committee in the 116th Congress, Grijalva earned an "A" grade from the nonpartisan Lugar Center's Congressional Oversight Hearing Index.

117th Congress (2021–23)

Grijalva was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to certify the 2020 presidential electoral college votes when the Capitol was attacked by Donald Trump supporters. Moments after Grijalva finished speaking in support of certifying Arizona's votes, insurrectionists started banging on the doors of the House chambers. He called the attack "one of the darkest and most shameful days of our republic" and the perpetrators "domestic terrorists." Grijalva blamed President Donald Trump for inciting the attack and called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to remove Trump from office. After the 25th Amendment was not invoked, Grijalva supported impeaching Trump a second time. He voted to impeach Trump again on January 13, 2021.

In February, Grijalva voted in support of the American Rescue Plan, which included a nationwide $15 federal minimum wage increase. However, the Senate Parliamentarian removed the increase from the bill. As a result, Grijalva joined a group of progressive Democrats in calling to overturn the Parliamentarian's ruling.

Grijalva voted with President Joe Biden's stated position 100% of the time in the 117th Congress, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

Committee assignments

For the 118th Congress:

• Committee on Education and the Workforce
  • Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education
  • Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development
• Committee on Natural Resources (Ranking Member)
  • In addition to the below, Rep. Grijalva was entitled to sit as an ex officio member in all subcommittee meetings per the committee rules.
  • Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources

Political positions

Grijalva speaking at a tax policy event in Phoenix, Arizona, February 2018

Grijalva formerly co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus with Mark Pocan, having been replaced by Pramila Jayapal after stepping down in order to chair the House Committee on Natural Resources. In 2008, he was among 12 members rated by National Journal as tied for most liberal overall. On the ideological map of all House members at GovTrack's website, Grijalva had been ranked furthest to the left. Liberal and progressive activist groups routinely gave him high marks for his voting record.

Grijalva was an advocate of mining law reform and many other environmental causes. From his position on the House Committee on Natural Resources—where he had been the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands since 2007—he had led Democratic efforts to strengthen federal offshore oil drilling oversight since before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and introduced a successful bill to create a permanent National Landscape Conservation System at the Bureau of Land Management. He was a leading candidate for Secretary of the Interior when President Barack Obama was elected, but the job eventually went to Ken Salazar; according to The Washington Post, Obama made the decision in part because of Grijalva's stated preference for more environmental analysis before approving offshore drilling projects.

Grijalva was a vocal opponent of Arizona's SB 1070 law, which mandates police checks of citizenship documentation for anyone subjected to a legitimate law enforcement stop, detention or arrest as long as the officer does not consider race, color or national origin during the stop, detention or arrest.

Grijalva criticized the 2010 deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.–Mexico border as "political symbolism" that he believed would not adequately address the issues of immigration and border security.

Grijalva often called for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and supports the wider implementation of the National Solidarity Program as a way to improve Afghans' economic and educational infrastructure. The group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave him an "A" rating for the 2007–08 congressional session.

Budget proposals

As co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Grijalva took a leading role in shaping CPC "alternative budgets"—budget bills offered by various groups and caucuses in Congress other than the official majority or minority party plan. In 2011 the CPC introduced what it called the People's Budget, which reached budget balance in 10 years according to an assessment by the Economic Policy Institute based on nonpartisan government data. The proposal was noted approvingly by some of the world's leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs—who called it "a bolt of hope ... humane, responsible, and most of all sensible"—and Paul Krugman, who called it "genuinely courageous" for achieving budget balance "without dismantling the legacy of the New Deal".

In 2012, again with Grijalva as co-chair, the Progressive Caucus introduced the Budget for All, which is similar to the People's Budget and includes several new features, including a novel proposal to institute a small personal wealth tax above $10 million in net worth phased in over a period of five years. The proposal received 78 votes, all from Democrats, when the House considered it on March 29, 2012.

Grijalva was among the 46 Democrats who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.

Deepwater Horizon and oil rig safety

On February 24, 2010, Grijalva wrote a letter signed by 18 other representatives calling for an investigation of the BP Atlantis offshore drilling platform due to whistleblower allegations that it was operating without approved safety documents. He called for Atlantis to be shut down. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on April 20, 2010, Grijalva wrote letters to the Minerals Management Service and the Department of the Interior questioning current offshore drilling regulations and calling for stronger oversight of the oil industry.

Grijalva gained prominence as an outspoken critic of what he calls lax federal oversight of the oil drilling industry, and in late 2010 launched an investigation of the White House's handling of the Horizon spill and its aftermath. That investigation revealed that scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere in the federal government had voiced concerns about drafts of an official government report on the cause and scope of the spill, but were overruled because the report was meant as a "communications document".

In 2010, Grijalva introduced H.R. 5355 to eliminate the cap on oil company liability for the cost of environmental cleanups of spills.

Education

Grijalva sponsored numerous education bills, including the Success in the Middle Act and the Graduation for All Act. He had longstanding ties to the educational community from his time on the board of the Tucson Unified School District and his position on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Environment

As a member and chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Grijalva was widely regarded as a central figure behind the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, an ambitious county program for planned land-use and biodiversity conservation. He consistently supported endangered species and wilderness conservation on the Board of Supervisors and continued to do so in Congress, introducing a bill in 2009 to make permanent the National Landscape Conservation System within the Bureau of Land Management. In 2008, Grijalva released a report, The Bush Administration's Assaults on Our National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, that accused the Bush administration of mismanaging public land and reducing barriers to commercial access.

The Trump administration proposed changes to "the way it enforces the Endangered Species Act" in 2018. Among other things, the proposal would facilitate delisting endangered species and "streamline interagency consultations". A ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee at the time, Grijalva called the proposal "a favor to industry" and said the administration "doesn't seem to know any other way to handle the environment" than "as an obstacle to industry profits".

Foreign policy

In 2011, Grijalva and representatives Barbara Lee, Mike Honda, and Lynn Woolsey criticized Obama for failing to seek congressional authorization for military intervention in Libya, and was one of the 70 Democrats to vote to defund the Libyan war. In 2013, he opposed intervening in Syria.

On April 25, 2018, 57 U.S. representatives, including Grijalva, released a condemnation of Holocaust distortion in Poland and Ukraine.

In July 2019, Grijalva voted against a House resolution condemning the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel. The resolution passed 398–17.

In 2021, Grijalva was one of eight Democrats to vote against the funding of the Iron Dome in Israel.

Fossil fuel industry funding of climate change studies

On February 24, 2015, as the ranking Democratic member of the United States House Committee on Natural Resources, Grijalva sent letters to seven institutions employing scientists who disagree with most other climate scientists on manmade climate change. The letters requested information on any funding from fossil fuel companies as well as copies of all emails about the content of their congressional testimony. One of the recipients, University of Colorado Professor Roger Pielke Jr., responded that he had already testified to Grijalva's committee that he has received no funding from fossil fuel interests, and characterized the letter as part of a politically motivated "witch-hunt".

The heads of some mainstream scientific organizations criticized Grijalva's letters. Margaret Leinen, the president of the American Geophysical Union, posted on her AGU blog that in requiring information of only a few scientists, based only on their scientific views, Grivalja's action was contrary to academic freedom: "We view the singling out of any individual or group of scientists by any entity – governmental, corporate or other – based solely on their interpretations of scientific research as a threat to that freedom." The executive director of the American Meteorological Society wrote to Grijalva that his action "sends a chilling message to all academic researchers" and "impinges on the free pursuit of ideas that is central to the concept of academic freedom".

In response to criticism that requesting communications was counter to principles of academic freedom, Grijalva said he was willing to eliminate that part of the request.

Gun control

Grijalva supported increasing restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns and increasing enforcement of existing restrictions on gun purchase and possession. He was one of the 67 co-sponsors of the 2007 Assault Weapons Ban, HR 1022. Grijalva had an F rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund.

Health care

As co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, Grijalva was a prominent supporter of a public option throughout the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The House-approved Affordable Health Care for America Act included a public option, but the Senate version did not, and it was ultimately not a part of the final package. Grijalva was largely supportive of the ACA from its passage and argued the Supreme Court should not overturn it during a segment with Representative Peter Roskam, who opposed the law, on the PBS NewsHour on March 28, 2012.

Grijalva had a long history in community health activism as an early supporter of Tucson's El Rio Community Health Center. He supported single-payer health care, but voted for the ACA because he felt it was a major improvement over the status quo.

Immigration

Grijalva supported the DREAM Act and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act (CIR ASAP) and had come to prominence because of his role in promoting immigration reform. He opposed the expansion of a border fence, citing cost effectiveness concerns and potential damage to sensitive wildlife habitats. The CIR ASAP bill includes his Border Security and Responsibility Act of 2009, which prioritizes remote cameras and other border monitoring techniques with a relatively slight environmental impact. The Immigrant Justice Advocacy Campaign gave him a 100% score for the first session of the 111th Congress. In previous years he voted against H.R. 4437 and the Secure Fence Act, and opposed Arizona Proposition 200 in 2004.

Israel

Grijalva voted to support Israel following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

Native Americans

When elected in 2002, Grijalva's seventh Congressional district included seven sovereign Native American tribes: the Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Gila River Indian Community, Ak-Chin Indian Community, Cocopah Tribe, Colorado River Indian Tribes and the Quechan Tribe. After the redistricting based on the 2020 census, the seventh district includes the Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Cocopah Tribe, and Quechan Tribe. Grijalva supported the sovereignty of Native American governments and advocates for a strong government-to-government relationship between Tribal Nations and the United States. He believed that Tribal Nations should receive the respect and authority they deserve in managing their lands and protecting their sacred and cultural sites.

In April 2010, Grijalva introduced the "Requirements, Expectations, and Standard Procedures in Effective Consultation with Tribes Act," known as the RESPECT Act, which ultimately did not pass into law. The bill aimed to establish into law a Clinton-era executive order that lacked the force of law. It would require the federal government to consult with tribal governments before initiating any proposed federal activities or finalizing regulatory actions that could impact tribal communities. Additionally, the Act mandated consultations for all activities that may affect federal land adjacent to Indian land.

Presidential election objections

Concerned about allegations of voting irregularities purportedly leading to disenfranchisement, in 2004 Grijalva joined Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson and several other House Democrats in requesting that the United Nations observe and certify elections in the United States. After the general election, Grijalva was one of 31 representatives to vote not to count Ohio's electoral votes. President George W. Bush won Ohio by 118,457 votes. Without Ohio's electoral votes, the election would have been decided by the U.S. House of Representatives, with each state having one vote in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Grijalva objected to North Carolina's electoral votes in the 2016 presidential election, which Donald Trump won by over 150,000 votes. Because no senator joined his objection, it was dismissed.

Puerto Rico statehood

In June 2023, Raul Grijalva traveled to Puerto Rico to discuss the prospects for statehood and energy issues in Puerto Rico with Governor of Puerto Rico Pedro Pierluisi.

Biden 2024 campaign

On July 3, 2024, Grijalva became the second House Democrat to publicly call for Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 United States presidential election.

Political campaigns

After the 2000 United States census, Arizona gained two congressional districts. The 2nd district, which had long been represented by Mo Udall, was renumbered as the 7th district. Ed Pastor, a Phoenix Democrat who succeeded Udall in 1991, had his home drawn into the newly created 4th district and opted to run for election there, making the 7th district an open seat. Grijalva won a crowded seven-way Democratic primary, which was tantamount to election in this heavily Democratic, majority-Hispanic district. Before the 2010 election, he was reelected three times with no substantial Republican opposition. In 2008, he defeated Republican challenger Joseph Sweeney.

During the 2008 presidential primary campaign, Grijalva endorsed Obama for president, but Hillary Clinton won his district.

During the 2010 midterms, Grijalva faced his toughest reelection campaign yet, against Republican Ruth McClung. It was reported that although Grijalva had decades of experience and McClung had none, and although there were twice as many Democrats in the district as there were Republicans, the two candidates were neck-and-neck in the polls. The main reason was Grijalva's call for a boycott of Arizona in response to the state's new immigration law, SB 1070. Grijalva won, 50–44%, his smallest margin of victory since being elected, and the first close election in what is now the 7th since 1978, when Udall was held to 52% of the vote.

Grijalva's district was renumbered as the 3rd district after the 2010 census, and made somewhat more Democratic than its predecessor even though it lost some of its share of Tucson to the 2nd district (the reconfigured 8th). Co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Grijalva broke from many of his colleagues and announced his support for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on October 9, 2015, at a rally for Sanders in Tucson.

Electoral history

Personal life and death

Grijalva and his wife, Ramona, had three daughters, including Pima County supervisor and former Tucson Unified School District board member Adelita Grijalva. Grijalva identified as Catholic.

Grijalva was a hiker and a fan of the University of Arizona's basketball team.

On April 2, 2024, Grijalva announced that he had been diagnosed with unspecified cancer initially diagnosed as pneumonia (but which he later announced to be lung cancer), and was beginning a "vigorous course of treatment". Prior to his diagnosis, Grijalva was a heavy cigarette smoker. On March 13, 2025, Grijalva died in Tucson from complications of cancer treatment, at the age of 77.

See also

In Spanish: Raúl Grijalva para niños

• List of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States Congress