Gregory John Stanton (born March 8, 1970) is an American lawyer and politician who is the U.S. representative from . A Democrat, he was

mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well ...

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...

. Stanton was on the

Phoenix City Council The Phoenix City Council is the governing body of the city of Phoenix, Arizona. The council is made up of nine members, including a mayor and eight council members representing individual districts. While the mayor is elected in a citywide electi ...

from 2000 until 2009. Stanton was elected mayor in

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrates ...

and reelected in

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...

. After then-incumbent U.S. Representative

Kyrsten Sinema Kyrsten Lea Sinema (; born July 12, 1976) is an American politician and former social worker serving as the senior United States senator from Arizona since January 2019. A former member of the Democratic Party, Sinema became an independent i ...

chose to run for the U.S. Senate, Stanton was elected to the open House seat. In 2020, he was reelected with 61% of the vote.

Early life, education, and career

Stanton was born in Long Island, New York. His family moved to Arizona and he graduated from

Cortez High School Cortez High School is located in Phoenix, Arizona at 8828 N 31st Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85051. It is part of the Glendale Union High School District. The mascot is the Colt and the school colors are primarily black and white with red used as an alte ...

in west Phoenix in 1988. He then attended

Marquette University Marquette University () is a private Jesuit research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Established by the Society of Jesus as Marquette College on August 28, 1881, it was founded by John Martin Henni, the first Bishop of the diocese of ...

and graduated in 1992 with a B.A. in history and political science and was a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

. In 1995, Stanton earned his J.D. from the

University of Michigan Law School The University of Michigan Law School (Michigan Law) is the law school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1859, the school offers Master of Laws (LLM), Master of Comparative Law (MCL ...

. He then worked as an education attorney from 1995 to 2000. In 2014, Stanton became an adjunct professor at

Arizona Summit Law School The Arizona Summit Law School was a for-profit law school in Phoenix, Arizona, that operated from 2005 to 2018. The law school was known until 2013 as the Phoenix School of Law, and was a part of the InfiLaw System of independent, for-profit l ...

Early political career

Phoenix City Council

Stanton was elected to the

for 6th district in 2000, 2001, and 2005 and served until 2009. This district included the affluent Phoenix

Biltmore Area The Biltmore Area is an upscale residential neighborhood of Phoenix, Arizona. It is among the city's wealthiest neighborhoods, with a "posh" reputation.Biltmore Fashion Park and Arcadia areas, as well as non-contiguous

Ahwatukee Ahwatukee Foothills (also Ahwatukee) is an urban village of Phoenix, Arizona. Ahwatukee forms the southernmost portion of Phoenix, and is considered part of the East Valley region of the Phoenix metropolitan area. In 2022, ''Niche'' rated Ahwatu ...

Mayor of Phoenix

Stanton was mayor of Phoenix from 2012 to 2018. During his 2011 campaign for mayor, questions arose over the legality of nearly $70,000 in contributions from Stanton's former treasurer Mindy Shields. Stanton opposed the

embezzlement Embezzlement is a crime that consists of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion of such assets, by one or more persons to whom the assets were entrusted, either to be held or to be used for specific purposes. Embezzlement is a type ...

prosecution of Shields and fired her in October 2010. On August 30, 2011, Stanton and Republican candidate Wes Gullett were the top two candidates in the Phoenix mayoral primary, with Stanton getting about 38% of the vote and Gullett 20%. Stanton advocated against the 2013 federal budget sequestration by meeting with members of Congress multiple times. Stanton was reelected on August 25, 2015. In 2017, ''Governing'' magazine named Stanton one of its Public Officials of the Year for his efforts to expand light rail, bike lanes, and sidewalks while reducing the city's greenhouse gas emissions. Stanton resigned on May 29, 2018, to run for Congress.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2018

After incumbent Representative

decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 2018, to replace retiring U.S. Senator

Jeff Flake Jeffry Lane Flake (born December 31, 1962) is an American politician and diplomat who is the current U.S Ambassador to Turkey. A member of the Republican Party, Flake served in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013 and ...

, Stanton – who was term-limited as mayor – decided to run for Sinema's seat. He was unopposed in the Democratic primary, and defeated Republican nominee Steve Ferrara 61% to 39% after a campaign during which he stressed his problem-solving experience as mayor.

2020

In 2020, Stanton was unopposed in the Democratic primary and defeated Republican nominee Dave Giles in the general election with 61% of the vote.

2022

Stanton ran for reelection in

Arizona's 4th congressional district Arizona's 4th congressional district is a congressional district located in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is currently represented by Republican Paul Gosar, who lives outside the district in Flagstaff. It stretches from the periphery of Phoenix ...

after

redistricting Redistribution (re-districting in the United States and in the Philippines) is the process by which electoral districts are added, removed, or otherwise changed. Redistribution is a form of boundary delimitation that changes electoral distri ...

and defeated Republican nominee Kelly Cooper in the general election with 56% of the vote.

Committee assignments

* Committee on the Judiciary ** Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet *

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure The U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. History The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure was formerly known as the Committee on Public Works a ...

** Subcommittee on Aviation ** Subcommittee on Highways and Transit

Caucus memberships

New Democrat Coalition The New Democrat Coalition is a caucus in the House of Representatives of the United States Congress made up of Democrats, primarily centrists, who take a pro-business stance and a moderate-to-conservative approach to fiscal matters. As of ...

**Healthcare Task Force (co-chair)

Political positions

In an interview a few weeks after the November 2011 mayoral election, Stanton stated his support for repealing the city food tax. He also supported public pension reforms, including more employee contributions to their retirement funds and longer work experience before retirement benefits. In March 2013, Stanton decided against repealing the food tax due to projections that ending the tax would cause layoffs of nearly 99 police officers and 300 other city employees. As a Representative, Stanton supported the Equality Act, a bill that would expand the federal

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...

to ban

discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of Racial discrimination, r ...

based on

sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...

and

gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the ...

. On October 1, 2020, Stanton co-signed a letter to Secretary of State

Mike Pompeo Michael Richard Pompeo (; born December 30, 1963) is an American politician, diplomat, and businessman who served under President Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United State ...

that condemned

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

's offensive operations against the Armenian-populated enclave of

Nagorno-Karabakh Nagorno-Karabakh ( ) is a landlocked region in the South Caucasus, within the mountainous range of Karabakh, lying between Lower Karabakh and Syunik, and covering the southeastern range of the Lesser Caucasus mountains. The region is m ...

, denounced

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

's role in the

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbaij ...

, and called for an immediate ceasefire. As of November 2022, Stanton had voted in line with Joe Biden's stated position 100% of the time. Stanton opposed the 2022 overturning of ''Roe v. Wade'', calling it "a dark, dark day for our country" and saying the Supreme Court had an "extreme, ideological agenda".

Electoral history

Personal life

Stanton is married to Nicole Stanton, an attorney for a cannabis company. They married in 2005 and have two children. They separated in 2016 but, as of 2019, were back together.

References

External links

Congressman Greg Stanton
official U.S. House website
Greg Stanton for Congress
campaign website * , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Stanton, Greg 1970 births 21st-century American politicians Arizona city council members Arizona lawyers Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Arizona Living people Marquette University alumni Mayors of Phoenix, Arizona University of Michigan Law School alumni Politicians from Phoenix, Arizona