Eric Robbins, Pima County Democratic Party Chair
Elinor Brecher; Edited by Deb Melton
Our special guest at the June 17 meeting at 3 p.m. in the Mesquite Room will be Eric Robbins, Pima County Democratic Party (PCDP) Chair.
Eric is practically a Tucson native. His family moved to Tucson when Eric’s dad “got sick of putting wood in that wood stove” in Maine, just across the border from New Hampshire, back in the later 1970s. Eric graduated from Amphitheater High School. He earned a B.S. in information technology from the University of Phoenix and an MBA from the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management. That program took him to China and Hong Kong, fueling his love of travel. He spent 30 years in sales, business development, and consulting, and owned two small businesses before “pivoting to my family vocation and becoming a teacher.” Eric taught middle school for two years before pivoting back to the private sector.
Eric may be the first PCDP chair from South Tucson, where he lives with “a wonderful life partner who enhances my knowledge of women’s issues,” his daughter (a high school student), eight cats, and a rabbit. The reason he got into politics is concern for his daughter’s future. “The best world I can leave her is her truest inheritance,” he says.
Eric canvassed and registered voters before the 2016 presidential election but was “so dismayed/traumatized/horrified by what happened, that I got much more involved at the LD level … I believe it is an obligation of every citizen to be involved in the body politic to represent their own interests. The degree to which I can help that happen is under threat.”
Among his priorities as PCDP chair is building and restoring connections throughout Southern Arizona. “A party earns a place in a community by modeling values that are important to that community. It is inverted to think that a community should ‘join’ a party. A party must be willing to join with the community. That means service, commitment, candor, and engagement.”
Eric believes that the next two years will be critical, and he is determined to strengthen community involvement to help elect Democrat majorities at the local, state, and national level.
If you are, like so many of us, concerned about the future of Arizona and our country, you will want to attend this meeting.