Editorial by The Cornerstone Republic
On Thursday following the council vote, the Town of Marana received Serial Number Referendum Petition applications for each of the two roughly 300-acre sites. The applicant listed on these petitions is Jordan Greenslade, who would need to collect at least 1,300 valid signatures for each petition to place the rezoning decisions on a future ballot.
What opponents haven’t disclosed to Marana residents is that Jordan Greenslade isn’t a Marana resident – he’s the Senior Field Director for Worker Power, a Phoenix-based 501(c)(4) political organization with offices at 1021 S. 7th Ave, Suite 202 in Phoenix.
Worker Power describes itself as “a multi-racial, multi-generational organization dedicated to preserving democracy and improving the lives of working families across the United States through voter engagement and strategic policy interventions.” The organization has conducted extensive partisan electoral campaigns in Arizona and Georgia, including knocking on over 750,000 doors in Arizona during the 2022 election cycle.
This isn’t grassroots Marana activism – it’s a well-funded national political operation with sophisticated infrastructure and professional organizers. While Worker Power certainly has the legal right to involve itself in local land use decisions, Marana residents deserve to know who’s really driving this referendum effort.
Local opponents like Sue Ritz, the U.S. Army National Guard veteran who has spoken passionately against the data center, deserve credit for their sincere concerns about their community. But when a Phoenix-based political organization with a track record of partisan organizing deploys professional staff to collect signatures in Marana, we’re no longer talking about spontaneous citizen outrage.
We’re talking about calculated political intervention in local economic development decisions.
The question Marana residents should ask themselves: Are outside political organizations with no stake in Marana’s economic future the right people to decide our community’s path forward? Should professional organizers from Phoenix, funded by out-of-area donors, override the judgment of locally elected officials who live here, pay taxes here, and will face the consequences of their decisions?
If the referendum qualifies for the ballot and voters ultimately reject the rezoning, that’s democracy at work. But voters deserve to know who’s organizing this effort and what their actual connection to Marana is. Transparency works both ways.
