On September 25, Townhall reported that Joanna Mendoza, who is running for the House in Arizona's 6th Congressional District, is pulling the same moves as her fellow Democrats: run as a moderate and hide your radical record. Mendoza deleted a bunch of social media posts that included her beliefs that "racism is killing the planet" and "systemic racism is quite literally in the air we breathe."
Last night, Mendoza tried that again, claiming in a debate with her Republican opponent, Rep. Juan Ciscomani, that she never supported defund the police.
"Well look, I mean the fact that this has been a conversation, social media scrubbing, that's not what we're hearing from people in the community. What they're concerned about is the costs. They're concerned about healthcare, they're concerned about border security," Mendoza said. "And what I will say is that, look, I never have supported defund the police. I said it back in 2020, when I ran for the state legislature, I'll say it again here: I do not support defund the police. And as a matter of fact there are statements out there that say that I support more resources for local law enforcement. So It's just mischaracterising my statement."
Mendoza defended scrubbing her social media count as a "really standard practice" for Congressional campaigns. Mendoza then tried to deflect. "These things are not things that we need to be talking about."
But perhaps Mendoza doesn't want to talk about these things because she does support defunding the police. In March, Fox News shared footage of Mendoza where she said, "I support the reallocation of funding to programs that would allow people to live their best lives. Such as social service programs. Such as housing, public education, healthcare, ensuring that we are addressing economic stability and environmental safety."
The Arizona Republic also wrote about Mendoza's pro-defund the police posts:
In one post, she criticized a political cartoon posted by her then-campaign rival, state Sen. Vince Leach, that mocked calls to defund the police. Mendoza linked to a webpage where she told a local blog: "Police reform and reallocation of funding to public education, healthcare, and other public service programs are long overdue."
“Militarizing our police has taken the form of an occupying army which has resulted in aggressive policing & needless death," she wrote in another deleted post from Jun. 19, 2020.
In another deleted post, she recommended an educational webpage from an activist group, "For those folks who don’t believe that #systemicracism is a problem in our nation!”
Her other deleted posts show a radical left-wing agenda, too. In October 2020, Mendoza shared a post from @VoteMamaUS that read, "RT if you've also had to tell a privileged cis man, 'I'm speaking.'" Other posts praised a proposal to let Arizona drivers identify as "nonbinary" on their licenses; Mendoza called it "long overdue" and added "#InclusionMatters" in an January 2, 2020 post. She also deleted a post celebrating the anniversary of the World Health Organization declassifying homosexuality as a mental disorder, writing to her followers, "Let's take a stand against homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia!"
On June 7, 2020, Mendoza wrote on X, "We must teach our kids what we are fighting for. If we want our children to join us in fighting the good fight, we must to teach them [sic] what that looks like. Get'em started young so that future generations are no longer plagued by this cancer known as systemic racism."
Once again, Democrat Joanna Mendoza has been caught hiding her true policy beliefs from Arizona voters. She's deleted social media posts and won't answer questions about the policy positions she said she believed just a few short years ago. Arizona voters have no reason to think she's changed, and every reason to think she's trying to pull a fast one on them.