Rodney Glassman, a former Democratic city councilman in Tucson, Ariz., who registered as a Republican in 2015, is running again.
After the Jewish politician fell short in his challenge of former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2010, he has run for positions such as the state’s corporation commissioner, Maricopa County assessor, and, in 2022, as the Grand Canyon State’s attorney general.
Now, he’s taking another stab at Arizona’s top legal office, as he again campaigns for the Republican nomination for attorney general to be contested next August, with the winner to challenge incumbent Democrat Kris Mayes next November.
“I have a servant’s heart,” Glassman, a lawyer and lieutenant colonel in the reserves, in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps, told JNS. “While going to school, working in the private sector and serving in the Air Force, I have always had a desire to have the greatest impact possible on helping others.”
Glassman, who was splitting his time between his law firm and his reserve Air Force duties at Luke Air Force Base, has wound down his military work to his annual requirements as he ramps up his campaign.
If he secures a general election win, then he would be the only Jewish Republican state attorney general in the country. He likens state attorney general roles to national positions, due to the impact of what he says is the “weaponization of these offices by the Democrats against President Trump and his administration.”
Mayes has sued the Trump administration nearly 30 times, according to Glassman.
She has also suffered some blowback for repeatedly referring to the Trump administration’s proposed migrant detention centers as “concentration camps,” which shows that she “obviously has a flawed understanding of the Holocaust,” according to Glassman.
To have a Jewish Republican in such a role, one “so closely tied to public safety, so closely tied to our schools and so closely tied to our economy makes this a national race and of national importance for the Jewish community,” he told JNS.
A key part of his campaign, Glassman said, is to educate voters that Arizona’s attorney general is a uniquely powerful position—in some ways more powerful than the governor.
“I describe the attorney general as the wife or mom of government because, as you know, in any good Jewish household, she’s in charge,” the candidate said.
Glassman’s sole rival thus far for the Republican nomination is Warren Petersen, the president of the Arizona state Senate and longtime legislator. While Petersen is an Arizona State University law school graduate, Glassman argues that he has no experience as a prosecutor or practicing attorney.
‘The attorney general works for the people’
While Arizona, a swing state, favored Donald Trump by a margin of over five points in November’s presidential election, Mayes crept by Republican Abe Hamadeh, now a U.S. congressman, in 2022’s vote.
Glassman told JNS that Republicans must choose a candidate who can win the general election.
“Historically, emphasis was not placed as heavily on the importance of nominating someone best positioned to win the general election, and if the Republicans nominate someone who is objectively unqualified, we’ll lose, which will result in another four years of Kris Mayes,” he said.
Raised in a Jewish home, Glassman is the son of a farmer father and a dentist mother. His family was affiliated with both Conservative and Reform synagogues in central California.
Glassman met his future wife, Sasha, while attending law school at the University of Arizona, where he also obtained a Ph.D. in arid land resource sciences. The couple, married 16 years this December, has two daughters.
His family supports the local Chabad center and belongs to Beth Tefillah, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Scottsdale, and Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform congregation in Phoenix.
He is a donor to the Jewish National Fund and sat on the Arizona chapter’s board, as well as the boards of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and Tucson Jewish Community Center. Glassman told JNS that he is a donor to AIPAC and a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“I believe that the commitment to the tzedakah and tikkun olam have always been a constant thread in my service, be it my nonprofit service with various charities—both Jewish and non-Jewish—my interest and commitment to serving in the Air Force, and most certainly, I think that if you look at the core of my candidacy and the core of how we live,” Glassman told JNS.
He said his father had Maimonides’ eight levels of charity posted on the wall in his home office, and when the younger Glassman moved to Tucson, he put it on his wall, too.
Glassman told JNS that a key part of his campaign message is stressing to voters just how powerful a position Arizona’s attorney general has to begin with.
“The attorney general works for the people. Yet if you ask the average voter, they don’t know that,” Glassman said. “If you ask the average voter, did you know that the attorney general runs the largest law office in the state of Arizona, provides all the legal services for every state agency—the department of real estate, education, public safety, the registrar of contractors—they don’t know that.”
Those duties include protecting law enforcement, as well, Glassman said. He was encouraged to run for attorney general again by Jerry Sheridan, sheriff of Maricopa County, who visited Israel for the first time in May, at the invitation of Larry Mizel, co-founder and chair of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem and Republican Jewish Coalition board member.
That push by Sheridan was the trigger for launching this campaign.
“It’s a grassroots campaign where our Maricopa County sheriff’s wife literally volunteers day after day to visit legislative districts and Republican clubs and business people with me to educate them on the importance of the attorney general’s role,” Glassman said.
He told JNS he enjoys support from across the Jewish Republican community. He is also shrugging off criticism of his acceptance of support from Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who, while generally supportive of pro-Israel causes, has ties to white nationalists, including podcaster Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and avowed antisemite whom Gosar has repeatedly declined to condemn.
Fuentes has been at the center of a controversy at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, which has come under pressure from Republicans for its president’s refusal to criticize former Fox News host and current podcaster Tucker Carlson and his recent unchallenging platforming of Fuentes.
Still, Glassman said he isn’t shying away from Gosar, who “is a dentist like my mother. He’s a conservative like my mother, and is a champion for the Jewish State of Israel.”
He also pointed to the need of an attorney general to have good working relationships with Congress members and senators at the federal level. Glassman said he’s already accepted Gosar’s endorsement for next year’s race.
