Representative Debbie Lesko

Debra Kay Lesko (née Lorenz; born November 14, 1958) is an American politician from Arizona who has served at the local, state, and federal levels. A member of the Republican Party, she represented Arizona’s 8th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2018 to 2025 and later was elected to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors representing the 4th District. Her congressional district, located in the West Valley portion of the Phoenix metropolitan area, included Glendale, Surprise, Sun City, Peoria, and part of western Phoenix. Over four terms in Congress, Lesko participated in the legislative process during a period of significant national political polarization and public health crisis, representing the interests of her constituents in Arizona’s West Valley.

Lesko’s early adult life included a series of personal and financial challenges that preceded her political career. In 1988, while living in Conroe, Texas, she was charged with a misdemeanor for tampering with government records; the case was ultimately dropped in 1994. That same year, her then-husband, Jeffrey Allen Ignas, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for fraud and was released in 1992. In October 1992, Lesko and Ignas filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection. The couple was sued twice in 1993 for failure to pay a $10,000 rental equipment bill and an additional unpaid $11,000 bill, and they filed for bankruptcy again that year. During this period, Ignas was allegedly abusive toward Lesko, reportedly punching her in the stomach while she was pregnant. Later in 1993, she filed for divorce. The second bankruptcy protection case was closed in 1994. Ignas, who later used the name Jeffrey Allen Herald, was again incarcerated in the Arizona Department of Corrections and was released in June 2022 on supervised probation. Over the years, Lesko used several names associated with marriage and personal circumstances, including Debbie Harris, Debra Ignas, Debra Schultz, Debra Howard, and Debra Kay Lorenz, before taking the surname Lesko after marrying her current husband, Joe Lesko.

By the early 2000s, Lesko had become active in local education and community affairs in Arizona, particularly in the Peoria Unified School District. She served on the district’s community committee and, in 2006, ran for a seat on the school board. In that race she was endorsed by U.S. Representative Trent Franks but finished fourth out of five candidates. Although unsuccessful, the campaign increased her public profile and deepened her involvement in local issues. She regularly attended school board meetings and contributed opinion pieces to The Arizona Republic, writing on topics such as illegal immigration and domestic violence, which helped establish her as a conservative voice on education and public policy in the West Valley.

Lesko entered state-level politics in 2008. With incumbent state Representative Bob Stump running for the Arizona Corporation Commission and leaving a District 9 seat open, she and Rick Murphy were unopposed in the September 2, 2008 Republican primary, where Lesko placed first with 10,902 votes. In the November 4, 2008 general election, she took the first seat with 37,762 votes, with Murphy taking the second, ahead of Democratic nominees Sheri Van Horsen and Shawn Hutchinson. She was reelected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2010 and 2012. In the August 24, 2010 Republican primary, with Murphy running for the Arizona Senate and leaving a District 9 House seat open, Lesko placed first with 14,498 votes; in the November 2, 2010 general election, she again took the first seat with 32,423 votes, ahead of Democratic nominee Shirley McAllister, while fellow Republican Rick Gray took the second seat. After redistricting in 2012 placed her in District 21 alongside Gray, she ran in the August 28, 2012 Republican primary and placed first with 14,771 votes. In the five-way November 6, 2012 general election, she took the first seat with 41,023 votes, with Gray taking the second, ahead of Democratic nominees Carol Lokare and Sheri Van Horsen and a Libertarian write-in candidate.

In 2014, Lesko successfully sought a seat in the Arizona Senate, running for the open District 21 seat held by retiring Senator Rick Murphy. She was unopposed in the Republican primary and was endorsed by the Arizona Police Association, Arizona Right to Life, and the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. In the general election, she defeated Democratic nominee Carolyn Vasko with 32,119 votes. She ran unopposed in both the primary and general elections in 2016. From 2015 to 2018, she served in the Arizona Senate, and from 2017 to 2018 she held the leadership position of president pro tempore, reflecting her growing influence within the state legislature. Over the course of her state legislative career from 2009 to 2018, she focused on conservative priorities, including taxation, regulation, and social issues, and became a prominent Republican figure in the West Valley.

Lesko’s transition to Congress came in the wake of the resignation of Representative Trent Franks. On December 20, 2017, she announced her candidacy in the special election to replace Franks in Arizona’s 8th congressional district, which substantially overlapped with her state senate district. Although Arizona’s resign-to-run laws would have allowed her to remain in the state Senate while running in the special election, and she was already in the final year of her term, she chose to resign on January 8, 2018. During the campaign, her state Senate committee, Re-elect Debbie Lesko for Senate, transferred $50,000 on January 2018 to a federal political action committee, Conservative Leadership for Arizona, created eight days earlier and authorized to make independent expenditures. The PAC raised almost no other funds and used the money primarily for yard signs supporting Lesko, while her congressional campaign focused its resources on television advertising. This arrangement prompted complaints to the Federal Election Commission and the Arizona Attorney General from primary opponent Phil Lovas and criticism from another Republican primary opponent, Steve Montenegro. In March 2018, the Campaign Legal Center filed a federal campaign finance complaint alleging that the transfer of $50,000 from her state campaign to an ostensibly independent group that spent nearly all of its funds backing her congressional run violated federal campaign finance law.

Despite the controversy, Lesko secured the Republican nomination and faced Democratic physician Hiral Tipirneni in the April 24, 2018 special general election. She was endorsed by President Donald Trump and national Republican organizations. Lesko won the special election with 52.6 percent of the vote to Tipirneni’s 47.4 percent, a narrower margin than expected in a historically Republican district. Observers noted that it was the closest contest in what is now the 8th District since 1976, when Bob Stump won what was then the 3rd District with 47 percent of the vote, and the Associated Press reported that the result sent a message to Republicans nationwide that even strongly Republican districts could be competitive. Later in 2018, Lesko again defeated Tipirneni for a full two-year term, this time with 55.5 percent of the vote to Tipirneni’s 44.5 percent, still the closest general election in the district in more than four decades and the closest a Democrat had come to winning a full term there since Stump switched parties in 1982.

Lesko continued to consolidate her position in subsequent elections. In the 2020 general election, she defeated Democratic nominee Michael Muscato with 60 percent of the vote, reflecting a more comfortable margin in the increasingly high-profile suburban district. In 2022, she ran for reelection without opposition in either the Republican primary or the general election, underscoring her strong standing within her party and the district. During her tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2018 to 2025, she served on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, one of the chamber’s key policy committees. Within that committee, she sat on the Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security; the Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce; and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. She also served on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, participating in congressional oversight of the federal response to COVID-19. Through these assignments, Lesko was involved in legislative and oversight work on energy policy, consumer protection, technology, public health, and pandemic-related issues during a consequential period in national politics.

In October 2023, Lesko announced that she would not seek reelection to Congress in 2024, citing personal and family considerations and signaling a desire to continue public service closer to home. She subsequently declared her candidacy for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors representing District 4, a powerful local governing body overseeing one of the nation’s largest counties. In the 2024 election, she was elected to that office, defeating Democratic candidate David Sandoval. As a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Lesko returned to county-level governance after more than a decade in state and federal office, continuing her long-standing role as a Republican representative of Arizona’s West Valley communities.