Representative Ben Toma Contact information

Benjamin Cornel Toma, born in 1979 in Cluj Napoca, Socialist Republic of Romania, is a Romanian-American politician. He moved to the United States in 1987 and has been serving as a member of the Arizona House of Representatives for the 27th district. He was elected in November 2016 and assumed office in January 2017.

Toma was selected to be Speaker of the House in 2022 and took office in 2023. From 2021 to 2023, Toma served as majority leader of the Arizona House. He is a member of the Republican Party and has been serving in various roles in the Arizona House of Representatives since 2017.

Before his political career, Toma was a real estate broker. He was appointed on a 5–1 vote to serve as a member of the Peoria, Arizona, city council in June 2014, when Cathy Carlat resigned to run for mayor. However, Toma was defeated in the special election in 2014 and again in 2016.

In April 2017, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Toma to fill a vacant seat in the Arizona House of Representatives representing the 22nd legislative district, to replace Phil Lovas, who resigned to accept a federal appointment with the Small Business Administration. The district includes parts of Peoria, Glendale, Surprise, and Sun City West.

Toma took his seat in the final days of the 53rd Legislature and was subsequently elected to a full term in the 2018 elections. In February 2019, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey vetoed a plan, supported by state legislators of his own Republican Party, for across-the-board cuts in the individual state income tax. Toma, as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, was an outspoken supporter of the tax-cut plan and an avowed opponent of tax increases.

Ducey, Toma, and other Arizona Republicans subsequently agreed upon a $11.9 billion state budget deal that included $386 million in offsets to tax hikes, angering some Arizona schoolteachers who were supporting higher taxes to increase funding for public schools. Toma had previously voted for historic salary increases for Arizona K-12 teachers and has voted for increased teacher pay since.

In 2021, Toma, as House majority leader, was the key architect of the largest tax cut package in state history, as well as a separate bill that shielded high-earners from a 3.5% tax surcharge for education that had been approved by voters in the November 2020 election.