EDS: Cronkite School journalists profiled candidates for Phoenix City Council and the Maricopa County sheriff race. You can find all the profiles here.
By Tori Smith
Special for Cronkite News
- Candidate name: Matt Evans
- Political affiliation: Republican
- Position sought: Mayor
- Age: 36
- Career: Senior DevOps Engineer for Parchment
“If anybody is responsible for making change in our city, it would be me, a native of Phoenix, who plans to raise their kids here,” said Matt Evans in an Instagram video posted by his mayoral campaign.
He grew up around 56th Street and Thomas and 44th Street and Indian School Road, according to another Instagram campaign video. He is a graduate of Arizona State University’s computer science program and earned an associate’s degree from Paradise Valley Community College. He is currently a senior DevOps engineer for Parchment.
Although Evans doesn’t have a political background, this isn’t the first time he’s run in an election. He ran as an independent in the 2022 City Council election, and lost to Jim Waring. Waring collected 52.8% of the votes, while Evans collected 17.3%. According to the Phoenix New Times, he changed his party from independent to Republican in June, when he called himself “more conservative” than most Republicans.
The steps Evans plans to take to solve the homelessness crisis
The largest part of Evans’ campaign is to address the homelessness crisis. It’s the only issue that has a separate tab on his website. He has multiple priorities he’d like to focus on if elected — “enforcing the law” is at the top.
Second, he’d create a neighborhood safety team (NST) for each council district in Phoenix. These NSTs would have daily patrols around each district; engage those who are unhoused and transition them into temporary shelters and assign them to a work program or treatment center; clean up trash and hazardous materials; remove public encampments; recycle stolen shopping carts; actively outreach to let individuals know loitering won’t be tolerated; add infrastructure like video surveillance and lights at bus stops; monitor district compliance with the unhoused; facilitate service integrations with local centers inside district boundaries to collect data; and campaign to raise awareness on his new policies.
Evans also wants to grade neighborhoods for their level of safety, create community service work programs and improve housing affordability. In an interview with the Phoenix New Times, Evans said he felt like short-term rentals were due to the rise of housing costs, specifically Airbnbs. He said there should be some ability to regulate short-term rentals.
The importance of transparency between the city and its people
In a recent interview with The Break Away USA Podcast, Evans said that he wants to use his skill set and background as an engineer to inform the city and keep small businesses, nonprofits and integrated services accountable. He wants to build a “data lake,” instead of APIs, requiring entities who have relationships or collect money from the city to integrate with the platform and publish metrics to the city, so they can then take that data and transform them into dashboards, keeping the city informed.
A data lake, according to Databricks, is a central location that holds a large amount of data in its raw format.
Phoenix makes its financial data, including yearly financial reports, public.
In his Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey responses, Evans said transparency is one of the top three key messages of his campaign. He also showed his opposition to his opponent, incumbent Kate Gallego, on his Instagram page because of her lack of transparency while using the Signal app to communicate with others.
Responding to the recent U.S. Department of Justice report about the Phoenix Police Department, Evans said, “There will be no federal oversight when I’m elected mayor of Phoenix … if it means we have to go to court and spend tens of millions of dollars, then I believe in it.”
Evans is against DEI initiatives
Evans is against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and said he feels like the current office has implemented unnecessary DEI initiatives. One example was when he was asked to include his race on Phoenix’s civilian review board.
“To me, equity is not a quality,” he said. “We should be hiring people based on the merits of their work, and the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”
Evans said that if he’s elected mayor, he would remove that question from the civilian review board application, and “every other application in the city of Phoenix.”
He also said felt like the routes created on the Valley Metro light rail by Gallego are DEI-based, referring to the rail that stops near the former Metrocenter shopping mall.
“What she’s essentially doing is connecting two bad neighborhoods together, and is turning it into a crime-ridden station, allowing drug addicts to be transients across our city,” he said.
Although he has no problems with transportation, he said the city needs to be more tactful around the infrastructure it creates.
Stepping up for the community
Evans said that he wishes he didn’t have to run for mayor. But after talking with his fiancee a few years ago about where they should move, he knew he wanted to step up for his community.
“This will be the first time in the history of the city where the people represent themselves,” he said.
When he’s not campaigning, Evans drives for Uber part time, takes care of his three kids: Phoenix, Ryder and Oakley, and shows miniature bull terriers.
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