Local businessman announces mayoral bid

Local businessman and financial services advisor Christian Price has announced his candidacy for mayor in 2012.

Price, 36, is the owner of Pantheon Investments. He has a wife, Cindy, a 4-year-old son, Cooper, and a 2-month-old daughter, Cassidy.

Price believes he has a good chance of winning the seat, which is currently held by Anthony Smith.

“I think my chances are pretty good,” he said Wednesday. “I put out a lot of feelers before making this decision and got a lot of positive feedback. I think people in Maricopa are ready for a change.”

Price, who said this is his first time running for political office, moved to Maricopa in May 2005 and lives in Maricopa Meadows, where he has served as president of the homeowners’ association.

During his tenure on the Maricopa Meadows HOA, Price said he became a founding member of the Maricopa HOA Presidents' Council, an organization in which members of the city’s homeowner-controlled association boards would meet regularly to discuss the affairs of their respective associations.

It was there Price said he began to fully understand that Maricopa was not only comprised of intelligent, educated people, but people willing to serve the public and make a difference in the lives of others.

It was through those regular meetings that Price and others on the HOA Presidents’ Council began to cultivate relationships with the mayor, city council, police department and fire department, he said.

Price said his long-standing desire to be actively engaged in his community can be traced to his employment as a legislative analyst in the Arizona House of Representatives nearly 13 years ago.  During his time there, Price said the House and Senate debated some of the most hotly contested issues in the state's history.

“I remember how much I longed to voice a common sense approach to many of these important issues of the day and participate in their outcomes,” he said.  “I left knowing the intricate ‘ins and outs’ of our state legislature.”

Price said the city must elect someone whose vision for Maricopa’s economic viability and infrastructure are greater than the sum of its current parts, and not someone whose personal political agenda will stymie the growth and expansion processes.

“The City of Maricopa needs leaders who aren’t bogged down by problems of the past, but who are excited and enthusiastic to meet present and future challenges directly and determine how to best overcome them,” Price said. “We need a mayor who, with youthful exuberance and passionate zeal, is ready to take the problems of the past and put them behind us once and for all and begin with a new and clean slate.”