Phoenix City Hall
By Taylor Seely || TheArizona Republic
Phoenix has a new vice mayor for 2023.
The City Council selected District 7 Councilmember Yassamin Ansari, 30, to serve for one year as the backup to Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego in a 6-2 vote, with Councilman Sal DiCiccio and Jim Waring voting “no.” She will succeed District 4 Councilmember Laura Pastor, who served in the position for two years nonconsecutively.
“Phoenix is obviously facing a multitude of crises: homelessness, affordable housing, hiring and retention — from our police department to public works — and as vice mayor, I’m committed to working with every single one of my colleagues to prioritize these issues and make 2023 our most productive year yet,” Ansari said after clinching the nomination.
As vice mayor, Ansari will represent the city when the mayor is unavailable and preside over meetings when Gallego can’t be there.
Ansari, still in her first term serving parts of downtown and south Phoenix, made history in 2021 as the city’s youngest woman to be elected to the council. She was 28. The youngest man elected to the council was Paul Johnson. He was 25 when elected in 1985. Johnson later served as mayor.
Ansari is the youngest vice mayor in Phoenix since at least the 1990s, and she may be the youngest vice mayor in city history. City sokesperson Dan Wilson said that the city doesn’t track vice mayors’ ages.
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