Democrats have placed one of their most closely watched House hopes this fall in the hands of JoAnna Mendoza, a blunt-spoken Marine veteran pitching herself as a candidate who can connect with working-class voters.
Yet as her campaign profile rises, certain details of Mendoza’s personal history have drawn fresh scrutiny.
Mendoza, 49, is making her first run for federal office as she challenges Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District, widely considered the state’s most competitive House race.
Her candidacy has already attracted national attention. The New York Times described Mendoza as a sober single mother who grew up in rural poverty, and the latest campaign finance filings available this year show she has outraised Ciscomani.
The contest is expected to be among the tightest in the country. Arizona’s Sixth District is rated a “Toss Up,” with a partisan voting index split evenly at 50 percent Democratic and 50 percent Republican.
Polling has reflected that balance, with recent surveys showing the two candidates effectively neck-and-neck. According to the Times, Mendoza held a narrow edge, 47 percent to Ciscomani’s 44 percent.
Mendoza is currently unmarried and, based on her public comments and campaign materials, has presented herself as a “single mom by choice” to her 10-year-old son, who appears in several of her campaign posts and videos.
The Daily Mail, however, reported that Mendoza had previously been married to a Syrian national who did not return with her to the United States.
JoAnna Mendoza is running against incumbent Juan Ciscomani in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District
Mendoza and her son, now ten, when he was a baby. She has spoken about her son frequently on the campaign trail but not other aspects of her family life
Records obtained by the Daily Mail show Mendoza wed Tariq Alrawwass, then unemployed, in Syria on April 20, 1998, three years after she left the Navy and a year before she joined the Marine Corps.
The marriage lasted 16 days.
‘I returned to the U.S. in May of 1998, approximately one week after our marriage. Respondent did not return with me,’ Mendoza wrote in a March 2001 court filing.
She did not file for divorce until October 17, 2000, more than two years after the split, and struggled to locate Alrawwass, reaching him through a relative living in the US and through her own father, who reportedly had her ex-husband’s number.
Mendoza’s campaign spokesperson, Kyle McCarthy, told the Daily Mail: ‘JoAnna’s brief marriage at age 21 is one short chapter amid her decades of service. It ended nearly 30 years ago, and she has since built a career dedicated to service, responsibility, and helping others.’
The Daily Mail was unable to reach Alrawwass and two of his other family members for comment. Ciscomani’s campaign also did not respond to the Daily Mail’s inquiry.
But Lydia Hall, a spokeswoman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC endorsed by House GOP leadership, told the Daily Mail, ‘This situation is fishy and weird. JoAnna Mendoza owes Arizonans a full explanation.’
Alrawwass does not appear to have ever lived in the United States.
A judge granted Mendoza a default divorce judgment in June 2001.
Mendoza’s own Naval service record, also obtained by the Daily Mail, offers no indication of how she and Alrawwass met.
She served in the Navy from 1994 to 1997 and never deployed overseas, per documentation reviewed by the Daily Mail.
Her combat tours – the New York Times noted she ‘served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan’ – came later, during her 1999-2016 stint in the Marines, during which she was a drill instructor.
The first page of Mendoza’s divorce filing that was reviewed by the Daily Mail
The second page of Mendoza’s divorce filing notes that she was not able to get ahold of Alrawwass throughout the divorce proceedings
The final page of Mendoza’s divorce document contains a claim that everything in the filing is accurate, and was made ‘under penalty of perjury’
While on the campaign trail, her sexual preferences, in addition to the rest of her personal history, have also been a selling point for her biography.
A story from the Los Angeles Times published in September 2025 about LGBTQ+ candidates described Mendoza as a ‘bisexual retired U.S. Marine,’ as did a page about her candidacy on the website of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.
But her commitment to left-wing causes and ideologies extends beyond her personal identity.
Mendoza also previously ran a strategy firm called Ponderosa Strategies, where she specifically sought to work with ‘progressive cis women, transwomen, nonbinary and gender nonconforming people, who are disrupting the status quo, & need a little help taking on public leadership roles, entrepreneurship, and other professional endeavors.’
