Election deniers win Republican primaries in Arizona | Arizona
Candidates backed by Donald Trump in Arizona prevailed in key primary elections on Tuesday, kicking off a fall campaign that will test whether Republicans can reverse some of their recent losses in the presidential battleground state.
Andy Biggs, the far-right congressman backed by Donald Trump, easily won the Republican nomination, challenging incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
The race is expected to be one of the most fiercely contested in the country, with control of the governor’s office of immense national importance in a state that became “ground zero” for election denialism after Trump’s narrow defeat in 2020.
Biggs, the former chairman of the House Freedom caucus who was a central figure in efforts to overturn Trump’s election defeat, defeated fellow congressman David Schweikert by appealing to the party’s deeply conservative base. Hobbs, who flipped the seat from red to blue in 2022, ran unopposed.
Republican state representative and attorney Alex Kolodin, who led unsuccessful legal efforts to overturn Arizona’s 2020 and 2022 election results, also won the primary to become Arizona’s top election official, the party’s secretary of state.
Kolodin will face Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes in November for the office that will oversee elections in a swing state during the 2028 presidential race. Fontes has cast himself as a bulwark against Trump’s election denialism as he oversees elections in one of the nation’s most closely watched battleground states.
In an all-caps social media post on Wednesday, Trump wrote, “IT’S A COMPLETE SURPRISE!!!” he declared.
“MAGA CANDIDATES WON EVERYTHING IN ARIZONA LAST NIGHT,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “ARIZONA IS BECOMING A REPUBLICAN STATE AFTER DECADES,” he added.
In fact, Arizona has long been a Republican stronghold and has only recently transformed into a competitive swing state with rapid population growth, changing suburban voting patterns around Phoenix, and an influx of college-educated voters.
In the decade since Trump’s election in 2016, Arizona Democrats have gained control of the three top statewide offices — governor, attorney general and secretary of state — as well as U.S. Senate seats. But Trump still narrowly missed Arizona in 2024 after losing the state four years ago; it was a shocking defeat that he unsuccessfully tried to reverse.
Biggs and Schweikert during the Republican gubernatorial campaign He offered contrasting visions of regaining the governorship. Schweikert, who gave up his crumbling congressional seat after eight terms to run for governor, argued that Biggs’ far-right politics and staunch embrace of the president allowed Democrats to make gains in once-ruby-red Arizona. But there are Republican voters in Arizona, as there are across the country.
This year, Republicans are struggling with adverse national political conditions. Historically, the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections, and Democrats hope they can gain control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate; This is fueling a wave of discontent over high gas prices and the unpopular Iran war, which have lowered Trump’s approval ratings. Two mixed House districts in Arizona are key to this effort.
Arizona’s first congressional district, located in affluent Scottsdale, has long been a Democratic target as suburbs drift away from the Republican party over the past decade.
Two years ago, Schweikert was re-elected with just under 52 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating former state lawmaker Amish Shah, who Democrats appeared poised to nominate again on Tuesday.
His opponent, former local news anchor Marlene Galán-Woods, also filed for the nomination two years ago. This year, Galán-Woods, the widow of former Republican attorney general Grant Woods, who publicly left his party over Trump, won the controversial endorsement of the Democrats’ congressional campaign committee.
Shah will face Republican Jay Feely, former Arizona Cardinals kicker, in November. Feely faced former state lawmaker Joseph Chaplik and technology and telecommunications executive John Trobough in his party’s primary.
Democrats in the sixth congressional district, which stretches from the suburbs of Tucson to the U.S.-Mexico border and includes much of southeastern Arizona, are hoping that the national headwinds facing the president’s party will unseat Republican congressman Juan Ciscomani, who is seeking a third term. Democrat JoAnna Mendoza, a Marine Corps veteran, was running unopposed.
Meanwhile, the race to replace Biggs in the Republicans’ safe fifth congressional district has attracted unusual attention. Trump-backed Republican candidate Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, spent the final weeks of the primary campaign confronting allegations of sexual harassment and abuse of power reported in a multi-part investigation by The Arizona Republic. Prosecutors found no basis for criminal charges and Trump confirmed again his support for Lamb, who denies wrongdoing.
The nurse will face Democrat Elizabeth Lee in the general election.
Elsewhere, Republicans picked candidates for two top state positions that Democrats see as critical to pushing back against the Trump administration.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen won the Republican primary race over Democrat Kris Mayes as the attorney general nominee. Mayes, an outspoken critic of Trump, won the office by just 280 votes after an automatic recount in 2022, making it one of the closest statewide races in Arizona history. He was running for the nomination against former Democrat Rodney Glassman, who was the party’s Senate nominee against John McCain in 2010 before joining the Republican party.
Tuesday’s primaries also produced tightly contested legislative races in Arizona, where Republicans hold slim majorities in both chambers of the state capital.
