Kirkpatrick leads 6 Democratic rivals

Ann Kirkpatrick was leading her six other Democratic opponents Tuesday night in her bid to renew her congressional career in a new district.

Early unofficial results showed the three-term Washington veteran locked in a tight race with Matt Heinz, the party's 2016 nominee, with five other rivals trailing well behind.

Lea Marquez Peterson, a fixture in Tucson business circles, was in a tight race for the Republican nomination as well. She held a narrow early lead over Brandon Martin, who worked in intelligence for the Army and is a veteran of the Afghanistan war.

Regardless of who wins either primary, the Tucson area will have its fourth member of Congress in seven years.

The race has attracted national attention in part because it is considered one of the more promising possibilities for a Democratic pick-up. The party needs to win a net 23 new seats to regain control of the House next year.

In 2016, voters in the district chose Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump by 5 percentage points on the same night they sent U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a Republican, back to Washington for a second term by a comfortable 14 percentage points.

Heinz, who lost that race, put $350,000 of his own money into an effort to defeat Kirkpatrick, who used to represent northeastern Arizona in Washington before moving to Tucson last year.

Throughout the primary, Heinz and Kirkpatrick accused the other of being beholden to gun-rights advocates and tried to cast themselves as more committed to Democratic ideals in 2018. It led each to accuse the other of distorting their records and running an ugly campaign.

Meanwhile, other Democrats in the race took turns reaching out to the party's left-wing.

As the Democrats battled in public, Republicans quietly staged a contested primary to replace McSally, who is running for the U.S. Senate.

Marquez Peterson, the CEO of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, dominated the field financially, but found herself in a tight race with Martin.

Ron Barber, a district director for former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, replaced Giffords in a 2012 special election and won a full term later that year. McSally narrowly lost to Barber in 2012 and beat him in the closest House race in the country in 2014.