Primary election is this Tuesday
Races will indicate voter enthusiasm, shifting balances of power between parties heading into November voting
For as important and anticipated as the 2020 elections have been for years, the primary election that will determine who is on Arizona’s ballots has seemed easy to overlook.
One reason for that is the relative lack of drama in the primary in the state’s marquee race of the cycle, the U.S. Senate contest. And the coronavirus pandemic has for months remained a major health and economic concern.
But for those who are paying attention, there are important races to watch, especially in the primaries for the Legislature. Partisan voters will make choices that will help settle whether Democrats retake the state House of Representatives for the first time since the 1966 elections or whether the GOP’s two-vote majority survives for another two years.
The Democrats will make an important decision about who they run in the congressional race against five-term Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz.
And Maricopa County voters will choose among new faces, such as Allister Adel, who was appointed the county attorney last year, and familiar ones, such as Joe Arpaio, who is seeking to reclaim his former job as sheriff after four years out of office.
Democrats are watching the primary election as a metric of voter enthusiasm, particularly among independent voters not affiliated with a party. In the primary election two years ago, independents were requesting Republican ballots more than
Democratic ballots. As of Friday, that trend appeared to have flipped.
“That’s not something we’ve really seen before,” said Democratic consultant Andy Barr. “If the overall volume of votes in the primary for Democrats as compared to for Republicans is even close to even, that’s a pretty dramatic change from recent years. What it means for the general (election)? We’ll see.”
Here is a look at some of the key primary battles that voters will settle this week.
Arizona Legislature
Several legislative primaries are pitting moderates against hardliners and testing incumbents embroiled in scandals.
In the general election, Democrats will be angling to win control of the state House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in decades.
But for both parties, the primaries will do much to define the session that follows, with Republicans deciding just how far right they want their lawmakers to go and Democrats choosing just how far to the left they envision their potential majority after November.
The race for the Senate seat representing District 15 in North Phoenix is an example, as Republican Rep. Nancy Barto challenges incumbent GOP Sen. Heather Carter.
Barto accuses Carter of political apostasy.
To be sure, Carter had become an annoyance for the party’s leadership. She helped hold up passage of the budget last year, for example. And she has rankled conservatives, such as with her support of LGBT rights. But Carter had argued, apparently unsuccessfully, that Barto is too radical.
If Barto wins and ousts Carter, it would be a big victory for right wing of the Republican caucus.
If Carter can hang on in what has been a loud noise flooded with outside money, it would be a rejection of one of the party’s most conservative legislators and an affirmation of the incumbent’s independent streak. The winner of the primary will not have any competition in the general election.
A similar battle is playing out in the left in South Phoenix, where Catherine Miranda is angling for a comeback.
Miranda represented District 27 in the Legislature from 2011 to 2019. She gave up her seat to run unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for Congress against Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. This year, she made a go for one of the state House seats currently occupied by Reps. Diego Rodriguez and Reginald Bolding.
In announcing her campaign, Miranda railed against what she described as “partisan resistance politics that has gridlocked our Legislature” and said “bipartisanship is the only way forward.”
The incumbents argued that Miranda was too conservative for the district, pointing to her endorsement of Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in 2014 and the times she broke with Democrats on abortion legislation.
But Miranda has the benefit of having held legislative office for years. And she comes from a prominent family in South Phoenix politics. Her late husband, Ben Miranda, served in the Legislature for years before her.
Still, those on the party’s left would view a victory for Miranda as a win for business groups backing her campaign, which they suspect are eager to moderate a Democratic caucus that could soon find itself running the House.
U.S. Congress
The presidential race will soon consume most screens most of the time, but for the moment, Arizona has a few congressional races to sort out.
Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., has a primary battle from Glendale businessman Daniel McCarthy that she is widely expected to win before taking on Democrat Mark Kelly in November.
She is among the more-prolific fundraisers in the Senate, and only narrowly lost in 2018 to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, DAriz. But McCarthy’s presence on the ballot speaks to a lingering discontent among the state’s most conservative voters.
It’s the same faction of the party that drove former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., into retirement and that censured the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., over his views on immigration.
In the 2018 GOP primary, about 45% of Republican voters preferred former state lawmaker-turned state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward or Arpaio over McSally.
As he has for months, McCarthy speaks to GOP voters wanting something else.
“Inside the Republican Party there’s is almost a primal feeling that we’re losing our country, and they’re sick and tired of having weak Republicans or fake Republicans represent them,” McCarthy said last week. “She’s worse than a fake Republican; she’s a Democrat. Look at her voting record.”
Caroline Anderegg, McSally’s spokesperson, declined to weigh in on the stakes of Tuesday’s primary election.
McSally will win back many of those who don’t vote for her in the primary, but the better McCarthy does in the primary, the more worried Republicans may be about retaining her already-imperiled seat in November.
By contrast, Kelly is unchallenged for the Democratic nomination and has easily out-raised McSally to this point.
Perhaps the most important choice in U.S. House races this year for Arizonans is the one facing Democrats in the Scottsdale-based, Republican-leaning 6th Congressional District.
There are four Democrats vying for the nomination and the right to challenge Schweikert. Hiral Tipirneni, a physician who ran in the West Valley-based 8th District in 2018, is running outside her district and has more than $1 million in cash for the race.
She is facing former tech executive Anita Malik, the 2018 Democratic nominee; and business owners Karl Gentles and Stephanie Rimmer.
Democrats have long circled this race as one to watch because the suburban relatively well-educated and affluent district is the kind that Republicans have seen slip away elsewhere in the country.
Additionally, Schweikert is facing a House Ethics Committee investigation over alleged misspending by his campaign and his office. His fundraising is among the worst in the country for incumbents facing significant challenges.
Tipirneni gives Democrats one of the best-funded House candidates in the country. But the others offer varying degrees of boldness on policy priorities and prescriptions.
Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, which spans northeastern Arizona, has a pair of primaries worth noting. Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Ariz., faces former Flagstaff City Council member Eva Putzova in the Democratic primary.
Putzova’s aggressive liberalism stands in contrast to O’Halleran’s morecentrist record in two terms in Washington.
Meanwhile, Tiffany Shedd, a lawyer and cotton farmer making her second bid for Congress, and Nolan Reidhead, a lawyer making his first attempt, are vying for the Republican nomination in that district.
Shedd has raised far more money and has the support of conservatives such as former Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
The primaries matter in this district because Trump carried it by 1 percentage point in 2016, and Republicans selected nominees in 2016 and 2018 whose views were easily pilloried by Democrats as out of step.
Maricopa County
County voters have a pair of races interesting for different reasons.
The Board of Supervisors named Adel, a Republican, the county attorney in October after Gov. Doug Ducey named Bill Montgomery to the Arizona Supreme Court.
She is unopposed for the Republican nomination and will face voters in November for the first time after a summer of roiling discontent with police officers.
Julie Gunnigle, Will Knight and Robert McWhirter are battling for the Democratic nomination, and each have debated how to manage one of the nation’s largest prosecution teams at a time of upheaval.
Meanwhile, Republican voters in the county will sort through the four sheriff candidates hoping to challenge Democrat Paul Penzone in November.
For the GOP, one name stands out from the others: Joe Arpaio, the man who held the job for six terms before losing to Penzone in 2016.
Arpaio is trying again, and hoping to win the nomination over his former deputy, Jerry Sheridan, Mike Crawford and Lehland Burton.