CD1: Shah’s two-front fight

A little more than a month ago, establishment Democrats were attacking congressional candidate Amish Shah as too conservative to be one of them.

These days, Republicans are incessantly calling him a “socialist.”

So which is it?

The battle to replace Republican Congressman David Schweikert in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, on top of being one of the most closely watched races in the nation, has turned into an absurd food fight — with everyone tossing their tomatoes and eggs at Shah.

In the primary contest, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) endorsed and supported his main opponent, former journalist Marlene Galán-Woods, in a controversial decision that backfired disastrously.

Shah won the four-way race with nearly 40% of the vote.

In the weeks before the July primary, the attack from Democrats was that Shah was a rogue lawmaker with a conservative streak on issues like reproductive healthcare.

Indeed, Shah had a penchant for reaching across the aisle to work with Republicans during his five years serving at the Arizona Legislature. But his voting record is fairly standard for an Arizona Democrat who wants to pass bills.

And the reproductive healthcare advocacy community’s attacks on Shah — which claimed he “can’t be trusted” and hinged on an amendment he introduced for a 2021 bill that legalized over-the-counter hormonal birth control — mostly fell flat. Shah’s campaign defended the amendment, which failed but would have changed the law to only apply to some kinds of birth control, by saying that estrogen-type contraceptives carry increased risk of fatal blood clots for some women.

But having Democratic allies turn against him still stung.

In a private call that leaked in late July, Shah told campaign supporters that the primary was “bruising” and that the DCCC’s “establishment insiders in back rooms” had done “serious damage” to his general election candidacy.

The DCCC did endorse Shah after the primary, and unsurprisingly, added him to its list of candidates in critical races.

Now, Shah’s getting the pitchforks from the other side.

Republicans — who are working to keep the seat and get former NFL kicker Jay Feely elected — are calling him “socialist Shah” and trying to portray him as a left-wing radical.

There’s almost nothing in Shah’s voting record to suggest he’s the far-left, socialist radical the Republicans desperately want him to be.

Sure, Shah campaigned for Sen. Bernie Sanders during a 2019 Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) event in Phoenix, giving a speech in which he called for a universal single-payer healthcare system.

That’s a position that Shah still holds, per his website.

But the Republicans have retooled that appearance at the 2019 event into evidence that Shah is a totally deranged anarcho-communist.

Earlier this week during a PBS candidate forum, Feely pointed to that DSA appearance as evidence that Shah is as radical as they come.

Talk about a leap — that one could win gold in the long jump at the Olympics.

Shah probably could have defended himself, had he chosen to attend the forum. His campaign didn’t directly respond to our question about why he didn’t participate, but did say Shah “looks forward to discussing issues important to Arizona voters” during an October Clean Elections debate.

Still, it’s doubtful that kind of over-the-top hyperbole will land with the relatively well-educated, affluent voters of CD1, who polling suggests are much more concerned about economic issues like inflation and rising costs than culture war battles.

Republicans have also tried to paint Shah as an anti-police radical since the beginning of the contest, saying in that ad above that Shah “voted against police funding” — a stretch that they didn’t back up with any evidence.

But it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the GOP to make that case persuasively as Shah picks up support from law enforcement unions.

Earlier this week, the Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association backed Shah, his third endorsement from a police or sheriff’s deputies union.

So much for the “defund the police” line.

With two months to go before the election, it’s too early to tell if Feely and Republicans’ bold histrionics will work. But according to prediction market Kalshi, they don’t seem to be doing the trick.

And, as of yesterday, elections media organization VoteHub estimated that Shah has a 73% chance of winning the contest.

So why are Republicans leaning so hard into projecting a far-left platform onto Shah?

It’s unclear. But for one thing, it does serve as a distraction from the fact that Feely was practically birthed into a political career by President Donald Trump, whose popularity is at a record low as a result of the Epstein files debacle and the chaotic, costly war against Iran leading to higher gas prices for Americans.

Trump’s endorsement was what launched Feely into frontrunner status in the GOP primary, even against a more conservative opponent in former Rep. Joseph Chaplik. Now, Feely — like plenty of other Republican candidates across the country — is doing his best to shrug off the Trump connection.

And while he tries to do that, the GOP’s attacks on Shah seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, as evidenced by an attempt this week to ambush Shah while he was putting up signs.

It’s hard to see how that cringy attempt at creating a viral moment — which Shah handled pretty well by pointing out that the cameraman was freaking people out for hiding behind a bush, or something — would hurt the Democrat at all.

If anything, it seems like the kind of antics that would inspire sympathy for Shah among a voting populace that’s primarily concerned about economics, tired of the clichéd left-versus-right theatre, and really doesn’t like to be bothered by random people hiding and jumping out at you from behind objects.