In the past decade, Arizona has gained a newfound, premier spot in the minds of power players in Washington, D.C., by solidifying itself as one of the nation’s most important swing states.
Control of the presidency and the U.S. Senate have both consistently run through Arizona, and this year, all eyes are on three of the state’s nine congressional districts as Democrats push to take back the House of Representatives.
Central to Dems’ mission is winning the 1st Congressional District — centered in Scottsdale and North Phoenix and represented for the past 16 years by Republican Congressman David Schweikert. It’s a seat they’ve been close to flipping for years, narrowly losing by a mere 3,200 votes in 2022.
The race to replace Schweikert this November has the potential to be one of the nation’s most hotly contested and well-funded congressional races.
But just how hot and expensive depends on who wins the July 21 primaries.
Back in March, we previewed the Republican primary, in which Trump-endorsed former NFL kicker Jay Feely is facing off against MAGA firebrand, former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik (who actually lives in the district).
But the dynamics on the Democratic side — where four candidates are vying for the nomination — are just as fascinating.
Last cycle, emergency medicine doctor and former state Rep. Amish Shah won out in a crowded, six-candidate field in the Democratic primary to represent his party against Schweikert. He was the only candidate who could boast previous experience in political office.
Among the losers in that race was third-place finisher Marlene Galán-Woods, who’s back this year with a vengeance.
And this time, the former journalist, former Republican and widow of former Republican Attorney General J. Grant Woods has national Democrats on her side.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — which is run by members of Congress and aims to get more Democrats elected to the House — endorsed Galán-Woods in May, placing her on its “Red to Blue” list of 26 candidates it will support to wrestle back control of the chamber.
Shah, in an interview with 12News’ Brahm Resnik (which GOP consultant Barrett Marson called a “masterclass in how to get off on the wrong foot right out of the gate in an interview”), griped about the endorsement and called it “meddling from D.C.”
The committee’s decision to throw its weight behind Galán-Woods is a departure from its approach last cycle, when it let primary candidates duke it out and then supported Shah in the general election.
That could be because after the 2024 primary, Shah went on to lose the election to Schweikert by about 16,500 votes as Republicans covered much of the country in a red wave.
But even so, Shah was the only Democrat in the country to underperform the party’s presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, in a competitive swing district.
It wasn’t exactly an inspiring performance.
“Arizonans already know Marlene Galán-Woods as a trusted voice who spent 20 years in broadcast journalism speaking truth to power, telling their stories, and advocating for hardworking people,” DCCC Chair Congresswoman Suzan DelBene said. “She is the common-sense fighter Arizonans deserve to cut through the noise, push back against extremists, and get things done.”
But so far this cycle, the DCCC’s track record on endorsements in competitive primaries has been lackluster.
Galán-Woods is one of three candidates (all of them moderates) the DCCC endorsed in such contests. The other two candidates — Jasmeet Bains in central California's 22nd and Joe Baldacci in Maine’s 2nd — both lost their primaries to more progressive opponents.
Shah and Galán-Woods — the favorites at this point — are also competing against In Business Magazine founder and publisher Rick McCartney and Jonathan Treble, a startup founder who leans progressive and supports Medicare for All after he nearly died from a vascular brain growth.
All four joined an Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission primary debate on Tuesday. But the unseen star of the debate was President Donald Trump.
Trying to ride the wave of the anti-Trump sentiment sweeping the nation and suburban swing districts like CD1, each railed against the president and advocated for impeachment. Asked about their first priority if they reached Congress, the quartet’s answers were all Trump-themed: rolling back tariffs, repealing the president’s landmark tax bill, holding him to account for constitutional abuses and for corruption.
It’s the playbook most suburban Democrats have followed for years — keep the focus on the big, scary orange man.
Unlike in the Republican primary debates, none of the candidates seriously tussled with each other, but Galán-Woods certainly came out punching harder than usual against Shah, highlighting his dim performance in 2024.
Beyond that albatross around his neck, Shah has — unlike the other candidates — a voting record that could be turned against him, primarily when it comes to reproductive healthcare.
In 2021, the House passed a bill — which former Gov. Doug Ducey signed — that legalized over-the-counter hormonal birth control, so no prescription would be needed. But Shah, with his medical background, tried to tack on an amendment that would have made the bill only apply to birth control medications that contain progesterone. The amendment failed, and Shah didn’t vote for the bill when it passed — even though it was a major win for the reproductive rights movement just before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and started a political fire.
Shah’s campaign told us that the amendment was actually in line with FDA guidance.
“Certain estrogen-type oral contraceptives carry a serious increased risk of sudden and fatal blood clots in women with certain health conditions,” campaign spokesperson Colin Lauderdale said, pointing out that Shah also worked to lower copays on birth control in the House. “He has a 100% pro-choice voting record.”
Other reproductive healthcare activists have noted that the bill included self-screening requirements for women to complete before they could get those sometimes-riskier types of birth control from a pharmacist, and several obstetricians testified in favor of the bill as it was written.
Shah’s record is far from bad for a typical Democratic voter, or even for moderate Independents and Republicans who favor access. But the failed amendment certainly didn’t help him among those who put support for reproductive rights among their most important qualifications for a candidate.
Notably, Planned Parenthood, which rarely gets involved in primaries, endorsed Galán-Woods. And an ad from a PAC called Pro-Choice Majority Action — which receives much of its funding from “dark money” sources that don’t disclose their donors — recently hit the airwaves. It hits Shah on that matter and hypes up Galán-Woods.
Still, Shah seems undaunted by the influx of support Galán-Woods has received. Lauderdale said the former lawmaker has focused the campaign on knocking doors, and that Shah has personally visited over 27,000 doors in the district to talk to Arizona voters during his political career.
“You were telling me how you saw all these yard signs around because you were walking your own neighborhood,” Shah said during his appearance on Resnik’s show. “I’m just telling you, like, we have not given up on that strategy — a philosophy that started right from the beginning to go to those voters. Those are the ones that decide elections, not some nameless, faceless people in D.C.”
But related to that ground game, one element of Shah’s door-knocking strategy has raised eyebrows.
We were told by a half-dozen people in 2024 that Shah signs were placed in their yards even though they didn’t give the candidate permission to put them there. Phoenix Democrat Andy Halpert talked with Shah at his door but didn’t ask for a sign.
“It was just, ‘Let’s just plant this right in the middle of your yard.’ And I don’t have any political signs up. The audacity of it was what turned me off the most,” Halpert said.
Something similar happened to the mom of our editor Hank. Shah personally knocked on her door last cycle, and she let him put up a sign in her yard. This year, the campaign asked again, and she said no. But one appeared in her yard anyway.1
Lauderdale denied the campaign was still doing that, and said that it kept meticulous records of yard sign requests and deliveries.
But while Galán-Woods is clearly gaining ground on her 2024 campaign performance, she has not been free of controversy within the Democratic base.
AZFamily's Dennis Welch reported that she previously owned $260,000 of Tesla stock at the same time she was speaking highly critically of its owner, Elon Musk. The campaign claimed that she had sold all of it off at the beginning of 2025.
But that isn’t the only case when there may have been a misalignment between Galán-Woods’ stock ownership and campaign trail rhetoric.
While Galán-Woods has criticized the trend of private equity firms and hedge funds buying up houses and driving up home prices since she ran in 2024, she has actually owned hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock of companies that do exactly that, her congressional financial disclosure statements show.
Corporate housing ownership is an issue that several candidates raised during this week’s debate — including Galán-Woods.
“We’ve got landlord conglomerates who are using algorithmic price-fixing to honestly screw over people who are trying to get an apartment,” she said. “We need to make sure that we do better.”
In 2024, she owned between $265,000 and $725,000 in the stock of private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR & Co., American Homes 4 Rent, Bridge Investment Group Holdings and New Residential Investment Corporation.
As of 2024, Blackstone owned about 63,000 single-family homes nationwide, some of which were in Arizona. In 2025, American Homes 4 Rent owned 61,000.
Galán-Woods’ shares increased in value in her 2025 filings to somewhere between $310,000 and $725,000.
But in her most recent filing, it appears that Galán-Woods has sold off (and reaped the capital gains rewards for) much of that stock, now owning between $217,000 and $530,000 in Blackstone, KKR and American Homes 4 Rent shares.
Jonathan Miller, her campaign spokesperson, didn’t respond directly to questions about how to square her ownership of private equity and corporate housing stocks with her criticism of them.
“Marlene supports banning all individual stock trading by members of Congress, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court. If elected, she will put her assets in a blind trust from day one,” Miller said.
Presumably, it wasn’t Galán-Woods picking those stocks like, say, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would. Some of the shares were owned under her husband’s trust, which she inherited when he passed away in 2021. But it’s not a good look.
The other two candidates — McCartney and Treble — are taken less seriously, partly because they’re newer to the scene and untested. They’re also self-funded, to a large extent.
Treble has donated more than $1 million to himself, making up about 40% of his $2.4 million war chest. McCartney has provided his own campaign with just about half of its $871,000 — with $365,000 of that coming in the form of loans he made to himself. (Shah has loaned himself $200,000, about 16% of his total funding.)
But either candidate would make for a really interesting matchup against whoever the Republicans nominate because of their business leadership backgrounds and experience starting companies.
It would be forgivable to take McCartney for a Republican based on his look, background and some of his job-creation talking points — but he’s fiercely anti-Trump.
"While this Administration, Congress, and the Supreme Court want to make us think that government doesn’t work, by ensuring that it can’t — tanking the economy, stripping away our rights — Rick McCartney is running to fight back,” his campaign website states. “But here’s the truth: we don’t need to keep playing from the same old, losing Democratic playbook. Recycling candidates who lost before is not going to get the job done.”
The fresh, new candidate line is a valid idea, but the two main contenders already enjoy some name recognition in the district from last cycle.
Treble faces the same uphill battle and a challenge in winning over the district's moderate, affluent voters with progressive ideas like Medicare for All — even if it’s a pitch he’s uniquely positioned to make.
“Two years ago, I had major brain surgery for a non-cancerous growth. But fighting for my life also meant fighting my insurance for coverage,” Treble says on his website. “That experience changed me, and it made clear just how broken our healthcare system has become. For too long, our healthcare system has prioritized corporate profits over people.”
It’s a bold position in this political climate, and it could be too sticky for the moderate district — even if Treble has business bona fides that could appeal to voters. But Treble also had some ideas that show a think-outside-the-box mentality, like emphasizing that Arizona should bring tribal communities into the fray of Colorado River negotiations as much as possible, since they have senior water rights.
With early ballots being sent to voters and a little more than three weeks before the July 21 primary, the heat is on. If you live in Arizona’s 1st, expect to be seeing plenty of these candidates on your televisions, phones and tablets. As for the winner, you’ll be tired of seeing and hearing about them come November.
1 Editor's Note: Hank's mom asked him not to write about her in the newsletter again. But technically he just told that story to TJ, who wrote that sentence. Anyway, sorry mom!