Power up for grabs
Chasing the Ninth Floor, risking the House ... The shutdown showdown has begun ... And it's only rigged if you lose.
Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert officially jumped into the GOP primary for governor yesterday.
We’ll get to what the shakeup means for the now three-way race to challenge Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
But first, let’s talk about Congressional District 1 — because Schweikert’s departure from the district, which he has held since the Tea Party wave of 2010, could end up having a bigger impact on Arizona and the nation than his candidacy for governor.
CD1 is one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country, and it has been drifting to the left for the past decade.
Schweikert’s decision to skip out and seek the governor’s office instead could help push the district — and control of the U.S. House — to Democrats.
And that would grind Donald Trump’s agenda to a halt, not to mention that Trump would spend his last two years in office under constant impeachment hearings.
On the other hand, if he can survive the primary, Schweikert probably represents Republicans’ best hope of actually winning the governor’s office, thereby returning Republican dominance to the state Capitol.
A seat in play
Democrats were stoked that Schweikert pulled the trigger on his gubernatorial run, leaving the district up for grabs next year.
And Republicans pretended to be stoked, too.
The consulting class was quick to put out polling showing Schweikert had a negative favorable rating in the district, spinning his departure as a chance for Republicans to get a fresh face in with less baggage.
But it’s hard to believe that Schweikert leaving makes the seat easier for Republicans to hold.
Yet, the vacancy creates a rare opportunity for a less-MAGA Republican to move up the ranks.
One important fact about CD1 — which spans the Arcadia and Biltmore neighborhoods of Phoenix through Scottsdale, Fountain Hills, Cave Creek — is that it’s incredibly wealthy.
As such, even its conservative residents are generally less concerned about issues like “immigrants taking our jobs” than about the availability of H-1B visas and skilled foreign workers. Put another way, it’s one of the few congressional districts that voted for Karrin Taylor Robson over Kari Lake in the 2022 gubernatorial primary. (And the district voted for Hobbs in November).
No Republicans of note have officially announced their hope to replace Schweikert in DC.
But the rumor list is long and growing.
The two names that come up the most are AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda and Republican state Rep. Matt Gress.
Rumor has it that Swoboda is Schweikert’s choice to replace him in CD1.
Swoboda has shown an uncanny ability to keep the MAGA and business wing of the Republican Party from engaging in open warfare, and she has successfully walked the line of remaining loyal to Trump without sounding totally nutty — a skill Schweikert excelled at.
Gress has won hard-fought battles for his competitive legislative seat within CD1, and has built a network of support from the kind of socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republicans who backed his former boss, Gov. Doug Ducey. In many ways, he’s the obvious heir to Schweikert’s job.
Other fun names we’ve heard include:
Race car driver and occasional political dabbler Danica Patrick1
Former ASU football coach Todd Graham
Phoenix City Councilman Jim Waring
Maricopa County Supervisor Tom Galvin
State Treasurer Kimberly Yee
State Sen. Shawnna Bolick
Former lawmaker Michelle Ugenti-Rita
Actor and health enthusiast Rob Schneider (OK, we made that last one up — but somebody should check!)
Meanwhile, Democrats in the race are celebrating, working under the assumption that a fresh-faced Republican nominee will be easier to beat than an entrenched incumbent.
That may be true, but Republicans are likely to come out of the woodwork for this opportunity, including some who can potentially self-fund their campaign to the tune of millions.
And even before Schweikert’s announcement, a dozen Democrats had filed paperwork to run for the seat.
Among them are two names that you may remember from last year’s election: Amish Shah and Marlene Galán-Woods.
Shah is a former moderate Democratic state lawmaker and the 2024 Democratic nominee who lost to Schweikert. Galán-Woods came in third in the Democratic primary for the district last year. She’s a former TV news reporter, a former Republican and the widow of former Republican Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods.
“David Schweikert will no longer be my opponent,” a presumptuous Shah announced in a press release yesterday.
Today of all days?
Schweikert’s gubernatorial ambitions have been well known, and most of the political world has been waiting on the news for a few weeks now — the announcement, we hear, was supposed to come two weeks ago until Charlie Kirk’s assassination derailed the news cycle.
That left Arizona’s now-senior congressman2 with the unfortunate timing of announcing on the day before he and the rest of his colleagues in Congress shut down the federal government instead of passing a budget.3
But Schweikert leaned into his “intense frustration” with the feckless Congress in his announcement tour, complaining about his colleagues’ inability to budget and saying he thinks he can really govern as governor of Arizona.
“I’ve grown to believe Washington ... is unsavable,” Schweikert told Axios. “I do believe Arizona is savable.”
As the only candidate in the race without Donald Trump’s endorsement, however, his path to victory is unclear. The announcement left even some Republican insiders scratching their heads.
But the Schweikert team believes he’s the only candidate who can win both a primary and a general election.
The thinking goes that he’s moderate enough to garner support from the business wing of the party, yet has actually won GOP primaries, unlike Taylor Robson. And he’s conservative enough for the base to accept, but without the hardcore MAGA edge that makes Andy Biggs a risky bet in November.
Polling, for what little it’s worth, is all over the map.
Still, it’s hard to imagine the same Republican electorate that has consistently elevated the most extreme voices picking a “Biggs-lite.”
More than anything, politicos are questioning what Schweikert’s announcement means for Taylor Robson, who has failed to gain any sort of widespread traction outside of boardrooms full of frustrated conservative businessmen.
And there are some signs that the CEO crowd helped to draft Schweikert specifically because they have no faith that Taylor Robson can deliver the governor’s office.
“The Venn diagram (of Schweikert donors and Taylor Robson donors) is a circle,” as one consultant who has traveled with that crowd put it. “They’re worried about Biggs, and they should be — because he’s gonna win (the GOP primary).”
Gavel games: The federal government shut down at midnight last night, marking the first shutdown since 2019. Federal services will be severely curtailed as all “non-essential” employees take a furlough or are expected to work without pay — though President Donald Trump is threatening to fire “a lot” of federal employees outright. Members of Congress will continue to get paychecks. NBC News has a pretty decent rundown of what services will be most affected. Most political observers don’t see an easy solution to the shutdown and fear it could drag past the 35-day record set in the first Trump administration.
Welcome to dystopia: Patients who use AHCCCS, Arizona’s Medicaid system, can no longer receive care at a Planned Parenthood, the Arizona Mirror’s Gloria Rebecca Gomez reports. There are seven clinics across Arizona, and while only four offer abortions, new federal rules go into effect today that ban abortion providers from receiving Medicaid funding, even though Planned Parenthood provides a lot of medical care, like STI tests and cancer screenings.
911, upgraded: Arizona just finished rolling out its “Next Generation 911” system that gives cell phone users more reliable access to emergency services, and the $48.5 million system can now get texts and track callers within three feet, Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer reports. Plus, the auto-locating feature routes calls to the correct regional dispatch center instead of relying on outdated addresses.
Repeat behavior: After a rare six-month pause, Phoenix police shootings have surged again as four people were killed and two wounded in just 41 days, pushing the total to eight police shooting deaths so far in 2025, the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L’Heureux reports. Meanwhile, Pinal County Sheriff’s deputies were caught on a Ring camera restraining and beating a 37-year-old man after he broke a window to a home, PinalCentral’s Noah Cullen reports. After the beating, one deputy said, “We were pretty much taking turns beating the dude up,” and another declared, “That was f****** hilarious.”
The hot seat: The Republic conducted a performance review for Arizona’s first Chief Heat Officer, Dr. Eugene Livar, and the results are mixed, Joan Meiners reports. Some local heat experts said Livar downplays climate change, and he refused to answer a question on whether he believes human-caused climate change contributes to extreme heat. His media coordinator cut off those questions because they were “political,” and the reluctance may be a strategy to avoid drawing federal scrutiny.
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In other, other news
A U.S District Court judge temporarily blocked Kari Lake from firing her remaining Voice of America staff, and called out her “concerning disrespect” for earlier court orders (Ronald J. Hansen / Arizona Republic) … The number of high school students missing 10% or more of the school year hasn’t rebounded from COVID-19, per a new report from Helios Education Foundation (Bridget Dowd / KJZZ) … Arizona could become a nationwide weed powerhouse if and when the federal government reschedules the marijuana drug classification (Morgan Fischer / Phoenix New Times) … Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow resigned after City Council censured him for violating seven rules of procedure (Olivia Maillet and Vyto Starinskas / The Verde Independent).
New polling shows Republicans’ confidence in election fairness skyrocketed from 40% to 77%.
That 40% figure comes from July 2021, during Maricopa County’s “Cyber Ninjas” audit, per the Capitol Times’ Jamar Younger.
The C+ rating came from early August this year.
Democrats, meanwhile, dropped from 80% to 75%.
Huh, it’s almost like faith in democracy is directly tied to getting what you want. Strange.
Just for fun, here’s a video of Patrick discussing the existence of lizard people.
Schweikert became the longest-serving member of Congress from Arizona after Raúl Grijalva died.
On the bright side for Schweikert, announcing the day before the start of the fundraising quarter means he has a full three months to make an impressive showing on his first fundraising haul.
I’ve called the Schweikert office pretty much weekly for 6 years. I comment on why he has done nothing but talk to an empty chamber and send out meaningless newsletters. Newsletters about the US demise due to the deficit. The young man who answers the phone seems to know me. We chat, I ask when Schweikert’s town hall is, never one scheduled, and I ask why he rails about the deficit but votes to give tax cuts to the rich, twice under Trump, driving up what he rails on about THE DEFICIT. Schweikert can’t talk to a crowd or answer questions. He’s had ethics violations. Democrats can go after him on his rigid abortion stance. He’s got a lot of baggage and voting history. His staff is nice.
I don't know why, but Schweikert reminds me of Evan Mechem "The Second Coming".