Power vacuum in CD1

For more than a decade, Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert has fought off wave after wave of Democratic challengers after his seat.

A few have come close — including within about 3,500 votes in the 2022 election — to toppling him while the district has gradually morphed from safely Republican to purple.

Still, none could knock off the relatively low-profile congressman.

But now that he’s running for governor, a vacuum has opened in the wealthy cities and towns that make up Congressional District 1 — Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Fountain Hills.

Electing a Democrat is not out of the question, as the district has favored Democrats in presidential or statewide races in seven of the last nine contests since 2020. The exceptions were President Donald Trump and Treasurer Kimberly Yee in 2024.

Will this be the year Democrats are finally able to flip the seat?

Until the July 21 primaries, that question will be hard to answer. Both parties’ crowded contests are free-for-alls, with no favorites and at last three notable candidates competing.

In many ways, Schweikert was a perfect Republican for the affluent district, which he has represented since 2011. In terms of messaging, he remained narrowly focused on tax policy — a key issue for his constituents — and was a consistently good fundraiser. He’s also not much of a MAGA culture warrior and is more moderate than the new candidates.

He was also convicted of 11 counts of House ethics violations by his congressional peers and was fined $175,000 for campaign finance infractions. Evidently, his office’s looseness with following the law was not a great enough sin for voters to toss him from office in any of the past three elections. Perhaps the rich respect a man who pushes the legal boundaries of finance.

There isn’t a clear successor within the Republican Party, whose ranks of challengers include at least eight candidates running for the nomination.

While former Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda announced her candidacy in October with an endorsement from Trump, she pivoted to a run for secretary of state after Trump issued another endorsement for one of her competitors less than two months later.

Trump’s second nod was for Jay Feely — a former Arizona Cardinals kicker whose political experience effectively consists of playing golf with the president.

Hilariously, Feely’s campaign website states he was “tough on the field” — a very generous designation for a guy who played the least physically taxing position in football — and that he is “tough, tested, and ready to kick Washington into shape.”

Never mind that he has no political experience. Instead of backing up the “tested” claim, Feely’s website heavily features his accomplishments as an athlete and doesn’t list any endorsements besides the president’s.

Feely also committed a blunder that could come back to haunt him: He originally announced a run for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District to fill GOP Rep. Andy Biggs’ seat. However, after Trump encouraged him to switch races, he did — leading several opponents and critics to label him as a “carpetbagger.”

GOP Rep. Joseph Chaplik — who represents much of the district in the Arizona House of Representatives — has taken the opposite approach, creating a contrast between himself and the somewhat-famous kicker. Chaplik’s website lists two dozen endorsements from local elected officials and is stacked with even more from former officeholders.

On Monday, Chaplik officially resigned from the Legislature to focus on the primary.

So you’ve got a rich former athlete against a fairly typical local politician.

Chaplik didn’t directly respond to our questions about Feely and Trump’s endorsement of the kicker. However, he did say he feels the energy and ballot math advantage is on his side.

So far, Feely has quite the advantage in fundraising. As of year-end totals, Feely had raised more than $1 million and held about $685,000 in cash. At least $330,000 of that is his own money, according to Federal Elections Commission records. He’s also received sizable checks from a who’s who of pro sports figures, including NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Patriots owner and billionaire Robert Kraft, and former linebacker Brian Urlacher and NBA legend Charles Barkley.

So, that fundraising advantage may not necessarily translate to electoral support in the district — but it could help get his name — and Trump endorsement — out in the primary.

Chaplik, on the other hand, raised about $250,000 and had $240,000 of it on hand at the end of the year.

Even Republican John Trobough — a telecommunications and cybersecurity CEO — was in a better position with $385,000 in his campaign coffers. But Trobough did even more self-funding than Feely, giving himself at least $450,000 of the $463,000 he has raised throughout his campaign.

New campaign finance data reflecting candidates’ fundraising from January-March will be released in a little over a month.

It’s even more unclear who will become the Democrats’ nominee for the race — but what’s certain is that the national party intends to target the race heavily.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee listed the district as one of 44 it considers in play in November. The DC-based committee will support a few of the party’s candidates before the primary, assisting with media prep for candidates and training for staff. After the primary, however, it will throw lots of resources toward the nominee.

Just like the GOP contest, it’s a crowded primary field for Democrats, with about a dozen candidates.

So far, entrepreneur Jonathan Treble has raised the most of all candidates (including Republicans) since the beginning of the cycle, with more than $2 million. He also has the most cash available — about $1.5 million.

However, FEC records show that he gave himself nearly $1 million of that haul.

Two other candidates — former newscaster Marlene Galán-Woods and former state lawmaker Dr. Amish Shah — ran in the primary in 2024, with Shah emerging as the winner. Shah lost by about 16,500 votes to Schweikert in the general election, but that loss might not damper his chances — polling from last week suggests he has a solid lead.

Galán-Woods and Shah are fairly equal on campaign finances — she had raised $1.13 million by the end of the year and had $557,000 in cash, while Shah had raised about $1 million and had $644,000 on hand. However, he loaned himself $185,000 of that and gave his campaign a $51,000 donation.

Without a dominating candidate, the Democratic primary is anyone’s game. The vote tallies may be similar to last cycle, when four candidates received between 18.5% and 23.5% of the vote.

No matter what, the matchup in November will pose a new question for the district’s voters: replace the outgoing and fiscally conservative Schweikert with a MAGA-leaning hardliner, or elect a Democrat as Republicans and Trump face mounting criticism for expanding ICE raids and starting a highly questionable war with Iran.

If the midterm momentum is enough, this could finally be the year that Dems get their long-awaited wish and flip the seat for the first time since Schweikert took office — which was back when Trump was best known as a reality TV star in “The Apprentice.”