Primary beef

Before the partisan battles take over in November, Arizona’s midterm hopefuls are delivering plenty of intraparty drama.

This primary season has already produced cease-and-desist letters, white-supremacy allegations and even open calls for attack ads against primary competitors.

And that’s just the statewide and federal races on Arizona’s primary ballot.

There’s a lot more drama unfolding at the state Legislature, where Republicans are trying to protect their majorities, and Democrats say this is the year they’ll finally take control.

Legislative candidates have been busy digging up opposition research before early ballots go out on June 24 — dragging each other online, and for some, on the debate stage.

Much of that fighting is playing out in state Senate primaries, where there’s only one seat to fill and no room to hide behind a two-person House slate.

Here’s a look at some of the messiest legislative primaries so far.

Sen. John Kavanagh has a theory for why he finally drew a primary challenger in his deep red district: He arrested the guy in a past life, when his challenger was a “reincarnated Black gang banger,” the longtime lawmaker speculated at last week’s debate.

That’s a typical Kavanagh-ism, or the senator’s usual brand of eye-roll humor. But it also helps explain why the Senate race in LD3, a Republican stronghold covering northeast Maricopa County and affluent communities like Fountain Hills and Carefree, has become unusually interesting this year.

The brave soul challenging Kavanagh this year is Robert Wallace, whose campaign website lists a broad conservative resume, from leading the Arizona chapter of Gays Against Groomers to working as a regional manager for Turning Point Action’s Chase the Vote program.

Kavanagh got to work early in his primary campaign. He launched a website cataloging Wallace’s colorful digital footprint, which includes stories about getting kicked out of the Church of Scientology, Reddit posts about making DMT and “interdimensional” travel sessions involving “Teletubby-type” aliens and “reptilians.”

And, of course, his past life as a gangbanger.

Wallace got a chance to explain himself during last week’s debate, and acknowledged he’s “had some experiences of very odd, weird nature in (his) past,” but called the opposition research “a character assassination attempt.”

Wallace also promoted his own anti-Kavanagh website, which calls out the senator’s 19 consecutive years in the Legislature and his votes to raise lawmakers’ pay. At the debate, Wallace called Kavanagh “part of what we generally call the swamp.”

After eight years in the Legislature, Democratic Rep. Myron Tsosie is term-limited out of the House. Now, onto the Senate.

Tsosie is running for the open Senate seat in LD6, a heavily Democratic, majority-Native district in northeastern Arizona. Current Sen. Theresa Hatathlie isn’t seeking reelection.

The legislative musical chairs routine is a time-honored way to outrun term limits, but Tsosie has an obstacle in his path to the Senate.

He’ll have to fend off a primary challenge from Jamescita Peshlakai, the daughter of his current House seatmate, Rep. Mae Peshlakai.

Jamescita wants back in the Legislature after previously representing the area for one term in the House and nearly two terms in the Senate. She resigned halfway through her second Senate term in 2021 to take a tribal liaison job in the Biden administration.

Meanwhile, Mae is running to keep her current House seat, with another family member running alongside her on the LD6 ticket. Her sister, Angela Maloney, is running for the seat Tsosie is leaving behind.

Mae and Maloney also ran as a sister slate last year, but Tsosie fended off the challenge and kept his seat as the top vote-getter.

And while Tsosie won’t be in the House race this year, the sister slate still has company. Ian Teller, founder of the civic group When Natives Vote, is also running for one of the district’s House seats.

The race for one of Arizona’s few competitive districts took a dark turn after the Republic dug up child-abuse allegations against one of its Senate hopefuls.

The highly competitive LD17 — which covers north Tucson, Oro Valley and Marana — is key for determining party control in the Legislature next year. And Republican Sen. Vince Leach isn’t seeking reelection.

Two GOP candidates lined up to replace him: Anthony Dunham, a retired federal detention officer backed by Turning Point Action, and Christopher King, a Vail Unified School District governing board member with Leach’s endorsement.

While Turning Point Action backed Dunham as a “Christian conservative” dedicated to “protecting families,” his background complicates that pitch.

Dunham’s parenting rights were temporarily removed in 2022 over “unusual punishments” in his home, per the Republic. Court documents allege Dunham was present as his ex-wife forced his 12-year-old daughter to drink apple cider vinegar until she vomited.

The filings also alleged his then-wife sprayed vinegar in the faces of two younger children — ages four and five — and locked them in their room for hours, leaving them to urinate on the floor.

During the GOP primary debate for the Senate seat, Dunham said he “didn’t let (his ex-wife) do anything,” and was “actively working with (his) therapist on an exit strategy.”

Dunham and his ex-wife were never criminally charged, and his parenting rights were later restored. But the custody case isn’t the only part of Dunham’s record that complicates his family-values pitch.

As our sister newsletter, the Tucson Agenda, highlighted in March, Dunham’s Twitter account has interacted with quite a few accounts that are … not very family-friendly.

As she hits her House term limits, Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez’s path to the Senate has already been pretty … rocky.

Rocque Perez, a former Tucson City Council member, is challenging Hernandez for the Senate spot in Tucson’s deep-blue LD20.

Hernandez has caught flak from Democrats over the years for breaking with her caucus at the Capitol — LD20 Democrats recently considered censuring her for straying too far.

Perez has campaigned on the argument that Hernandez is too conservative for her district. In a Daily Star op-ed, he cites scorecards from groups that analyze lawmakers’ votes to rank them on a progressive hierarchy, and put Hernandez in last place among Democrats. Perez, a vocal Palestine supporter, also called out Hernandez’s “unwavering support for the Israeli government” as a defining factor of her political identity.

Then, Perez sued to boot Hernandez from the ballot over thousands of dollars in unpaid fines related to late campaign finance reports.

A judge ruled in Hernandez’s favor last month, finding that Hernandez isn’t “liable” for the fines because the Arizona Attorney General’s Office hasn’t tried to collect them.

In her announcement of the court win, Hernandez called Perez an “unserious opponent” and asked for campaign donations to help replace the money her campaign spent in court.

Republican Sen. Kevin Payne wants to hang onto his Republican stronghold district — which includes Northwest Phoenix, Peoria and Glendale — but he has to fend off a primary challenge from his former colleague first.

After leaving his LD27 Senate seat in 2024 for a failed congressional bid in CD8, Anthony Kern is now trying to win it back from Payne.

But the congressional run wasn’t Kern’s first plan. Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko didn’t announce she was leaving her post until October 2023, when Kern had already filed a statement of interest to run for the LD27 House seat.

At the time, Kern and Payne were publicly planning a friendly chamber swap. A May 2023 article from the conservative AZ Free News announced that Kern would run for the House while Payne, who was hitting his House term limits, would run for the Senate.

In the article, Kern praised Payne as “a solid conservative who is doing great and important work on a number of issues.”

Payne returned the favor, calling Kern “one of the hardest working State Senators in Arizona” and “a selfless guy who wants what is best for Arizona.”

We’ll see if the sentiment holds this time around, as the two Republicans fight for one Senate seat. While both have MAGA credentials, they apply them a bit differently.

Payne, for example, signed onto a letter asking Congress to accept votes from Arizona’s “alternate” Trump electors after the 2020 election.

But Kern was one of those fake electors, and was later indicted for his alleged role in the scheme.

He also works for Turning Point Action, per his financial disclosure statement, and was spotted at the Jan. 6 riots.