Primary Prepping: LD22 House Democrats
Leezah Sun’s revenge … All Mark Kelly all the time … And you just can’t fight like that on Threads.
Former Democratic lawmaker Leezah Sun has been called a “lunatic,” a “wackadoodle” and “batshit crazy.”
But you can’t call her unambitious.
After being forced out of the Legislature this year for a string of bizarre behavior including threatening to “bitchslap” a lobbyist and throw her off a balcony, Sun is now running for office again — this time for her district’s Senate seat against Democratic Sen. Eva Diaz.
Sun is simultaneously running for a seat on the Tolleson Union High School District Governing Board in an attempt to further expand her influence and smite her enemies. But she’s also attempting to pull off a coup in the House, drafting a running mate in Democrat Jen Wynne, a political unknown with virtually no information online about her campaign.
Wynne is challenging House Democratic Leader Lupe Contreras, who is seeking a seventh term in office, and his seatmate, Democratic Rep. Elda Luna-Nájera, who was appointed this year to replace Sun.
Betsy Muñoz, an education nonprofit worker, is challenging the incumbents for a House seat.
The West Valley’s Legislative District 22 is solidly blue, although most of its voters are registered as independents. It covers portions of Tolleson, Avondale and Buckeye.
Lupe Contreras
Contreras has been a member of the state Legislature since 2012, serving in both the House and Senate. He’s the Democratic minority leader in the House.
Career experience: Contreras is the director of new business and enrollment at Pomeroy & Associates, a group of insurance brokers and consultants. Before that, he worked at the Law Office of Ben Miranda1 and had high school jobs picking onions and melons and working at Fry’s.
Fun fact: His designation as House Democratic leader last year drew comparisons to the voting marathon for former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's position amid 11 rounds of voting that took 9 hours.
Elda Luna-Nájera
Luna-Nájera was appointed in February to take over for former Rep. Leezah Sun upon her resignation.
Career experience: She coordinates student services for the Agua Fria Union High School District and is president of the Tolleson Union High School District Governing Board (where Sun is also currently seeking a seat).
Fun fact: Luna-Nájera is also a licensed social worker.
Betsy Muñoz
Newcomer Muñoz is a first-generation college graduate who’s worked at several education nonprofits.
Career experience: She’s a postsecondary transition analyst at a nonprofit that works with local high schools to increase access to higher education.
Fun fact: Muñoz was the only candidate to show up to the Clean Elections debate for this House race.
Campaign website: www.munoz4az.com/
Jen Wynne
There’s virtually no information about Wynne online besides an address on otherwise empty financial disclosure statements. She doesn’t have a website or social media for the campaign. There’s also no photo of her on the Arizona Secretary of State’s website, nor on one LinkedIn profile we found based out of Tolleson. The only bio we were able to find online came back with a “100% probability” that it was generated by artificial intelligence, per an AI detector.
The few hits we could find on her came from Sun’s social media.
Sun is her campaign treasurer and they share a campaign consultant in Markus Ceniceros, who was cited in 2022 for stealing campaign signs from Contreras and his then seatmate.
How it would all work: What happens to Sen. Mark Kelly’s seat if he gets elected vice president? KJZZ’s Ben Giles and Camryn Sanchez explain the different scenarios and the steps for each one. Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t made a decision yet, but the Arizona Democratic Party is pushing for Kelly to get the nod, the Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small reports. Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly says now that Harris is the favorite to be the presidential nominee, the Democratic National Convention will feel more like a party, the Associated Press reports. Former Congresswoman and vocal gun control advocate Gabby Giffords campaigned with Harris at a church in an area of Philadelphia where a fatal shooting occurred last weekend, AZFamily reports.
No choice to make: Primary elections might be a letdown for a quarter-million people in the Valley who won’t have any choices when they vote for city council members, the Republic’s Shawn Raymundo and Sean Holstege report. One-third of open council and mayoral seats don’t have any challengers, including in cities like Glendale and Buckeye, so incumbents are guaranteed victory. And it’s not just the Phoenix area. Nationwide, about 60% of council races were uncontested last year.
Nobody did a good job: Substacker Robert Robb isn’t happy that the Legislature and Gov. Katie Hobbs bungled the state budget over the past two years. There is plenty of blame to go around, including GOP leadership in the Legislature, he writes. The state’s “rickety” finances should be a big issue in a year when Democrats could take control of the Legislature. But he thinks those finances will rarely get mentioned.
Starting early: The U.S. Census Bureau is doing practice runs in tribal lands in Arizona and a handful of other places in the South and West before the 2030 census, the Associated Press reports. The goal of the practice runs, which will start in 2026, is to fix mistakes in places where officials undercounted in 2020.
Funky market: The market for office space in the valley is kind of strange right now, Axios Phoenix’s Jessica Boehm reports. It’s a mix of people wanting to work from home, bosses seeking out the cushiest sites to draw workers back to office buildings, not enough luxury spaces being built, and developers hesitating because they’d have to charge so much on leases.
No merger for now: For the past few weeks, newspapers in Arizona have been tracking which of their local Safeways would be sold after a merger between Kroger and Albertsons. It’s a big deal when there aren’t that many grocery stores in town. A judge in Colorado just pushed pause on that merger until a lawsuit is resolved. The trial is set to start at the end of September, ABC15’s Óscar Contreras reports.
Sentence of the day: “Summer in the Rim Country means the cow elk that were bred during the rut are now having calves,” Dennis Pirch writes for the Payson Roundup.
Substacker Dillon Rosenblatt broke the news that progressive Democratic Rep. Analise Ortiz used to be a Republican, juxtaposing her voter registration with her criticism of her primary opponent, Mario Bustos Garcia, for only recently registering as a Democrat.
The story kicked off the type of Democratic insider Twitter battles we can spend all day watching.
Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez, who is part of the Democratic caucus’ moderate wing, jumped in to denounce duplicitous “purity tests” in the party.
“(T)he public deserves to know if she voted for Ducey and why it is now OK for @RepAnaliseOrtiz to run as a staunch progressive and not tell anyone that she’s a former Republican,” she wrote.
Dem strategist Tony Cani shot back that Hernandez is terrible at filing campaign finance reports on time, and called on her family consulting business, Hernandi Group LLC, to release a full list of its clients.
“You know the ones that pay you to be a lobbyist even though you are a legislator. I mean even the ones that pay you or your partners to tweet. And the secret ones,” he wrote.
Former Pima County Democratic Party executive director Kenny Jacobs piled on, calling out Hernandez for forming a new campaign committee after the old one racked up thousands of dollars in fines for late filings.
And Democratic Sen. Anna Hernandez (no relation to the Tucson Hernandi clan) jumped in, firing off a subtweet about Hernandi Group LLC, accusing the other Hernandez’ of “sell(ing) off your votes, and mak(ing) decisions based solely on how you personally benefit from them.”
Fun times in the Democratic caucus Twitter!
Miranda was a former lawmaker and longtime Latino political leader.
Is Briana Ortega (Consuelo Hernandez's running mate to challenge fellow Dem Hamilton in LD 21) a client of that consulting firm? What's the story of this challenge?