As the dust settles on Arizona’s primary election, one central story has become crystal clear:
Voter turnout was downright atrocious. Meager. Pathetic. Unimpressive. Low.
Sure, participation in the primary is always lower than in November — but voter participation in Tuesday’s election utterly pales in comparison to the primaries of yesteryear.
With the turnout rate likely to land around 25%, it’s actually the most pathetic voter turnout rate in an Arizona primary election since 2008.
There are myriad reasons for the low turnout — it was the first year since 2014 when voters didn’t nominate a U.S. senator, for example — but a big one is the lack of engagement from independent voters.
For about a decade, independent voters have been the deciding factor in Arizona elections — and amid mounting frustration with both the Republican and Democratic parties, their ranks are growing. But for non-affiliated voters to participate in the primary elections, they have to request a ballot for one party. It’s a hurdle that some people, if they’re not amply motivated, won’t take the time to jump. And that’s fair enough.
There are almost as many registered independents as there are Republicans, but in Maricopa County and across the state, far more Republicans turned in ballots than did independents. (Independents are especially underrepresented in early voting because they don’t automatically receive a ballot.)
Democrats also lagged behind Republicans in turnout, which makes sense, considering the top-tier races weren’t contested on the Democratic side.
Even though independent voters seemed as apathetic as ever in this contest, you would be wise to bet your bottom dollar that they will once again be the key factor in the November midterms.
And if the tide of public opinion continues to turn against President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, the right could be in serious trouble.
At first glance, it might look like Republican voters showed up in droves in this election — but their turnout advantage over Democrats was actually the lowest it’s been since 2020.
Yesterday, we cranked out an extensive roundup and analysis of preliminary election results — which, if you haven’t already read, we kindly suggest you do.
In terms of results and takeaways, nothing much has changed since that report. There were only a few tight races too close to confidently call.
In the West Valley’s LD27 Republican primary, Sen. Kevin Payne holds a 302-vote lead over MAGA acolyte and 2020 fake elector former Sen. Anthony Kern.
And in Southern Arizona’s LD21, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton trails challenger Miranda Lopez by 203 votes for the second spot in a three-candidate tango. Rep. Consuelo Hernandez leads both handily.
So today, we’re reviewing some of the local and B-list legislative/statewide primary contests we didn’t have the time or space to cover yesterday.
Let’s start with the Phoenix metro area’s municipal races.
Gilbert
Gilbert voters are livid about their water bills.
And based on preliminary results Wednesday, they’re poised to make their incumbent council members pay for it.
Four of six Gilbert Town Council seats were up for election this year, and all three council members up for reelection — Chuck Bongiovanni, Bobbi Buchli and Jim Torgeson — are at the bottom of a seven-way race. The fourth spot is open after Council member Yung Koprowski declined to run again.
Ironically, the three trailing incumbents took office in 2023 on a platform of cleaning up town hall and rebuilding trust after dissatisfaction with the previous council.
Since then, residents have become increasingly disaffected by a wave of water rate hikes and a new billing system that raised some residents’ bills by thousands of dollars. The town responded with listening sessions and a nearly $500,000, six-month audit that found no systemwide billing errors.
In February, the council approved another 25% rate increase.
And in a familiar municipal politics saga, residents have also expressed discontent with major developments they say the council approved without the roads and infrastructure to support them.
The top four vote-getters lining up to replace the incumbents are:
Beth Goulden: Spent 25 years with the Maricopa County Adult Probation Department and now leads a state board created last year to reform Arizona’s sex offender registry laws
Bill Spence: Retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who previously served a nine-month appointed term on the council
Joel Coen: President of marketing agency TruNorth Advisors
Bus Obayomi: Co-founder of New Zeal International, a faith-based leadership consulting firm
Chandler
Last year, we told you about the accidental “Freaky Friday” situation taking shape between Chandler Mayor Kevin Hartke and Republican Rep. Jeff Weninger.
Hartke, who is term-limited as mayor, planned to move his political career to the state Capitol as Weninger vacated his LD13 House seat to run for mayor.
The transformation didn’t take.
While Hartke finished first in LD13’s GOP House primary, Weninger lost the mayor’s race after both mayoral candidates attacked the other’s record on data centers.
Matt Orlando, who’s currently serving his sixth Chandler City Council term, was beating Weninger by about 17 percentage points Wednesday. Yesterday morning, Orlando declared victory, and Weninger conceded.
The mayor position is nonpartisan, but partisan identity still became a clear dividing line in this year’s election. Orlando called for taking politics out of city hall, while Weninger ran on returning “conservative values” to it.
And despite his nonpartisan message, Orlando received support from labor groups and the council’s more left-leaning members.
Chandler’s growing resistance to data centers became a major theme in both candidates’ campaigns. In December, the City Council unanimously rejected a data center project that former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema had spent months lobbying for.
Though both agreed Chandler doesn’t need more data centers, they traded attacks over their records: Weninger cited Orlando’s vote to approve the CyrusOne data center, while Orlando pointed to Weninger’s 2021 vote to extend state tax breaks for the industry.
While Weninger’s mayoral bid is over, the family name may live on at the Capitol.
His wife, Janet Weninger, is set to take the second GOP House nomination in LD13. She runs the Weninger family’s sandwich catering business and, per her financial disclosure statement, heads a religious charity group called Crusaders of Love.
Hartke and Janet Weninger will face two Democratic challengers — Racquel “Rockee” Armstrong, a professor at ASU’s teachers college, and Jacob Weinberg, an Army veteran and business executive — in November.
Another data center fight shaped the election in Marana, where Mayor Jon Post and three incumbent council members fended off a surprisingly strong slate of challengers opposed to their decision to support a proposed 600-acre data center and an ICE detention facility at the former Marana prison.
Farther east, right-wing podcast host Chris DeSimone lost his bid for the Oro Valley Town Council, finishing second-to-last in unofficial results.
Our sister newsletter, the Tucson Agenda, has the details.
Scottsdale
In June, we chronicled the wacky, histrionic intrigue of Scottsdale City Hall, the made-for-TV city government where two incumbent council members, a former one and five challengers are squabbling over three seats.
What’s at stake? The council will likely remain fairly conservative no matter what — but the question of whether to allow more housing and corporate development in the city transcends party lines.
Per the city’s charter, the top vote-getters could win outright if they earned a “majority” of votes — which, in this case, means the total number of votes, divided by three open seats, then divided by two (the majority part).
That target number is in flux, but as of last night’s tally, winning a "majority” meant getting about 26,890 votes.
Council member Solange Whitehead, a prominent liberal-leaning critic of the city’s right-wing majority, is the only candidate who is currently above the threshold with 17.5% of votes.
But that isn’t guaranteed to hold — Scottsdale City Clerk Ben Lane told us his office isn’t making any calculations yet because it’s still waiting to receive some results from Maricopa County.
If Whitehead stays above the threshold, then the next top four candidates will compete for two seats — and if she falls below it, she’ll compete with these five candidates in November’s runoff election:
Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a reportedly wild former Republican state senator who faced a 2020 lawsuit alleging she and her then-fiancé sexually harassed a lobbyist by repeatedly propositioning her for a threesome, had 15% of the vote.
Council member Barry Graham, who’s aligned with the council’s conservative MAGA bloc and has been an outspoken critic of Taser and body-worn camera company Axon’s attempts to influence the election and get its proposed headquarters in the city approved, had 14.5% of the vote.
Bob Littlefield is a former three-term council member and former mayoral candidate seeking the seat that his wife, term-limited Council member Kathy Littlefield, is vacating. He’s also currently under scrutiny for running a PAC opposing an apartment development his wife has voted on — raising conflict-of-interest concerns, though the couple denies they have ever discussed the matter — and sits at 13.6% of the vote.
Raoul Zubia, a moderate candidate with experience working for various civic organizations who’s focused on “protecting (Scottsdale’s) neighborhoods, managing growth responsibly, and restoring professionalism to City Council,” held 13.5% of the vote.
Ethan Knowlden, a lawyer who’s lived in Scottsdale since 2018 and campaigned on public safety, fiscal responsibility and limiting development, has 13.2% of the vote.
More results worth noting
While we covered a lot of ground on the top races in yesterday’s early results roundup, here are a few interesting outcomes we missed.
Corporation Commission: A Republican incumbent on Arizona’s utility-regulating board may become the latest victim of a conservative purity purge.
Commissioner Kevin Thompson was set to keep his seat as the top vote-getter in the three-way Republican primary. The second nomination remained too close to call, but incumbent Nick Myers was trailing GOP Rep. Ralph Heap by roughly 15,000 votes on Wednesday night.
Heap, a Mesa orthopedic surgeon, entered the race last year as one of Sen. Jake Hoffman’s hand-picked challengers to insufficiently conservative Republicans. He was originally supposed to run on a slate with former Rep. David Marshall, who left the race after taking over as Navajo County recorder earlier this year.
Navajo Nation president: After three tumultuous years as Navajo Nation president, Buu Nygren’s tenure is nearing its end.
The top two finishers in the Nation’s nonpartisan primary advance to the November election, and Nygren wasn’t one of them. Unofficial results show two of his public opponents, Justin Jones and Crystalyne Curley, in first and second place, with Nygren finishing third in a 16-person primary.
Nygren’s term was consumed by political turmoil, including sexual harassment allegations he was later cleared of and attempts to remove him over alleged nepotism and misuse of federal funds, among other things.
LD6 Senate & House (Page, Flagstaff, San Carlos, Whiteriver): Former Democratic Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai is poised to claim LD6’s Senate seat over Democratic Rep. Myron Tsosie.
Tsosie was term-limited in the House and hoped to switch chambers to the Senate next year, but Peshlakai’s comeback bid got in the way. She left the Capitol in 2021 to take a tribal liaison position in the Biden administration, but lost the job after Trump returned to office.
Peshlakai brought a family slate with her, though with mixed results so far: Her mother, Rep. Mae Peshlakai, was set to keep her seat after leading the three-way Democratic House primary. But her aunt, Angela Maloney, trailed Ian Teller, founder of the youth-led civic engagement initiative When Natives Vote.
LD8 Senate (Tempe, Arcadia, Salt River Indian Reservation): Democratic Sen. Lauren Kuby cruised through her primary challenge from former Rep. Deborah Nardozzi, who previously served a nine-month appointed stint in the House. Kuby had roughly 77% of the vote Wednesday.
Throughout the race, Kuby cast herself as the anti-establishment incumbent, while utility and business interests lined up behind Nardozzi. A PAC funded by Airbnb, APS and the Arizona Association of Realtors spent more than $22,000 on mailers supporting the challenger.
It’s lawsuit season: Supporters of Arizona’s universal school voucher program are suing to keep the Protect Education Act, which would put more guardrails around Arizona’s voucher system, off the ballot, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Republican attorney Kory Langhofer is alleging that the initiative, which turned in 421,000 signatures, does not have the minimum 255,949 valid signatures due to a variety of issues, including that paid petition circulators were not registered as required by state law. No date has yet been set for a hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court.
People literally starving: The New York Times took a deep dive into the struggles of the nearly half-million Arizonans who are being kicked off the SNAP rolls, thanks to Arizona’s aggressive adoption of provisions of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” as we previously covered. Among the heartbreaking stories the Times dug up was that of Alejandra Casillas, who was informed in March that she had to reapply by February to keep her benefits.
“Her $24,000-a-year job is not enough to keep her and two children fed, she said, and food banks offer less help than SNAP. She stopped breastfeeding because she fears she lacks nutrients, and after exhausting her cash on groceries, she sold her TV to pay the rent. She said she has lost 50 pounds and has fantasies about stealing food,” the Times wrote.
“Literally, I have been thinking about going into a grocery store — just put a whole bunch of food and run out” with the cart, Casillas said.
A super “part-time” Legislature: Democratic lawmakers skipped more days of work this legislative session than Republicans, the New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports, but playing hooky is still a bipartisan affair. Arizona’s top truant lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Seth Blattman, who is not seeking reelection, missed more than half of the House’s floor sessions — skipping 35 days out of 65 — while the Legislature’s top truant Republican, Sen. Janae Shamp, missed 18 out of 65 floor sessions (plus, she was late seven times).
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Bad news, Jamaica: Arizona serial election loser Kari Lake is one step away from becoming the ambassador to Jamaica after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved her nomination on a party-line vote, the Republic’s Stephanie Murray reports. The only remaining step is a confirmation vote on the Senate floor. The Foreign Relations Committee inexplicably did not ask about Lake’s false claim on her certificate of competency that she won two Billboard Music Awards for the song “81 Million Votes My Ass,” by the Truth Bombers, which used clips of her speeches, as AZFamily reporter and punk rock musician Dennis Welch previously found.
Congress says shhhhhhhh!: Federal lawmakers, including Arizona Democratic Congressman Greg Stanton, are worried that some European airlines are allowing people to talk on the phone during flights and they want to make sure that doesn’t happen in the U.S., the Washington Post reports. Lawmakers passed the Quiet Skies Act in 2018. While it should ban in-flight calls, the FAA hasn’t actually adopted rules to implement it. So they’re trying again with a new Quiet Skies Act, which Stanton co-sponsored. Traditional cellphone calls are already prohibited, but lawmakers are worried that the restriction doesn’t apply to Wi-Fi calls, even though airlines in the U.S. already ban all phone calls in the air.
Word is already going around about how GOP gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs showed up oddly late to his own election night watch party as he won a ridiculously one-sided primary.
Thanks to a few press pool reporters assigned (so sorry!) to his victory party, we now have the full story.
Biggs’ watch party was, frankly, uncomfortable.
First of all, it was held at Dillon Precision, a DIY firearm ammunition manufacturer business that is primarily focused on helping people make their own bullets and reloading cases.
The GOP also catered sandwiches from pro-marijuana and stoner-themed Cheba Hut for the event.
During the event, one press corps reporter summed up the event as a “hot ammunitions manufacturing hangar smelling of jet fuel” with “no air flow.”
“It’s like, damn… think about the people next time,” the reporter told us.
These poor reporters wanted badly to simply go home. But at 10:30 p.m. — even as the party was clearing out — rumors were spreading that Biggs had just landed.
“By 11:15 p.m., I think we were ready to wield pitchforks at the next person who swore he was en route,” a second reporter told us. “At the same time, Kimmie Dillon got on stage to announce Biggs was 15 minutes out — and that got approximately two discordant claps.”
A third member of the press corps provided us with even more extensive details of the vibe at the watch “party.”
“We were stuck in a hanger, listening to a playlist called ‘Biggstock’ on repeat. That’s like Woodstock — but ‘Biggstock.’ You know how people say ‘I was at Woodstock’ and that means they weren’t there? Well, I was at Biggstock — and I wish I hadn’t been there,” they said. “Then we eventually got into a different playlist called ‘Corporate Upbeat,’ but we were too overheated to feel any joy. There was no air-conditioning in there. Biggs showed up about 4 hours late and said it was nice of us to stick around. I think he should spend four hours in a hot box listening to ‘Sweet Caroline’ on repeat.”
