When Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission carefully carves up the state’s legislative districts every decade, only a handful emerge as politically competitive.
Last time around, just five of the state’s 30 legislative districts landed within the commission’s competitive range — and Legislative District 27 wasn’t one of them.
Still, Democrats see a chance to pick up a House seat there in November, despite the district’s sizable Republican registration advantage.
It’s a stretch.
But if Democrats end up with the blue wave they expect this year, perhaps the furthest realistic reach of that wave would be LD27, which covers parts of northwest Phoenix, Peoria and Glendale.
That makes LD27 a useful gauge of how strong that Democratic wave really is.
If Democrats perform well enough to pick up a House seat there, they’re likely also faring well in the districts with an officially competitive designation — potentially enough to secure a House majority for the first time in modern history.
This year’s House race for LD27 is a rerun of the one voters saw in 2024: Republicans Lisa Fink and Tony Rivero against Democrat Deborah Howard.
From left to right: Democrat Deborah Howard, Republican Rep. Lisa Fink and Republican Rep. Tony Rivero.
Two years ago, both of LD27’s GOP House incumbents were running for other offices, so both seats were up for grabs. Democrats saw an opening, put money behind Howard and deemed her district “competitive.” 1
It was a classic single-shot strategy: Democrats ran just one House candidate and encouraged supporters to cast only one of their two available votes for Howard, rather than using the second to help a Republican.
Howard lost the race, but finished close enough to make the district’s safe Republican standing worth another look.
The 2024 election was a great one for Republicans, both in Arizona and nationally.
But with the winds at their back this year, Democrats are more hopeful than ever that they can pick up at least the House seat in this West Valley Republican stronghold.
And that one seat could be enough to flip the balance of power at the Capitol.
During the last round of redistricting, the commission’s competitiveness test showed Republicans with a nearly 9-percentage-point advantage in LD27. Yet in 2024, Howard came within about 3.6 points of Rivero for the district’s second House seat.
Nelson Morgan, who chairs the Arizona Democratic Party’s Census and Redistricting Committee, has continually flagged LD27 as an under-the-radar battleground district.2
He ran an analysis comparing Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego’s 2024 performance in each district with the Democratic House candidates running there. While Democrats in the seven usual battleground districts trailed Gallego by an average of 2.4 points, Howard ran just 0.6 points behind him in LD27.
In other words: Howard performed more like a Democrat in a battleground district than LD27’s partisan makeup would suggest.
“As physicist Niels Bohr reputedly said, ‘It’s hard to predict – especially the future.’ But LD27 should be considered to be one of the 2026 target districts,” Nelson Morgan writes in his analysis of competitive state House races compared to Ruben Gallego’s 2024 performance.
So this year, Howard and Arizona Democrats are trying again.
Howard reports raising more than $124,000 so far this election cycle — more than either Republican incumbent individually. Rivero reports about $92,000 in total income to date, while Fink reports about $39,000.
The district is still pretty red — about 37% of voters are registered Republican, 35% independent and 26% Democratic, per the latest voter registration count.
But courting those independent votes is key to Howard’s success, per Valerie Harris, chair of the LD27 Democrats. She said the local party has nearly tripled its volunteer ranks since 2024 and expanded its outreach, with a particular focus on independents.
Harris also sees an opening in a non-presidential election year.
“The number of votes that (Howard) got in 2024 would have won had Trump not been on the ballot,” she said. “I don’t see a lot of enthusiasm on the Republican side, and if we can keep the enthusiasm up on the Democratic side, I think (Howard’s) got it.”
The rematch continued last night, when Howard battled Fink and Rivero in the LD27 House debate — one of the rare instances when every candidate in the race showed up.
Welp, we miss David: Tucson’s daily newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, is now wholly owned by USA Today Co., the evil empire formerly known as Gannett, which also owns the Republic. Up until yesterday, the Star was a joint venture between USA Today and Lee Enterprises — with Lee running the news side. As our sister newsletter, the Tucson Agenda, reports, the buyout means billionaire David Hoffmann can no longer run the paper as his own vanity project. But it also means that Palantir — which struck up a deal with USA Today last month to mine its readers’ data — has its claws in both of Arizona’s major dailies.
Is raw milk cheaper?: Both Gov. Katie Hobbs and GOP challenger Andy Biggs present affordability as a top policy priority, but they differ on how to get there, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. Biggs wants to eliminate Arizona’s 2.5% income tax, while Hobbs — who declined an interview and instead sent a statement that was “light on details” — cited targeting out-of-state corporations pumping groundwater. Biggs also highlighted his MAHA agenda, including banning junk food purchases with SNAP, allowing restaurants to serve raw milk and making ivermectin available over the counter.
He’s not not running: Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly will soon be putting in the legwork to run for president by stumping for candidates in South Carolina, the Deep South state that will be home to the first primary in the presidential nominating process, the Associated Press reports. Kelly, the former astronaut, is stumping for U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, while Arizona’s other U.S. Senator, Ruben Gallego, has already made recent stops in the state. Kelly also continues to beat up on the Trump administration for starting a war with Iran and being stuck in a worse position than before the unnecessary conflict, per The Hill.
“The Iranians weren’t racing to get a nuclear weapon. The straits were open, and we didn’t have over 20 dead service members and 800 injured,” Kelly said. “This thing has been a disaster, and it’s been a mistake and it’s because of the failed leadership of the president.”
Donor baggage: Frédéric Fekkai, a celebrity hairstylist accused of helping groom and sexually abuse Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, donated $1,400 to Republican U.S. Rep. Eli Crane’s campaign from December 2024 to November 2025, the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports. The donations continued as Congress battled over releasing the Epstein files, including after Crane backed away from a bipartisan effort to force their release. Crane’s office says he never met Fekkai or knew of his Epstein ties.
Big beautiful cuts: A new analysis puts Arizona among 15 states expected to face some of the biggest Medicaid payment cuts under new federal rules, Stateline writes. Arizona has participated in a federal program that lets states pay some medical providers more than Medicaid normally would, but the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed last year puts new limits on those state-directed payments starting in 2028. The new Health Affairs study says states that spent more than 20% of their Medicaid budgets on those payments face the steepest cuts — and Arizona is one of them.
Beyond the Ballot AZ is a weekly show about legendary Arizonans, notable — and sometimes notorious — political events, and the social movements still shaping the arguments we’re having today.
A resource of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, hosted by Executive Director Tom Collins and Director of Voter Education Gina Roberts, who break down what’s happening and how you can actually get involved in it. Same state you’ve been reading about all morning, with a lot more context.
Howie Fischer, the Arizona Capitol’s most legendary reporter, joined KTAR’s Mike Broomhead on the station’s “Amazing Arizonans” to discuss his distinguished career of legislative and political reporting.
It’s a fascinating look at his 40+ years of covering Arizona political stories, how the news industry has changed and what he thinks the future of journalism holds.
But our personal favorite part of the interview is hearing him discuss his time working as a mall Santa Claus.
“What they don’t tell you is these kids have been standing in line for 30-45 minutes, and their bladder goes,” he reminisced. “Somewhere running around Phoenix at this point are people who peed in my lap.”
1 The single-shot strategy only works to boost candidates in House races, where voters elect two representatives. That’s why we’re not focusing on the Senate race in this district today — it’s an even longer shot for Democrats.
2 Morgan bet Hank a cup of coffee that Howard would win LD27 in 2024, and he paid up when she lost. Which, now that Hank’s writing this footnote, he realizes may have been an illegal arrangement.