Arizona strategists say the race for the state’s heavily Democratic 7th Congressional District to replace the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva could hold clues about where the Democratic Party is heading and be a major road test for party messaging.
“There’s some soul-searching going on in the Democratic Party, and there’s some internal conflicts, no doubt,” Hiral Tipirneni, a past Democratic congressional candidate in neighboring districts, told NOTUS. “Who we put in that seat is going to maybe speak volumes as to which direction we want our party to go, at least here in Arizona or Pima County.”
The split between how Democrats believe their party should approach President Donald Trump has been on full display in the last several weeks. Ten House Democrats joined Republicans to censure Rep. Al Green after his protest during Trump’s joint address to Congress. Sen. John Fetterman criticized Rep. Jasmine Crockett and other Democrats for participating in what he called a “cheeseball” viral video in which lawmakers took “choose your fighter” positions. The divisions reached a new level last week after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he would support advancing the GOP’s government spending bill, to the dismay of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other House Democrats.
Now those tests are starting to spill over to the campaign trail.
“The Democratic Party is a very large and complicated entity, and I think there are a lot of folks sort of battling for the soul of the party, what kind of party we want to be and who we want our representatives to be,” Arizona Democratic strategist Adam Kinsey told NOTUS. “[This race] has the potential for being sort of a microcosm of the overall battle for the future of the party.”
Already several Democrats have come up as possible candidates to replace Grijalva, who died last week at the age of 77 from complications related to his cancer treatment after a months-long absence from Congress.
Last Friday, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs announced that the primary for the special election will be held on July 15, and the general election will happen on Sept. 23. To qualify, candidates have until the April 14 deadline, which is quickly coming up, to get signatures and file the necessary paperwork for their candidacy.
No high-profile Democrats have announced their candidacy. But among those considered possible candidates are Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and former Arizona state Rep. Daniel Hernandez Jr. Both Fontes and Hernandez are seen by Democrats as more moderate.
Whether Grijalva’s daughter, Adelita Grijalva, the District 5 Pima County supervisor, will jump in is also a major question. She’s considered a well-known progressive Democrat in the district.
“There’s a Grijalva political machine in the district that has lived off of Congressman Grijalva for many, many years,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist who is a former Republican. “That institutional Democratic existence of those people are going to be a big help to Adelita. [Fontes] will be looked at as the upstart, as the guy that could upset the apple cart.”
A spokesperson for Fontes’ campaign referred NOTUS to comments he made Wednesday to a local radio station where he said that he’s “preparing as if” he’ll run for the seat.
Hernandez, who didn’t comment but previously ran for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District seat, hasn’t publicly discussed his plans.
And Keith Bagwell, a senior policy advisor for Pima County District 5, told NOTUS in a statement that Adelita will not announce any decisions “at least until after her father’s funeral on Wednesday.”
Robert E. Branscomb II, the chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party, told NOTUS in a statement that the party is “committed to electing” a Democrat in the district “who will continue” Grijalva’s work.
“It is critical to have another Arizona Democrat in Congress fighting back against Trump and Elon Musk’s gutting of Social Security, Medicaid, and vital federal assistance programs that Arizonans rely on,” Branscomb said in the statement, indicating how nationalized the race is likely to become.
Some of the issues Democrats are expecting will come up in the race are trade and immigration, given that the district borders Mexico and is home to the Nogales port of entry, one of the largest ports of entry between the United States and Mexico.
Coughlin said that a new Democratic representative could be in a position “to help the Democratic Party shape a better narrative about how they approach those issues post-Biden.”
On the Republican side, multiple candidates are working to collect signatures to make the ballot. They include Daniel Butierez, who challenged Grijalva for the seat in the 2024 election cycle, and Jorge Rivas, a conservative businessman who participated in a 2020 “Latinos for Trump” roundtable.
“I think even though this district has been voting Democrat for so many years, it doesn’t mean that it cannot change,” Rivas told NOTUS.
But Republicans acknowledge it would be tough to put up a competitive candidate there and are instead looking to the race for clues as to where Democrats are heading as a party.
Gina Swoboda, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, told NOTUS she believes this election will be helpful to see where the “needle is going” when it comes to how Democrats’ approach is resonating with voters in the state.
“What is the outcome of that primary, and do those candidates, if indeed it is contested, run towards the middle?” Swoboda said. “Which is where all of the kind of at large, broadly speaking, that’s where the American people seem to be. Or, are they going to continue trending to the left?”
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Torrence Banks is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.