ARIZONA ELECTION FINALLY CALLED – NO ONE CAN BELIEVE WHO WON
Trump-Backed Republicans Won Arizona's Key Primaries - But the Sweep Does Not Settle November's Battlegrounds
Donald Trump got much of what he wanted from Arizona Republican primary voters.
The candidates he backed for governor and two closely watched open House seats all won their nominations.
That is evidence of the president's continuing influence inside the Arizona Republican Party.
It is not yet evidence that those candidates strengthened the GOP's position for November.
Arizona held its primary on July 21, not this week.
With the results now essentially complete, Rep. Andy Biggs won the Republican nomination for governor with about 74 percent of the vote.
Rep. David Schweikert finished a distant second at about 14 percent, followed by Scott Neely and Ken Miceli.
The margin was decisive.
Biggs received roughly 454,000 votes to Schweikert's 88,000.
For a Republican primary, there was little ambiguity about which direction voters preferred.
Biggs will now face Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November.
This is not a rematch.
Hobbs defeated Kari Lake in the 2022 governor's race; Biggs was not her opponent.
The 2026 contest will be the first general-election matchup between Hobbs and Biggs.
Trump's role in Biggs' path to the nomination was real, although the endorsement history was more complicated than a simple early choice.
Trump first endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson when she was the major declared Republican candidate.
After Biggs entered the race, Trump took the unusual step of endorsing both of them.
"Two fantastic candidates, two terrific people, two wonderful champions," Trump wrote at the time.
"It is therefore my Great Honor TO GIVE MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT TO BOTH."
Robson later withdrew from the race.
By July, Trump was giving Biggs an unambiguous endorsement and telling Arizona Republicans that the congressman was his choice for governor.
At a Turning Point event in Phoenix, Trump joked about the cost of moving Biggs out of the House.
"I hate to lose him," Trump said, "but he'll be a great governor."
Biggs' primary victory therefore reinforces Trump's strength with Republican voters.
But describing it as proof of a perfect statewide endorsement record goes further than the evidence.
Trump has sometimes dual-endorsed competing Arizona Republicans, and an endorsement record depends heavily on which races and which stage of a race are counted.
The more useful conclusion is narrower.
In the races Arizona Republicans cared most about on July 21, Trump's preferred MAGA-aligned candidates generally performed very well.
The 1st Congressional District offered another example.
Former Arizona Cardinals kicker and television analyst Jay Feely won the Republican nomination with about 49.8 percent of the vote.
Former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik received about 35.7 percent and businessman John Trobough about 14.5 percent.
Feely's endorsement story also began with a Trump hedge.
In January, Trump endorsed both Feely and then-Arizona Republican Party chair Gina Swoboda for the House seat.
He called them "Two Highly Respected America First Patriots" and wrote that "JAY OR GINA WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!"
Swoboda later left the congressional race and ran for secretary of state.
Trump subsequently endorsed Feely alone before the July primary.
Feely then defeated the remaining Republican field.
He will face Democrat Amish Shah in November.
Shah won the Democratic nomination with about 39.4 percent, defeating Marlene Galán-Woods, Jonathan Treble and Rick McCartney.
Shah was also the Democratic nominee in 2024, when he narrowly lost to Schweikert.
That history is why Arizona's 1st District is more important than a routine open-seat race.
It covers affluent and rapidly changing parts of the Phoenix metropolitan area, including Scottsdale and northeast Phoenix.
Republicans retain a registration advantage in the district, but it has moved toward the political center over the past decade.
National analysts continue to treat Feely-Shah as one of the House battlegrounds that could help decide control of Congress.
A Republican primary win therefore does not mean the seat is safely Republican.
The 5th Congressional District is different.
Former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb won the Republican nomination for the heavily Republican East Valley seat being vacated by Biggs.
Lamb received about 58.7 percent of the vote to Daniel Keenan's 41.3 percent.
Trump endorsed Lamb well before the primary and reaffirmed that support in July.
"It is my Great Honor to endorse MAGA Warrior Mark Lamb," Trump wrote.
He added that Lamb had his "Complete and Total Endorsement" and "WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!"
Lamb's victory was important for Trump's endorsement scorecard, but it was not a controversy-free campaign.
Lamb faced public allegations involving sexual misconduct and abuse of power.
He denied wrongdoing, and the Pinal County attorney said the available evidence did not support criminal charges.
Trump kept his endorsement after the allegations became public.
Because the 5th District is strongly Republican, Lamb enters the general election in a much safer position than Feely.
That difference matters when assessing whether the primary results created a uniformly strong Republican map.
Arizona's 6th Congressional District is another genuine battleground.
Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani had no primary opponent.
Neither did Democratic nominee JoAnna Mendoza.
Ciscomani had Trump's endorsement, but an uncontested nomination is not evidence that an endorsement powered him through a competitive primary.
The important test comes in November, when Ciscomani and Mendoza meet in a district both parties regard as competitive.
The same distinction applies to other incumbent Republicans Trump endorsed in Arizona.
Eli Crane, Paul Gosar and Abe Hamadeh all had Trump's support.
Their endorsements demonstrate broad alignment between Trump and much of the state's Republican congressional delegation.
They do not all represent equivalent electoral tests.
On the Democratic side, the results were less ideologically uniform than the phrase 'progressive challengers' can suggest.
Gov. Katie Hobbs was unopposed for renomination.
Rep. Greg Stanton, a member of the more business-oriented New Democrat Coalition, defeated progressive activist Kai Newkirk in the 4th District.
Stanton won about 62.3 percent to Newkirk's 37.7 percent.
Newkirk had support from progressive organizations and had joined the Democratic Socialists of America.
His defeat was therefore a clear case in which Arizona Democratic voters rejected a challenge from the party's left.
That result complicates any simple claim that both parties moved in the same ideological direction on primary night.
Arizona Republicans overwhelmingly chose Biggs over Schweikert in the governor's race.
Arizona Democrats in Stanton's district overwhelmingly chose the incumbent over a socialist-aligned challenger.
The November map is consequently more complicated than the Republican primary margins.
Trump celebrated the Arizona results by writing that MAGA candidates had achieved "A COMPLETE SWEEP."
As a description of several prominent Republican primaries, that was a fair political victory lap.
As a forecast for the general election, it was premature.
The governor's race illustrates the problem.
Hobbs won in 2022 by less than one percentage point, so Republicans have an obvious path to reclaim the office.
Republicans have also expanded their voter-registration advantage in Arizona since that election.
Those are real reasons for GOP confidence.
But Biggs brings vulnerabilities that did not matter in a Republican primary.
He is closely identified with the House Freedom Caucus and with efforts to challenge certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Democrats will use those positions to argue that he is too ideological for a closely divided state.
That concern is reflected in current race analysis.
After the primary, the Cook Political Report moved the governor's race from Toss Up to Lean Democratic, citing Biggs' potential difficulty with swing voters.
That rating is not a prediction of the final result.
It is a reminder that winning a Republican primary by 60 points is a different task from building a statewide majority in November.
The campaign has also changed since primary night.
Biggs selected former state Sen. Sine Kerr as his running mate.
Hobbs selected former Mesa Mayor John Giles, a longtime Republican who later became an independent and has been openly critical of Trump.
Arizona will elect a governor and lieutenant governor on the same ticket for the first time this year.
That creates a general-election contrast broader than Biggs versus Hobbs alone.
Biggs is attempting to consolidate conservatives and turn out Trump's Arizona coalition.
Hobbs is explicitly trying to add independents and anti-Trump Republicans to the Democratic base.
The House battlefield has a similar split.
AZ-05 is built to favor Republicans.
AZ-01 and AZ-06 are much more competitive.
A Republican sweep of those three districts would be a major success; losing either of the battleground seats could help Democrats in their effort to win the House.
That is why Trump's endorsement performance should be measured in two stages.
The first stage was candidate selection.
On that measure, he did extremely well in Arizona.
Biggs, Feely and Lamb all emerged from contested Republican primaries with the nominations Trump wanted by Election Day.
The second stage is electability.
That test is still ahead.
Biggs has to show that a candidate built for a conservative primary can win independents and enough suburban voters to defeat an incumbent governor.
Feely has to hold a district where Republicans can no longer assume that the party label alone will carry the seat.
Ciscomani has to survive another competitive Tucson-area campaign.
Lamb has to keep a safe Republican district from becoming unnecessarily complicated by controversy.
Those races will also test how durable Trump's 2024 Arizona coalition remains in a midterm electorate.
Trump won Arizona in 2024 by a substantially larger margin than his 2016 victory and his 2020 loss.
Republicans hope that performance marked a longer-term shift in the state.
Democrats argue that Arizona remains closely divided and that midterm voters will judge Republican candidates individually.
Both sides have evidence for their case.
Republicans now hold a clear voter-registration advantage statewide.
Democrats still control the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats and other major statewide offices.
Arizona is therefore neither the reliably Republican state it once was nor a reliably Democratic one.
The July 21 primary did settle the Republican Party's internal argument.
Andy Biggs, Jay Feely and Mark Lamb are the candidates Republican voters chose after Trump put his political weight behind them.
It also showed that Trump's endorsement remains a powerful asset in Arizona GOP contests.
What the primary did not settle is whether that same alignment is an advantage with the broader electorate.
The strongest Republican districts may answer yes almost automatically.
The governor's race, AZ-01 and AZ-06 will provide the harder answer.
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Trump can accurately point to a strong Arizona primary night.
He cannot yet point to a November sweep.
