ELECTIONS CALLED IN ARIZONA – GOP BOMBSHELL
Trump's Arizona Primary Sweep Shows His Grip on the GOP - But November Will Test How Far It Reaches
Arizona's Republican primary delivered a result that was easy to describe but harder to interpret.
Candidates backed by President Donald Trump won the state's most closely watched GOP contests, including the Republican nomination for governor and an open congressional seat that could help determine control of the House.
The sweep confirmed something that has been evident for years: Trump remains the central figure in Arizona Republican politics.
What the primary did not prove is whether that influence will translate as cleanly to the broader electorate in November.
The clearest victory came in the governor's race.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs won the Republican nomination with about 74 percent of the vote, overwhelmingly defeating fellow Rep. David Schweikert and two other candidates. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs was unopposed for her party's nomination.
That sets up one of the country's most closely watched gubernatorial contests on November 3.
It is not, however, a rematch.
Hobbs narrowly defeated Trump-backed Kari Lake in the 2022 governor's race. Biggs and Hobbs have not previously faced each other in a general election.
Biggs enters the race with one of the strongest Trump-aligned records in the Arizona Republican Party. A former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and former president of the Arizona Senate, he has campaigned on lower taxes, tighter border enforcement, public safety and reducing the size of government.
Trump made his support for Biggs explicit, but the history of that endorsement matters.
In April 2025, Trump endorsed both Biggs and Karrin Taylor Robson, writing that they were 'two fantastic candidates, two terrific people, two wonderful champions' and giving his 'complete and total endorsement' to both. Robson later suspended her campaign in February 2026, leaving Biggs and Schweikert as the two major Republican contenders.
At a Phoenix event in April, Trump made clear where his enthusiasm had landed by the time the primary approached.
'I hate to lose him from Congress,' Trump said of Biggs, adding that 'he'll be a great governor.'
The result gave Trump another high-profile Arizona nominee who is closely identified with his political movement.
But it also illustrates why endorsement records require some context.
Biggs was Trump-backed, but Trump had also previously backed another candidate who left the race before voters made their final choice. The primary therefore demonstrates the strength of a Trump-aligned candidate more clearly than it demonstrates the power of a single exclusive endorsement.
The same distinction appears in Arizona's 1st Congressional District.
Former Arizona Cardinals kicker and sports broadcaster Jay Feely won the Republican nomination with 49.8 percent of the vote, defeating former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik and businessman John Trobough.
Feely had Trump's endorsement. Earlier in the cycle, however, Trump had also endorsed then-Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda, calling Feely and Swoboda 'Two Highly Respected America First Patriots' and declaring, 'JAY OR GINA WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!'
By primary day, Feely was the Trump-backed candidate who emerged from the final field.
His November race will be much less forgiving than the primary.
Feely will face Democrat Amish Shah, an emergency-room physician and former state legislator who also won the Democratic nomination for the district. Shah previously won the Democratic primary in 2024 before narrowly losing the general election to Schweikert.
The district includes Scottsdale, north Phoenix and other parts of northeastern Maricopa County. It has become increasingly competitive, and national election analysts continue to treat the open seat as a toss-up.
That makes Feely's victory strategically important for Republicans.
The primary decided who would carry the GOP label in one of the House races Democrats view as a serious pickup opportunity. It did not decide whether the Trump brand that helped Feely in a Republican primary will help, hurt or have little effect among the independents and non-Republicans who will vote in November.
Trump-backed former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb also won the Republican nomination in Arizona's 5th Congressional District, the seat Biggs is leaving.
Lamb defeated Daniel Keenan with 58.7 percent of the vote. Trump had called Lamb a 'MAGA Warrior' and reaffirmed his 'Complete and Total Endorsement' during the campaign.
The political stakes in the 5th District are different from those in the 1st.
The district is heavily Republican, stretching from the southeast Phoenix suburbs into Pinal County. Winning the GOP primary there places Lamb in a much stronger general-election position than Feely has in the more competitive 1st District.
Arizona's 6th Congressional District offers another useful contrast.
Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who also had Trump's support, had no primary opponent. Democrat JoAnna Mendoza was likewise unopposed for her party's nomination.
The lack of a primary fight does not make the general election unimportant. The 6th District is also considered a toss-up and has produced close races in recent cycles.
That distinction matters when describing the Arizona results as a Trump sweep.
The president's preferred candidates did come through the Republican nomination process successfully. But some won hard-fought contested races, some benefited from divided opposition, and some had no primary opponent at all.
Those are different kinds of victories.
Trump also backed other Arizona Republicans, including Reps. Eli Crane, Paul Gosar and Abe Hamadeh, reinforcing the broader alignment between the state's Republican congressional delegation and the administration on border security, taxes, energy and election policy.
On the Democratic side, the primary produced a different picture.
Hobbs advanced without opposition. In the 4th Congressional District, Rep. Greg Stanton defeated progressive challenger Kai Newkirk, who had tried to move the race left on issues including Israel, health care and immigration enforcement.
The result kept an incumbent Democrat in place rather than producing the kind of ideological upset progressives have achieved in some other races.
In the 1st District, meanwhile, Shah defeated a Democratic field that included Marlene Galan-Woods, who had support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and several prominent Arizona Democrats.
Taken together, the results show two parties making different calculations heading into November.
Republican primary voters strongly favored candidates associated with Trump and the America First movement. Democratic voters largely kept Hobbs and Stanton while choosing Shah in the most competitive open House race.
The numbers explain why neither party can treat the primary as a general-election forecast.
Republicans have a voter-registration advantage statewide, but Arizona also has a large bloc of independent voters. The state backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election, yet Democrats continue to hold the governor's office and other major statewide positions.
That is the central tension behind the Biggs victory.
For Republicans, Biggs's 74 percent primary showing is evidence of an energized and unified conservative base. For Democrats, his long record as one of the House's most combative conservatives gives them an opportunity to argue that he is less suited to the statewide electorate than to a Republican primary.
Election forecasters are already treating those two electorates differently.
The Cook Political Report moved the Arizona governor's race from Toss Up to Lean Democratic before the primary, while continuing to rate the 1st and 6th Congressional Districts as toss-ups. An AARP-commissioned poll conducted in late July put Hobbs ahead of Biggs 52 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, though a single poll is a snapshot rather than a prediction.
That does not erase the significance of Trump's primary victories.
A president who can help shape nominations across a major battleground state still has substantial influence over his party. Biggs, Feely and Lamb will carry Trump's support into the general election, and their campaigns are built around many of the same priorities that define the administration: border enforcement, lower taxes, deregulation, energy production and opposition to Democratic governance in the state.
The more important question is what happens when the electorate expands.
Primary voters choose a party's candidates. General-election voters decide whether those candidates can build a coalition large enough to govern.
Arizona will test that difference in several places at once.
A Biggs victory would return the governor's office to Republicans after Hobbs's narrow 2022 win. A Feely victory would keep an open battleground House seat in Republican hands. A Ciscomani victory would protect another vulnerable GOP district. Lamb, by contrast, enters November in a seat where the Republican nominee begins with a much clearer structural advantage.
So the July 21 primary settled one issue: Trump remains extraordinarily influential over the direction of the Arizona Republican Party, and candidates closely tied to him emerged from the state's major GOP contests.
What it did not settle is whether primary dominance equals general-election strength.
May you like
That answer will come on November 3, when Arizona's independents, moderates and less partisan voters join the electorate in much larger numbers.
For Trump and the candidates running with his endorsement, that is the test that matters next.
