Looking ahead to this year’s elections

Making a mad world a little more coherent ... Demonstrations and vigils ... And the last chance was last year.

It’s time to overthrow the government!

No, not that way. At least, we hope not that way. There’s no telling what the president will do, but we’re crossing our fingers and hoping Southern Arizonans will get to vote in free and fair elections this year.

And there are a lot of elections to think about. We’ve got countywide ones like RTA Next, another race for a Pima County supervisor, and school board elections at TUSD, Amphi, Vail, Sunnyside and other districts.

Then there are a dozen or so legislative seats in Southern Arizona and all the statewide offices, including governor and, for the first time, lieutenant governor.

And state lawmakers decided last year to send three measures to the ballot this November, so voters will decide whether to cap taxes on groceries, designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations, and whether to track the mileage of electric-vehicle drivers who don’t pay the gas tax.

The big decision for most Tucson voters will be deciding whether to keep Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who was elected just a few months ago, and GOP U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Southern Arizona’s Congressional Districts 7 and 6, respectively. (Their names are on the ballot, but we suspect “impeachment” will be the real candidate.)

With so many elections, we all have a lot of homework to do. But never fear, we’ve got you covered.

Today, we’re looking ahead at all the choices you’ll make at the ballot box in 2026. We’re also going to give you a sense of how the year is going to unfold.

Let’s get to it!

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Just around the corner

As strange as it may sound to say in January, you’re going to get ballots in your mailbox in about a month.

That’s when early voting starts for the Regional Transportation Authority special election. You’ll have two measures to decide, known officially as Props 418 and 419 but better known as RTA Next, tied to the March 10 special election.

Those measures will account for roughly $2.7 billion in regional transportation spending over the next 20 years.

Spring will also be the time that you’ll start seeing candidates filing statements of interest to run for various offices, like state and congressional representatives. We’ll keep track of who’s planning to run and let you know.

Starting to heat up

A few weeks after the March 10 election, candidates for the dozen or so legislative seats in the Tucson area will file their nominating petition signatures to officially get on the ballot.

And since elections are a contact sport, some candidates are going to challenge each other’s signatures in court.

Often, those challenges don’t amount to anything, but keep in mind that former Rep. Austin Smith was just barred from running for office for five years after he forged the name of a dead woman on his nominating petitions.

Legislative candidates also will have to file their campaign finance reports for the first quarter of 2026, so you’ll get a little insight into who’s bankrolling them in April.

Don’t forget that some candidates run unopposed, so just getting on the ballot means they won the election. It happens more often than you’d think.

We’re excited, for example, to learn who will qualify as a candidate to be Oro Valley’s next mayor.

The big choices

When July rolls around, you’ll make some of the most consequential decisions of the year.

That’s when early voting begins for the August 4 primary. Democratic voters outnumber their Republican counterparts in Pima County, so the candidates you pick in the primary will probably take office next year.

But there are exceptions.

Legislative District 17 is generally conservative, but not completely. Rep. Kevin Volk, a Democrat, beat a Republican last year to get a seat in the state House. Local activists believe there will be Democratic challengers to the Republican incumbents for the other two seats in LD17 this year.

And the race for the seat in Congressional District 6 is going to be wild.

Republican voters hold a slim majority and the seat has been held by both Democrats and Republicans in recent years. Right now, it’s Ciscomani who’s trying to hang on for a third term.

Nationally, Democrats have put CD6 on the map as a targeted district to take back the U.S. House. We expect a lot of ads and visits from high-level Democrats stumping for Ciscomani’s Democratic rival.

A week after early voting begins, you’ll get another look at campaign finance reports (and you’ll probably hear another rant from Curt about how the campaign finance deadlines don’t make any sense).

Prime time

August 4th is the date to circle on your calendars: The primary elections for most of the offices we’re talking about today.¹

This isn’t an election year for Pima County supervisors (that was 2024), but former Supervisor Adelita Grijalva ran for the CD7 seat after the death of her father, longtime Congressman Raúl Grijalva.

That means Democratic voters will decide whether they want Andrés Cano — who was appointed to replace Grijalva on the board — to stay on for the remainder of the four-year term or pick somebody new.

Cano still could face a Republican opponent in the general, but District 5 is solidly blue.

The Big Kahuna

The general elections are on November 3rd.

In a single day, Southern Arizona voters will decide whether to send Democrats or Republicans back to Washington, although if the past is prologue, we might send one of each to D.C.

As we hinted at earlier, President Donald Trump has openly worried that if the Democrats take back the House and Senate, he’ll face impeachment proceedings for a third time.

Beyond the midterm elections, Southern Arizona will have a role in deciding statewide offices like attorney general, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction and governor, as well as the state’s first lieutenant governor.

Democrats are also betting big on taking over the Legislature (for what seems like the hundredth year in a row). If that happens and Gov. Katie Hobbs gets another four-year term, we expect a very different Arizona in 2027.

But don’t hold your breath. The GOP has maintained a majority at the state Capitol for quite some time now.

In addition to the ballot measures we mentioned earlier, there are a bunch more measures being floated at the Legislature this year, but it’s too early to tell which ones will survive the legislative gauntlet.

What we can tell you is that we’re going to be all over these elections. Stick around for a year full of high-stakes decisions, and undoubtedly a boatload of political shenanigans.

Permission to kill: Demonstrations and vigils emerged nationwide on Wednesday night, including in downtown Tucson and in front of Phoenix’s ICE field office, after a federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva called for Congress to investigate the shooting and “(rein) in this lawless agency.” Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the ICE agent “did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation.”

Still apt after all these years: Former Rep. Gabby Giffords penned an op-ed in the Republic about the day in 2011 she and 18 others were shot outside a grocery store. She focused on the “Together We Thrive” slogan that “became a unifying theme for a town that came together in unprecedented ways” and highlighted individuals like Jasmin Ceballos, who turned her front yard into a community pantry when the government shutdown threatened federal food programs.

“Fifteen years later, this day remains painful. But I channel my grief into our ongoing fight to stop other people from being shot, to end this nation’s gun violence epidemic,” she wrote. “On this January 8th, I urge us to honor the victims by focusing on their enduring legacies, and by recognizing the Arizonans who make our state such a special place to call home — often regular people who go the extra mile to help others.”

That’s not how it works: The Arizona Supreme Court shut down Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby’s attempt to claim legislative immunity in the case against him for refusing to certify the 2022 election, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. After two other courts shut down claims that Crosby’s refusal was protected as an official board action, the state Supreme Court agreed certifying elections is “not a field where legislators traditionally have the power to act, as canvassing is delegated to the executive branch.”

New precedent: After legal threats from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, Riverview Dairy, the Minnesota company that owns megadairies and pumps huge amounts of water near Willcox, agreed to stop using 2,000 acres of farmland and set up an $11 million fund to help nearby residents whose wells went dry, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports.

Your support helps keep our “well” from running dry.

Staying in line: Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani, along with every other Arizona Republican in Congress, voted against extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits, per Laura Gersony at the Republic. Ciscomani said last year that Arizonans would face harsh consequences if the tax credits expired, but in the end he wasn’t among the 17 Republicans who broke ranks to support the bill.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Tucson City Council and Tucson Electric Power were this close to a complicated, lawyer-heavy agreement to finally put a franchise deal before voters.

Then things went sideways.

There are a few competing versions of who soured the relationship at the eleventh hour, but it probably didn’t help that TEP filed a lawsuit against the city over undergrounding some power lines.

As for when the issue actually lands on a ballot?

TEP’s current agreement with the city expires later this year, so the clock is ticking.

Turns out, that might’ve been some bad math by TEP to kick the can down the road.

Thanks to the delay, they’re going to have an even harder time working out a deal with the city. The council now has another member who’s openly interested in buying out TEP altogether and replacing it with a municipal-run electric utility.

1. Though that primary election date could change — lawmakers at the state Capitol have filed a bill to move the primary election to the last Tuesday in July instead.