The early ballot returns are looking promising if you are a Democrat running in Pima County.
Democrats are punching above their registration weight, especially in two Southern Arizona political battlegrounds — Congressional District 6 and Legislative District 17.
Both are Republican-held targets that Democrats hope to flip next week. And right now, registered Democrats are outperforming their share of the electorate among voters who have already returned ballots.
Republicans have a registration edge in both districts. But Democrats are doing a better job of getting their voters’ ballots back so far — an encouraging sign for a party trying to turn a favorable national political climate into actual seats.
But don’t buy party balloons quite yet, Democrats.
Historically, Republicans tend to vote in large numbers on Election Day. Especially those who don’t trust the mail.
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that there’s a huge difference between counting Democrats who voted and counting ballots cast for Democrats.
Political analysts are assuming a wave of independent voters will side with Dems this year, and even a sizable number of disillusioned Republicans.
If those predictions pan out, we’re looking at a legitimate blue tsunami.
The Fightin’ Sixth
The returns right now look really good for Democrat JoAnna Mendoza as she runs to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Congressional District 6.
As of Wednesday, 49% of registered Democrats in CD6 had returned their ballots, compared with 35% of Republicans. (In raw numbers, about 13,000 more Dems have returned their ballots in the district.)
Data cruncher Sam Almy’s ballot-return dashboard.
Democrats have been pushing a vote-early strategy for months now, specifically over concerns about meddling from the Trump administration. Their argument is simple — get your vote in now and avoid long lines on Election Day.
We wrote about the millions being spent in the race earlier this week to sway undecided voters, but ballot chasing is becoming a central strategy for both campaigns. Turning Point USA, several big unions and both political parties are all pushing to canvass neighborhoods this weekend.
While we’ve heard this-is-the-most-important-election-of-your-lifetime statements from politicians of every stripe, it’s still a midterm election.
Presidential elections draw bigger crowds, making 2022 a more useful comparison than 2024. That year, the “top” of the ticket was governor, although some political nerds will remind you that was also the election when Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly defeated Republican Blake Masters.
The ballot returns are largely on par with 2022 at this point.
Democrats’ current 13,000-ballot lead over Republicans could evaporate on Election Day, as more than 11,000 voters cast their ballots on election day.
The Selective 17th
In LD17, where Democrats are hoping to pick up the open Senate seat, keep one House seat and flip another, they’ve brought out the big guns — Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs personally kicked off an evening canvassing event on Monday.
Although they’re outnumbered in voter registration, Democrats have returned 51% of their ballots in the competitive district. By comparison, only 36% of Republicans have returned theirs.
This sounds like a blue wave, but the devil is in the details: Republicans outnumber Dems handily there, and in raw numbers, Democrats have only a 1,800-ballot advantage right now.
Katie Hobbs and running mate John Giles spent most of Monday in Tucson campaigning, including kicking off a canvassing event in LD17.
Democratic Rep. Kevin Volk says he isn’t leaving anything to chance, noting that he and Democatic Senate candidate Edgar Soto are spending today canvassing in 11 different places in LD17.
He isn’t watching ballot returns, saying that months of canvassing have shown him that independents are upset with the broken promises from Washington, D.C.
They’re motivated to vote for real change, Volk told us, arguing that the economy is the issue driving voters.
Republican House candidate John Winchester said Republicans have told him on the campaign trail that they prefer to vote on Election Day.
With less than a week to go, we’ll be watching how those ballot-return margins shift.
But the bigger question is whether those ballots translate into votes for the party’s candidates.
In these two districts, that’s not a given.
Here we go: A massive new data center could be coming to an area near Willcox that has been plagued by dwindling groundwater, Beau Hodai reports for the Cochise Regional News. Local residents first learned about the proposed “supercomputing facility” near the Apache Generating Station when they started receiving letters last week. The company behind the project is Tombstone Resources LLC, which was incorporated this summer in Wyoming by Soorosh Faegh. The letters were signed by a Michael Smith at a big Atlanta law firm, but when the Cochise Regional News called the firm, nobody had heard of him. Cochise County officials are still waiting for a formal application for the data center and, in light of the widespread public backlash against data centers, Republican Cochise County Supervisor Frank Antenori swears the process will be transparent, per the Herald/Review.
“None of us have signed NDAs,” Antenori said.
Opinions galore: Local elected officials are giving their two cents ahead of Tuesday’s election. Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz says the midterms are the best chance to end the Trump administration’s “governance by cruelty,” including the “callous deportation machine” and the “gutting” of programs like SNAP and Medicaid. Locally, Tucson City Councilwoman Selina Barajas wants voters to approve Prop 421, which she says will translate all the community input on the Tucson Electric Power franchise agreement over the past year into “investments that benefit Tucson neighborhoods.” And Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva is urging voters to sign off on Prop 425. She calls the ballot measure a “common-sense update that would allow Pima County to make fuller use of resources already available to serve residents,” without raising taxes.
Taking it all the way to City Hall: The Benson City Council signed off on spending $1.1 million to convert a donated building into the next city hall, Matt Hickman reports for the Herald/Review. The building has an interesting history. After Aluminum Dynamics was basically kicked out of town by residents concerned about the environmental effects of its recycling plant, the company offered to donate a modular building to the city. Initially, city officials said it would be too expensive to move it, but earlier this month decided to go ahead with the plan. This week, the council voted to spend the money to dismantle and transport the modular building to a site near Apache Park.
RIP: Legendary labor rights activist Dolores Huerta died Wednesday at the age of 96. She was no stranger to Tucson and helped found the United Farm Workers union, as well as coining the phrase “Sí, se puede!” Over the course of decades of activism, she was arrested more than 25 times for nonviolent civil disobedience, Andrew Capasso reports for KVOA.
“In her UFW heyday, Huerta cut a striking figure, a fierce young Latina shouting through a bullhorn, rallying workers and leading marches. This was a rare sight at a time when Hispanics had yet to become a political force,” Capasso writes.
Looking for a silver lining: As Tucson Unified School District officials contemplate closing 10 schools, Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo says families affected by the closures could get free childcare and transportation, Mia Kortright reports for the Tucson Sentinel. Trujillo also says closing schools could boost enrollment by allowing the district to offer free afterschool childcare.
Inside the Issues is a nonpartisan series from the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission about the issues shaping Arizona’s future — the ones that are complex, consequential, and easy to overlook.
Each episode brings voters into the conversation with experts, public officials, and community leaders who explain what’s actually at stake and what decisions are ahead. No pundits, no party line — just the context you need to walk into the voting booth informed instead of guessing.
Citizens and political groups have been pressing the Pima County Board of Supervisors to stop doing business with border wall contractors since at least the first Trump administration.
On Tuesday, opponents escalated to the supernatural, as a self-described witch placed a hex on border wall contractors and their “collaborators” on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
Specifically, the hex went to Sundt Construction, which has a roughly $443 million federal contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to build approximately 58 miles of new wall along the Southern Arizona border. It also contracts with Pima County for construction projects.
“Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. Border wall, your days are numbered. Sundt Construction thrown asunder. No more borders, no more fear. All travelers be welcome here. And so that it may come to pass, I urge Pima County to drop Sundt fast,” the witch told the board.
Arizona procurement laws say you can’t blacklist private companies from bidding on public contracts (even if you don’t like the other projects they work on).
But if the hex takes out the county’s coffee maker, we can imagine someone on the board will want to find a loophole.
