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A Freedom Caucus fanatic could put a critical governor's race out of reach for the GOP
We preview all of swingy Arizona's top primaries, from governor on down
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After a three-week intermission, the 2026 primary season resumes Tuesday as voters in Arizona pick nominees for key races up and down the ballot.
One major storyline to watch is on the GOP side, as candidates affiliated with the state branch of the Freedom Caucus—the nihilistic bloc that began in Congress and has spread to statehouses across the country—fight for greater influence in the Grand Canyon State.
Democrats are also waiting to see whether the progressive base’s anger with longtime officeholders, which manifested in dramatic fashion last month in both New York and Colorado, endangers a prominent congressman who should otherwise be secure.
Below is our guide to all of the major races to watch. You can find an interactive map of all nine of the state’s congressional districts on Dave’s Redistricting App.
When it’s available, we’ll tell you about any reliable polling that exists for each contest, but if we don’t mention any numbers, it means no recent surveys have been made public.
Polls close at 10 PM ET / 7 PM local time in most of Arizona. But because the Navajo Nation, unlike the rest of the state, observes daylight saving time, voting will conclude one hour earlier there.
Election authorities will need to verify signatures from mail-in ballots—a very popular form of voting in Arizona—so a large portion of votes will likely still need to be counted after Tuesday night. The state has introduced new protocols for this year to speed up the process and allow for more votes to be tabulated on election night, but some close races may still be unresolved at the end of the evening.
Join The Downballot on our private Discord server to discuss the election returns with fellow community members as they come in on what will be an exciting night!
AZ-Gov (R) (52-47 Trump)
Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert are nominally competing for the right to take on Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, but Biggs appeared to have locked up the race long before Schweikert even entered.
Biggs, a prominent member of Congress’ Freedom Caucus and a one-time winner of $10 million in the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, entered the contest early last year even though Donald Trump had already backed wealthy businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson.
But his ties to hardliners, as well as their hostility to Robson, led Trump to announce he was also giving the congressman his “complete and total endorsement.”
Schweikert, who has repeatedly won reelection against well-funded Democratic opponents in a competitive district, apparently hoped to take advantage of a MAGA split by launching his own campaign last fall. Biggs, though, always posted huge leads in the polls, and Robson wound up dropping out in February.
Schweikert continues to argue his electoral history shows he’s the strongest candidate to defeat Hobbs in this swing state, but Republican voters don’t seem to be listening. Polls continue to show Biggs far ahead, with an early July survey from the conservative Arizona-based firm NextGen Polling giving him a gigantic 66-10 edge.
AZ-01 (R & D) (51-48 Trump)
Both parties have contested primaries to replace Schweikert in Arizona’s 1st District, a swing seat located in northeastern Phoenix and Scottsdale.
Trump’s pick in the three-way GOP primary is Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker who played for the Arizona Cardinals from 2010 to 2013 and is the only Republican who has benefited from significant outside spending. Nonetheless, Feely never managed to sew things up.
The lineup also consists of former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik, who served as a leader in the Freedom Caucus’ state chapter, and businessman John Trobough, who has self-funded about $1 million.
Yet despite Trump’s intervention, a survey from NextGen conducted in mid-June showed Feely with just a 25-23 advantage over Chaplik, with Trobough at 6%. No one has released any new numbers over the ensuing month, however.
Four Democrats are campaigning to flip this constituency, including two contenders who faced off just two years ago.
Former state Rep. Amish Shah narrowly outpaced another candidate 23.5 to 21.3 in the 2024 primary, with former TV news anchor Marlene Galan-Woods just behind at 21.2. Shah went on to lose to Schweikert by a 52-48 margin, but he began running again last year before the congressman decided to seek a promotion.
Galan-Woods, though, is hoping that Democrats make a different choice this time. The candidate, whose late husband, former Republican Attorney General Grant Woods, was an ardent Trump critic, also has some influential allies she didn’t have during her first campaign.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which remained neutral in 2024, is supporting Galan-Woods this time and airing ads to help her. Some of those commercials star Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who didn’t take sides last time either.
The committee hasn’t said why it’s intervening, though a report from Axios says that it struggled to work with Shah during the previous general election. Shah’s side, however, argues voters should recoil from “D.C. insiders trying to put their thumb on the scales.”
The DCCC, though, isn’t the only organization trying to prevent Shah from getting nominated again.
The former state representative has been hit with well over $2 million in negative advertising from outside groups, with most of the spending coming from groups affiliated with Galan-Woods’ allies at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Shah’s backers have spent only a fraction of that sum to aid his cause.
Shah and Galan-Woods don’t have the primary to themselves, however, as businessmen Jonathan Treble and Rick McCartney are also campaigning for the Democratic nomination.
Treble, who has contributed more than $2 million to his campaign, has spent more money than anyone else. McCartney is also self-funding, though not to the same extent.
AZ-04 (D) (53-46 Harris)
Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton, a four-term congressman who previously served as mayor of Phoenix, faces a challenge from the left from activist Kai Newkirk in a constituency based in the communities of Mesa and Tempe.
Newkirk is seeking to harness the anti-establishment fury that’s doomed other longtime Democratic politicians in primaries, but he’s struggled to raise money.
The challenger also received unwanted attention late in the campaign when the Young Democrats of Arizona and other groups revoked endorsements over unspecified “concerning patterns of behavior.” Newkirk has responded by saying the allegations, which come from a 2019 article that has since been retracted by one of its authors, amount to “character assassination.”
A late June internal poll from Stanton showed the congressman ahead by a wide 56-23 spread, though those numbers also indicated that a large portion of the Democratic electorate was open to change. The congressman’s allies seem to agree he could use some help. A pair of outside groups affiliated with the crypto and AI sectors spent around $400,000 to promote him late in the campaign.
A more recent survey from a pro-Newkirk group gave the congressman a considerably smaller 46-38 advantage. But while that poll argued Stanton could lose if his critics got involved in the race, major outside groups remained on the sidelines.
AZ-05 (R) (59-39 Trump)
Former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb remains the Republican frontrunner despite a torrent of scandals, but his wealthy primary opponent, construction contractor Daniel Keenan, is hoping to pull off a surprise on Tuesday.
Last year, Trump endorsed Lamb, a failed 2024 Senate candidate with a history of affiliating with QAnon figures and other white nationalist entities, in the race to replace Andy Biggs as the representative for the southeastern Phoenix area.
But while Lamb seemed to be on track for an easy victory over Keenan, things began to change in May when the Arizona Republic published a story featuring allegations from two women who accused Lamb of sending them sexual messages and threatening to use law enforcement if they spoke out.
The paper went on to publish several more articles centered around allegations concerning Lamb’s personal life and professional conduct. These have included—but are not limited to—accusations that Lamb made a racist joke about Black people, and a now-former friend’s claim that Lamb introduced him to a “lifestyle” that involved sex with Lamb’s wife.
Trump, unsurprisingly, has continued to back Lamb, who has denounced the charges as “lies.” So has the Club for Growth, which has spent $250,000 to boost Lamb. The Club also released a poll from early July showing him beating Keenan 61-27 even though Lamb hasn’t spent any money on advertising.
But Keenan, who has used his fortune to finance ads denouncing Lamb as “a disgrace, an embarrassment, and unfit for office,” sees the chance for an upset. An internal poll for Keenan found him edging out Lamb 42-40 in the first week of July.
AZ-AG (R) (52-47 Trump)
Two Republicans who have both spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election are campaigning to take on Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose 280-vote victory two years later made her the first Arizona Democrat to hold the office in a dozen years.
The primary pits state Senate President Warren Petersen against attorney Rodney Glassman, a former Democratic member of the Tucson City Council who has unsuccessfully run for office several times as a Republican. NextGen’s survey from earlier this month placed Petersen ahead 43-28.
AZ-SoS (R) (52-47 Trump)
Republicans also have a two-person race to face Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, but the difference between the two challengers is considerably more stark than it is in the primary for attorney general.
State Rep. Alex Kolodin, a member of the state Freedom Caucus who unsuccessfully sued to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, has used his time in office to advance plans to make it harder to vote.
His opponent is Gina Swoboda, a former state GOP chair who has clashed with the Freedom Caucus and other far-right figures like Laura Loomer. Swoboda, who led the party when Trump carried Arizona in 2024, argues Kolodin would be just another hardline nominee doomed for failure in a general election.
Republican primary voters, though, haven’t been persuaded. NextGen’s most recent poll showed Kolodin easily defeating Swoboda 44-20.
AZ Corporation Commission (R) (52-47 Trump)
Two Republicans are preparing for tough general elections to keep their seats on Arizona’s Corporation Commission, a powerful body that regulates utilities across the state, but one of them may get toppled in the primary first.
Commissioners Nick Myers and Kevin Thompson are defending themselves from intraparty critics who say they’ve failed to do enough to advance Trump’s pro-coal agenda in office. One of those detractors is state Rep. Ralph Heap, a Freedom Caucus ally who has made coal a centerpiece of his argument.
But while hardliners originally hoped to defeat both Myers and Thompson, they had to scale back their ambitions in April when state Rep. David Marshall, who was campaigning alongside Heap, dropped out of the race.
The trio of Myers, Thompson, and Heap will compete on a single statewide ballot, and voters can vote for up to two options. The two contenders with the most votes will advance to the November general election, making it possible that any mixed-and-matched set will move forward.
The eventual nominees will take on Democrats Jonathon Hill and Clara Pratte, who face no intraparty opposition, in a fall showdown that will operate using similar rules.
Republicans hold all five seats on the board, and, because only two of them are on the ballot this year, they aren’t in danger of losing control of the commission this cycle. Democrats, though, hope a strong showing this November will set them up for more success in 2028, when the other three seats will go before voters.
Other races to watch:
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