Two-thirds of Arizona lawmakers unchallenged in primary

The highest level of Arizona’s uncontested incumbents since 2018 dominated Tuesday’s primary election. According to a report by Ballotpedia, 317 of the 488 July elections were uncontested - 65%.

Of the nine congressional district seats, four incumbents went uncontested. These include 5th Congressional District Republican Incumbent Rep. Andy Biggs, who will face Democrat Katrina Schaffner in the general election, District 4 Democratic Incumbent Greg Stanton, who will face Republican Kelly Cooper in the general election, District 7 Democratic Incumbent Raul Grijalva who will go against Republican Daniel Francis Butierez and District 8 Republican incumbent Paul Gosar who will go against Democrat Quacy Smith.

By far, the legislative state senate positions had the highest number of uncontested incumbent candidates. These include Legislative District 3, LD 4, LD 5, LD 6, LD 9, LD 10, LD 11, LD 12, LD 13, LD 15, LD 16, LD 18, LD 19, LD 20, LD 21, LD 26, LD 28 and LD 29. Some of which will not even have any opponents from the opposing party in the general election.

These are LD 3 Republican Senator John Kavanagh, LD 6 Democrat Theresa Hatathlie, LD 18 Democrat Priya Sundareshan, LD 20 Republican Sally Ann Gonzales, LD 21 Democrat Rosanna Gabaldon and LD 28 Republican Frank Carroll - meaning that residents of those districts have no question of who will be their state senator.

According to Paul Bentz, senior vice president of research and strategy for Highground Public Affairs, this is because when there is only one seat available, it can be incredibly difficult to unseat an incumbent.

“It’s very difficult to unseat an incumbent. Incumbency has a lot of advantages when it comes to fundraising, when it comes to name ID,” Bentz said. “So, it’s a very difficult undertaking when someone comes to challenge an incumbent.”

However, it becomes more competitive when there are more open seats like in the house representative primary races, where two people are elected. In a lot of cases the two incumbents who held the seats previously, if they are of the same party, will pool together their campaigning money and run as a pair to increase their chances.

Examples of this are LD 3 Republican Incumbents Joseph Chaplik and Alexander Kolodin, LD 9 Democratic Incumbents Lorena Austin and Seth Blattman, LD 12 Democratic Incumbents Patty Contreras and Stacey Travers, LD 18 Democratic Incumbents Nancy Gutierrez and Chris Mathis, LD 19 Republican Incumbents Gail Griffin and Lupe Diaz, LD 20 Democratic Candidates Betty Villegas and Alma Hernandez, LD 26 Democrats Cesar Aguilar and Quanta Crews and LD 30 Republican Candidates Leo Biasiucci and John Gillette.

According to Bentz, the majority of Arizona districts aren’t considered competitive. Therefore, almost 80% of elections are determined in the primary elections.

“Only [Legislative] Districts 2, 4, 9 and 13 are considered highly competitive and district 16 is considered competitive,” Bentz said. “The rest of them lean one way or the other.”

Additionally, he said that often the only challenges seen to incumbents in the primaries is when a more progressive or conservative candidate focuses on taking out an incumbent by campaigning on the idea that the incumbent doesn’t represent their respective parties.

However, with an average of only 30% of the electorate voting in the primaries, 29.26% of voters in Tuesday’s primary, Bentz thinks that the incumbents don’t often represent the views of the general electorate.

“I think it has created the environment we have now where it does not encourage people to work together,” Bentz said. “It actually punishes bipartisanship because those are the type of things that incumbents avoid because they don’t want to be challenged in the primary. It creates ideological extremism on both sides of the aisle and disincentivizes people working together.”

This is the main reason why there is a ballot initiative, Arizona Proposition 140 or the Eliminate Partisan Primaries Amendment, that would create open primaries where voters can vote for the candidate of their choice no matter the party affiliation of the voter or the candidate. This would inevitably create more general election candidates.

More information on Arizona’s primary election results can be found on the Secretary of State’s website.