Why the race in this Arizona congressional district is attracting national attention

By 9 a.m. on a current Sunday morning in Tucson’s Winterhaven neighborhood, the temperature was already nicely on its option to a excessive of 105. However Kirsten Engel was simply getting began.

The College of Arizona regulation professor is one among three Democrats looking for the celebration’s nomination to signify the sixth Congressional District, which stretches throughout Graham and Greenlee counties and far of Cochise County to components of Tucson, Marana and Casa Grande.

Going door to door, introducing herself to voters who had simply acquired mail ballots for the first election, she fielded questions on a spread of points. However one stored developing: abortion.

“I’d say that’s the primary concern that comes up repeatedly,” Engel stated.

Engel stated she first acquired concerned in politics, profitable a seat within the Legislature in 2016, to work on funding for her daughter’s college.

However the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s choice overturning Roe v. Wade is private too, she provides.

“It is a slap within the face to girls,” she stated.

With Democratic voters energized on the problem, Engel argues it units her aside. She introduces herself on the doorways as a pro-choice Democrat and has criticized her essential opponent within the race, state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, for lacking a vote within the Legislature this yr on a invoice banning abortion after 15 weeks.

Hernandez counters that he has labored on reproductive rights for years on the Legislature, profitable a nod from American School of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 2019.

The vote Engel mentions was misplaced nicely upfront, he argues, when reasonable Republicans misplaced their seats in earlier elections and made it doable for a extra conservative GOP caucus to move extra expansive abortion legal guidelines.

Hernandez argues that what units him aside is a political profession spent working throughout a district that spans southeastern Arizona.

Elected to the Legislature 2016, Hernandez beforehand served on the board of the Sunnyside Unified Faculty District and interned for Gabby Giffords when she was in Congress. He was together with her when a gunman tried to assassinate her, killing six others. He supplied first assist.

“You realize I first began taking place to locations in southern Arizona, significantly in Cochise County, after I was 18 years outdated and dealing for Gabby,” he stated.

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination could have their work reduce out for them. Whereas the district seems loads just like the one Democratic U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick was re-elected to signify in 2020, Kirkpatrick is just not operating once more and the district has been redrawn. The state’s redistricting fee took out Democratic enclaves, like Bisbee, and it added extra conservative areas, like Saddlebrooke.

“The fee that drew the maps redrew this district to be far much less Democratic,” stated Jacob Rubashkin, with the publication Inside Elections, which tracks congressional races across the nation. It charges the district as tilting Republican.

“Below the outdated traces, Joe Biden would have carried this district by about 11 factors within the 2020 presidential election. Below the brand new traces, he would have received it by simply 0.1 proportion factors or simply 395 votes. So what meaning is it is merely a way more Republican district.”

Republican leaders see a chance to flip the district — and in the event that they do, it might assist them win management of the U.S. Home of Representatives.

Home Minority Chief Kevin McCarthy is backing Juan Ciscomani within the Republican major, a former senior adviser to Gov. Doug Ducey.

However Ciscomani has not cleared the sphere.

There’s additionally Kathleen Winn, a former Tucson TV persona and businesswoman with the endorsement of Paul Gosar, Ryan Zinke and Joe Arpaio.

There’s Younger Mayberry, a retired Air Power lieutenant colonel.

Former U.S. Military reservist Brandon Martin types himself because the “MAGA candidate” within the race and was the Republican nominee right here in 2020. However he misplaced by about 9 factors.

Lucretia Free, one other Republican operating for her celebration’s nomination, is writer of the Vail Voice newspaper, east of Tucson. She argues any profitable candidate has acquired to satisfy voters within the center. For her, meaning addressing voters’ issues about inflation and the rising price of residing.

“The factor that is high of thoughts as a result of it is a entrance dealing with concern is clearly the state of our financial system. The excessive costs are increased than they have been up to now 40 years,” she stated. “We go to the grocery retailer and that have is not the traditional form of mundane kind of expertise you’ve gotten while you go to the grocery retailer. You expertise empty cabinets and rationed child system and that form of factor.”

Free added: “This district has to attract on the help of independents in an effort to win.”