Key Takeaways
- Andy Biggs won the Republican primary for Arizona governor, defeating David Schweikert.
- Biggs, a Trump ally and former House Freedom Caucus chair, will face Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs in the general election.
- The race is expected to be one of the most fiercely contested in the country, with control of the governor's office carrying outsized national significance.
- Biggs was a central figure in the effort to overturn Trump's 2020 election defeat in Arizona.
Arizona voters on Tuesday chose their nominees for governor, Congress and other top offices, setting up a fall campaign that will test whether Republicans can reverse some of the Trump-era losses they suffered in a premier battleground state. Andy Biggs, the hard-right congressman endorsed by Donald Trump, easily won the Republican nomination to challenge the incumbent Democrat, governor Katie Hobbs. The race is expected to be among the most fiercely contested in the country, with control of the governor’s office carrying outsized national significance in a state that became “ground zero” for election denialism after Trump’s narrow loss there in 2020. Biggs, a former chair of the House freedom caucus who was a central figure in the effort to overturn Trump’s election defeat, trounced fellow congressman David Schweikert, by appealing to the party’s deeply conservative base.
Throughout the campaign, Biggs and Schweikert offered contrasting visions for reclaiming the governorship. Schweikert, who gave up his toss-up congressional seat to run for governor after eight terms, argued that Biggs’ hard-right politics and unswerving embrace of the president had allowed Democrats to make gains in once-ruby-red Arizona. But Republican voters in Arizona, as they have across the country, followed the president’s lead, even though Trump’s candidates have repeatedly fallen short in the state’s most competitive general election contests. Businesses Ken Miceli and Scott Neely were also vying for the nomination. Hobbs, who flipped the seat from red to blue in 2022, ran unopposed.
Arizona has transformed in recent years from a Republican stronghold into a competitive swing state, fueled by rapid population growth, shifting suburban voting patterns around Phoenix and an influx of college-educated voters. In the decade since Trump’s election in 2016, Democrats have gained control of the top three statewide offices – governor, attorney general and secretary of state – as well as both US Senate seats. Trump narrowly carried Arizona in 2024 after losing the state four years earlier – a defeat he unsuccessfully sought to overturn. This year, Republicans are contending with unfavorable national political conditions. Historically, the president’s party loses ground in the midterm elections, and Democrats are hopeful they can seize control of the House – and possibly the Senate, riding a wave of discontent over high gas prices and an unpopular Iran war that have dragged down Trump’s approval ratings. Two toss-up House districts in Arizona are key to that effort.
Arizona’s first congressional district, anchored in affluent Scottsdale, has long been a Democratic target as the suburbs shifted away from the Republican party over the past decade. Two years ago, Schweikert won re-election with just under 52% of the vote, narrowly defeating Amish Shah, a former state lawmaker who Democrats appeared poised to re-nominate on Tuesday. His challenger, the former local news anchor Marlene Galán-Woods, also sought the nomination two years ago. This year, Galán-Woods, the widow of former Republican attorney general Grant Woods, who publicly broke with his party over Trump, earned the controversial backing of the Democratic congressional campaign committee. Shah will face Republican Jay Feely, a former Arizona Cardinals kicker, in November. Feely faced Joseph Chaplik, a former state lawmaker, and John Trobough, a technology and telecommunications executive, in his party’s primary.
In the sixth congressional district, which extends from the suburbs of Tucson to the US-Mexico border, encompassing much of south-eastern Arizona, Democrats hope national headwinds facing the president’s party will dislodge Republican congressman Juan Ciscomani, who is seeking a third term. Democrat JoAnna Mendoza, a Marine Corps veteran, was running unopposed. Meanwhile, the contest to succeed Biggs in the safely Republican fifth congressional district has drawn unusual attention. The Trump-backed Republican nominee, former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, spent the closing weeks of the primary campaign confronting allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of power reported in a multi-part investigation by the Arizona Republic. Prosecutors found no basis for criminal charges, and Trump has re-affirmed his support for Lamb, who has denied wrongdoing. He will face Democrat Elizabeth Lee, a nurse, in the general election.
By choosing Biggs, who supported Trump’s failed attempt to block certification of his 2020 election loss, Republican voters risk nominating another conservative warrior who excites the party base but fails to win a general election by turning off independents. Although Republicans once dominated Arizona, Democrats now hold both U.S. Senate seats and the top three state offices.
Schweikert argued during the campaign that Biggs would continue a decade of Republican backsliding. However he struggled to raise money and did not even return to Arizona for Election Day, remaining in Washington as the House passed a government funding bill. Biggs, who had Trump’s endorsement and support from the grassroots organization Turning Point Action, said he can unite Republicans going into the general election. “Everyone I have talked to is really conservative around here,” said Ray Roberts, a 33-year-old Republican who works as a processing engineer and knocked on doors for Biggs. “We all have mostly conservative values. I think Arizona is a red state. I think Andy will be the winner in November.”
Meanwhile both parties had hotly contested primaries to replace Schweikert in the highly competitive 1st Congressional District. Trump-backed Jay Feely won for the Republicans. On the Democratic side, emergency physician Amish Shah faced off with Marlene Galán-Woods, a former television news anchor who used to be a Republican. She was backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Linda Bandler, a 65-year-old independent who volunteered on the Galán-Woods campaign, said the party will be in good shape regardless of who wins the primary. “There still is some sanity,” said Bandler, who like Galán-Woods is a former Republican. “I do think that the Democrats will take over the House and the Senate.”
Alexander Kolodin, a state lawmaker and lawyer who wants vast changes to Arizona election law, won the Republican nomination for secretary of state. Kolodin, a Republican state representative and attorney who helped lead failed legal efforts to overturn Arizona’s 2020 and 2022 election results, will face Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in November for the office that will oversee elections in a swing state during the 2028 presidential race. Fontes has cast himself as a bulwark against Trump’s election denialism, while overseeing elections in one of the nation’s most closely watched battleground states. Republicans were also picking a nominee for attorney general.
Biggs and Schweikert responded differently to Trump’s GOP takeoverBiggs built a national profile as chair of the House Freedom Caucus from 2019 to 2022 and as a staunch defender of Trump. He assisted the president’s attempt to block the certification of his loss in the 2020 election, voting against accepting Electoral College votes from Arizona and other battleground states after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.He has always represented safe Republican seats and is a veteran of factional brawls within the GOP. Before going to Congress, he nearly lost his post as state Senate president during a confrontation with then-Gov. Jan Brewer, also a Republican, over her push to expand Medicaid. “I want the border secured. I want the police and more money spent in the right places like education,” said Kate Rouleau, a 67-year-old Republican who voted for Biggs. “Biggs has the same quality as President Trump.”
Schweikert walked a tightrope with Trump, carefully keeping his distance without antagonizing him. That helped him win a string of tough races in a competitive House district but left him isolated from Trump’s “ Make America Great Again ” base.
Democrats focused their attacks on Biggs, whom they plan to portray as an extremist focused on helping Trump and not Arizonans. In a statement Tuesday night, Hobbs said: “The more Arizonans learn about Biggs, the more they’ll realize he’s one big problem they can’t afford.”
Primaries set the field for a top House battlegroundSchweikert’s 1st District is a top battleground in the fight for a congressional majority. Anchored in Scottsdale, it is home to many of the white, highly educated and affluent voters who have soured on the GOP under Trump. Feely, a former Arizona Cardinals kicker, won Tuesday’s GOP primary over Joseph Chaplik, a former state legislator popular with many of the GOP’s grassroots activists, and businessperson John Trobough. Feely had Trump’s endorsement but has been dogged by criticism for living outside the district.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee controversially threw its support behind Galán-Woods. Her late husband, Grant Woods, was the Republican attorney general in the 1990s and later became a vocal Trump critic.Galán-Woods’ chief opponent, Shah, is also a former state legislator who was the nominee in 2024 but lost narrowly to Schweikert. Republicans hold a voter registration advantage in the affluent district, which includes northeast Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley.But it started to trend toward the center after Trump’s 2016 victory. Redistricting accelerated the trend, fu
Biggs, who has represented Arizona's 5th District for five terms, is one of the top backers of President Trump's unproven election fraud claims. Biggs was subpoenaed by the now-defunct Jan. 6 select committee for his alleged involvement in Mr. Trump's scheme, and his name appeared frequently in the final report. The governor's race is expected to be a tight one. Hobbs defeated Trump-backed Kari Lake in 2022 by less than a percentage point, and the state flipped back to Mr. Trump in 2024. Arizona had traditionally been a red state, but Democrats now control the governor's mansion and both Senate seats, and the state voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020. Although Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics ranks the governor's race as leaning toward Democrats, Republicans still have a strong foothold in the state, and control six of the state's nine congressional districts.
Biggs faced travel problems leaving a Republican Governors Association meeting in Colorado, according to senior adviser Drew Sexton, and didn’t reach his victory party in Scottsdale until more than three hours after he won the race. By the time he took the stage, the crowd of hundreds had dwindled to dozens and he spoke to a mostly empty room. “Let’s make this the year that we turn Arizona red again,” Biggs said.
Biggs rejected Schweikert’s claim that he’ll be another Republican judged by voters to be too extreme. “I am a conservative — and a principled conservative — but I work with people that don’t necessarily agree with me on every issue,” Biggs told a reporter after his victory speech.
State Rep. Alexander Kolodin won the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, defeating Gina Swoboda, the former Arizona Republican Party chair. Kolodin, a lawyer, was sanctioned by the state bar over his involvement with two 2020 election cases that courts found baseless, including one alleging the vote was marred by fraud and demanding Biden’s victory in the state be overturned.
State Senate President Warren Petersen won the Republican nomination for attorney general and will face Democratic incumbent Kris Mayes, who won four years ago by just 280 votes out of more than 2.5 million. Petersen was involved in the chamber’s controversial audit of the 2020 state election results.
The race is likely to be another close contest four years after Hobbs narrowly beat Republican firebrand Kari Lake by less than 1 percentage point. Republicans have since expanded their advantage in the state, growing GOP registration by 6% while Democratic registration fell by 4%. Repeating her victory will require Hobbs to again win a majority of independents and some disaffected Republicans. For his part, Biggs has attacked her as a weak leader who presided over rising costs.
Cook Political Report considers Hobbs “the most endangered Democratic incumbent” governor this cycle, as other similarly competitive races — a toss-up in Wisconsin and a “lean Democratic” race in Michigan — are open seats. But the election handicapper shifted the Arizona race toward Democrats in the weeks ahead of the primary, citing Hobbs’s fundraising advantage and her relatively strong approval ratings. It moved from “toss up” territory to the “lean Democratic” column. “With an environment that’s favoring Democrats and a potentially polarizing and deeply conservative nominee in Rep. Andy Biggs, a 2020 election denier, this is a contest Republicans sound less optimistic about,” analysts said.
Hobbs rose to national prominence as Arizona secretary of state amid Trump’s unproven claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. She won her first term in the governor’s office in 2022, defeating divisive Trump ally Kari Lake and marking the first time in nearly 20 years that a Democrat controlled the office. Biggs has been a major Trump backer since he entered the House in 2017. He challenged Trump’s 2020 loss in the state even as he won reelection on the same ballot and is a co-sponsor of the SAVE America Act, a top priority for the president as he works to reshape U.S. elections.
Democratic Governors Association executive director Meghan Meehan-Draper ripped Biggs in a statement following his primary victory. “At every turn, he’s put his own extreme agenda and powerful insiders first at the expense of everyday Arizonans,” she said, later adding, “Even his own party is warning he’s too extreme for Arizona, and we’re going to ensure he’s rejected at the ballot box in November.”
Trump had initially backed businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson for the post before Biggs announced, but she ended her gubernatorial bid in February in the hopes that her party would avoid a divisive, draining primary.
Democrats were locked in a close primary contest for a battleground U.S. House district, with emergency physician Amish Shah leading party-backed Marlene Galán-Woods for the chance to take on Jay Feely, the former Arizona Cardinals kicker who won the Republican nomination with Trump's endorsement. A Shah victory would be another defeat for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has occasionally struggled this year as voters seek out antiestablishment candidates. The race was too early to call early Wednesday morning.
In an all-caps social media post on Wednesday, Trump declared “A COMPLETE SWEEP!!!” “MAGA CANDIDATES WON EVERYTHING LAST NIGHT IN ARIZONA,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He added: “AFTER DECADES, ARIZONA IS BECOMING A REPUBLICAN STATE.” In fact, Arizona was long a Republican stronghold and only recently transformed into a competitive swing state, fueled by rapid population growth, shifting suburban voting patterns around Phoenix and an influx of college-educated voters.
Francisco Pedraza, the head of Arizona State University's Center for Latina/os and American Politics Research, told CBS News that he could see a Biggs-Hobbs matchup as a "tight race." He cited ASU's research on the 2024 election that found that one in three Arizona voters are "not that confident" or "not at all confident" that absentee or mail-in ballots will be fairly counted and free of fraud. "That is some evidence that when thought leaders — and especially elected officials, public officials, including the president of the United States — when they continue to bang on this drum that there's fraud happening despite no evidence that that is the case, it sticks, and so people's beliefs are really tainted," he said.
Lake, who backed Mr. Trump's false claims about the 2020 election, has since been tapped by the president to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America and other services like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The Senate has not yet voted to confirm her nomination.
Biggs has sought to portray himself on the campaign trail as a bipartisan lawmaker, emphasizing his work with the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — a figure who has become persona non grata within much of the MAGA faction but remains beloved in Arizona.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, who also serves as president of the Republican Governors Association, said in a statement: "As governor, Andy will continue to put Arizona families first while Katie Hobbs focuses on serving special interests instead of addressing affordability, increasing the supply of housing, and creating more good-paying jobs."
In October 2021, Biggs suggested during a House hearing that "we don't know" who won the presidential election in Arizona the previous year.
Just last week, Hobbs posted a video to social media with text reading, "Me when Netflix makes a documentary about beating 2 election deniers back-to-back in Arizona."
Fontes, who ran unopposed Tuesday, said in response to Trump's address that the state's election officials "will continue to evaluate credible evidence whenever it is presented, but our responsibility is to follow the facts — not political rhetoric."
Arizona Republicans have a long history of nominating election deniers or those who have questioned past election results: Lake, Trump's pick for U.S. ambassador to Jamaica, ran for Arizona governor in 2022 and Senate in 2024, losing both races. Venture capitalist Blake Masters, who ran for Senate in 2022 and lost to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), also questioned the 2020 election results. Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) ran for Arizona attorney general in 2022 and lost, but he won his congressional seat in 2024. Former state Rep. Mark Finchem (R), another election denier, lost his bid to be the state's top elections official in 2022.
Biggs overwhelmingly defeated fellow U.S. Rep. David Schweikert in the primary and will face Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in what could be one of the closest governor races in November.
"We can't let the state go to somebody who's actually recklessly incompetent, and that is our current governor," Biggs said.
Feely won the Republican primary over Joseph Chaplik, a former state legislator popular with many grassroots activists, and businessperson John Trobough. Feely had Trump's endorsement but has been dogged by criticism for living outside the district.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee threw its support behind Galán-Woods, a controversial decision to get involved in a contested primary that rankled some party activists. Her late husband, Grant Woods, was the Republican attorney general in the 1990s and later became a vocal Trump critic.
Galán-Woods' chief opponent, Shah, is a former state legislator who was the nominee in 2024 but lost narrowly to Schweikert.
Biggs also carried the endorsement of the late Charlie Kirk and the support of Kirk’s influential conservative activist organization, Turning Point Action.
In the primary against Schweikert, Biggs worked to soften his reputation as an ideologue, touting efforts at bipartisanship in Congress despite staking out deeply conservative positions on taxes, health care funding and election reforms.
Lamb, billing himself as “America’s Sheriff,” ran a high-profile campaign centered on his law enforcement background, securing key endorsements from Trump and the influential Club for Growth. However, his campaign was rocked late in the race by a series of Arizona Republic reports detailing allegations of personal misconduct involving sexting and threats. Lamb has denied wrongdoing and an investigation by the Pinal County Attorney’s Office found “no evidence that Lamb acted in a criminal manner.” The former sheriff has also faced scrutiny on the campaign trail over his stance on the 2020 election. While Lamb has defended Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 results, he acknowledged during a congressional hearing that he had seen “zero evidence” of fraud that could have impacted the outcome that year. Despite skipping a debate and facing a barrage of attack ads from opponent Daniel Keenan, Lamb’s name recognition and Trump’s backing carried him across the finish line. He advances to the November general election, where he is overwhelmingly favored to win the historically safe Republican seat.
Feely, the athlete-turned-broadcaster, leaned heavily on his relationship with Trump, who endorsed him, and outraised his primary opponents with financial support from powerful figures in the sports world. He also injected more than $300,000 of his own money into the race. Feely retired from the NFL in 2014 after a 14-year career that included four seasons with the Arizona Cardinals. He initially launched a bid for Arizona’s 5th District but pivoted to the 1st District, which includes Scottsdale and parts of Phoenix, after Trump endorsed another GOP candidate in that race.
Shah, meanwhile, defeated three other candidates, including former broadcast journalist Marlene Galán-Woods, who had the support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. As an emergency physician, Shah has campaigned on lowering health care costs and has highlighted his experience working across the aisle in the state legislature. Shah first ran for and won the 1st District Democratic nomination in 2024, also beating out Galán-Woods in that primary.
Conclusion
The Arizona primary will test whether Trump's endorsement can still carry a candidate to victory, or whether voters are ready for a more moderate approach. The winner must unite a fractured party to challenge Hobbs, who remains vulnerable amid voter discontent. The Arizona governorship is a top takeover opportunity for Republicans in a midterm environment where voters historically have punished the party occupying the White House. The eventual winner, along with his or her statewide political organization, could play an important role in the 2028 presidential campaign, as Arizona is once again expected to be a critical battleground. Of the seven Democratic governors in states Donald Trump carried in 2024 as the Republican presidential nominee, only two are up for reelection in 2026, and only Hobbs is expected to face a competitive general election.