Arizona US House primary election live results: Ex-NFL kicker wins GOP race as Democrat fends off challenge

Arizona voters chose nominees for the state’s nine House districts Tuesday, with two of the six Republican-held seats drawing attention as toss-ups that Democrats want to flip in their quest to win a House majority. One Democratic incumbent fended off a prominent challenge from the left.

Democrats are pushing hard to flip both the 1st and 6th Congressional Districts, which the nonprofit election analysis site Cook Political Report rates as toss-ups.

There is an open seat in the 1st, which includes part of affluent Scottsdale, because Rep. David Schweikert (R) ran for governor. Former NFL kicker Jay Feely won the primary with President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the GOP primary over state lawmaker Joe Chaplik and businessman John Trobough.

Democrats were engaged in some tough intra-party fighting for the chance to flip the district. The House Democratic campaign arm is backing Marlene Galán-Woods, a former Republican , while former state lawmaker Amish Shah is trying to marshal grassroots support against the party machine.

Shah, an emergency room physician, won the district’s Democratic primary in 2024 but lost the general election to Schweikert. Galán-Woods, a former broadcast journalist, is the widow of Grant Woods, a Republican who served as the state’s attorney general and was a close confidant of the late senator John McCain (R-Arizona) but renounced the GOP because of Trump.

Primary candidates for the 6th District, in the southeast corner of the state outside Tucson, are running unopposed, with incumbent Rep. Juan Ciscomani on the ballot for Republicans and JoAnna Mendoza, a military veteran, on the ballot for Democrats.

A broader ideological struggle within the Democratic party played out in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District, where Kai Newkirk failed in his left-wing challenge to incumbent Rep. Greg Stanton. Stanton has represented the district, which includes Tempe and parts of Mesa and Chandler, since 2019, and has wrapped up solid local endorsements with pledges to oppose Trump and work to make things more affordable.

Newkirk, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, had the endorsement of several national left-wing groups. He has criticized Stanton for being too “corporate,” for supporting Israel and for opposing Medicare-for-all and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.