Six takeaways from Arizona’s tense, Trump-dominated primaries

Republican primary elections in Arizona on Tuesday elevated a former NFL kicker in a key House race, a hard-line Trump loyalist trying to win the governorship and an election denier aiming to become the state’s top election official.

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As President Donald Trump’s preferred candidates comfortably won primaries, Democratic voters sided with a moderate incumbent over a left-wing challenger. One closely watched Democratic primary race had not been called as of late Tuesday night.

Here are six takeaways from Arizona’s primaries.

A former NFL kicker scored an endorsement victory for Trump

Jay Feely, a former journeyman NFL kicker who was endorsed by Trump, won the Republican primary in a battleground House district that includes Scottsdale, Arizona, and a chunk of Phoenix.

Feely, who says he was inspired to run for office by the 2024 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, had planned to run in a deep-red district southeast of Phoenix.

But Trump asked Feely to switch to the 1st Congressional District, which experts in both parties say could host the most expensive House race in the country in November. Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican who currently represents the district, decided to give it up to run for governor.

Feely’s path to primary victory was complicated by Joseph Chaplik, a former state lawmaker who ran to his right. The race was ugly: The two men traded cease-and-desist letters and built dueling attack websites.

Trump, who once owned a franchise in the short-lived United States Football League and has long sought to bridge the worlds of politics and sports, worked to lift Feely this month, describing him as “a friend of mine.”

In an interview Tuesday night, Feely said he “very much” appreciated Trump’s support, but he did not dwell on the president. “As we look forward, this race will be about the economy,” he said, “and this race will be about who best is going to represent this district and the people of this district.”

The hotly contested Democratic House primary in the district had not been called as of late Tuesday night. That race pitted Marlene Galán-Woods, a former Republican who received support from House Democrats’ campaign arm, against Dr. Amish Shah, an emergency physician who was the Democratic nominee in the district in 2024.

In 2008, Shah was a sideline physician for the New York Jets and Feely was the team’s kicker.

A Trump loyalist dominated in the primary for governor

Rep. Andy Biggs, in part powered by an endorsement from Trump, thundered past another sitting congressman, Schweikert, to win the Republican nomination for governor.

Biggs, a former leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, built such a large lead over Schweikert in opinion polls that he appeared to start turning his focus to the general election weeks before the primary.

He downplayed his vote to overturn the 2020 presidential election, still a highly sensitive topic in Arizona, and emphasized his ability to work with Democrats.

In the general election, he will face Gov. Katie Hobbs, a moderate Democrat and former election official who in 2022 narrowly dispatched a far-right opponent, Kari Lake.

Hobbs did not face a Democratic challenger this year.

A sex scandal didn’t stop one Republican

The solidly Republican, deeply religious congressional district that Biggs is vacating has offered a test of voter attitudes on allegations of sexual impropriety.

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Mark Lamb, a Trump-endorsed former sheriff running to replace Biggs, faced accusations, surfaced by The Arizona Republic, that he had sent sexual messages to women outside his marriage and threatened to deploy law enforcement to prevent a recipient of one of the messages from speaking out. A campaign spokesperson denied the allegations, describing them as lies.

Daniel Keenan, Lamb’s leading opponent, tried to used the allegations to attack him. Keenan said they would imperil Republicans’ chances of keeping the seat if Lamb advanced to the general election.

Still, Lamb won the primary comfortably.

An election denier won the GOP primary for Arizona’s top elections post

In 2020, Alexander Kolodin, a Phoenix-area lawyer, went to court to try to overturn Trump’s narrow loss to Joe Biden in Arizona. He helped to lead a lawsuit — along with Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Trump — that falsely claimed there had been “massive election fraud.”

A federal judge rejected the complaint, saying that it was built on “baseless claims” and could leave many Arizona voters “utterly disenfranchised.” In 2023, Kolodin was penalized by the Arizona state bar for his efforts to reverse the 2020 election result.

Now Kolodin is one election away from becoming Arizona’s top election official.

He won the Republican primary for Arizona secretary of state on Tuesday, defeating Gina Swoboda, a former state party chair who argued that Kolodin was too conservative to win the general election.

Kolodin, who has served in the Arizona Legislature since 2023, was aided in the primary by support from Turning Point USA, the conservative activist group founded by Charlie Kirk, who lived in Arizona before he was assassinated last year.

Kolodin is challenging the sitting Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who defeated another vocal election denier in 2022.

A Democratic incumbent glided past a democratic socialist

Some democratic socialists, emboldened by recent upset primary victories in New York and Colorado, had hoped for another over Rep. Greg Stanton, a moderate fourth-term Democrat whose district includes Tempe and Mesa.

But on Tuesday, Stanton handily defeated his left-wing challenger, Kai Newkirk, a first-time candidate who identified as a democratic socialist. Newkirk framed the race as a front in a battle for the future of the Democratic Party, and argued that Stanton was a “corporate Democrat” who would “never flip the tables of our corrupt status quo.”

But in Stanton’s suburban Phoenix district, voters seemed happy enough with the status quo represented by their centrist congressman.

Another high-profile House clash is set in southeast Arizona

Neither Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a vulnerable Republican incumbent in a Tucson-area district, nor the Democrat challenging him, JoAnna Mendoza, faced competition in their primaries on Tuesday. But their uncontested victories set in motion another hotly competitive general-election race.

Democrats hope that Mendoza’s personal biography will help her topple Ciscomani. She is a Mexican American who grew up poor and later became a Marine Corps drill instructor. The district is home to many veterans and has a large Hispanic population.

But Ciscomani has also leaned on his own life story as a Mexican immigrant. And he has overcome competitive Democratic challenges in the last two election cycles.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.