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Running to the finish line for the state's primary election, how the political winds have changed for Arizona candidates looking to advance in the general election midterms in November.

What's at stake and what to watch out for.

It's all on The Press Room, starting now.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins.

Arizona's primary election is July 21st.

Voters are making their choices on who should get a chance to serve as Arizona's governor.

Decisions impacting the state's congressional delegation are also on the ballot, and more.

We're going to talk first with the University of Arizona political science professor, Samara Klar.

Samara, thank you for joining us on The Press Room.

- You bet, happy to be here.

- Now you've followed some polling data ahead of the primary.

What is the mood of the electorate going into these contests?

And how has it changed perhaps over the last 18 months?

Well, we do have several important contests coming up on July 21st.

Probably the primary that people may be following most closely has to do with the gubernatorial race and trying to figure out who the Republican nominee will be to take on the Katie Hobbs.

We have a couple high profile candidates in that race.

Recent polling suggests that it is Biggs who has a fairly large lead who's probably going to end up as a Republican nominee.

Of course, you never know what happens.

But typically the horse race poll right now is not much is being done with the Democrats.

There's not a lot of intra-Democrat races going on.

So most of the action has to do with the Republican battles to secure the nomination.

Are voters in the mood to actually go to the polls during this primary or would they prefer sitting it out until the general election in the midterms that some people feel that's the one that counts?

Yeah, I mean, primary elections always have lower turnout for a number of reasons.

First of all, the races aren't as high profile.

There's going to be smaller races people may not be as familiar with.

Usually it's sort of the more enthusiastic engaged voters will come out.

So in Arizona in recent years, our primary turnouts have been growing.

They're at about 30% now.

So whether you think that's a lot or a little, it's sort of a subjective call.

But about a third of voters will typically participate.

If you see Arizona also, you know, in the summer, people may be away, they may not be as engaged as they would be during the regular campaign season.

But I would expect to see about a third turnout, which is pretty typical and consistent in Arizona.

And speaking about turnout, the Republicans in this primary in Arizona have a lot bigger decisions to make than the Democrats do.

At least that appears to be the case on paper.

Is the polling data pretty much show that they're the ones who are the most engaged, the most interested in making the choice?

Well, you know, Arizona does have more Republican voters than Democrats.

And what we've seen leading up to the primaries is Republican registration is growing at a faster rate than Democrats.

So Republicans at this point have a little more of an edge in terms of their numerical plurality here in the state.

Arizona is an interesting state, I mean, for a number of reasons, but one is that we are almost perfectly evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and Independents.

So about 35% of Arizonans register as Republicans, about 32-ish percent register as Independents, and about 30% register as Democrats.

So it's a very close electorate, but we have seen greater numbers registering as Republicans.

And that is probably an indication of voters eager to participate in the Republican primaries more so than the Democratic primaries, where there is less action, as you say.

Now let's get to some questions about trends.

Democrats nationally have had the most newsmaking happenings during the past couple of weeks.

The Graham Platner story, the Maine Senate candidate who dropped out amid sexual assault allegations.

I want to ask you, how do voters seem to respond to scandal these days?

Well, I've done a little bit of research myself on how voters respond, not only to scandal, but particularly to sexual assault allegations.

Now what you find might not be that surprising, which is that voters are much more concerned about scandal when it occurs in the other party than it does in their own party.

But that's not what we've seen this week with Graham Platner being called to step down most prominently by members of his own party.

Obviously Americans are somewhat used to scandal in their political scenes.

Sexual assault allegations are not new in American politics.

It's something that we are dealing with a lot with our candidates.

The Democrats I think are trying to set an example in some ways by saying that this is not something they'll tolerate with their own party.

And Graham Platner, as you say, will not be the nominee in the Senate race in Maine.

It's not great for the Democrats, obviously.

This is not what they want going into a primary season.

But I think by trying to get Graham Platner out and make a strong statement, they're gonna control some of the damage.

Now here's another story that's happened in just a few weeks, a couple of months.

Candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America won elections in New York City and more significantly in Colorado.

The question is, is this a legitimate political trend?

Everyone's asking this.

Is this similar to the Tea Party, for example, in 2007?

And is there any kind of impact on this in Arizona?

Well, it's impossible to predict how these things will play out in the future, but this has certainly been a big attention-grabbing, headline-grabbing trend within the Democratic Party.

And we do see polling showing pretty big support for the DSA among Democrats.

Although the most recent polling does indicate the support is highest among white Democrats, among young Democrats, and particularly among higher-in Democrats.

So this seems to be sort of a movement among higher-educated, college-educated, young voters.

That's obviously a group within the electorate that is important, that plays a role.

It hasn't necessarily, the popularity hasn't necessarily spread as much throughout the entire Democratic Party, but I think it is definitely a trend to watch, certainly in places like Colorado, where the victories are a little more surprising than you might say in New York City.

And then do national trends generally find their way into Arizona, for example?

Again, I mentioned the Tea Party case in 2007, and your previous research probably has looked at other trends dating further back.

Are the trends like that going to show up in Arizona between now and the general election?

Well, there's a few things about Arizona that I think do make it a little bit unique relative to the rest of the country.

And that's primarily based on the fact that we do have a very politically diverse electorate.

This is not a state where either party can really campaign only to its base and expect to win.

To win in Arizona, you have to win Independents, and you often have to win at least some crossover voters from the other party.

So if you look at the Democrats who have won in Arizona recently, people like Katie Hobbs, Mark Kelly, Ruben Gallego, these are Democratic candidates who have made pretty explicit appeals to the middle, to the center.

You cannot win as a Democrat in Arizona without appealing to centrists, independents, moderates, and I think the same is true for Republicans.

There just simply aren't enough voters tied to each party to really move that far to either side.

Now that is a little bit unique to Arizona.

You have other states where one party may have an overwhelming majority of voters, and there they can afford to be a little more committed to the, I don't wanna say the extreme side, but more to the left or to the right side of their party.

So national trends, of course, will impact our state because candidates are part of a national party.

They wanna tow the party line.

They wanna support their party colleagues and their party leaders, but Arizona's a little more of a blended state.

We have more political diversity, and the candidates who win are the candidates who pay attention to that.

Now Arizona is also a swing state, but the unique characteristics of Arizona make it different from the other swing states, say like North Carolina, for example.

Tell me a little bit about how that Arizona's electorate does make a little bit of a difference based on the number of independent voters, for example.

Yeah, absolutely.

Arizona has become a really important swing state, and I think any Arizonan feels that during election season, Phoenix receives more political ads during campaigns than most cities in America.

The amount of campaigning that goes on in Arizona relative to 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, feels like an exponential increase, and it is, when you look at the amount of money being spent in the state.

That has to do with the fact that we do have this closely divided electorate.

There's a lot of voters that campaigns perceive to be up for grabs, not only Independents, but also Democrats and Republicans who ideologically identify closer to the middle, campaigns see them as possibly voters who may switch parties.

We saw evidence of that in the most recent election, where you had voters supporting Trump and Gallego.

So Arizona voted for the Republican president for candidate, voted for Democratic Senate candidates.

So we do see these real split ticket ballots in Arizona, more so than you might find in other states.

And that makes it a very appealing state for campaigning, and it's why probably a lot of Arizona voters are pretty fed up by the end of the campaign season with all the flyers and the phone calls.

But absolutely Arizona is an important swing state and a distinct one.

All right, and one last question, and get to the numbers specifically, a Gallup poll found that 45% of Americans can consider themselves Independent.

In Arizona, according to the Arizona Secretary of State, registered voters who don't favor either party That's 34%, Republicans read 35, Democrats at 28.

How closely should we follow that statistic regarding independent voters between the primary and the general?

Well, usually what we find as the general approaches is that the percentage of Independents does occasionally drop as parties successfully mobilize voters back into the party fold, but not necessarily in Arizona.

Arizonans are pretty proud Independents.

One thing that does facilitate our high percentage is that Independents can participate in primaries.

If you are an Independent, you can vote in the primary on July 21st.

You just have to declare which party's primary you will be voting in.

So that does allow for a higher percentage of Arizonans to register as an Independent.

But this is an incredibly important group in Arizona because with only 35% Republicans or only 28% Democrats, neither party can afford to win without the Independents.

And the Independents do make a big difference here in Arizona.

Arizona is a little bit more of a moderate state in many ways.

When we look at issue positions, Democrats tend to be a little closer to the center and Republicans tend to be closer to the center as well than what we typically find nationally.

So the best campaigning strategy in Arizona, as we've seen with the recent winning campaigns, seems to be candidates who really portray a moderate image, portray themselves as not especially tied to either political party.

As a political science researcher, what result are you anticipating or if you're anticipating any surprises in the primary election?

Well, the primaries typically don't have as many surprises as you'd find in the general.

We have fairly, as you say, the Democrats aren't facing too much intra-party competition.

There are some races that are closer than others.

At the gubernatorial level, it looks as though it may be a Hobbs-Biggs race for the general.

But I would never try to predict a general election outcome in Arizona.

Arizona is a really, as a political scientist, it's fun in a sense, how unpredictable it can be.

But these are races where the candidates in the general are winning by one percentage point, one and a half percentage points.

So Arizona's, it's an unpredictable state.

It's an important state to be in if you wanna make a difference with your vote.

And hopefully we'll see a high turnout.

All right, well, that'll do it.

Thank you for talking to us.

University of Arizona political science professor, Samara Klar.

Appreciate your time on The Press Room.

Thanks.

We'll be back with more after this.

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Welcome back to The Press Room.

We're continuing our preview of the Arizona primary election with Joe Ferguson of the Tucson Agenda.

Joe, thanks for being with us again.

Thanks for having me.

The governor's race has gathered a lot of the attention, mostly the attention, in fact heading into the primary.

Democratic candidate, Katie Hobbs, an incumbent, will wait to see which Republican candidate will face her in November.

Congressman Andy Biggs has President Trump's endorsement.

He's leading the polls on the Republican side.

The question is, has Biggs' toughest rival in this contest, Congressman David Schweikert, done enough to have a chance for an upset?

I think that we're gonna find out who shows up to the polls because Biggs has put his name next to Trump's.

He's getting support from TPUSA.

And that's a double-edged sword at the end of the day.

We'll see if voters really want that kind of a candidate to run against Hobbs, who is a known moderate.

And so Schweikert has done his best to get his name out there.

He's well-regarded in certain circles.

It's just a question of who shows up at the polls, including Independents, when it comes to the Republican primary.

That contest has had a long history.

It seems so long ago that Karrin Taylor Robson was part of the field for this particular race.

Yeah, and Biggs has talked very nicely about her to try to woo her supporters to his side as well.

I think that there's a lot of dynamics in this race.

And so I'm expecting some interesting results on Tuesday night, two weeks from now.

Now Biggs got the Trump endorsement.

Does that still carry the same positive weight as it did at the beginning of the year?

Well, the president has absolutely record low numbers when it comes to his polling.

And there are crisis after crisis coming out of D.C.

every week.

So it'll be interesting to see how people who are struggling to pay for groceries and other rising costs really see the Trump endorsement in terms of Arizona's next governor.

The two front runners have name recognition.

Both of them are US congressmen.

But what about the issues?

Affordability, immigration, has a lot been talked about there?

I think they have, but I think that I was at an event for Biggs, Latinos for Biggs event down in Green Valley a couple weeks back.

And Biggs kind of dismissed the affordability issue when he was talking to that crowd, saying that it was a Democratic word at the end of the day.

And then he brought out the head of the Border Patrol union to talk about how safe the border is now.

But that message was still that we have to continue to build the wall, continue to deport people that we have the same song and dance that we heard back in 2020 at the end of the day in 2024.

So I don't know if people are gonna continue to embrace that message the longer they keep repeating it.

All that being said with the governor's race on the Republican side, why has Andy Biggs become the front runner and continue to have his lead in the polls?

I think he's got a lot of tremendous support from TPUSA who's helping to fundraise and knock on doors.

And I mean, that group really does open up a large phalanx of volunteers that are gonna help him to win in two weeks.

And the last word on that, we say over and over again that a lot of time is gonna pass between the time that we speak and the time that they cast their ballots.

That time is now.

Has a lot changed in the governor's race?

Not really.

I think that they both have had the same messaging for the last six months that we saw when they announced their races.

And so I don't think that's changed anything.

I think just the circumstances that the voters are dealing with has.

All right, over to the Arizona Secretary of State: incumbent Adrian Fontes is running unopposed on the Democratic side.

There are contests for the Republicans and then also in the Green Party.

The Secretary of State runs the election process and the contrast between Republicans, Gina Swoboda and Alexander Kolodin is interesting because Arizona's politics and elections are interesting.

I agree.

And I think that Gina Swoboda is a well-known name in Republican circles, but she's also being named as a almost Democratic- light being compared to agreeing with certain priorities that Democrats are doing.

And so that labeling has kind of divided Kolodin versus Swoboda.

So Swoboda is a moderate who talks to the press and has some ideas on how to reform issues, but she's not as radical as Kolodin is at the end of the day.

And so I don't know if that message resonates well inside Republican circles where there's still a lot of election denialism going on in every form in every town that I've been to.

Again, that's a lot of talk about stolen elections, alleged stolen elections.

Is the electorate in Arizona tired of hearing about that issue?

I think they are, but I can't, we'll find out in two weeks, I suppose.

I think that a lot of it doesn't always make sense.

Talking about 2020 stolen election is something that people wanna move on from and wanna talk about affordability and jobs and other kinds of AI security, water security.

Those are issues that are facing Arizonans right now and get lost when we start talking about stolen elections and ballot fraud.

Okay, let's talk about the Arizona Attorney General's race.

Democrat, Kris Mayes is the unopposed incumbent in that contest, but Republican Warren Petersen has said some controversial statements in the last couple of weeks, especially about DACA recipients.

He said to them, "Get ready to get deported."

Is language like that going to spell the difference between himself and his top contender?

I think that they're both making hard line statements, but I think that particular one really did get a lot of attention.

And I think Warren Petersen is trying to set the stage that he is the toughest, most right-leaning Republican in the race, and he's trying to make his opponent, a former Democrat, look like that he's still supporting some Democratic ideals, which we haven't heard him say in probably a decade since he switched parties.

Rodney Glassman is the other candidate in that contest for the Republicans.

What about experience in that contest?

I mean, what are we talking about?

How many times Rodney Glassman has run for office and lost, or how many times that they've actually stepped into a courtroom?

Both of them haven't had a lot of courtroom experience.

Rodney is hiding a little bit behind his role as a JAG officer in the Air Force, which means that we don't know exactly what cases he's worked on, and he's talked about things that are akin to being a paralegal versus Petersen, who's only held a law degree for a couple of years, and the biggest cases he tried, it was as an intern.

Now, the last three races we've just talked about, the Democrat is basically waiting to see who the opponent is going to be.

Whatever the outcome is among the Republicans in these contests, what is the fight going to be like when we move to November, and the campaigning for the general election?

I think you're gonna have three high-profile Republicans who've staked out positions, try to find a way to find a unifying message as they go around town, join press conferences, join meetings, join rallies, and that stuff, with a message that they can bring to the Arizona voters, and I think that that could be really hard after they've all staked out different positions, and if Gina, say, gets into the race with hypothetically Warren and Biggs, that would be an interesting ticket to really kind of define.

And the contrast is gonna be defined as well in each of these cases, and contrast is not necessarily what we're seeing on the primary election.

Yeah, no we're not.

We're seeing a lot of different infighting going on and kind of jabs at each other, and so hopefully, after the primaries are over, we're gonna see a more unified messaging so we know what we're getting into.

So there's a lot of minutia to go over right now.

All right, let's move over to the legislative district primaries, which one of those contests seems to be the most interesting within the state of Arizona?

I mean, for Tucson and southern Arizona, which I feel like I'm the resident expert on, is gonna be LD20.

I think the fight between Alma Hernandez, who is leaving the House and seeking a seat in the Senate after being term-limited and going up with Rocque Perez, facing him, is gonna be a real fight.

It's gotten really ugly, it's gotten really mean, there's daily twists and turns, and you have a lot of Democrats fighting amongst themselves over who that nominee should be, and so I expect that to be a close race.

Okay, we're gonna talk real briefly about the attention that's being given to the different contests and the money that's being spent.

Now we're gonna see a lot more of that happening moving towards November.

Is that aspect, the finances for the candidates, going to become a factor between now and the general election?

I mean, I think that we're gonna see a lot of groups get into this race.

TPUSA has been very vocal and been very active in races, and they have deep pockets to help the candidates they want to get their message out.

On the Democratic side, I think that we've heard of record fundraising for a lot of Democrats, so I think that there's a lot of money to go around, but I think they're gonna choose strategically which people to endorse and not endorse.

So that is gonna be something interesting, is can Hobbs out-raise the winner of the Republican primary?

All right, now let's again ask you a question about the primary results.

If you were to pick a contest to look out for that might yield a surprising result, which would it be?

I think our leg races are gonna see some surprising results.

There's contested races in LD10, LD17, LD20, LD21, and you've got a lot of new faces in those races going up against incumbents, and we'll see if the voters decide that they want something fresh at the legislature.

So that's what I'll be watching.

All right, turnout is always an issue and always a story, but sort of a disappointment for leaders of both parties in the primary.

Yeah, I think that people don't turn out for the primaries the way that they turn out for the general.

It's just people are not necessarily used to voting in the summer.

The dates change and people are often in flux during the summer, vacationing or school or whatever that looks like versus in November.

Everybody's pretty much where they normally are in November.

So it's a little bit more important to vote in the November race as far as general voters are concerned.

People are waiting to pay more attention to what's happening toward November.

Yeah, and I think that they vote with what's going on then, not necessarily what's going on today.

They look at how their lives are and who the candidate fits their needs best.

And issues will become bigger than personality, or is that always the case?

Sometimes it just depends on who the personality is.

There's a lot of call for people in politics that can take up all the air in the room.

So sometimes it's a little bit of both.

Now tell me about what you have on your radar looking ahead, whether it's election or outside of politics.

I am looking forward to Tuesday night's decision on who Pima County's next treasure is going to be.

We've got 10 people to pick from and it'll be an interesting discussion Tuesday night.

All right, Joe Ferguson, thank you very much, from the Tucson Agenda.

- Thank you.

And that'll do it for The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins.

For all the staff and crew, thanks for being with us.

See you next time.

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This has been an original production of AZPM News.