Democrats eye a rural swing district in bid to flip the Arizona House

Filed 44m ago · Via Arizona Mirror · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House from Washington, DC · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Democrats are targeting Legislative District 23, a four-county stretch from Goodyear to Yuma, in hopes of flipping both House seats and ending 60 years of Republican control of the Arizona Legislature. Despite a Democratic registration edge, Republican Rep. Michele Peña has won the district's second seat twice, most recently by just over 2,000 votes.

At a Wednesday debate Peña skipped, Democrats Mariana Sandoval and Emilia Cortez both named affordability as their top priority and voiced support for Governor Katie Hobbs' move to cancel land leases tied to a company dumping California sewage biosolids in Yuma. They split on water-use restrictions, with Sandoval favoring education over mandates and Cortez declining to give a yes-or-no answer.

On immigration enforcement, both candidates criticized aggressive ICE tactics, though Cortez mistakenly stated that sheriffs are federal officials before Sandoval corrected her, noting sheriffs are county officeholders and arguing local police shouldn't hand detainees to federal agents.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Getting the org chart of your own county wrong during a debate on policing is the kind of slip that sticks, like forgetting whether the mayor or the water board fixed your street. The bigger story here is a district that's leaned blue on paper for years but keeps sending a Republican to Phoenix anyway, which tells you registration numbers and actual votes are two different animals. Whichever way LD23 goes, it'll be decided by the usual things, turnout and trust, not by who had the sharper debate-night talking points.

Source: Read the original at Arizona Mirror → Scored: Krampus Workshop · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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