Arizona‘s Republican establishment isn’t quite dead yet despite a series of stinging defeats at the hands of primary candidates aligned with former President Donald Trump. At least, that’s the big takeaway from the Aug. 2 Republican primary in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District.
The Aug. 2 GOP primaries in Arizona and Michigan were largely a resounding victory for former President Donald Trump — his endorsees prevailed up and down the ballot, with Republicans nominating a slate of hard-right state-level candidates, unseating a centrist congressman who backed impeaching the former president, and picking a conservative state attorney general to fill Missouri’s open Senate seat. And while Tuesday’s races proved to be a clear setback for naysayers of Trump’s influence within the GOP, one Republican who he did not endorse seemed to defy the trend with his primary win for an open southeastern Arizona House seat against several decidedly more pro-Trump rivals.
Juan Ciscomani, a first-generation Mexican immigrant and former senior adviser to Gov. Doug Ducey, easily won the GOP’s nod for the newly redrawn 6th District last week. Ciscomani, who is closely associated with the Trump-loathed term-limited governor, was backed by major figures from across the GOP’s national political establishment, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA), House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (NY), Sen. Tim Scott (SC), and former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl.
Additionally, in an unusual move, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a McCarthy-aligned House GOP super PAC, poured $1 million into the primary to boost Ciscomani. McCarthy himself even singled Ciscomani out in national media appearances ahead of the primary — in a July 28 appearance on Fox Business Network, the top House Republican praised Ciscomani as a standard-bearer of the party’s efforts to elect minority candidates and as someone who supports “sound policies to help us get this country back on the right track.”
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The GOP’s decision to go all out for Ciscomani paid off. He handily defeated his Republican primary opponents, garnering 47.2% of the vote to his nearest rival’s 20.8%. Notably, though, while Ciscomani has declined to back Trump’s rejection of the 2020 election results and has essentially steered clear of mentioning him at all (a search of his campaign’s Twitter account reveals zero references to the former president), his two closest opponents were both outspoken supporters of Trump.
The primary’s runner-up, Brandon Martin, a twice-failed GOP candidate who ran against Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in the same district in 2018 and 2020, received Trump’s endorsement in 2020 and has been a staunch proponent of unevidenced claims that the former president won the 2020 election. In a May debate hosted by Arizona PBS featuring GOP candidates for the seat, Martin claimed that Trump won in 2020 but that the election was “rigged” and that Trump had been “robbed” of his presidency.
In the same debate, Kathleen Winn, who came in third place with 18.7% of the vote and who fixtures of the Trump-aligned wing of the GOP had tried to coalesce behind, made broad allegations of widespread “ballot stuffing” and voter fraud in 2020. The two candidates also took hard-line stances on immigration, with Martin comparing the “invasion” of unauthorized migrants at the southern border to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Winn asserting that surges in migrant levels at the border were part of a concerted foreign-backed effort to “destabilize” the United States. Ciscomani declined to participate in the debate.
None of this is to say that Ciscomani has centrist leanings — policywise, he is on the record as supporting stricter immigration enforcement, federal school choice proposals, a constitutional balanced budget amendment, and abortion restrictions except in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother. Still, it’s clear that of the GOP contenders in the 6th District, he was the one most closely aligned with the party’s establishment wing and the candidate least amenable to some of the former president’s most controversial rhetoric.
And in a primary in which Arizona Republicans picked hard-right 2020 election skeptics as their nominees in hotly contested races for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and the U.S. Senate, Ciscomani’s primary win stood out as a rare victory for those in the party aligned with figures such as Ducey, former Vice President Mike Pence, and leaders in Washington eager to move on from the former president’s election claims.
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Ciscomani is set to face Democrat Kirsten Engel, a former state legislator, in November’s general election to replace Kirkpatrick, who is retiring. The Tucson-anchored 6th District was redrawn to take in more Republican-leaning areas during the decennial redistricting process, so while the race remains competitive, Ciscomani is headed into the general election with a clear advantage.
Nevertheless, likely due in large part to the GOP establishment’s early intervention in the race, southeastern Arizona is likely to be represented in Congress next year by a Republican aligned with the Ducey wing of the Arizona GOP rather than an outspoken Trump acolyte.
