The former Arizona state senator Debbie Lesko fended off an energetic Democratic challenge to win the special congressional election on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
Tuesday’s special election in Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District, in the conservative suburbs outside Phoenix, revealed the depth of Republicans’ political challenges in 2018. Ms. Lesko was favored to win over Hiral Tipirneni, a Democrat and emergency room doctor, in a district that supported Donald J. Trump in 2016 by more than 20 points.
Even so, national Republicans spent more than $1 million to help Ms. Lesko. With an outcome this close in a district that should have Republicans winning big, it is another sign of Democratic enthusiasm, organizational muscle and determination to send a message about President Trump and his party.
See the drop in Republican margins in special elections since Donald J. Trump became president.
The congressional seat became vacant this year when Representative Trent Franks resigned amid reports that he pressed female aides to serve as surrogate mothers for Mr. Franks and his wife.
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It took a big money push from the Republican Party, tweets by the president and the support of the state's current and former governors, but the GOP held onto an Arizona U.S. House seat they would have never considered endangered in any other year.
Tuesday's narrow victory by Republican Debbie Lesko over a Democratic political newcomer sends a big message to Republicans nationwide: Even the reddest of districts in a red state can be in play this year. Lesko won by about 5 percentage points in Arizona's 8th Congressional District, where Donald Trump won by 21 percentage points.
The former state senator defeated Hiral Tipirneni, a former emergency room physician who had hoped to replicate surprising Democratic wins in Pennsylvania, Alabama and other states in a year where opposition to President Trump's policies have boosted Democrats' chances in Republican strongholds.
Republican political consultant Chuck Coughlin called Tuesday's special election margin "not good" for national Republicans looking at their chances in November.
Screengrab from campaign video
"They should clean house in this election," said Coughlin, longtime adviser to former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. "There's a drag on the midterms for Republican candidates that's being created by the national narrative. And it would be very hard to buck that trend if you're in swing districts, much less close districts, if you can't change that narrative between now and November."
Tuesday's special election determined who would replace former Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican who resigned in December after he was accused of harassment. At the time, he was faced with a House Ethics Committee investigation into whether his behavior constituted sexual harassment. Politico reported Franks offered former aides millions to birth his child, and The Associated Press reported he discussed surrogacy with former staffers.
Victories in historically red districts will be crucial for Republicans as they hope to maintain the House. According to the latest Real Clear Politics aggregation of polls, Democrats are up 5.5 points in the generic House ballot.
PHOENIX — Thousands of voters have made their way to the polls on Tuesday to elect a representative in an Phoenix-area congressional district after former U.S. Rep. Trent Franks resigned late last year.
Those voters will elect either Debbie Lesko, a former Arizona state senator who ran for the Republican Party, or Hiral Tipirneni, a former emergency-room physician who represented the Democratic Party.
Voting had hit a snag on Tuesday, after a printing delay prevented about 8,000 residents in the 8th Congressional District from receiving their voter registration IDs in time.
But County Recorder Adrian Fontes told ThinkProgress that it was “not that big of an impact on voters because we have redundancies in our system. Every voter already got either a ballot in the mail or they got a sample ballot in the mail.”
The district covers much of the western Phoenix suburbs, where a Democrat has not been elected in more than 35 years.
Polls for the election will close at 7 p.m., with early results expected to kick off around 8 p.m.
You can follow along with the results using the widget below.
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Republicans held on to a deeply conservative Arizona congressional seat on Tuesday night in a special election race to replace an incumbent lawmaker who resigned amid sexual misconduct allegations.
The Associated Press called the race for Republican Debbie Lesko shortly after 8pm local time, when the results from the first batch of early votes showed she had an insurmountable lead over her Democratic opponent, Hiral Tiperneni.
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Lesko, a former state senator, led Tiperneni, a doctor and political newcomer, by a margin of 53% to 47% in the race for a Phoenix-area seat that Donald Trump had won by over 20 points. The result, albeit preliminary, is unlikely to calm Republican nerves ahead of a midterm election cycle when the president’s party historically loses seats in Congress.
Mike Noble, a Republican pollster in Arizona, said a race in a solidly coservative district, with older voters who are less likely to cross party lines, should not have been anywhere close to as tight as it was.
“Republicans should not be hitting the panic button, they should be slamming it,” he said.
A Democrat in the state called it the “perfect scenario” for the party ahead of the midterms here in November.
Cheers rang out as Lesko celebrated her victory with a toast, clinking champagne glasses with former Arizona Republican governor Jan Brewer. “Here’s to success! Here’s to Republicans winning this year!” she said.
Meanwhile, Tiperneni told the crowd at her election night event that the race was too close to call and she would not concede that evening.
The race was being watched as a potential test of Trump’s popularity after surprising Democratic special election victories in Republican strongholds like Pennsylvania and Alabama. And the strong performance by the Democrat in a district where the party did not even field a challenger in the last two elections marked yet another troubling sign for the Republican party ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump made a last-minute appeal urging voters to support Lesko, who he said was “Strong on Border, Immigration and Crime. Great on the Military”.
The seat came open in December when conservative lawmaker Trent Franks resigned over reports he offered to pay a female staffer $5m in exchange for carrying his child. Lesko will serve for the duration of his two-year term and seek re-election this fall.
The district, located in the western suburbs of Phoenix, is known for its Sun City retirement community and for permitting golf carts to drive on the streets. The constituency is home to a sizeable senior population that helped keep hardline former sheriff Joe Arpaio in office for more than two decades.
Early voting numbers eased jittery Republicans. Before the polls opened on Tuesday more than 70% of Arizonans had already cast their ballots, half of which came from registered Republicans, and the median age of voters was 67.
Republicans in Arizona were confident the district would not flip but the national party leaders and groups had no intention of leaving anything to chance after last month’s shock Democratic victory in south-western Pennsylvania.
The Republican National Committee, National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) and the Congressional Leadership Fund collectively spent nearly $1m to defend the reliably conservative seat. National Democrats, notably, stayed out of the race, but used the election as an opportunity to strengthen the party in the district and generate enthusiasm among liberals statewide.
“Debbie ran a smart campaign and focused in on the issues that voters cared about, like having more take-home pay, fewer regulations and a secure border,” Ryan said. “Her victory proves that Republicans have a positive record to run on this fall, and we need to spend the next seven months aggressively selling our message to the American people.”
During the campaign, Lesko pledged to join Freedom Caucus, a bloc of fiscally and socially conservative lawmakers that is often a thorn in the side of GOP leadership. A major plank of Lesko’s campaign was to support the president, especially on immigration, which is top concern among conservative voters in Arizona. She supports building a wall along the southern US border and increasing immigration enforcement.
This fall, Arizona will play host to one of the marquee Senate races of the cycle for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican senator Jeff Flake. The state will hold a gubernatorial election and a contested congressional race.
After a loss in Arizona’s eight congressional district, Democrats still must win 23 seats to take back the House of Representatives.
Tiperneni, who was part of the wave of Democratic women inspired to run for office since Trump was elected, entered the race to challenge Franks. After he resigned, Democrats rallied around her campaign. She mounted a vigorous challenge and outraised Lesko in what was a clear demonstration of Democrat’s eagerness to compete in races they would typically not contest.
Tiperneni ended the evening by announcing her intention to challenge Lesko again for the seat. “Still waiting for results from today’s vote, but whatever happens tonight or tomorrow, we’re not giving up,” she said on Twitter. “Regardless of the outcome, we’re taking this to November.”
