Donald Trump won Arizona and crushed Kamala Harris everywhere. Chandler re-elected Christine Ellis. Stewart wins against Navarro. School bond rejected. Lake lost.
President
Donald Trump crushed Kamala Harris. He won 312 electoral votes and the national popular vote. He achieved about the same number of total votes as he did in 2020, while Kamala Harris was about 5 Million votes shy of Joe Biden's 2020 total. Although the count in Arizona, especially Maricopa County, is still ongoing, Trump has been declared the winner in the state and appears to have won by surprisingly clear margin of about 6%.
US Senate - Republicans in control - Lake loses, again
Republican also won the Senate with 53 out of 100 seats. Democrat Ruben Gallego has been declared the winner in his Senate race against Republican Kari Lake. This is the second time Lake lost against a weak and extreme Democrat for state-wide office. While Donald Trump won Arizona by 6%, Kari Lake lost her race by over 2%. This means she ran more than 8% behind Donald Trump, who had endorsed her. Nearly every tenth voter who voted for Trump did not vote for Lake. It should hence be clear now that she isn't electable for state-wide office in Arizona and Republican primary voters should not give her another chance for a state-wide run. Before Lake, Martha McSally had lost two statewide races, losing to Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, who were both non-incumbents without an incumbent advantage, netting the GOP a loss of two Senate seats. Perhaps the Arizona GOP should put two and two together and figure out some commonalities between both losing candidates and avoid sending such people into state-wide races in the future. The GOP lost other close Senate races, e.g. in Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan. However, in those states Trump won more narrowly than in Arizona, in all those races Republican challengers faced incumbents having the incumbent advantage, and of course all had to contend with incompetent Republican Senate leadership that chose to put Millions into Larry Hogan's predictably failed bid in Maryland, rather than supporting candidates with a chance of winning. Lake had to suffer under this stupid leadership just the same, but she ran in a state Trump won handily and she faced a non-incumbent who is a radical. Republicans hence should push Lake aside and select people who can win in general elections.
Regarding claims of election shenanigans cheating Lake out of victory. Please don't. Just don't. It's tedious. Trump won the state by 6. 6 out of 9 House seats were won by Republicans, a hard line border security proposition was passed by voters. Republicans did OK. Lake did not. This is on her, not on shenanigans.
US House - Republicans narrowly in control
At current count Republicans have picked up 1 US House seat. At 219 confirmed, they currently above the 218 threshold needed for majority control. However, it should be remembered that even in the current situation, with a very narrow majority, the Republicans under speaker Mike Johnson essentially passed Democrat spending bills. In Trump's first term, a Republican controlled House did little to support the President's agenda, refusing, for example, to fund the border wall. This was also due to the narrowness of their majority, making it difficult to whip the required votes in the face of unified Democrat opposition. In Arizona, Crane, Biggs, Hamadeh, Schweikert, Ciscomani and Gosar have won seats for Republicans, meaning Republicans hold 6 out of 9 Arizona House seats, a good outcome. There are 7 races outstanding mostly in California. Republicans lead in 3 of them at current count. If they win these 3, they'd have 222 seats, which would be a narrow 5 seat majority.
Arizona Sate House - Republicans
The 24 Republicans who have won seats are:
Bliss
Nguyen
Kolodin
Chaplik
Marshall
Blackman
Heap
Olson
Powell
Hendrix
Carter
Way
Diaz
Griffin
Kupper
Carbone
Linvingston
Pingerelli
Taylor
Montenegro
Gillette
Biasiucci
Martinez
Pena
The following 9 Republicans at current count would also win seats, but the count is ongoing and could change:
Wilmeth
Gress
Carter
Weninger (LD13)
Willoughby (LD13)
Lopez
Jones
Fink
Rivero
The Arizona State House has 60 seats so 31 seats are a majority. Republicans have won 24 seats and are at current count (which could still change) set to win 9 more races, potentially having a 33 to 27 majority in the Arizona State House. Lawrence Hudson (LD12-R) had run a campaign focused solely on getting rid of mail-in ballots and machine based vote counting. He was, to no ones surprise, crushed in the election. Given the district he was running in, his campaign amounts to political malpractice of the highest incompetence. Further incompetence of the entire party apparatus of the local GOP is evidenced by the fact that they only nominated 1 candidate for the 2 available seats.
Arizona State Senate - Republicans
The following 14 Republicans have been declared winners in their races:
Finchem
Kavanagh
Rogers
Farnsworth
Peterson
Hoffman
Shope
Gowan
Dunn
Payne
Carrol
Shamp
Angius
Mesnard (LD13)
The following 3 are currently leading in their races at current count:
Bolick
Werner
Leach
This would, if it stays, give Republicans a 17 to 13 majority in the 30 seat Senate. Cara Vicini (R) was trounced by Mitzi Epstein (D) in LD12 roughly 40 to 60. She had campaigned on being the voice of the people.
Maricopa County Supervisor District 1 - Bozo defeats the Bolshevik
Republican Mark Stewart - who we had reluctantly endorsed - appears to have eked out a narrow victory against Bolshevik Joel Navarro. Stewart benefited from smart redistricting Republicans had done, cutting a slice of liberal Tempe out of the district. Stewart also benefited from rapid population growth in conservative Queen Creek. Stewart's predecessor, Jack Sellers, a Republican, had won his race 4 years prior by a very narrow margin as well, however Sellers had to contend with a more liberal voting public due to the old district boundaries of District 1. Sellers, who seems a bitter old man, had endorsed Navarro over Stewart by whom he had been vanquished in the Republican primary.
Maricopa Recorder - Heap (R) wins
Republican Justin Heap appears to have defeated Democrat Tim Stringham by a margin of about 5%. In the July 2024 Republican primaries Heap had defeated the incumbent, Biden-voting Stephen Richer.
Chandler City Council - Clown show
Christine Ellis, a spendthrift, DEI pushing leftist masquerading as a moderate Republican, is on track to defeat empty suit flip flopper Joseph Yang - who we had reluctantly endorsed as the lesser of two evils - in a narrow race. Despite our misgivings about Yang, we are hoping for a miracle, because Ellis is so atrocious. Chandler's nominally Republican mayor Kevin Hartke had endorsed Ellis over his party colleague Yang. Together they will presumably approve more section 8 housing, blow up the budget more, and beef up the Chandler Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office for more government sponsored racism against their own citizens.
Gilbert Town Council - the better man lost
Aaron Accurso was defeated by his Republican colleague Kenny Buckland. We had endorsed Accurso as the better candidate due to his much clearer small government position on housing and taxes. However, given that voters had the choice between two Republicans, it is no surprise that most of the Democrats held their nose and voted for Buckland, the less conservative candidate, while the Republican vote split. In the Republican primary in July, Accurso had a slight edge over Buckland.
Chandler School Board - one right of center candidate gets in
Leftists Claudia Mendoza, one of the CUSD Three backed by 6 figure teachers union PAC money came in first. Slightly right of center Ryan Heap came in second, securing a seat on the board of the Chandler Unified School District, CUSD80. He will presumably ally with Kurt Rohrs, who had supported candidates Heap, Deking and Gillespie. The board has 5 members leftists, Mozdzen, Mendoza and Patti Serrano completing the roster. Current Board President, the ghoulish Barb Mozdzen, came in a close third, securing the last available seat, just ahead of the third member of the CUSD Three gang, Zenya Pruzhanovsky, who did not win a seat. Deking and Gillespie came in 5th and 6th. Heap appears to have been the only right of center candidate who had bothered to raise some money and actually campaign. Rohrs will have to win his re-election and someone will have to defeat Serrano in 2026 for "conservatives" to win a majority on the school board. That's a tall order, given how poorly the Chandler GOP is run.
Chandler School Bond - rejected
As we had recommended, voters emphatically rejected the $500 Million School bond the Chandler Unified School district had pushed for, with a big PAC financed mostly by construction contractors in what looked like pay to play donations. $300 of the $500 Million had been earmarked for construction projects in a district with shrinking enrollment and underutilized schools.
Ballot Initiatives - Abortion limits rejected
Proposition 139 was resoundingly approved by Arizona voters with a nearly 2/3 to 1/3 margin. This newspaper had warned and predicted that the dogged determination of the pro-life lobby will lead to late term abortion becoming legal. They had cheered after Roe v Wade was overturned by the SCOTUS and cheered even more when an ancient state law amounting to a near total ban came back on the books in Arizona as a result. Democrats, with the help of 2 Republicans, quickly passed a law establishing a 15 week limit instead. Rather than offering their own proposition to voters, say: legal up to 15 weeks, with narrow exceptions thereafter, the pro-lifers offered voters nothing and were left to campaign for a simple no against a free for all Proposition 139. They lost, and now abortion up to birth will be a right enshrined in the Arizona constitution that can not be overridden by a mere law passed by the legislature. When given the choice of total ban vs free for all, voters chose a free for all, even though the actual preference of most voters is around a 15 week limit. Unfortunately the pro-life lobby generally will not settle for anything less than total victory, accepting total defeat as a consequence. Well done! Now some claim that voters were confused by the language used. They were not, they just don't want to live in a theocracy in which preachers/pastors make the rules. Given that Donald Trump won the state by a margin of 6%, while voters at the same time approved abortion on demand, it should be clear how toxic total ban politics is to most voters. Donald Trump, despite being a Republican, is more on the pro-choice side, having committed to not signing a national abortion ban, preferring to leave the issue with the states, keeping the federal government out of it.
Proposition 133, giving the legislature power over how municipalities handler their primaries was rejected.
Proposition 134 requiring ballot initiatives to get over signature hurdles in every legislative district was rejected.
Proposition 135 which would automatically terminate the governors emergency powers after 30 days of declaring an emergency was rejected.
Proposition 136 which would have allowed pre-election lawsuits against the validity of ballot initiatives was rejected.
Proposition 137 which would have ended judicial terms for judges was rejected.
Proposition 138 which would have given employers more freedom for compensating tipped workers was rejected.
Proposition 140 for jungle primaries and ranked choice voting was rejected.
Proposition 311, which came out of the legislature, for the establishment of a fund for increased benefits for first responders, was approved.
Proposition 312 which gives property owners the right to petition for a return of property taxes paid if a jurisdiction doesn't properly handle issues related to homeless encampments, was approved.
Proposition 313 increasing jail terms for child sex trafficking was approved.
Proposition 314 giving law enforcement more power to combat illegal immigration was approved.
Proposition 315, which would have required state agencies who impose new regulations to get those regulations approved by the Office of Economic Activity if the regulations impose significant cost, was rejected.
The transaction privilege sales tax in Maricopa County will be continued, as per voters will, approving Prop 479.
Prop 486 increase the base spending limit for the Maricopa County Community College District MCCCD, was approved.
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