GOP candidate Debbie Lesko won the House special election in Arizona Tuesday night; fending off a fierce fight from her Democratic challenger and holding a pivotal district carried by Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
As the polls closed, Lesko defeated Democrat Hiral Tipirneni by a margin of 53% to 47%, dashing liberal hopes of turning the red seat blue heading into the high-stakes 2018 midterms.
The tighter-than-expected results are sending alarm bells throughout Republican circles in Washington, who are sounding the alarm over a district the President won by 21% over Hillary Clinton.
“These election results are a wake up call to Republicans in Arizona and nationally,” a major GOP donor told Politico. “Winning the Arizona 8th by such a small margin portends very little margin of error for Gov. Doug Ducey and the eventual Arizona Republican Senate nominee this fall.”
“Republicans shouldn’t be hitting the alarm, they should be slamming it," added another GOP strategist. “This district isn’t supposed to be competitive, and so to see this margin, especially with the Republicans pouring in resources here — again, it’s a tough year.”
This has been a very solid Republican district for years. Romney won there by 25% in 2012.
So we are talking about anywhere from a 15 to 20% swing in favor of the Democrats, which seems to be about what we are seeing around the country in other special elections. If this trend continues, and there is no reason to assume it won’t, you are talking about an absolute tsunami in November.
President Trump won that Congressional district by 21% while Republican Lesko won there by just 5.2%. (Trump won Arizona by 3.6%.) If Democratic Sinema loses in that Congressional district by about 5.2%, she will be Arizona’s next Senator for us here. The Republican needs to win in that Congressional district by at least 10% to win statewide in Arizona here.
The former R who stepped down after a scandal where he asked his employee to be a surrogate mother for him, ran unopposed the last couple of cycles. Deep red district.
Here’s what it has looked like in that district for the past number of races, congressional and otherwise. The congressional race has been unopposed R.
Agreed, There’s a curious juxtaposition here of the crowing thread title, and the body of the post talking about the amount of resources the GOP had to pour into this race to eek out a victory in a district that was previously a slam dunk.
Just to be clear, because the Republican that normally wins by 20 points won by 5 points it means that there won’t be a blue wave? Not sure I get the logic there.
Curious, are you pretending to not understand or do you actually not understand? Would you like someone to explain what’s happening to you? You never have to be embarrassed to ask.
