A Freedom Caucus fanatic could put a critical governor's race out of reach for the GOP
We preview all of swingy Arizona's top primaries, from governor on down
After a three-week intermission, the 2026 primary season resumes Tuesday as voters in Arizona pick nominees for key races up and down the ballot.
One major storyline to watch is on the GOP side, as candidates affiliated with the state branch of the Freedom Caucus—the nihilistic bloc that began in Congress and has spread to statehouses across the country—fight for greater influence in the Grand Canyon State.
Democrats are also waiting to see whether the progressive base’s anger with longtime officeholders, which manifested in dramatic fashion last month in both New York and Colorado, endangers a prominent congressman who should otherwise be secure.
Below is our guide to all of the major races to watch. You can find an interactive map of all nine of the state’s congressional districts on Dave’s Redistricting App.
When it’s available, we’ll tell you about any reliable polling that exists for each contest, but if we don’t mention any numbers, it means no recent surveys have been made public.
Polls close at 10 PM ET / 7 PM local time in most of Arizona. But because the Navajo Nation, unlike the rest of the state, observes daylight saving time, voting will conclude one hour earlier there.
Election authorities will need to verify signatures from mail-in ballots—a very popular form of voting in Arizona—so a large portion of votes will likely still need to be counted after Tuesday night. The state has introduced new protocols for this year to speed up the process and allow for more votes to be tabulated on election night, but some close races may still be unresolved at the end of the evening.
Join The Downballot on our private Discord server to discuss the election returns with fellow community members as they come in on what will be an exciting night!
AZ-Gov (R) (52-47 Trump)
Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert are nominally competing for the right to take on Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, but Biggs appeared to have locked up the race long before Schweikert even entered.
Biggs, a prominent member of Congress’ Freedom Caucus and a one-time winner of $10 million in the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, entered the contest early last year even though Donald Trump had already backed wealthy businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson.
But his ties to hardliners, as well as their hostility to Robson, led Trump to announce he was also giving the congressman his “complete and total endorsement.”
Schweikert, who has repeatedly won reelection against well-funded Democratic opponents in a competitive district, apparently hoped to take advantage of a MAGA split by launching his own campaign last fall. Biggs, though, always posted huge leads in the polls, and Robson wound up dropping out in February.
Schweikert continues to argue his electoral history shows he’s the strongest candidate to defeat Hobbs in this swing state, but Republican voters don’t seem to be listening. Polls continue to show Biggs far ahead, with an early July survey from the conservative Arizona-based firm NextGen Polling giving him a gigantic 66-10 edge.
AZ-01 (R & D) (51-48 Trump)
Both parties have contested primaries to replace Schweikert in Arizona’s 1st District, a swing seat located in northeastern Phoenix and Scottsdale.
Trump’s pick in the three-way GOP primary is Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker who played for the Arizona Cardinals from 2010 to 2013 and is the only Republican who has benefited from significant outside spending. Nonetheless, Feely never managed to sew things up.
