Trump-backed Biggs wins GOP primary for Arizona governor, to face incumbent Hobbs

[00:00:00]Katie Hobbs has clinched the Democratic nomination to serve a second term as governor of Arizona. This is from the Democratic Party posting this on X saying, "Congratulations, Governor."

[00:00:11]Well, her challenger in November has seemed to have a race call from the Associated Press. Andy Biggs wins the Republican nomination for governor in Arizona. The Associated Press making that race call just six minutes ago.

[00:00:28]Let's show you the latest numbers we have in the newsroom. Just about 39% of those estimated votes counted. That is enough, however, for the Associated Press to feel confident in this race call projection. You can see Andy Biggs there with about 70% of the vote. That's over 170,000 ballots for him. David Schweikert with 18% of the vote. Of course, a major margin between the two of them. This is a race that we are following. Now, we know it is decided it will be a HOBS bigs matchup in November.

[00:01:06]As I mentioned a couple moments ago, this first vote drop just came into the newsroom about six or seven minutes ago.

[00:01:13]Another race that we've been closely following is Arizona's first congressional district. We're going to pop up these numbers on screen here. The Cook Political Report rates this as a tossup. So that means whatever Democrat and whatever Republican win the party domination today will face off in November and it will be a closely watched race seeing if we can pop up here congressional district 1 so we can get you the latest vote tally.

[00:01:42]Excuse us while we uh get these numbers, the latest numbers in this race for CD1.

[00:01:48]All right, here they are. Let's start with the GOP. Jay Feelely with 49% of the vote. Former NFL player Joseph Chaplick 35% of the vote. This is about 69 of those estimated votes counted. By the way, this is of course not a statewide race. This is a district race.

[00:02:07]So, we're talking about the area of Scottsdale, if you're familiar. Uh, of course, still some more ballots to be counted, but it does look like Feelely is in the lead. He is endorsed by President Trump, by the way. All right, let's pull up the latest numbers for Democrats. The latest Democratic tally in the first congressional district. You can see Marlene uh Galon Woods with 32% of the vote. Amish Shaw with 42% of the vote. Again, somewhat of a smaller margin with 76% of those estimated votes counted. Both Democrats running in this race. And by the way, both of them ran for the same district in 2024, and it was Shaw who moved on to the general election. Of course, a lot uh to be seen as the rest of these votes continue to get tallied. This is the latest numbers for some of these very closely watched races. And now for a little bit of analysis, we're going to bring in Arizona based political analyst Mike O'Neal, who joins us now. Hi Mike. Good evening to you. Thanks for joining us here on Live Now.

[00:03:13]>> Good evening.

[00:03:14]>> So, just spoke a lot about some of these uh initial vote drops. What's your initial reaction to seeing some of those early numbers?

[00:03:23]>> First reaction, I'm not at all surprised that Bigs won. I am a little surprised by the Margin. This is a no contest. In fact, that probably accounts for the early call. The AP does uh uh exit polling usually and they don't call based on that unless it's a very lopsided race. Um it's very interesting to me. Jay Feelely, if anything, I would have expected him to have a larger margin than that. I thought the Trump endorsement would have counted for a little bit more, particularly running against a relatively unknown opponent.

[00:03:58]Now, on the Democratic side, there's one thing really interesting in that race.

[00:04:03]This is a rerun of a race two years ago and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee may walk out of this with egg on their face because they endorsed a candidate in the primary and that was Marlene Galan Woods who is behind right now. If that holds, they will have the embarrassment of having endorsed somebody who didn't win. And my guess is they'll have to go hat in hand to Emis Shaw who one last time and is at least ahead at this point because uh they're going to want to line up be beside him because you mentioned that this is a tossup race. Let me tell you how significant that is. There's only about 15 true tossup races in the country and two of them are in are in Arizona and that's one of them.

[00:04:47]And as you were just speaking, we did see that the Associated Press called another race, one that I did not include in the intro, but we're going to talk about it now. This is Arizona's fifth congressional district. Mark Lamb wins the Republican nomination for US House in Arizona's fifth congressional district. You can see Mark Lamb has about 59% of that vote. Daniel Keenan with 41%.

[00:05:14]This is a race that we have again been watching. This was vacated by a candidate who was running for governor.

[00:05:20]Uh what's your reaction to this vote tally? Are you surprised at all by this?

[00:05:25]I wanted to mention Lamb uh endorsed by the president as well.

[00:05:28]>> Well, I wouldn't have been surprised either way. I thought in the beginning Lamb was destined to win this one by a extremely wide margin and then he got hit with some sexing scandals and some accusations, credible accusations that he intimidated people using his power as a county sheriff. And I think that accounts for the 40% that his opponent got. That's a whole lot closer than it would have been two or three weeks ago.

[00:05:56]It would have been, you know, 80 or 90% lamb. Now, fortunately for him, this is a heavily Republican district, and I can't see any Democrat winning in that district under any circumstances.

[00:06:11]>> All right. And you can see this tweet here from the Associated Press saying, "Mark Lamb wins Republican nomination for US House in Arizona's fifth congressional district." Of course, Mike, it's interesting during these hours as we are getting these early race calls, it's cool because, you know, we get these notifications into the newsroom and we can have analysts like you help us break down if this, you know, was a surprise or what the numbers truly mean. I want to hop back to the governor's race because, as you mentioned, it was a pretty large margin.

[00:06:40]Of course, in November, it will be a showdown between Hobbs and Bigs. Do you think that race will be close in November?

[00:06:50]uh any race statewide in Arizona, if the Democrat is credible, is going to be close. There is about a 6% 7% natural uh favor of a Republican. Um you know, in other words, a generic Republican in Arizona statewide beats a generic Democrat by about 6%. Now the other thing counterveiling that is that on a national level for the last 12 months all of the off cycle elections that they've had the Democrats have outperformed by an average of almost 10%.

[00:07:22]So those two things and nobody really believes the 10% will hold up. It's for Democrats that sounds a little optimistic but but it has been consistent. So the natural 6% tendency for Republicans in this state is canled by uh the fact that this looks like a Democratic year and so a generic Republican and Democrat is very close race in Arizona. I think Katie Hobbs is delighted with this result. I think uh that uh the candidate bigs that she's going to face is a far weaker candidate for her. is closely associated with MAGA. U that u his opponent Schwe both both congressman Schwiker is much more moderate and I think probably would have beat Katie Hobbs. Uh at this point I in fact the in anticipation of this the basic folks who do the best raiders around are guys like Larry Sabato and Cook Political Report both switch this race from tossup to lean Democrat in the face of a likely bigs nomination.

[00:08:31]>> You know one thing that I'm interested in when we talk about these primaries and of course general elections too is fundraising. Uh talking about both Hobbs and Bigs, what has their fundraising looked like for these primary races? Did either candidate have a significantly bigger war chest than the other? Uh how much money were they able to get in this primary? I >> I don't know the exact numbers, but uh you know, Bigs clearly was dominant in the fundraising, which usually happens when you're likely to win. Uh Katie Hobbs has a much bigger uh bankroll than does bigs. On the other hand, Republicans would like, you know, obviously are in the in the running here and I think they could they could expect some national money moving to bigs except for the fact that uh the Republicans may want to put most of their money into House and Senate races, which are very touchandgo in terms of who controls Congress. So, he's going to be competing with uh not not just others locally, but he's going to be competing with you send money to Susan Collins in Maine, you send money to Paxton in Texas, you know, Republican Senate seats that are in jeopardy. So, he's going to have to make the case that uh that he should be on that list and uh support it. But, I expect both candidates for governor will be very well financed. uh there'll be no shortage of money. And you know, money uh the only time money really makes a difference is somebody has a lot and the other person has a little. If they both got a lot, it really doesn't matter. Somebody has a little more than the other. They're both going to have enough money that we'll be sick and tired of all their commercials by November.

[00:10:13]>> All right, good insight there. We do have another race call from the Associated Press. Let's put this on our screen. Jay Feelely wins the Republican nomination for US House in Arizona's first congressional district. That first district, by the way, rated as a tossup.

[00:10:29]This is very closely watched on a national stage. Putting these recent numbers up here on our screen with just about 69% of those estimated votes counted. The Associated Press is confident enough to say that Jay Feelely has the Republican nomination and is moving on to the general election. That margin seems to be 49% to 39 to excuse me 35% for Joseph Chaplick. Uh you know this has been of course a really interesting race monitoring both the Republican and the Democrat side. Uh you know what's your reaction to this because you know Feelely of course was Trump endorsed. Uh just what's your take on on this ticket the GOP ticket?

[00:11:12]>> Uh you know f first of all you got to congratulate the Trump endorsement. it came through again as it has for a long time in Republican primaries. Now in Arizona, we've had the problem is that those Trump endorsed candidates at a statewide level just about all went down to defeat last time. So that nomination is great in the uh primary and this proves that it still is uh but uh less so potentially in the general election particularly given his poll numbers.

[00:11:42]This is this was a tossup race. This is going to be a tossup race. Uh we're going to be, you know, we're going to be counting votes late in the evening on election night on both CD1 and CD6. We haven't talked about that, but that's the one down in the southeastern Arizona. And that one's also a tossup.

[00:12:00]So, uh those are going to be the absolute premier race in on the national level in Arizona. CD1 and CD6 both are absolutely down to the wire.

[00:12:12]And you [snorts] know, the two front runners in this race, you have Jay Feelely, who is a former NFL player, and then you have Joseph Chaplick, who does have a career as a politician. Do you find that voters in in some of these primary races, not not only that we've seen in Arizona, but also statewide, have a greater appetite for candidates who don't have political experience, are sort of fresh to the political scene?

[00:12:38]>> There are two things that work in contradiction to one another. First of all, people, it's good to have name. If you don't have name recognition and people don't know who you are, it's pretty hard to win. One of the best ways you can get name recognition is to have run for other offices before, particularly if you've won. However, in the current mood, there is uh a lot of uh support for throw the rascals out, which is a recurrent theme in American politics. And we do like fresh faces, but they have to be well abundant fresh spaces, or else people are never going to figure out who they are. So, uh, and by the way, I I think in this case they weren't either of them terribly well known. Bey had some name recognition due to having been an Arizona Cardinal, but that's hardly an across the board kind of thing. Um, uh, I I think the the the two Democratic candidates were considerably more wellknown. Chaz, a prominent uh legislator and uh Marlene Golan Woods is a widow of our former attorney general who was also an aid to John McCain and a former anchor woman in Phoenix, though that was almost 20 years ago. The impact of that is probably a lot less than it would have been 20 years ago.

[00:13:50]>> Yeah, let's put up those numbers here on our screen for this Democratic ticket.

[00:13:53]We can see that Shaw is still leading with about a 10-point margin, 42% of the vote. Uh the Associated Press has not yet called this race. Uh 76% of those estimated votes are counted. One thing that we've been discussing on the show here is that Golan Woods is backed by the DLEC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. My question to you is why wouldn't the committee give Shaw a doover when he had a proven track record of making it to the general election in 2024? And are you surprised that the committee got involved in this?

[00:14:27]I was extremely surprised when I saw that primarily because the DCC uh as their Republican counterpoint does usually doesn't get involved in primary races. They they sit on their money until they have a victor and then they go with it. Um I frankly I thought about this a lot and it's a real head scratcher. I do not understand why they did it. I'm sure that they are both more than acceptable candidates from their standpoint. Shaw won last time. He did it the way he appears to be winning at this point, which is he knocked on a whole lot of doors and he had a a much more formidable organization just at the grassroots level. And this is a congressional seat is about the highest level office where you really can do it.

[00:15:17]You know, you don't you don't run for governor on shoe leather. you need television commercials and media just because too many people to to reach out to personal. But at a at the congressional level, if you really work a lot, that can make a difference. And so far, it appears that that may be unless this rate narrows and it's not called, but that 10% lead with 25% of the vote to go looks pretty good at this point.

[00:15:44]>> All right. And of course, a lot of these races that we've been focused on is that first congressional district, the governor's mansion in the fifth congressional district. But I wanted to mention to Arizona voters are deciding their next secretary of state and attorney attorney general among a couple other statewide and district races. Is there anything else you want to leave us with? Any races that you've been watching that you think is important for our viewers to know? Well, I think that in the case of Secretary of State, there's two candidates, a fellow by the name of Colandon who is pure MAGA, was involved in uh election denial and trying to uh trying to uh he was involved with the slate of electors uh that that uh that the Republicans put together. Uh Vabota is a former Republican party chair. Trump has kind of endorsed halfway both of them. So you can hardly well he'll he'll claim a victory no matter who wins. But I think uh Colandan is clearly the more MAGA candidate of the two and u I think he will be as a result of that an easier target for the incumbent Democratic secretary stay.

[00:17:00]>> All right, Mike O'Neal, we appreciate you coming on the show with your insight and your analysis. A couple more races to be called. We'll be tracking those here on Live Now from Fox.