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Republican Debbie Lesko has defeated Democrat Hiral Tipirneni in the special election for Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District. But Tuesday night’s race should still give Republicans pause.
In a deeply conservative district, Tipirneni was able to substantially narrow Lesko’s margin of victory over Donald Trump’s in 2016. And the national Republican Party and outside GOP groups poured more than $1 million into winning the seat that will be up again this November.
By all measures, Arizona 8 is deeply red; it encompasses the suburbs north and west of Phoenix in Maricopa County — the stomping grounds of infamous former Sheriff Joe Arpaio and home to the reliably conservative Sun City retirement community. Trump won the district by 21 points. It’s currently rated R+13. Lesko is expected to win by a substantially smaller margin.
Lesko will replace the very conservative Trent Franks, who resigned early this year amid reports that he’d offered to pay female staffers to be his baby surrogate (possible through natural conception). When Franks resigned, no one thought the seat would be competitive.
There’s no question that the race in Arizona was a clear win for the Republican Party, which will maintain a very conservative seat in the House until November. But Tipirneni ran a campaign focused almost exclusively on health care that dozens of other Democratic candidates are looking to replicate in more competitive districts across the country.
And even in a deeply red district like this one, Arizona Democrats showed they are enthusiastic to come out and vote, which could have huge implications for the state’s House and Senate races this November.
Debbie Lesko ran a traditional Republican campaign, and it underperformed
Lesko’s political profile seems like a traditional fit for a conservative district.
A former state House and Senate lawmaker whose district overlaps with Arizona’s Eighth, Lesko is anti-abortion and has run on a “tough on immigration” platform, saying she will work with Trump to bring the border wall to Arizona. She supports the president but says she doesn’t approve of all his antics, celebrated the Republican tax cuts, and was quick to paint her Democratic opponent, Tipirneni, as a “Bernie Sanders, Medicare-for-all” liberal (Tipirneni supports a public option). Lesko will be sworn in to the House with the support of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, a group that her predecessor Franks was a part of.
Among notable moments in her career, she was among the 36 Republican lawmakers in Arizona who signed on to the unsuccessful lawsuit against then-Gov. Jan Brewer (R) for supporting Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. And in the district, she’s known for something much more close to home for an aging retirement population: She pushed for state legislation to make it legal for people to drive golf carts alongside the road.
In all, Lesko ran as close to the Republican Party’s 2018 playbook as possible. She was pro-tax cuts, pro-border wall, anti-Obamacare. But put together, it wasn’t as easy a sell in a year that has seen an incredible surge in Democratic enthusiasm.
Democrats closed the gap in a deep-red district
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Arizona’s Eighth District is red and was always expected to stay red.
It’s Trump country; the president carried the district by 20 points in 2016. And while Democrats recently saw success in a Trump +20 district, clinching the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th last month, it was difficult to see how they could replicate that success in Arizona’s Eighth. It is a district that has “no Democratic heritage,” as Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report told Vox — like labor unions.
Republicans have strong roots in the region and make up 41 percent of registered voters — a clear advantage over Democrats, who only make up 24 percent of registered voters. It’s home to Maricopa County and Arpaio, who as sheriff was known for infringing on the constitutional rights of residents by assuming immigration status.
Despite Arizona’s fast-growing Latino population statewide, this district is nearly 90 percent white. Almost half the population is 55 or older. It includes the Sun City retirement community, a massive chunk of the district that consistently votes Republican. Roughly three-fourths of the constituents in the district voted early, the majority for Lesko.
In other words, there wasn’t as much potential for a drop-off of Republican voters. But there was room for a surge in Democratic turnout, and it’s clear that Tipirneni ran on a campaign that energized the base.
It’s looking like health care is going to be a big vulnerability for Republicans
Tipirneni, a former emergency room doctor and cancer research advocate, zeroed in on what Democrats think will be a winning message in 2018: health care.
And as deeply red as this district is, that message seems to show promise — especially in the home state of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who famously voted down Republicans’ efforts to repeal Obamacare.
As Vox’s Dylan Scott explained, Republicans set themselves up for relentless progressive attacks on health care. They spent the majority of their first year in control of Congress and the White House trying to repeal the increasingly popular Affordable Care Act. When that didn’t work, they shifted back to sabotaging the health care system and talking about making cuts to even more popular programs like Medicare and Social Security.
As Scott writes:
Republicans already have a mess on their hands of their own making. The Trump administration’s multifaceted crusade against the health care law — slashing outreach budgets and pulling the law’s cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers — were already to blame for a 20 percent premium hike this year. Then Congress repealed the individual mandate in their tax bill, a huge political victory given the GOP’s vehement opposition to the mandate but one that insurers have said would drive up premiums even more next year.
That message might not have been enough to offset Democrats’ structural disadvantages in AZ-8, but it could prove more fruitful in the more than 30 competitive Republican districts that Democrats are hoping to turn blue this November, and in Arizona’s possibly two open Senate seats.
As one Democratic operative told Vox, Tipirneni isn’t unique in her campaign message. And it could make all the difference in a district with more of a Democratic heritage, or statewide where the demographics are much more in Democrats’ favor.
