By Jim Ellis — Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025
Governor
eight-term Arizona Rep. David Schweikert (R-Fountain Hills/ Scottsdale)
The fact that such a story has arisen firmly suggests he is headed toward running. In the statewide Republican primary contest are Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Gilbert), who is leading in early polling, and Karrin Taylor Robson who ran for Governor in 2022 but failed to overtake Kari Lake for the GOP nomination.
Earlier in the year, President Trump issued a dual endorsement for Rep. Biggs and Robson, but her support was recently withdrawn because the President said she was not using his backing to its fullest benefit.
With Robson likely stagnating, Rep. Schweikert may see the opportunity of overtaking
Biggs in a GOP primary race that won’t be decided until Aug. 4 of next year. The eventual Republican nominee will be highly competitive against Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) who defeated Lake by a scant 50.3 – 49.6 percent count in 2022.
The bigger national story, should Rep. Schweikert become a gubernatorial candidate, would be the battle for his open 1st Congressional District.
The 2021 Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission members didn’t do Rep. Schweikert any favors because they transformed his once safely Republican 6th District into a highly competitive 1st CD. Schweikert being convicted of 11 House ethics violations for misuse of his congressional office funds and the Federal Election Commission issuing a $175,000 fine for multiple campaign finance violations certainly didn’t help him win re-election, either.
In the last two elections, Rep. Schweikert, battling negative publicity relating to the ethics abuses and fines, recorded winning percentages of 50.4 and 51.9 percent in 2022 and 2024, respectively. The Dave’s Redistricting App statisticians calculate a 50.9R – 47.5D district partisan lean. The Down Ballot political blog prognosticators rank AZ-1 as the 18th most vulnerable seat in the House Republican Conference.
In the 2024 presidential race, Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris here 51.9 – 48.0 percent. In 2020, however, President Biden carried the seat over Trump, 50.1 – 48.6 percent. The 1st District margin was one of the reasons the national Democrat carried Arizona, which became a major cog in the Biden victory over then-President Trump.
The Grand Canyon State’s 1st CD is fully contained within Maricopa County and anchored in the city of Scottsdale. The seat also includes Rep. Schweikert’s hometown of Fountain Hills and the cities of Paradise Valley and Carefree. The voting age population is 74 percent white, 14 percent Hispanic, 5.5 percent Asian, and 4 percent black.
The most recent district voter registration totals (July 1, 2025) reveal 207,076 Republicans (38.4 percent), 179,128 (33.2 percent) non-affiliated voters, 144,592 Democrats (26.8 percent), and 8,608 (1.6 percent) minor party members for a total of 539,404 registrants. The election statistics revealing much closer results than the voter registration figures seem to project indicates that the non-affiliated group votes predominantly Democratic. Therefore, the GOP’s registration advantage is less than one observes at first glance.
Should Rep. Schweikert opt for the Governor’s race, we can expect a crowded Republican congressional primary to develop.
The Democrats are already seeing spirited competition in their primary as 11 party members have announced their candidacies, including former state Representative, physician, and 2024 congressional nominee Amish Shah, 2024 congressional candidate and former news anchor Marlene Galan-Woods, Administrative Law Judge Brian Del Vecchio, Tempe School Board member Andres Barraza, and Democratic National Committee member Mark Robert Gordon.
The AZ-1 campaign was already promising to be one of the most competitive US House races in the 2026 cycle and a major factor in deciding which party will control the chamber in the 2027-28 congressional session. As an open seat contest, this district will attract even more national political attention once the race intensifies.