
Your ballot is coming
Arizona’s hottest election … Keep DREAMing of affordable education … And $2.3 million is a lot of pillows.
Ballots are in the mail for the biggest election of the year — the special election to fill Raúl Grijalva’s seat in Southern Arizona’s sprawling Congressional District 7.
Five candidates are running in the Democratic primary, though only three of them have a chance of winning:
Odds-on-favorite Adelita Grijalva, a former Pima County supervisor who served two decades on the Tucson Unified school board before that. As the name implies, she’s the daughter of the late congressman and she largely follows in his very progressive footsteps, ideologically.
Former lawmaker Daniel Hernandez, a business-backed Democrat known for cutting deals with Republicans at the Capitol. He rose to prominence as the intern who helped save former congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ life, and has built his own political machine by drafting his sisters into politics.
And Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old social media strategist, activist and darling of the national media, which has dubbed her “The Next AOC” — assuming she wins the race.1 Foxx doesn’t have the political infrastructure or campaign donors of the other two, but her insurgent campaign is trying to turn that into her biggest selling point.
The race is a big deal for Southern Arizona, and Arizona more broadly — Grijalva held the seat for 22 years, and leaves, as we previously put it, “big, dusty dress shoes to fill.”
The race will also serve as something of a barometer for the Democratic base — offering voters a choice between the same kind of steady progressivism Grijalva represented; Foxx’s younger, more confrontational liberalism; or Hernandez’ pro-business, centrist candidacy.
And as one of the two districts in Arizona where Latinos make up the majority of voters, the race will be a gut check of what direction Latino Democrats in particular want the party to take.
The district stretches from Yuma to Douglas, taking in west Tucson and stretching all the way up to the far southwest tips of the Valley.
But for voters outside of Tucson, the candidates are not exactly household names.
Our Tucson Agenda colleague Joe Ferguson has been spending a lot of time breaking down the race and introducing readers to the contenders, including by sitting down with the candidates themselves.
So on this eve of ballots arriving in mailboxes, Joe’s bringing you a chance to get to know the big three in the race.
Adelita Grijalva
As the daughter of a politician, Adelita Grijalva grew up with politics woven into her childhood.
A proud graduate of Pueblo High School, Grijalva didn’t consider running for office herself until she was 29, when she eyed a seat on the Tucson Unified School District board — an unpaid elected position she went on to hold for more than 20 years.
The seed was planted years earlier by her father.
“He's famous for these little doodles, and on my high school graduation card he wrote, ‘Adelita Grijalva for TUSD,’” she recalled. “He put the bug in there before I had any interest in doing any of that.”
Still, she knows that in many ways she is defined by her last name.
“I’m a proud daughter of Raúl Grijalva — always have been, always will be. But I’ve been in elected office for 22 years, 20 of those on a volunteer school board. Nothing was handed to me. Respectfully, the bar has always been set incredibly high because of who my dad is. And that comparison is tough — because he’s amazing.”
Daniel Hernandez
As a young adult, Daniel Hernandez spent time training as a nursing assistant and as a phlebotomist. Jumping into the world of politics — and never looking back — would come later.
But that training came in handy in 2011, when he became an intern for then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and he rushed to her side seconds after a gunman shot her and 18 other people during the January 8, 2011, mass shooting
That same year, he joined the governing board for the Sunnyside School District, and in 2016, he was elected to the state Legislature. Now, he’s the associate executive director of Stand for Children, an advocacy group, and he’s making his second run for Congress in Tucson.
”This is my 17th legislative session where I've been working on a variety of difficult issues. Guns, gays and abortion, which are not easy things to work on here in the state of Arizona, and public education,” he said.
Hernandez is pragmatic about the current state of Democratic politics, saying he was hopeful that the judicial branch would serve as a check on the Trump administration in his second term. But he has been disappointed with some of the rulings from the Supreme Court.
“Right now we're in the minority, so it's going to be playing a lot of defense. But I think there's a really good shot that Democrats take the House in 2026. And I think once we have power, we need to stop being complacent,” he said.
Deja Foxx
At just 16 years old, Deja Foxx stood in a town hall and challenged a U.S. senator — a moment that kicked off a decade of political defiance and grassroots advocacy.
Even before her viral confrontation with Sen. Jeff Flake that launched her into social media stardom, Foxx had been challenging school board policies in Tucson.
She may not have been on the board, but the University High student began attending meetings and challenged an outdated sex education policy, eventually getting appointed to a committee to help update TUSD’s policies. In college, Foxx was a high-profile advocate in Southern Arizona, encouraging voter turnout in support of Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential campaign.
“I was raised by a single mom in section 8 housing on SNAP benefits and Medicaid. I was a free lunch kid right here in our public schools. And so that is what got me started in politics, was that my access to the things I needed to just get by was by and large determined by our elected officials,” Foxx said.
Foxx says voter frustration runs deep — not just with Republicans, but within the Democratic Party itself, and Democratic voters want someone who’s willing to fight for them inside and outside the halls of Congress.
“I've been arrested protesting on Capitol Hill in an act of civil disobedience after the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, alongside movement leaders and just one or two congresspeople. We should have more Congress people out there doing the work of advocates and activists, right? Using their positions of power to risk a little something because our families have a lot on the line,” Foxx said.
The Arizona Senate budget bills are in, and this is the version you’ll want to pay attention to.
We’ll know more about the $17.6 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year after the Senate Appropriations Committee hashes it out at 9:30 a.m. today.
You can preview the Senate budget bills here. You can find the Joint Legislative Budget Committee’s analysis of the bills here.
Republican Sen. T.J. Shope called the Senate’s budget “viable, unlike the fantasyland budget proposed in the House.”
But Republican Sen. John Kavanagh said the Senate’s budget and the one House lawmakers passed around 9:30 p.m. on Friday “are not terribly different.”
He maintains that the Senate has the alpha budget, however, because it was crafted with Gov. Katie Hobbs’ staff and leaves out “policy-type issues” that Democrats won’t vote for, like freezing salaries for family court judges.
The Senate’s budget includes $300 million more in spending than the House’s. But Kavanagh doesn’t think there will be a Senate vs. House battle to determine which budget progresses. Instead, “the governor resolved that issue when she said ‘no way’” to the House budget, he said.
It doesn’t look like anyone told House Republicans the issue was resolved.
The Senate plans to pass its budget on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the House is holding its own Appropriations Committee meeting tomorrow to discuss a Prop 123 renewal, which previously stalled budget talks for weeks as Republicans tried to embed constitutional protections for school vouchers into the renewal legislation.
It looks like Republicans are trying to get voters to approve a renewal of the $300 million annual school funding stream — without Trojan horsing school vouchers into the bill. Though that could change with further amendments.
Also on tomorrow’s House Appropriations Committee agenda: A bill to reduce state Medicaid funding by $108 million. Rep. Justin Olson’s strike everything amendment would freeze enrollment for people who became eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and Arizona’s Prop 204. Passed in 2000, Prop 204 expanded coverage to those who make up to 100% of the federal poverty level, which is $32,150 a year for a family of four.
Getting schooled: Republican lawmakers in the state House are pushing a budget that would revoke in-state tuition rates for students not legally in the country, writes Howie Fisher for Capitol Media Services. Republican Rep. Matt Gress, one of the lead lawmakers on the proposal, said he doesn’t believe this would conflict with Proposition 308, which was passed by voters in 2022 and grants in-state tuition to dreamers who meet certain criteria. Meanwhile, Arizona Superintendent Tom Horne is threatening to report Scottsdale Unified School District to the federal government over what he called a “DEI-oriented textbook,” per Tom Powell at AZFamily. Horne also called the school board “woke” for passing curriculum that he says contains anti-police propaganda.
“To label them woke without having ever read what was the 1,250 pages in the textbook is a problem from my perspective,” said Scottsdale Superintendent Scott Menzel, in response to Horne’s comments.
¿Por qué no los dos?: The Common Sense Institute released a report battling the “myths” of the state’s projected $1.6 billion budget shortfall, particularly that former Gov. Doug Ducey’s flat tax is to blame, per Chamber Business News. The center-right think tank, which is largely staffed by former Ducey administration folks, blames spending for the state’s financial strain.
National (news) treasure: National news outlets have been drawn to Deja Foxx, the 25-year-old running in the special election to fill the seat in Arizona’s 7th District, which has been vacant since Democratic U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s passing in March. The attention on Foxx has circled around her fresh voice for the Democratic party, including an article from Newsweek that suggested Foxx could become the next AOC, except she’s polling in the single digits in the only poll in the district.
No arrest record?: Police have been suspiciously mum about the man who pointed a pistol at the “No Kings” protest on Saturday, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy found. Plus, there was at least one neo-Nazi in the crowd.
Prisons hate Jimmy: The Arizona Department of Corrections spun up a whole strategy of blackballing longtime prisons reporter (and winner of the prestigious Agendie Award) Jimmy Jenkins. And it teamed up with a company that uses prison labor for a public relations campaign to counter his damning reporting back in 2022, Fourth Estate 48’s Dillon Rosenblatt writes, based on records that took him three years to pry loose.
“Since the biased AZ Republic series on Arizona’s use of prison labor, it is more important than ever for Televerde to be transparent about its business model and practices and how it benefits – not exploits – the incarcerated women who work with us,” the company said in its pitch to the Department of Corrections.
Arby’s incoming: Some of Tucson’s favorite chill spots, like Sabino Canyon, Madera Canyon and Mount Lemmon, could be sold to the highest bidder under the Senate version of President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” budget bill, the Tucson Agenda’s Joe Ferguson reports. Up to 250 million acres could be on the chopping block nationwide, including up to about 15 million acres in Arizona.
The Tucson Agenda’s birthday is coming up soon — and your subscriptions are the only gift they want.
Last week, we laughed at the My Pillow guy, Mike Lindell, taking the stand in his trial for defamation.
Lindell is an election fraud conspiracy superspreader who finally got slapped with a lawsuit for all the outrageous stuff he said about specific people whom he claimed helped steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
We noted at the time that he was trying to raise $1.5 million for his legal defense (and was making depressingly decent progress toward that goal).
So how’d that trial wind up?
Well, we wouldn’t be laughing if he had won, would we?
Still, with just a $2.3 million fine, he got off a lot easier than his victim would have liked.
But it looks like he’ll have to update that fundraising target by a couple of million.
However, AOC endorsed Grijalva in the race.
The idea that the orange menace is coming for our public lands is kind of the last straw. When his supporters find themselves without medicare, food assistance, civil and constitutional rights and even a place to walk off the stress all of this has produced, will they cheer the billionaires who sit in the fat pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?
Can someone please run and officially retire Grandpa Horne?!! How embarrassing. At least when he makes these "threats", he included key far-right "FoxNewsy" words like "DEI" and "woke." He did forget though to add "Biden", "Obama" and "extreme liberal agenda."