AZ-07 Primary Preview

Primary School

— 3 min read

AZ-07

Deja Foxx vs. Adelita Grijalva vs. Daniel Hernandez vs. Patrick Harris vs. José Malvido

First, the final week of independent expenditures in AZ-07:

  • $100K in digital ads supporting Adelita Grijalva from Progressive Promise
  • $7K in digital ads and $27.5K in TV ads supporting Adelita Grijalva from the Working Families Party
  • $6K in radio ads across two buys supporting Adelita Grijalva from Votar es Poder PAC
  • $23K in mailers supporting Deja Foxx from Tucson Families Fed Up PAC
  • $33K in mailers across two buys and $16K in assorted other expenses opposing Adelita Grijalva from Tucson Families Fed Up PAC
  • $35K in digital ads supporting Deja Foxx from Youth Save Democracy PAC

Now, the actual preview:

Rep. Raúl Grijalva cost Democrats a House seat when he chose to run for reelection in 2024 despite terminal cancer. It’s harsh to say, but it’s true, and it’s why we’re here: Grijalva, a veteran progressive lawmaker and ally of Bernie Sanders, passed away mere months into his term, teeing up a special election. This district runs along the Mexican border from Yuma in the west to Nogales and Bisbee in the east, also encompassing the US half of the Tohono O’odham Nation, but most of the population lives in Tucson, a large and very left-leaning city in the Sonoran Desert, with a smaller population cluster on the outskirts of metropolitan Phoenix. It’s safely Democratic, and whoever wins Tuesday’s primary should be headed to DC in the fall.

The frontrunner to succeed Grijalva is his long-planned successor: his daughter Adelita Grijalva, a former Pima County Supervisor. Given that the younger Grijalva—backed by Sanders and AOC, as well as both of Arizona's U.S. senators—is presumed to be as progressive as her father, a lifelong progressive stalwart, it was probably inevitable that she’d face a serious opponent running to her right. She does, in fact, face one in former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, a vocal Israel apologist who’s alarmingly cozy with the business lobby even by the standards of Sun Belt Democrats. What Team Grijalva probably didn’t account for was a vigorous campaign mounted by a Gen Z influencer, Deja Foxx, who first made waves confronting then-Sen. Jeff Flake while she was still a teenager. Foxx has turned this primary, which had seemed destined for a coronation of the younger Grijalva, into a three-way race: after garnering a wave of national attention which translated into robust small-donor and volunteer support, she seems like the main threat to Grijalva now, but with Foxx and Grijalva likely splitting the progressive vote, Hernandez can’t be counted out despite this district’s leftward lean. (Grijalva has the institutional progressive support, but Foxx, who touts her support for court-packing, a ban on congressional stock trading, and Medicare for All, is unmistakably a progressive Democrat herself, though too crypto-friendly for my tastes—and a youth-focused pitch is likely to attract progressive voters, who skew younger.)

Grijalva led the pack in fundraising in the second quarter of 2025 by a margin of about $200,000, but when it comes to TV advertising, the gap is only $150,000 according to a CNN analysis of AdImpact data. That's including outside help, which is less efficient due to FCC rules regarding the rates stations must charge candidates versus PACs, and which only Grijalva has on TV according to publicly filed FEC reports.

Though she has no independent expenditures supporting her on TV, Foxx isn't without substantial outside help of her own. David Hogg’s PAC, Leaders We Deserve, threw down $150,000 in digital ads, and an assortment of other PACs have chipped in with smaller investments in mail and more digital ads. The Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus's PAC has also endorsed Foxx, who is Filipino, while the Congressional Hispanic Caucus's PAC has endorsed Grijalva. Local politicians, unions, and organizations have broken for Grijalva or Hernandez depending mostly on ideological leanings (progressives and liberals for Grijalva, moderates for Hernandez.) Foxx, who also worked on Kamala Harris’s campaign and served on the board of Planned Parenthood Arizona, is relying more on her national connections and substantial social media following, as well as the aforementioned heavy investment in traditional campaign advertising.

Also on the ballot are two minor candidates: José Malvido, an Indigenous rights activist from the rural mining town of Ajo, and Patrick Harris, a local gadfly with some quirky ideas. Grijalva should be favored over all of them, but Foxx and Hernandez are both hoping to pull off the upset and making the right moves to do so. The geography of this contest is hard to game out, as most voters, and all five candidates, hail from Pima County. (Ajo, while more than 100 miles west of Tucson, is still in Pima County.) Results from the other five counties in the district, which span several media markets and metropolitan areas, may matter on the margins, but this is Tucson's House seat (well, one of two), and Tucson will dominate tonight.

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