Republican Wins Arizona Congressional Seat in Unexpectedly Close Race

WASHINGTON — Former Arizona state Sen. Debbie Lesko fended off an unusually strong Democratic challenge to win a special congressional election Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, demonstrating the resilience of the Republican base but also the eagerness of liberals to compete in even the most heavily conservative districts.

Lifted by more than $1 million in outside spending from Republican groups determined to avoid another electoral embarrassment, Lesko defeated Hiral Tipirneni, a physician and first-time candidate, in a district President Donald Trump carried by more than 20 points.

With nearly all of the early ballots counted Tuesday night, which were expected to make up the bulk of the vote, Lesko was ahead by nearly 6 percentage points.

Lesko was helped by an aggressive intervention from Republican leaders that included a wave of robocalls from Trump and fundraisers hosted by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader.

Republican officials described their efforts as precautionary, a nod toward the party’s humiliating special election losses in Alabama and Pennsylvania and an acknowledgment that they must fortify their defenses in even the reddest of districts.

The Phoenix-area seat for the 8th Congressional District, a haven for sunshine-seeking retirees from the Midwest, is so reliably Republican that Democrats did not even field a candidate in the last two elections.

But after the previous representative, Trent Franks, resigned following revelations he had offered $5 million to an aide in exchange for carrying his child, Arizona Democrats rallied to Tipirneni. She outraised Lesko in what was the first high-profile congressional election since 2016 between two women.

National Democrats, however, stayed away from the race, deducing that a district that has sent only Republicans to Congress for four decades was out of reach. And any hopes Tipirneni had to win outside support may have faded this month when a local TV station reported that she had not practiced medicine since 2007 and had settled a malpractice lawsuit with a woman who blamed her for contracting tetanus.

In contrast, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund, the primary House Republican super PAC, each poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race. The investment proved critical in what became an unexpectedly close race.

“It’s a warning shot,” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said of the results. “Anything below a 10-point margin is not good news.”

Lesko, 59, ran as a dependable supporter of Trump and assailed Tipirneni for not backing White House priorities like the construction of a wall on the Mexican border. With help from the battery of outside Republican organizations, Lesko sought to polarize the district along traditional partisan lines, branding Tipirneni as a liberal and a puppet of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader.

Rather than wait for the contest to tighten, the groups helped Lesko build an early advantage in a race in which the vast majority of voters cast their ballots early. Registered Republicans far outnumbered Democrats in the early voting period, and the median age was 67 among those voting before Election Day, an indication of a heavily conservative electorate.

Tipirneni, 50, found energetic support among some women in the district who were uneasy about Trump and had been roused to get active in politics. As Rep. Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania did in a special election last month, she offered herself as a moderate who would not support Pelosi for House speaker.

But unlike Lamb’s Pittsburgh-area seat — which includes an array of vote-rich, upscale suburbs — the Arizona district is full of AARP-eligible snowbirds, reliably Republican Mormons and military families who work at nearby Luke Air Force Base. And this race was a head-to-head contest — there was no Libertarian on the ballot, as in Pennsylvania, who could have allowed Tipirneni to eke out a win had it proved closer.

This was not a district that was on either party’s list of seats that will determine control of the House. But the steps conservatives took to secure victory for a former officeholder illustrate just how much the anti-Trump energy on the left is putting Republicans on the defensive across the country.