T hat mail-in ballot has been sitting on your kitchen counter for weeks now, and the primary is right around the corner. It will determine the matchups for a litany of prominent races — seats in Congress and the state legislature, as well as the high-profile jobs of governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Yet, when you look at that ballot, your head spins. How to make sense of it all? Phoenix New Times is here to help. We’re not going to tell you how to vote, but we can demystify some of the bigger races on your ballot. Given that most incumbents in statewide office are Democrats, most of the interesting matchups are on the GOP ballot. But there are still some intriguing showdowns among the Dems. This isn’t an exhaustive list — you should do your own careful research on state legislature races and others not listed here — but this should help you feel a bit more prepared to drop off that ballot or pop into a polling place. Governor (GOP) The candidates: Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. David Schweikert, Ken Miceli, Scott Neely All available evidence suggests that Biggs, the far-right congressman and former leader of the House Freedom Caucus, is going to run away with this race, teeing him up to take on Gov. Katie Hobbs in the general election. A recent poll had him claiming 60% support among likely primary voters. Biggs has spent most of his time campaigning against Hobbs rather than his primary rivals, correctly recog- nizing that they present little challenge to him. The Trump and Turning Point USA wing of the party coalesced around Biggs early on, and nobody else has really picked up any steam. That includes Schweikert, whose campaign has been a curious one. A staunch conservative himself, if not an extra-Trumpy one like Biggs, Schweikert jumped into the race late, claiming that Biggs’ far-right connections made him unelectable in Arizona. Schweikert may be right about that, as the Cook Political Report recently changed its outlook on the governor’s race to Leans Democratic, but he never made a persuasive argument that primary voters should pick him instead. Even after lobbyist Karrin Taylor Robson dropped out of the race — despite her having been the first to jump into it and despite having Trump’s endorsement — Schweikert has failed to show he’s a viable alternative to Biggs. At the end of the first quarter of 2026 — (second-quarter reports came out after this story went to print) — Biggs had $1.1 million in campaign cash on hand. Schweikert had just $86,000. If Schweikert can’t slow down the Biggs juggernaut, local businessmen Miceli and Neely don’t have a shot, though Neely’s gotten some good shots in about Biggs’ record. Might as well go down swinging. Attorney General (GOP) The candidates: state Sen. Warren Petersen, Rodney Glassman Biggs may have the governor nomination all but sewn up at this point, but the GOP race for attorney general is anyone’s guess. It’s probably the messiest primary race on the slate, as the two candidates vying to unseat Democrat Kris Mayes have spent most of the campaign attacking each other and acting like children. See their televised debate, which went off the rails almost immediately. Petersen is the president of the Arizona Senate and is a steady supporter of President Donald Trump — though, notably, he lacks an endorsement from Trump or Turning Point. He’s championed bathroom and sports bans for transgender girls, measures to mandate state and local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cumbersome elec- tions reforms and more. All expected from a fairly MAGA member of the Arizona Legislature. What he hasn’t done is prose- cute any cases as a lawyer. Petersen only graduated from law school in 2020 and wasn’t admitted into the State Bar of Arizona until 2023, though the Arizona Republic caught him fudging that timeline on his campaign website. Glassman has repeatedly hit Petersen for overstating his legal credentials. Glassman has a longer history as a lawyer — and, interestingly, a long history as a Democrat. He’s a former member of the Tucson City Council and ran for Senate as a Democrat in 2010, ultimately getting pasted by incumbent Sen. John McCain. Glassman switched parties in 2015 and has run unsuccessfully for office multiple times since, including for attorney general four years ago. (He lost the nomination to Abe Hamadeh, who went on to narrowly lose to Mayes.) He comes from a rich family and seems to really, really want to get elected, since he keeps spending his own money on campaigns. Petersen has attacked him over that, and Petersen’s allies have also promoted unproven sexual assault claims about Glassman and his own brother, which both Glassman scions have denied. That should give you a sense of how ugly things have gotten, and the race has become such a mess that it’s hard to predict the outcome. Both Glassman and Petersen have touted polls showing them in the lead, although in both cases, the number of undecided voters far outweighs the number of voters who have picked a side. Secretary of State (GOP) The candidates: Gina Swoboda, state Rep. Alexander Kolodin This race probably presents the clearest contrast of the major GOP primary contests. On one side is Gina Swoboda, a former elections worker and the former chair of the Arizona Republican Party. Though she’s a fan of Trump and he’s a fan of her, she does not fit comfortably into a MAGA box. For one, she’s rejected the kind of election conspiracy lunacy that Trump and his extreme allies have constantly pushed. If you’re not a political junkie and you’ve seen her face before, it might be because of the videos she filmed as party chair to explain election procedures to laypeople. Though it’s not her purview, she’s also expressed a willingness to support guardrails on the state’s out-of- control school voucher program. All that has put Swoboda at odds with the Turning Point wing of the party, which she openly disdains. The TPUSA crowd has instead lined up behind Kolodin, who has brought (and been censured for) election lawsuits and who is one of the most conservative members of the Arizona House of Representatives. Kolodin is of the opinion that Arizona’s elections are a laughingstock — evidence shows they actually run just fine and produce reliable results — and he’s made it a persistent mission to reform elec- tion laws in a way that many feel would make voting harder. This fall, in fact, Arizona voters will be asked to decide a ballot measure sponsored by Kolodin and referred by the legislature that would, in part, require showing ID to vote by mail. The ballot measure leaves it unclear as to how one would do that. Superintendent of Public Instruction (GOP) The candidates: Tom Horne (incumbent), Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee This race is an interesting one — it features the only two Republicans to win major statewide office four years ago, and now they’re vying to take each other out. And they’re doing so despite seeming to agree on almost everything. The two big issues in the race have been DEI — that is, diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies, the new bugaboo of the Trump right — and Arizona’s school vouchers program. Both Yee and Horne say they want to eliminate DEI in education. Both are big supporters of school choice. Yet you’d never know it from how they attack each other! Yee, who was recruited by far-right state Sen. Jake Hoffman to take on Horne, has attacked Horne for daring to suggest that at least some guardrails should be placed on the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program, which is the name for school vouchers in Arizona. The program, which allows any student to use taxpayer money for private or home school expenses, has been a budget albatross with a price tag of more than $1 billion a year. A steady drumbeat of reporting has shown that the system allows bad actors to use ESA dollars to purchase things like lingerie, jewelry and gaming systems, among other items lacking educational value. A scathing report from the Arizona Auditor General found that the Arizona Department of Education under Horne had few viable systems in place to catch ESA cheats. Horne, who has been at the center of a string of scandals throughout his long polit- ical life, has defended the program and disputed the idea that fraud regularly gets past his office. Yet he’s also suggested limits on what parents should be able to buy, making him an enemy of the hyper-partisan school choice crowd. On the other hand, Horne has attacked Yee for >> p 12
