First Look at the Legislative Races

Well, it looks like September is going to be another interesting Election marked with a couple of heated primaries and some new faces representing Mesa at the Arizona Legislature. It will be fun to watch and see how things go over the next couple of months. If you are interested, you can look up all of the candidates on the Secretary of State's page.

District 18
Senate: Russell Pearce, Kevin Gibbons - Republican, Judah Nativio - Democrat
House: Cecil Ash, Steve Court, Kanani Henderson, Ron Middlebrook - Republican, Tammie Pursley - Democrat

District 19
Senate: Chuck Gray - Republican
House: Kirk Adams, Rich Crandall - Republican, Kathy Romano - Democrat

District 21 (Partially in Mesa)
Senate: Jay Tibshraeney - Republican
House: Warde Nichols, Steve Yarbrough - Republican, Phil Hettmansperger - Democrat

District 22 (Partially in Mesa)
Senate: Thayer Vershoor, Eddie Farnsworth, Joe Bedgood - Republican
House: Andy Biggs, Adam Armer, Bob Brown, Laurin Hendrix - Republican, Glenn Ray - Democrat

The two hot spots are District 18 and District 22. Both are marked by some open spaces to fill on the house side and a heated primary race for the Senate seat. In District 22, you have two known commodities who will be battling to see who can get further to the right.

In District 18, you have a very well known candidate in Russell Pearce running against a virtual unknown in Kevin Gibbons (who's number three result that comes up under a google search is him once owning the trademark to "inmigracion sin barreras"). I think it will be hard to come in with a pro-immigration stance in that part of Mesa.

It will be an all new slate in the house for District 18. District 22's spot became open when Eddie Farnsworth decided to challenge Vershoor in the primary.