TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Now that Democratic and Republican voters have spoken with their primary votes, we know the race for CD 7 will be between Adelita Grijalva and Daniel Butierez. But history and especially voter registration give one side an edge.
Democrat Adelita Grijalva and Republican Daniel Butierez each won their nominations by margins over sixty percent.
Grijalva says she ran on her record of twenty years of community involvement as a school board member and County Supervisor, not as an inheritor of her father’s legacy but she campaigned as Raul Grijalva taught her, face to face and personal.
“We fought for literally every vote. And it is because we were invested in this community and present in this community that the voters of this community saw through that, and I think what we need to do now is get away from a lot of this partisan sort of attacks on one another. Focus on rebuilding our party together.”
Daniel Butierez says he focused on his ties to the community too.
“The R and the D mean nothing, and we need to get away from that and realize the values that we hold is is a people we need to unite and come together and start fixing things, because if we continue to fight, we're not going to fix anything in this homeless crisis, it's gotten out of control, is going to remain out of control and continue to get worse.”
But the nature of that community has given Democrats an advantage.
The boundaries of what is now CD 7 have changed over time. For the Member of Congress before Raul Grijalva it included a large slice of Maricopa County. Now the district includes a bit of Maricopa County, covers the west side of Tucson, runs west across reservation land to Yuma and takes in a small strip of border in Cochise County that includes Douglas.
That led to a district where close to 40 percent of voters are registered Democrats versus not quite 21 percent registered Republicans. Other voters like independents account for more than 37 percent. The U.S. Census says 61 percent of the district is Latino.
Raul Grijalva had no Republican opponent in 2016
In his eleven other races for Congress, Raul Grijalva’s winning percentage averaged more than sixty percent compared to 37.1 percent for Republicans.
So any Republican candidate will need to attract a large share of independents and maybe some registered Democrats to head to Washington as the new representative for Congressional District 7.
