By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON Reuters) -Arizona Democrats on Tuesday will choose their nominee to run for a vacant U.S. House seat in September, as the party grapples with demands for generational change and divisions over just how progressive it can be in the era of President Donald Trump.
With Democrats’ losses in last year’s presidential and congressional elections weighing heavily on the party nationwide, it has struggled over how best to appeal to young progressives while luring back working-class voters who shifted toward the Republican Party.
The winner of Tuesday’s primary is expected to prevail in the September 23 general election in the heavily Democratic district that stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border and includes parts of Tucson.
Polls close at 7 p.m. MT (9 p.m. ET/0100 GMT).
The front-runner is seen as Adelita Grijalva, who is seeking a seat formerly held by her father, Representative Raul Grijalva, who died in March. She leads a pack of five Democrats.
A 54-year-old former county board supervisor, Grijalva has racked up notable backers spanning the party divide. They include environmental groups, labor unions and lawmakers who range from progressive luminaries such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to the moderate Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.
But Deja Foxx, half Grijalva’s age and emphasizing her youth, has been gaining attention in what some party activists say could be a shock victory for progressives on Tuesday much like Zohran Mamdani’s in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary last month.
Foxx, 25, won the endorsement of David Hogg, a survivor of a 2018 Florida school shooting who held a high position within the Democratic National Committee until he ruffled establishment feathers by threatening to help finance challengers to Democratic incumbents he deemed insufficiently progressive.
A more moderate former Arizona state representative, Daniel Hernandez Jr., is also in the mix. He was an intern in 2011 when his boss, then-Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, was gravely wounded in an assassination attempt.
Giffords, however, has endorsed Grijalva.
Raul Grijalva won re-election in November, easily beating his Republican opponent by about 27 percentage points.
Next year’s midterm elections give Democrats the opportunity to capture a majority in the House, which currently is narrowly controlled by Republicans 220-212.
Republicans also will hold a primary election for Grijalva’s seat on Tuesday. Among the candidates are a construction worker and a man who is on probation following a felony fraud conviction, according to Arizona media reports.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Cynthia Osterman)
