DLCC Targets Bolick, Peña In General Election

National Democrats are expanding their Arizona target list with fewer than 100 days until the general election, adding two legislative races they believe could help break Republicans’ hold on the state House and Senate.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee added Amelia Gallitano in the LD2 Senate race and Emilia Cortez in the LD23 House race, bringing its Arizona target list to 17 races.

The announcement shows that Democrats aren’t just targeting obvious swing districts.  Gallitano is running in a hotly contested North Phoenix area, and Cortez is in a Democratic-leaning district in southwestern Arizona where Republican Michele Peña has repeatedly survived challenges.

Republican Senator Shawnna Bolick, who easily bested a challenger from the right in this year’s primary, will face Gallitano in LD2. She told Arizona Globe that she expected Democrats to target her after her narrow 2024 victory and was more surprised that they didn’t take action sooner.

“It was bizarre,” she says. “It was surprising that I wasn’t on that first list. I knew at some point they would add me. Here we are. I’m not surprised overall, but I am surprised that they waited so long.”

Bolick won her seat in 2024 by about three percentage points, but a Republican victory in her area isn’t a sure thing. “It’s an R+1 voter registration,” she said. “You have to focus on the swing voters as much as possible.”

The DLCC is the national Democratic organization that focuses on state legislative races. The designation gives Gallitano additional national party support, including access to research, data and voter-contact resources. “She will have a ton of money coming in now that she’s on that list,” Bolick said.

Bolick added that she didn’t know much about her opponent and is focusing more on targeting swing voters than going on the attack. “I’m more concerned about pulling together our general election plan than who my opponent is,” she said.

She said she plans to center her short general-election campaign on cost of living issues, as that’s what concerns her constituents most. “I have been focused on cheaper gas, affordable housing, and have been pushing against the food tax. I’ve already been working on affordability issues, and voters will see that.” She argued that Democrats have no real counter for her platform, and that they’ve repeatedly tried to win the district’s Senate seat without finding a successful formula.

“They don’t have a winning recipe,” she said. “If they did, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

 LD23 is an even more nuanced case. Peña has twice won in a district where Democrats hold a registration advantage, making her exactly the sort of Republican Democrats believe they ought to be able to dislodge. Taken together, the two races give a sense of the Democratic strategy for reclaiming a majority in the Arizona Legislature: beat a Republican in a genuine swing district and claim a Republican-held seat in territory Democrats believe should favor them.

Arizona Republicans enter the fall with little room for error. Democrats need only a handful of net gains to win control of either chamber, making individual districts such as LD2 and LD23 potentially decisive. “Trump’s poll numbers are not very good,” Bolick said, “and independents are not going in a Republican direction….We’ve got fewer than 100 days.”

She added, “They always find someone to run against me.”