Democrats Are Desperate to Flip an Arizona House Seat. They’re Rallying Around a Former Republican.
· The Intercept
As the Democratic Party establishment consolidates around a former Republican they hope can flip a key Arizona congressional seat, super PACs are spreading their resources across candidates in the district’s upcoming Democratic primary — and three of the top spenders have ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
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Marlene Galán-Woods, who was a registered Republican until 2018 and is the widow of the state’s former Republican attorney general, picked up the endorsement of the Democrats’ powerful House campaign arm in May, raising eyebrows in a cycle dominated by anti-establishment sentiment. One of the three main super PACs spending in the Democratic primary for Arizona’s 1st Congressional District is backing her, while another is touting businessman Jonathan Treble as “the only lifelong Democrat” in the race. All three PACs are opposing the district’s former Democratic nominee Amish Shah, whose critics point out that he briefly registered as a Republican to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. (He’s said he thought it would help boost Hillary Clinton.)
The finger-pointing in the toss-up district suggests that candidates are walking a line between touting their abilities to work with Republicans and distancing themselves from the GOP before Democratic voters pick their nominee next Tuesday. Democrats consider the district — which includes wealthy exurbs northeast of Phoenix whose residents are mostly white and around 20 percent Hispanic — an example of a true median among voters and a bellwether for other competitive races.
“It’s what I call the old playbook,” said Rick McCartney, another Democratic candidate in the race, referring to the Democrats’ choice of a former Republican to appeal to swing-district voters. McCartney, himself a former Republican who mentioned his own ability to work with all parties, said it’s reasonable for people to question whether they align with a party’s values, but it’s also reasonable for voters to want transparency. Navigating both can be tricky.
For Galán-Woods, the balancing act rests in part on her commitment to reproductive rights. Of just under $4 million in outside spending on the primary this cycle, more under $1.3 million came from Pro-Choice Majority Action, which formed in May and says it works to elect women who support abortion. The PAC is primarily funded by its affiliate, the Democratic group EDW Action Fund, which received $1 million from United Democracy Project — AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC — in the spring. The PAC for Democratic Majority for Israel also gave $37,750 to EDW Action in April.
Abortion is a critical issue in Arizona, where voters passed a constitutional amendment codifying it as a right in 2024. Galán-Woods’s major backers are a mix of the Democratic establishment, women’s rights organizations, and pro-Israel interests. In addition to Pro-Choice Majority Action and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which gave Galán-Woods its biggest investment on primary ads so far this cycle, she’s backed by EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the PAC for Democratic Majority for Israel, and BOLD PAC, the campaign arm for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Lenny Young, a spokesperson for Pro-Choice Majority Action, said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss the group’s conversations with its partners, but it doesn’t pick candidates based on Israel policy. “Correlation is not causation,” Young said. “We support women. And our priority is women who can help us take back the majority.”
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“Marlene is a mother and a grandmother, who will never back down from defending reproductive freedom and stand up to any effort to strip away fundamental rights,” said EMILY’s List spokesperson Amelia Fox. Her critics point out that before she left the GOP in 2018 — saying it was “driven off a cliff” by President Donald Trump — Galán-Woods long voted for anti-abortion Republicans, including former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed into law several of the nation’s most extreme abortion bans in the early 2010s; former Arizona Sen. and presidential candidate John McCain; and former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Galán-Woods’s campaign declined to comment.
Treble’s deep-pocketed supporters, meanwhile, are lifting up the businessman as the only truly committed Democrat in the primary race. He’s backed by a super PAC called Crush MAGA, which has spent over half a million dollars opposing Shah and backing Treble, and says it’s focused on opposing Trump and his allies.
“Jonathan Treble is the only lifelong Democrat in this race, and the candidate best prepared to win this critical seat in November,” Crush MAGA spokesperson Sophie Mestas told The Intercept. “Crush MAGA is committed to electing strong Democratic leaders who stand up to Trump, protect the right to vote, and defend our fundamental freedoms.”
Save Democracy PAC has used another PAC, Crush MAGA, as a vehicle to target progressive candidates in other primaries.
But Crush MAGA, too, is an affiliate of a PAC that received $100,000 from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project. That group, Save Democracy PAC — which backs Democrats and says it wants to get big money out of politics and protect the right to vote — has used Crush MAGA as a vehicle to target progressive candidates in other primaries. Save Democracy PAC, also known as SD PAC, has given directly to Democratic candidates this cycle but has spent little so far on primaries. Most of its independent expenditures in previous cycles were made during the general election.
Treble, who did not respond to a request for comment, has said he launched his campaign to fight for Medicare for All after he almost died from a vascular brain growth two years ago. His critics have pointed out that he did not vote in recent elections and did not register in Arizona until 2025, after moving there in 2022. He runs a company that sells printers and coffee machines to offices and has self-funded his campaign to the tune of $2.3 million, making him the top fundraiser in the race with $4 million in total. Galán-Woods is in second with $2.2 million, followed by Shah with $1.8 million, and McCartney with $1.3 million.
The outside spender in the race isn’t explicitly backing any candidate. BOLD America — which was founded by former Congressional Hispanic Caucus members and supported New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat before he lost his primary last month to a democratic socialist challenger — has spent just under $1 million opposing Shah.
In May, BOLD America received $650,000 from UDP.
In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for United Democracy Project said, “UDP has no involvement in any way in AZ-1.”
It’s been a tough midterm cycle for the Democratic establishment and some of the PACs that have emerged to prop it up.
Pro-Choice Majority Action spent $1.5 million to help outgoing Rep. Diana DeGette’s campaign before she lost to democratic socialist Melat Kiros in the June primary in Denver, Colorado. It backed Jasmeet Bains, who lost to progressive Randy Villegas in California; Julie Johnson, who lost to Collin Allred in Texas; and Shannon Bird, who lost to Manny Rutinel in Colorado. Two more of its candidates — Connie Chan and Melissa Hernandez — came in second in their California primaries and are headed to runoff elections.
Crush MAGA PAC has had more mixed results. In California, the group spent against Ammar Campa-Najjar and in favor of Lauren Babb Tomlinson, both of whom lost. In addition to spending against Shah, the group also launched ads last week against progressive Will Lawrence in Michigan that attacked him for having a savings account.
Despite the establishment’s blunders, in a race where so many candidates have dabbled in Republicanism, many were quick to assert their commitment to the Democratic Party line. McCartney, who has no known Super PAC support, was previously registered as a Republican but his campaign said he has supported Democratic presidential candidates from Bill Clinton to Kamala Harris. Shah’s campaign said he’s voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every presidential election he’s voted in, since Clinton in 1996 — and supported the other Clinton in 2016, as was the goal of his Trump primary vote.
Some Democratic voters, as McCartney pointed out, may still feel stung by a former Democratic Arizona senator.
“Particularly based on Kyrsten Sinema and how she went to Congress as a Democrat and walked out of there as an independent, I think people have every right to be focused on what it means to be a part of their party,” McCartney said.
It’s unclear who’s likely to win next Tuesday’s primary: Galán-Woods has the establishment backing, Treble has the campaign cash, and Shah was up 22 percentage points in the only public poll released on the race back in February. (House Majority PAC declined to share information on any more recent polling.)
Shah was also the district’s Democratic nominee in 2024, when, as his spokesperson Colin Lauderdale pointed out, “the DCCC stayed out of the primary election and only endorsed Dr. Shah in the general election, when they were joined by several other Democratic PACs and organizations.” He lost by less than 4 percentage points to incumbent Rep. David Schweikert, who is now departing to run for governor, leaving the Republican nominee unknown, too.
Democrats haven’t won this seat since the Obama administration. McCartney, who held a fundraiser for Galán-Woods last cycle and worked to elect Shah after he won the primary, pointed to party leadership as responsible for the failure.
“When the DCCC wants to come into this community and tell these voters who they should be focused on before they’ve even sat down and talked with somebody like me, it’s the old way of doing things, and people are tired of it,” he said. “It hasn’t worked for us, by the way.”
Update: July 15, 2026, 1:57 p.m. ET
The article was updated with new spending numbers from Pro-Choice Majority Action in a new filing Wednesday.
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