Your vote has power. Use it in the Arizona primary to choose competence over conspiracy (2024)

Opinion: Arizona's 2024 primary election is the perfect opportunity for voters to choose competence over conspiracy.

When Arizona begins early voting, starting on July 3, voters will not simply cast a ballot.

You will send a message about issues and policies and people that matter.

That’s real power, even though the lineup in the last few primary elections might not make it seem that way.

Many races have been and remain this year as hold-your-nose-and-vote affairs, especially for moderate Republicans and independent voters.

Few candidates in contested races closely match reasonable views and priorities.

Bad candidates have infected Arizona politics

And no wonder.

The Republican Party — which, ironically, still holds a roughly243,000-voter registration advantageover Democrats —has been overrun by MAGA loyalists.

The state GOP and its offshoots have turned into confabs of cranks and misfits. Drunk with populism, the party refused to accept outcomes in the 2020 and 2022 cycles.

They turned on their own, censuring people like former Gov. Doug Ducey, the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, Cindy McCain, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and all seven justices of the Arizona Supreme Court.

Business leaders withheld support. Money dried up.

And then, bad candidates — people with eccentric views and oddball conspiracy theories, who prefer to engage in Donald Trump’s cutthroat form of politics — began dominating and winning GOP primaries, only to lose to Democrats in the fall.

Democrats ignore rural Arizona: That could cost them the election

Consider the message disaffected voters have sent in those races.

Republicans have primarily been the ones to turn Arizona blue, with moderate Republican and independent voters largely electing Democrats to most state offices.

Choose competence over conspiracy now

But they’ve done so largely in the general election. It’s time to send a similar message in the primary.

This time, it’s a wholesale rejection of unserious candidates — candidates who would rather tout party fealty or their own interests instead of what’s good for the state.

Arizona needs candidates who are willing to tackle issues that directly affect us, including housing, education and water.

And not just to use those issues as partisan bludgeons against those with whom they disagree.

Our state needs serious candidates with serious policy chops — or, if not the chops, then at least the interest to hone those chops by listening and learning from others, even those with which they disagree.

That is the government Arizona voters want and deserve. Thankfully, opportunities abound across the primary election ballot to make this transition.

CD 8 is a key race to send this message

One of the most important races in the state is who will replace Republican U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko in Congressional District 8 on metro Phoenix’s west side.

The race has drawn several candidates whose conduct in recent years should be unsettling, if not disqualifying. For instance, Abe Hamadeh has spent the last year and a half denying and challenging the results of the 2022 election.

Anthony Kern got himself indicted serving as a “fake elector” for Donald Trump. He also disgraced himself by very publicly turning his back to Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Blake Masters has crossed red lines attacking Hamadeh’s Muslim faith, while a conservative PAC supporting Masters has essentially called Hamadeh a “terrorist sympathizer.”

Former U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned in 2017 after pressuring female aides to have his child, is back seeking the seat in this West Valley district.

Lesko, who served as a conservative Republican but toned down the MAGA rhetoric, has endorsed the most responsible Republican in the race.

That would be House Speaker Ben Toma, who is one of the level-headed figures in the party and who has accepted the results of the past two elections, even dispelling some of the conspiracy theories on his own.

So is the Republican LD 17 Senate race

Another Republican primary in which competence will be on the ballot this year is the race for state senator in Legislative District 17 in southern Arizona.

Former Sen. Vince Leach, a more traditional Republican and fiscal conservative, is back to reclaim the seat he lost to MAGA figure Justine Wadsack in 2022.

Leach is keying on Wadsack’s eccentric opinions and looks — her China-doll hair and blazing red lipstick — with a series of ads entitled, “There’s something weird about Justine Wadsack.”

Wadsack endorsed posts on social media that called the 9/11 attacks and the Uvalde, Texas, shooting “black flag” and insider operations. She has dabbled in election denialism and also turned her back on the governor.

As is this county supervisor race

Athird race is the District 2 GOP primary for Maricopa County supervisor. There, a tough-talking Trump conservative, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who got caught up in a Capitol sex scandal in 2016, is taking on incumbent Tom Galvin, a traditional Republican.

In 2016 a female lobbyist accused Ugenti-Rita of trying to recruit her for a threesome. Ugenti-Rita now — and without irony — accuses Galvin of doing nothing as the county library stocks sexually explicit books for children.

While Galvin, an attorney, is focused on more staid issues like improving the business climate and fiscal responsibility, Ugenti-Rita crudely says on AZ Family TV, “He sucks and he’s gotta go.”

These aren’t the only races where the line between competence and extremism is clear.

If Arizona Republicans want to take back their party, they will need to vote for candidates across the board who are responsible and mature.

In fact, voters arguably may have more power — and can send the strongest message — in the primary than the general, because that is where many legislative and county races will be decided.

You don’t have to be a card-carrying Republican or Democrat to vote in the July 30 primary, though independent voters must choose a party ballot by July 19 to vote by mail.

It’s time to flex the power of our vote and move Arizona back toward a more serious and sensible middle, where it belongs.

This is an opinion ofThe Arizona Republic's editorial board.