Taking stock a week later

Ballot counting almost done … A few new faces emerge ... Dahl joins Gallego's team.

Now that more than a week has passed since Election Day, the picture of what local government will look like for the next four years is starting to get clearer.

And that picture looks a lot like it did before the election.

• Nearly every incumbent for Pima County offices won re-election.

• Democrats still control the county government.

• The GOP still controls the state Legislature, even more so than before the election. But local voters did add another Democrat to the Southern Arizona delegation.

The picture isn’t quite complete yet, but it’s close.

Pima County officials have counted more than 500,000 ballots as of Wednesday evening. They had about 9,000 ballots left to count, the bulk of which were provisional ballots.

County races

All but one high-profile county race has been decided already.

The one that is still up in the air is the contest between Sheriff Chris Nanos and Republican challenger Lt. Heather Lappin. Nanos has watched his lead dwindle over the past week. He’s now ahead by just 199 votes.

And, of course, that race has its share of controversy, after Nanos suspended Lappin in the final days of the campaign and the county supervisors all-but-censured him on Tuesday.

Now that Steve Christy clinched his race in District 4, every incumbent county supervisor has won re-election. The board will stay at a 4-1 Democratic majority, with Christy as the lone Republican.

The new face on the board will be Jen Allen, who beat Republican Janet Wittenbraker for the District 3 seat. They were competing to replace longtime Supervisor Sharon Bronson, a Democrat who resigned last year.

The Superior Court also will look the same as it did before the election. County voters overwhelmingly favored keeping 16 Superior Court judges on the bench, along with two state appeals court justices.

We still have to wait to see what happens with the sheriff’s race, but every other countywide office will be led by a Democrat.

One new face in countywide offices is Democrat Brian Johnson, who was elected treasurer. He beat out Republican Chris Ackerley, who was appointed to fill in for longtime Treasurer Beth Ford after she retired earlier this year.

Legislature

Another new face is in Legislative District 17, which runs from southern Pinal County along the northern edge of Tucson to Vail.

Democrats poured money into the races for the district’s Senate seat and two House seats, viewing it as an avenue to change the balance of power at the Legislature.

In the end, Democrat Kevin Volk won one of the House seats, beating out first-term Republican Rep. Cory McGarr. The other incumbent, Republican Rep. Rachel Jones, also in her first term, kept her seat.

The loss spurred McGarr to put together some of his own numbers and claim the election was rigged. Luckily, local claims of election-rigging are mainly relegated to the fringes this year.

Another new-ish face is Republican Vince Leach, a former lawmaker who won back the Senate seat in LD17 after losing it to Sen. Justine Wadsack in 2022. The race was neck-and-neck, but Leach eventually outlasted Democrat John McLean.

Even with Volk’s win, Republican lawmakers still expanded their majority at the Legislature. The GOP majority went from a two-vote margin in the Arizona Senate and House to a 17-13 edge in the Senate and 33-27 in the House.

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The Tucson Agenda has been right there with you through this year’s election season. With your financial support, we’ll be right there with you next time around!

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The GOP also expanded their majority in Congress, thanks in part to a key win in Southern Arizona.

Both members of Congress in Southern Arizona kept their seats, although one race was a real nail-biter.

Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani managed to eke out a win over Democrat Kirsten Engel in Congressional District 6, just like he did in 2022 when he won his first term.

The other congressional race, where longtime Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva cruised to victory in CD7, got us thinking about what’s going to happen two years from now.

It could get very interesting. Grijalva has said this will be his last term in Congress. Which local Democrats are going to try to fill his shoes in 2026?

For that matter, who is going to run for three seats on the Tucson City Council next November? Are any of the current council members going to run for Grijalva’s seat?

Joining the team: Tucson City Councilman Kevin Dahl is going to be part of the transition team for U.S. Senator-elect Ruben Gallego, the Gallego campaign said in a news release. Republican Kari Lake kind of conceded the race yesterday, but never really said she lost.

Call to the public: The Pima Association of Governments has opened their survey to the public on the RTA Next plan. You can fill out the survey here. Officials say they’re going to consider all the input from the public as they put together the final plan that will be sent to voters next November.

Gearing up for a battle: At a news conference Tuesday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes took aim at a Saudi-owned company that pumps huge amounts of groundwater, and said she’ll stand in the way of the incoming Trump administration’s policies on abortion and mass deportations, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reports.

Tariffs incoming: Local businesses are preparing for the impact of tariffs President-elect Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail, KGUN’s Kenny Darr reports. The owner of a tire business pointed to increased costs for imported tires, while a Mexican restaurant owner said being close to the border might soften the blow.

Call to the public, times two: The advisory board for Pima County’s library system is holding a special meeting Friday to figure out what to do about closing libraries, the Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff reports. The plan that was announced in August sparked a backlash from the public and county officials are launching a public engagement campaign before making any final decisions.

98.16%: The percentage of ballots already counted in Arizona. Pima County was at 98.31% on Wednesday evening.