Something unexpected is happening in Tempe. The March 2026 city council election, a race for three seats among seven candidates including three incumbents, has produced results that few political observers saw coming, and the story isn’t over yet.
The clearest winner of the night was incumbent Arlene Chin, who cleared the majority threshold outright and earned re-election without a runoff. But for the other two sitting council members, the returns have been a rude awakening.
Challenger Brooke St. George was the second-highest vote earner in the entire field: a remarkable showing. Incumbent Jennifer Adams, meanwhile, came in fifth, a stunning result for a veteran councilwoman seeking re-election. Adams now trails badly heading into the May 19 runoff, and her path back looks difficult.
Brooke St. George
What makes St. George’s performance all the more striking is the personal dimension. She previously worked inside Tempe City Hall supporting the Mayor and Council, meaning she worked alongside Jennifer Adams in the very institution Adams now struggles to defend. Voters didn’t just prefer a newcomer over a sitting incumbent; they chose someone who had watched that incumbent up close and decided she could do better.
Incumbent Berdetta Hodge, a historic figure as the first African American woman elected to the Tempe City Council, also advanced to the runoff, but her vote total leaves her far from safe. She’s at real risk of losing her seat in May.
Then there’s Bobby Nichols, perhaps the most unconventional candidate in the field. A complete political outsider with no electoral history, Nichols is aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America and has built his campaign around economic populism: public affordable housing, free childcare, and programs to reduce everyday costs for working families. It’s a platform rarely heard on Tempe ballots, and yet Nichols is headed to the runoff.
The incumbents had every structural advantage: name recognition, endorsements, and years of relationships with local voters. The fact that two of three are now fighting for their political lives while a DSA-aligned outsider advances suggests Tempe residents may be hungry for something different. The May runoff will tell us whether that hunger translates into a genuine changing of the guard.