AZ Sen. John Kavanagh
Regular readers know that we have been highlighting local political races that will impact our area and we project how those campaigns might play out in the November election. One district that we don’t find ourselves talking about much however is legislative district 5, which covers all of Scottsdale north of the 101 and also includes Fountain Hills and Carefree.
This district is currently represented entirely by Republicans: Joseph Chaplik and Alexander Kolodin in the House of Representatives and John Kavanagh in the Senate. While Chaplik has been making some waves in attempts to become the Speaker of the House in the State and has dusted up with elected officials including Mayor Dave Ortega, the others have been relatively mute for much of this year’s legislative session.
Due to the significant Republican majority in this district, the district’s Democrats are going with a “single shot” strategy in the House, where they only field one candidate and tell their voters to not use their second vote and instead leave it blank. The candidate for the LD 3 Dems is Richard Corles, and numerous swing districts have had significant luck with this strategy if they have a relatively small disadvantage. That said, this is not a small disadvantage for Dems; this is a solidly red district.
Regarding the money race, Corles is running in the Clean Elections system, meaning that his funding will be capped and he will receive about $50K to run his general election with; not a miniscule amount but a difficult amount to run a robust winning race with. Chaplik has proven himself to be a prolific fundraiser, a necessity if he wants to be seen as a viable Speaker candidate. He has raised $242K to date during this campaign, and sits with $94K cash on hand (CoH). Kolodin has been significantly less capable with fundraising, having only brought in $64K to date with $42K CoH. Unless he gets these numbers up in future elections he is setting his own political ceiling.
As for the Senate race, it’s a fairly boring one. John Kavanagh ran unopposed in the primary and has no general election opponent. This is about as easy as it gets.
As for how November will play out, there will be few elections that we cover that will be as clear cut as this one. All three Republicans are almost certain to cruise to re-election, and it will be a small miracle if the Democrat makes this an even relatively close contest.