The recent primary in Scottsdale offered some clarity on how the next iteration of the City Council will look, as well as one surprise: instead of fundraising favorite Tammy Caputi avoiding a run-off and winning outright, it was Jan Dubauskas who finished in first with enough of a margin to avoid a run-off, and as such will be the first new face on City Council.
Now with only two seats available and four candidates eliminated, we have more clarity as to how November will play out. Along with Tammy Caputi, Adam Kwasman, Mary McAllen, and Tom Durham will advance.
It is worth acknowledging that the dynamics of the general election are always significantly different than primary elections. While Scottsdale has above-normal voter turnout for primary elections, there will be a much larger number of registered independent voters as well as relatively unengaged voters. In this dynamic, strong partisanship is not a strong advantage, and name identification and money are key.
First we look at the fundraising elephant in the room: Tammy Caputi. In the piece we wrote in the run-off to this race, Caputi’s pre-primary campaign finance report wasn’t yet available. We now see that she spent an eye-watering $98,000 in the first two weeks of July. Even with that massive late expenditure however, she still had over $121,000 cash on hand rolling into the election, and presumably still has much of that. Considering her name ID, cash on hand, and relatively strong showing in July (even if it was below expectations), it’s difficult to not see her winning one of the two open seats.
With that, it is a race for one seat between three people. One candidate is relatively easy to suss out; for instance, it is rumored that Tom Durham intends to simply coast in this election and is comfortable with the idea of losing his seat, so he likely will become one of the people eliminated.
So the race for second place comes down to two people: Adam Kwasman and Mary McAllen. Considering that while Caputi is registered independent, she is a former Democrat and is generally considered somewhat left-leaning on some issues, voters may decide to balance out their second option. That said, Kwasman’s numbers were significantly boosted by the massive Republican turnout in the primary election, which is likely to be balanced out with increased Democratic turnout in the general election, so while Kwasman has a significant fundraising lead, one shouldn’t count out McAllen.