{"id":229069,"date":"2026-10-29T05:43:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T05:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/a-revolution-in-slow-motion-is-arizonas-wealthiest-district-finally-done-with-trump-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T05:43:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T05:43:03","slug":"a-revolution-in-slow-motion-is-arizonas-wealthiest-district-finally-done-with-trump-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/a-revolution-in-slow-motion-is-arizonas-wealthiest-district-finally-done-with-trump-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A revolution in slow motion\u2019: is Arizona\u2019s wealthiest district finally done with Trump? – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Circumstances are ripe for change in this onetime Republican stronghold given the current dissatisfaction with Trump agenda, experts say
D<\/span>onald Trump has repeatedly asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot<\/a> in November\u2019s crucial midterm elections. And in the comfortable confines of Arizona\u2019s most affluent and fiercely contested congressional district, Trump is definitely on voters\u2019 minds.
But whether that helps or hurts the warring congressional candidates in this sun-drenched swath of suburbia, where Teslas and walled-in luxury homes dominate, depends on who you ask.
\u201cAny politician on the face of the Earth who\u2019s a Republican is not getting my vote,\u201d Tom Wolfe, a lifelong Republican, said while sitting down to a lunch of a burger and fries. Trump\u2019s endorsement was a \u201cdeath knell\u201d, the 82-year-old said. He plans to vote for Democrats<\/a> in next week\u2019s elections.
For David McGahan, a retired accountant reveling in his retirement life in Rio Verde, a desert enclave outside Scottsdale, the economy and the country are working well under Trump.
\u201cI like the course the country is on,\u201d McGahan said while pumping gas at a local Costco. \u201cMostly,\u201d he conceded, when a reporter noted the $101 charge for his fill-up.
Cushioned between blue cities and red counties, America\u2019s suburbs have emerged nationally as political battlegrounds. That is especially true of Arizona\u2019s first congressional district, which includes north Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.
Here, among the high-end golf courses and desert estates with breathtaking mountain views, the competition between Democrat Amish Shah<\/a> \u2013 an emergency room doctor who narrowly lost the seat in 2024 \u2013 and Republican Jay Feely \u2013 a former National Football League kicker backed by Trump \u2013 could help determine control of the House in November.
Since Trump\u2019s election a decade ago, Republicans\u2019 hold on the district has slipped, though the party still maintains a voter registration advantage. The seat is open, after the Republican congressman David Schweikert opted to not seek a ninth term.
\u201cThese are your McCain-type voters,\u201d said Matt Grodsky, a Democratic political strategist referring to the late Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain. They\u2019re business owners, hold college degrees and relatively tuned in to politics.
Given the current dissatisfaction with the Trump agenda and no incumbent with built-in name ID, Grodsky said circumstances were ripe for a change in this onetime Republican stronghold.
\u201cIf there\u2019s going to be a swing,\u201d he said, \u201cit should be this cycle.\u201d
W<\/span>ith a median income of $102,000, 33% of residents holding a bachelor\u2019s degree and 22% with an advanced degree, voters in the district lean conservative, but don\u2019t fit comfortably in Trump\u2019s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement , said Mike Noble, founder of Noble Predictive Insights, a non-partisan pollster based in Arizona.
Voters here helped deliver a slew of recent Democratic victories, including a succession of Democrats to the state\u2019s two Senate seats, a slight tilt to Joe Biden in 2020, and a slate of top statewide officials in 2022 when voters rejected Maga-aligned candidates. But Schweikert managed to hold on, albeit narrowly.
More cracks appeared in 2024, when the ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, won nearly 25% of the district\u2019s <\/strong>vote in the state\u2019s presidential primary \u2013 even though Trump had already clinched the Republican nomination.
Months later, while Trump easily won a second term from Arizona voters, the victory margin in the district was 3% compared with 5.5% statewide.
\u201cWe\u2019re watching a bit of a political revolution play out in slow motion,\u201d said Stan Barnes, a political consultant and former Republican state senator.
The shift comes from voters like Greg Edmunds who was a Republican for most of his life, backing candidates such as McCain and George W Bush. Trump\u2019s ascension in the party changed all that; he is now a registered independent.
In the battle for Congress, Edmunds said Feely\u2019s well-publicized embrace of Trump \u2013 amplified by the pro-Shah campaign \u2013 makes the choice an easy one. He will vote for Shah to help block Trump\u2019s agenda.
\u201cWe just can\u2019t have a rubber-stamp Congress,\u201d the Scottsdale resident said. \u201cI can\u2019t vote for someone like that.\u201d
In September, as Trump\u2019s approval ratings slipped nationwide, the influential Cook Political Report changed its rating of the Feely-Shah race from \u201ctoss-up\u201d to \u201cleans Democrat\u201d.
Feely supporters say the district is still conservative at heart, and voters ultimately are motivated by a desire to keep taxes low and make prices more affordable. That makes Feely a good fit for the district, said Adam Kwasman, a Republican and member of the Scottsdale city council. An early backer of Feely, Kwasman likened his demeanor to that of the former Arizona governor Doug Ducey: pro-business, genial and decidedly not a flamethrower.
\u201cThe Shah campaign is grasping at straws if they think the Republican nominee for Congress is a problem,\u201d Kwasman said, pointing to the district\u2019s preference for conservatives and downplaying the constant reminders of Trump\u2019s backing of Feely.
Feely, who Trump not only endorsed but also encouraged to drop his campaign in a neighboring district to run in congressional district one, has leaned hard on his football ties, hosting regular \u201chuddles\u201d with his team and peppering roadsides with campaign signs with a football motif.
His opponent, Shah, has football ties of his own. He was on the sidelines as a team doctor for the New York Jets during Feely\u2019s stint there as a kicker. The two never met, but the coincidence has made for a fun bit of common ground in a race where the two candidates disagree sharply on key issues from healthcare and datacenters to tariffs and congressional accountability.
Feely\u2019s campaign, with hefty support from Turning Point Action, has sought to portray Shah as a socialist, posting signs that link the Democrat to Senator Bernie Sanders.
Shah, who won the party\u2019s nomination again this year after a nasty primary battle against a rival backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, <\/strong>firmly rejects the socialist label. Meanwhile, his campaign has touted an endorsement<\/a> from the former state house speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who resisted pressure from Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Arizona.
I<\/span>ndependents will be key to who prevails in the 3 November election. After Republicans, independents are the second biggest voting bloc in the district, as well as the state. Democrats are in third place.
For Cindy Cummens, her choice is clear: Shah. She likes that, during his time as a state lawmaker, Shah worked with Republicans, often to the dismay of his Democratic colleagues.
\u201cI\u2019m tired of one side voting only one way, whether it\u2019s Democrats or Republicans,\u201d she said, adding that bipartisan cooperation could resolve issues such as high prices, from gas to groceries.
No Labels, a small startup party<\/a> that is trying to claim the independent lane, endorsed Shah for his willingness to work across the political aisle, said Paul Johnson, the No Labels chairman.
To qualify, Shah had to sign a pledge to uphold the US constitution, effectively vowing to abide by the rule of law. No Labels invited Feely to sign the pledge, but did not receive a response.
Since the July primary, Feely has backed away from his earlier enthusiasm to highlight the president\u2019s support. His campaign signs and website no longer tout the endorsement and he did not attend Trump\u2019s mid-October visit to Arizona. However, he was the only Arizona official or candidate to speak at the Republican party\u2019s midterm convention in Texas last month, an event many Republicans in competitive races skipped.
Earlier this month, Feely said<\/a> he was grateful to have the backing of former senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat-turned-independent. Though she has not publicly endorsed his campaign, Feely pointed to her support<\/a> as a sign that he can appeal to voters of all stripes.
Barnes, the political consultant, called the Republican\u2019s de-emphasis of Trump a savvy move that follows a time-honored tradition of shifting to the middle after winning the party\u2019s base in the primary.
\u201cHe can\u2019t win solely by being the Trump candidate,\u201d Barnes said, noting that Shah, too, had struck a more centrist tone.
Shah had previously supported a universal, single-payer healthcare system, but now instead says he wants to add a public option to the mix of other insurance plans to ensure all Americans are covered.
Although not an issue the candidates have spent time openly debating, abortion \u2013 a major topic <\/a>in the 2024 race \u2013 could be decisive in this tight race. Two years ago, district voters strongly supported a statewide ballot measure that ensured abortion rights<\/a> in Arizona, with 64.8% in favor.
Reproductive Freedom for All has targeted the district, pumping a six-figure investment into messaging that highlights Feely\u2019s anti-abortion stance and promoting Shah\u2019s \u201cvery solid\u201d support for reproductive rights.
In 2024, Shah helped collect voter signatures to put abortion rights on the ballot. Feely voted against the initiative, and says abortion policy should be a matter of local, not federal, control.
\u201cThe bottom line is what the federal government does on abortion can wipe out the gains we made by amending our state constitution to lock in a fundamental right to abortion,\u201d said Athena Salman, director of Arizona campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All.
Protecting reproductive rights resonates with Donna and Henry Male, both of whom are voting for Shah.
\u201cWomen\u2019s rights are absolutely top of my list,\u201d Donna Hale said. She worries about the future facing her 28-year-old daughter, especially with two years left in Trump\u2019s term.
Henry Male dropped his lifelong Republican registration after Trump\u2019s first term, but was frustrated with the party\u2019s opposition to abortion long before then.
Male said he didn\u2019t know much about Shah, but considered the Democrat his only option this year: \u201cThere\u2019s not a chance in hell I\u2019ll support Jay Feely.\u201d
This story was amended on 28 October 2026 to correct the name of Reproductive Freedom for All in the second reference<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Circumstances are ripe for change in this onetime Republican stronghold given the current dissatisfaction with Trump agenda, experts sayDonald Trump has repeatedly asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot in November\u2019s crucial midterm elections. And in the comfortable confines of Arizona\u2019s most affluent and fiercely contested congressional district, Trump is definitely on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}