That snaky line probably made the difference.
Many factors decide any election, of course, but you can logically trace the outcome of the narrow Congressional District 6 race back to before the candidates were even decided.
In 2021, the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission debated and finally decided the line that would divide District 6 from District 7.
It became, let’s be frank, a gerrymander that ever-so-slightly benefited Republicans and may have made the key difference. As it stood Tuesday, Republican Juan Ciscomani was leading Democrat Kirsten Engel by less than 4,000 votes, or about 1 percentage point. Engel has conceded her loss.
It’s the kind of small margin that a well-drawn line can create. How it became that way, though, is surprising. In short, the only Tucsonan on the five-member commission, Republican David Mehl, took Democratic Party members’ wishes and turned them to Republican advantage.
One of the key moments happened in late October, 2021, when Tucson Mayor Regina Romero wrote a letter to the commission asking that north of Broadway, the line between Congressional District 6 and District 7 be moved further east.
At the time, the line was along North Sixth Avenue, north of Broadway. That meant that the entire university area and most of midtown were in Congressional District 6, the one that Engel and Ciscomani eventually competed over, as opposed to Raul Grijalva’s Congressional District 7, which covers southwestern Arizona.
She asked that the line be moved further east “at least” to North Campbell Avenue, if not further. Mehl was happy to comply. After all, every move of that line further east took Democrats out of Congressional District 6, a district Republicans were hoping to flip.
He wielded his local knowledge and suggested that the line should go as far east as North Craycroft Road, removing most of midtown and all those Democrats, from Congressional District 6 and putting them in Congressional District 7.
In the end, the line went down North Country Club Road and North Alvernon Way through midtown, before jutting even further east south of Broadway, all the way to Pantano Road.
Every move of the line, of course, leads to other changes. And in Congressional District 7, that was more emphatically so, because it is a Voting Rights Act district —one that under federal law was to be drawn to create representation for Hispanics, over 50 percent Latino voters if possible.
So when thousands of non-Hispanic Anglos in midtown were brought into Grijalva’s new district, that meant that new Latinos had to be added somewhere else.
One dog leg stretches east, between East Broadway and East Golf Links Road, all the way to Pantano Road. Romero said that peninsula of CD 7 jutting into CD 6 went a little too far east, but overall she approved of the concept in her letter.
“This would keep majority Latino neighborhoods along the Broadway/22nd street corridor (e.g. Barrio Centro, Arroyo Chico, Pueblo Gardens, Julia Keen, etc) together with Latino majority neighborhoods on the city’s southside, ensuring their voting power is not diluted by being included in a non-VRA district while helping to maintain a second VRA Hispanic/Latino majority Congressional District in District 7,” she wrote.
The dog-leg remained. But the new midtown voters in CD 7 had to be balanced out by Latino voters elsewhere, said DJ Quinlan, a Democratic Party consultant who worked for the Arizona Latino Coalition for Fair Redistricting. That coalition was co-chaired by Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, the congressman’s daughter.
“Moving central Tucson’s population to Grijalva’s district, that necessitated the need to go in to southern Cochise County,” he said.
Yes, southern Cochise County. It has long been part of the southeastern Arizona congressional district, but it no longer is.
“We have had some questions on — to even better achieve the VRA (Voting Rights Act) compliance, you know, can we increase the Hispanic voting percentage in that district (District 7)?” Mehl asked during the Dec. 21, 2021 meeting.
“I would suggest on the southern boundary of D7 that we extend over and pick up Bisbee and Douglas and give up the eastern — the northeastern portion of Santa Cruz, and that brings in additional Hispanic voters that I think will take that CVAP (proportion of Hispanic voters) to over 50 percent,” Mehl said.
It took some arguing, and some politicking, but that eventually happened as well. Thousands of Latino Democrats in the Douglas area became part of the southwestern Arizona district represented by Grijalva.
“The entire goal was to take as much of Tucson as possible out of District 6,” Quinlan said. “To do so, they did rather strange things like split Casa Grande in half, create the dog leg in Cochise County, and then make the bizarre claim that everything west of Alvernon is U of A.”
Of course, it’s true that the resulting district is extremely competitive. This election’s results show that — in contrast to claims made earlier this year that it would be lopsidedly Republican, noted Ciscomani supporter Daniel Scarpinato, who was then Gov. Doug Ducey’s chief of staff.
“It is truly a district that is right on the cusp,” he said. “More than a swing district, it is divided.”
But if the line had been drawn slightly differently — leaving Douglas out, for example, or putting the line through midtown at North Campbell Avenue, it could easily have swung for Engel instead.
Grijalva, by the way, is winning by one of his healthiest margins — 30 percentage points. Now, though, he’s one of three Democrats going to Congress from Arizona, as opposed to five under the old districts.
Congressional District 6 candidates Kirsten Engel and Juan Ciscomani on abortion access. Video by Andrea Morabito For the Arizona Daily Star.
