Pima County Supervisors: Rex Scott leads in District 1 race

Scott had 58.5% of the votes in the initial release of results Tuesday night.

Republican challenger Steve Spain had 41.5% of the vote.

Results so far come from early ballots and were released Tuesday night by the Pima County Elections Department via the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office’s results page.

If his lead holds, Scott will serve through 2028.

Scott, a former long-time public educator and councilman in Athens, Ohio, narrowly beat Spain in the 2020 election to become the district’s first Democrat supervisor to win the seat since Ron Asta in 1972. He serves as the board's vice chair. He also is chair of the Pima Association of Governments (PAG) Regional Council and has been the county’s representative on the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) Board since 2021.

Spain, his opponent, told an Arizona Daily Star reporter Tuesday night that he was "cautiously optimistic" while refreshing his phone for the local results. "We worked really hard on this campaign. I think we had some very effective messaging," Spain said. Spain's platform touted fiscal conservatism and prioritized “safety at the border,” getting “obscene books out of the children’s sections of our libraries” and bringing “the values of hospitality to constituent services.”  Spain has a career in the IT and hospitality industries.