Retired Air Force pilot Wendy Rogers was leading a tight three-way GOP primary in sprawling Congressional District 1 over state Sen. Steve Smith and attorney/small-business owner Tiffany Shedd.
Rogers has been actively campaigning for the seat on and off for years, but previously failed to get past the Republican primaries, losing the Congressional District 9 in 2014 and a race against Paul Babeu in CD1 two years ago.Β
In early results Tuesday night, Rogers had about 43 percent of the vote, compared with the nearly 39 percent of Republicans backing Smith.
Shedd had almost 19 percent.
The winner will face Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom OβHalleran in November.
In her third consecutive election cycle in CD1, Rogers fully embraced President Trump, with her campaign signs touting that she is a Trump-backed candidate.
At campaign stops, she handed out photos of herself with Trump.
Rogers pointed out that the district backed Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
βIt is an anomaly,β Rogers told a packed restaurant in Marana a few weeks ago, noting that while voters backed OβHalleran 20 months ago, they also voted for Trump.
The statement is accurate, but it was hardly a landslide.
Trump got 3,054 more votes than Clinton in CD1, which stretches from the northern outskirts of Tucson to the Four Corners region, covering all of the Navajo Nation and westward to the Grand Canyon.
Even OβHalleran admits in his fundraising letters that his seat is vulnerable.
As of Tuesday night, there were thousands of ballots uncounted in Pima County alone.
Rogers made headlines recently when a political tracker sneaked into one of her meetings, leaking audio to the Huffington Post about a speech where she discussed her anti-abortion stance.
At a meeting in Marana, Rogers said it was an honor to be skewered by the online outlet and refused to back away from comparing abortion to the Holocaust.
Smith campaigned on his experience in the Legislature for the last six years as one of his primary qualifications, sitting as the chair of the powerful Senate Commerce and Public Safety Committee.
Particularly, Smith pointed to how Arizona turned its economy around, digging its way out of a multibillion-dollar debt and becoming one of the leading job creators in the country while he was in office.
