Democrats in Battleground LD17 Get More Votes than MAGA Republicans in the Primary

There is a shift away from MAGA in Tucson’s battleground LD17. Voters cast more ballots for the three down-to-earth Democratic legislative candidates in the July 21 primary than the Republican candidates.

“Thanks to all of you who voted for us, helping us beat our Republican challengers by over 5,000 votes combined, in a majority Republican district!” said Democrat Holly Lyon, a candidate for the state House.

Lyon garnered 21,590 votes, and her colleague, incumbent Rep. Kevin Volk, garnered 20,823. The turnout for the Republicans John Winchester was much lower – 18,810 votes – as was that for incumbent Republican Rep. Rachel Jones Kesher with 18,464 votes.

Lyon added, “Our State Senate candidate Edgar Soto also received many more votes than his Republican challengers—in fact, many more votes than either Kevin or I did.”

LD17 wraps Tucson’s north and east side — Rincon Valley, Tanque Verde, Oro Valley, Marana, and SaddleBrooke.

Soto received an impressive 27,696 votes in the primary, compared with Republican primary candidate Christopher King, with only 19,734 votes.

There are two reasons for this shift in Republican-leaning LD17:

1. Democrats are running much better candidates. They are addressing kitchen-table issues that affect everyone.

Holly Lyon, a former teacher and Air Force Colonel, is running to

• Bring down costs of housing, groceries, utilities, and healthcare
• Secure Arizona’s water future
• Make data centers pay their own way
• Strengthen public education and hold ESA vouchers accountable
• Lower prescription drug prices

Rep. Kevin Volk is a small business owner, former teacher, and co‑founder of an affordable housing affordability company.

Volk is running to:

• Bring living costs down
• Invest in education
• Invest in our water future

Edgar Soto for the Arizona State Senate is a Pima Community College dean and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, lifelong educator, and community leader. He is running to:

• Lower Costs for Families
• Strengthen Public Education
• Support strong public safety

Volk, Lyon and Soto are all endorsed by Democrats of Greater Tucson.

2. In contrast, the Republicans are yapping about tired culture-war issues.

Republican Rachel Jone Keshel is best known for her photo with disgraced Justine Wadsack posing with guns and high heels in front of the Capitol.

Republican Keshel’s top priorities are:

• Fighting the woke agenda in schools
• Fighting abortion rights
• Allowing concealed carry of weapons on school campuses
• Fighting vaccine mandates
• Opposing mail-in voting
• Election denial. She even called her own winning 2024 election “illegally administered”

On top of that, it’s unclear if she really even lives in LD17. She may live in a five-bedroom house in Vail (LD19) with her husband. She lists her address as “the Arizona Capitol” rather than a specific district home in multiple financial filings. She uses censorship technology to eliminate her address on the Internet.

Republican John Winchester’s regressive priorities will take away rights:

• Opposes abortion — with no exceptions for rape or incest
• Says healthcare “is not a natural right” and that Medicaid and Medicare are “entitlement programs” that are “imprecise and wasteful.”
• Supports voter suppression, denying the right to vote to people without a photo ID
• Opposes the minimum wage as being counter to “principles of capitalism”
• Supports ESA school vouchers and eliminating the U.S. Department of Education

Winchester lies that he is “not a career politician,” but this is not his first campaign. He ran against Ally Miller in the 2016 Republican primary for the Pima County Board of Supervisors. His biography also says his political involvement began while working on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign during high school.

Republican Christopher King for Senate in LD17 is a hardcore reactionary. His top priorities are:

• Preserving disastrous ESA school vouchers with no limits
• Repealing the right to abortion
• Denying climate change in the middle of the hottest, driest summer in years.
• Opposing minimum wage laws.
• Opposing gun safety laws

The primary results send an unmistakable message: LD17 is no longer safe territory for MAGA extremism. Holly Lyon, Kevin Volk and Edgar Soto collectively demonstrated that voters want candidates who offer solutions on affordability, public education, water security, healthcare and public safety—not another round of election denial, abortion bans, unrestricted vouchers and manufactured culture wars.