In the final weeks of the election season, a closer-than-expected race has emerged in a district that Republicans should comfortably hold.
In 2021, Arizona’s independent redistricting commission shifted the rural 2nd District several points to the right — though Biden won the old version of the seat by two points in 2020, Trump would have won the redrawn district, which stretches across the northeastern quarter of the state, by eight points. In 2022, moderate Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran put up a well-funded fight, but Republican Eli Crane still defeated him by eight points.
Crane, a former Navy SEAL who founded a Shark Tank-backed business that turns .50 caliber cartridge casings into bottle openers, joined the Freedom Caucus and quickly gained national notoriety for helping oust former Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. Though McCarthy attempted to engineer Crane’s defeat in the GOP primary, the freshman congressman clobbered former Yavapai County Supervisor Jack Smith, 81%-19%. (It didn’t help that Smith shared a name with the special counsel investigating Trump).
But now it looks like Crane might have slightly more to worry
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