TUCSON — The election isn’t for another year, but the race for Congress has started.
Kristen Engel, the Democrat who lost the Arizona Congressional District 6 race to Republican Juan Ciscomani in 2022, announced Wednesday she again running for the office.
“Juan Ciscomani and the Republicans in Congress have the wrong priorities; rolling back access to abortion, kicking the can down the road on our climate-driven water crisis (and) ignoring parents’ pleas to address gun violence,” Engel said in her announcement video.
The Ciscomani campaign wasted no time in reacting to Engel’s announcement, issuing a press release that read, “Engel is an extremist who wants to defund the police and doesn’t support securing our border. She’d make our community less safe,” and that Engel “is endorsed by some of the most extreme forces in her party, from Raul Grijalva to Nancy Pelosi.”
The Ciscomani campaign also announced last week that, during the first quarter of this year, he has raised more than $1 million for next year’s race.
In one of the closest Congressional races in the state, Ciscomani defeated Engel by 5,232 votes in 2022, second only to the 3,195 votes that separated Republican incumbent David Schweikert and Democrat Jevin Hodge in the Dist. 1 race.
Congressional Dist. 6 includes most of Graham, Greenlee and Cochise counties; a portion of Pima County, including a portion of eastern Tucson; a small portion of northern Santa Cruz County, and a portion of Pinal County, including Casa Grande.
