PHOENIX — When Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) decided to run for Senate, it provided a rare opening in one of the safest congressional districts in the state for Democrats and set up a fiercely competitive and expensive primary.
The July 30 primary results were close and after an automatic recount, the top two contenders were separated by just 39 votes.
Typically, such a narrow outcome would result in a legal battle to ensure all votes were properly cast and counted — but this is Arizona, where former president Donald Trump and Republicans have criticized the voting systems for years, especially in the Phoenix area. Kari Lake, the Republican running against Gallego for Senate, is still legally challenging her defeat in the 2022 governor’s race, which she lost by about 17,000 votes.
The congressional candidates and key Arizona Democratic Party figures were fearful that casting doubt on the result would draw claims from Trump and his allies that Democrats were “election deniers,” according to five Democrats and a Republican closely familiar with the race who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss private conversations. Questioning the outcome, they said, carried the risk that the former president would cite complaints made by Democrats about the legitimacy of the state’s voting system should he lose the November presidential election and try to undermine the results again.
Plus, neither of the Democratic candidates’ campaigns had evidence of problems big enough to change the outcome of the race, they said, and the odds of winning a court case were slim.
“The conversation was mindful of those conflicts,” said one Democrat familiar with the losing candidate’s strategy who has been involved in Arizona politics for many years. “We were very careful that the narrative was not anything that says, ‘The county runs terrible elections.’ … We were going to do what was best for the election without us being skeptical and putting on a bad look for Democrats.”
The close primary illustrates the challenge facing Democrats around the country — especially in battleground states — who may face the prospect of challenging razor-thin outcomes in November. After defending the nation’s voting systems and describing attacks on it as an existential threat to the American experiment, Democrats could find themselves in the position of raising challenges to it after the general election.
Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District stretches across parts of Phoenix and its suburbs and its residents are mostly Latino and working-class. It has about 313,000 registered voters, the fewest of any of the state’s nine districts. The district had one of the state’s lowest rates of voter turnout in the 2022 election, where Gallego captured 77 percent of the vote.
The race to replace him was blistering and expensive, pitting two progressive front-runners against each other: Yassamin Ansari, a former Phoenix City Council member who years ago advocated for climate change as a policy adviser at the United Nations, and Raquel Terán, a former state lawmaker, one-time chair of the state Democratic Party and community activist. The race offered an up-close view into fissures within the party’s most liberal wing — a stark departure from the type of competitive congressional races that typically take center stage in the state where candidates must appeal to middle-of-the-road voters during general elections.
Both candidates focused heavily on their relationships with constituents within the district and their professional records. Ansari, the 32-year-old daughter of Iranian immigrants, was considered an underdog and emphasized her work on the city council to try to make housing more affordable, to tackle climate change and protect access to abortion. Terán, who was born in an Arizona border town, was largely considered the front-runner and had the backing of influential party figures, like Sen. Mark Kelly (D) and Planned Parenthood’s lobbying arm. Terán, 46, also ran on the need to increase affordable housing while highlighting her support of abortion rights.
With the candidates largely agreeing on policy, they emphasized their historic backgrounds, youth and leadership styles. Their allies, meanwhile, criticized campaign donations by those who had previously given money to Republicans or conservative causes and questioned the opposing candidates’ commitment to the district and liberal causes. As early voting began, Terán called on Ansari to denounce the support of a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC that had ties to Trump-aligned donors and poured about $1.4 million into the race.
The race saw more than $5.6 million in ad spending, according to data from AdImpact — an unprecedented level in this district. As early voting began and the campaigns knocked on doors to turn out voters in the searing heat, no one knew how it would end.
It didn’t end on Election Day. For six days, the candidates and their teams gathered around computers to frantically check updates from Maricopa County, which administered the election. They contacted voters who had issues with their ballots to fix them with the county so they could be tallied. Finally, after more than 44,000 ballots were tallied, 42 votes separated the candidates — making it one of the closest federal races in state history.
Ansari, who held the advantage, did not claim victory; Terán did not concede.
“We are still hard at work ensuring that every vote is counted,” Ansari said.
Terán said: “We know as Democrats, especially here in Arizona, how important it is for every vote to get counted.”
The race headed to an automatic recount under a state law passed after Trump’s 10,457-vote defeat in 2020. Recounts rarely change outcomes, and Ansari and her team wondered whether Terán would challenge the final result in court, said four people familiar with conversations. But it was a risky proposition since there were no substantial problems with the way the election was run. On top of that, Terán’s attorney represented two Democrats who have made trust in elections cornerstones of their own political brands: Vice President Kamala Harris and Kelly, the senator who was fresh off consideration to join Harris’s ticket.
“Having the very team who defended Arizona’s outcome in 2020 raising challenges without evidence in 2024 would have been political insanity,” said Stacy Pearson, a Ansari ally who informally advised the candidate and was involved in some strategy discussions.
During video meetings and phone calls, Terán and her campaign weighed her path forward, two people recalled. Terán did not respond to a request for comment.
“It was the campaign’s approach to leave no stone unturned,” one person said. “There’s always a trust-but-verify thing.” The campaign looked for abnormalities in the election process, examined notes from election observers and scoured news reports and social media for complaints about how the election was administered.
“We looked very closely at everything, we asked a lot of questions,” the person said. “I don’t think Raquel Terán ever wanted to go to court on the basis of a conspiracy theory or an unsubstantiated allegation. In the age that we live in, doing something like that … wouldn’t be helpful.”
Terán’s campaign waited for the results of a recount, which came on Aug. 20 in a Maricopa County courtroom. Attorneys and campaign aides, state and local election directors and reporters gathered inside for a rare exercise. Much like being handed a verdict in a criminal case, a sealed manila envelope was handed to a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.
“You all must be exhausted,” the judge said before opening the envelope and sliding out the paperwork.
“Yassamin Ansari received 19,087 and Raquel Terán received 19,048 votes,” the judge said. “This means the higher vote-getter is Yassamin Ansari.”
Ansari had added no new votes during the re-tally while Terán had picked up three. In the end, just 39 votes separated the candidates — three votes less than the original 42-vote margin. Errors sometimes happen during elections and when election officials checked their work during the recount, they found three differences that favored Terán:
When counting a batch of early ballots, one was not tabulated in the original count because of a machine jam. The ballot was counted during the recount, adding a vote for Terán.
One voter filled in the oval next to Terán’s name and the oval next to the line for a write-in candidate, which is called an overvote. That overvote was removed from the original count. The recount adjudication board determined that the voter intended to vote for Terán.
Another voter marked the oval next to Terán’s name and put some sort of shimmery substance — possibly white out — in another oval. The recount adjudication board awarded the vote to Terán after determining the voter intended to vote for her.
Terán quickly and publicly conceded, and called Ansari to congratulate her.
“The rest of the country should feel assured that Maricopa County and Arizona run a phenomenal election, and they are diligent, they are tireless, they are meticulous,” Ansari said at a victory event inside of a sheet metal workers shop. “Whoever wins in November, I trust that the election will run perfectly.”
Dan Keating contributed to this report.