The daughter of the late Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva is following in her father’s footsteps and running for his vacant seat in the House of Representatives.
Adelita Grijalva, who currently serves as a Pima County supervisor, will run to replace her father in Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District after Rep. Grijalva died on March 13 following a long battle with cancer.
She told the Arizona Luminaria that her father was “unapologetic and unafraid” of his liberal values, and she wants to carry on his legacy.
Rep. Grijalva had represented the Seventh District since 2003 and was the longest-serving member of the Arizona congressional delegation. He was planning to retire after recently winning a 12th term in the 2024 election but died after complications with lung cancer.
The late congressman was diagnosed in April 2024, causing him to miss a majority of last year’s votes. He was also largely absent from the beginning of the 119th Congress, the sole Democrat who did not show up to vote on the GOP’s budget resolution due to his diagnosis.
Adelita Grijalva has served as a county supervisor since 2020, making her the first Latina to be elected to the post. She chaired the supervisors for two years until January and served on the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board for 20 years.
She is following the political track her father took almost to the letter — the late congressman also served as a Pima County supervisor and on the Tuscon school board before his ascension to national politics in Washington. Her priorities, she told the Arizona Luminaria, will be immigration and education, two areas that the Trump administration and the GOP-controlled Congress are heavily targeting.
Adelita Grijalva said it’s important “that we can’t sit around and say, well, ‘This too shall pass.’ No. You have to have all of your defenses up.”
The primary election will take place on July 15, followed by a general election on Sept. 23. With a razor-thin majority due to deaths and other vacancies, Republicans currently cannot afford to lose more than two GOP lawmakers to pass legislation along party lines.
Adelita Grijalva will be the latest in a string of recent legacy cases. Former Texas Democratic Rep. Erica Lee Carter finished out the rest of the term of her mother, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. The late Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner won the election to represent Jackson Lee’s district for a full term in 2024 but died on March 5.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), chairwoman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, took over the seat of her husband, former Rep. John Dingell, who held the record for being the longest-serving member of Congress.
Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA), the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in the House, succeeded her late husband, Luke Letlow. He won the 2020 election to represent the state’s Fifth Congressional District but died from complications due to COVID-19 five days before he was set to take office in the 117th Congress.
The race to replace Rep. Grijalva will be closely watched due to the narrow majority in the House. The late congressman won his seat last November by 27 percentage points. All but one county, Pinal County, voted for the longtime congressman, so the seat will likely remain in Democratic hands.
Other special elections are on the horizon. With Turner’s death, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has until Friday to call an election to fill his seat and get it on the May ballot. Two Democratic candidates, Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards, are running for the seat that’s been blue since Jackson Lee first held it in 1995.
Per Houston Public Media, Abbott has not publicly commented on any plans to fill the vacant congressional seat. Texas law states he can call it anytime between now and November, or he can wait until the 2026 midterm elections — leaving the seat vacant for 19 months.
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On Tuesday, Florida residents in the First and Sixth Districts will cast their ballots for the successors of former Rep. Matt Gaetz and national security adviser Mike Waltz, respectively. Gaetz and Waltz won both seats by 30 points each in the 2024 election.
But polling shows these races may be closer than usual. Republicans have recently grown concerned about their ability to hang on to the Sixth District as the Democrats continue to out-raise the GOP candidates by the millions.