The election to replace Rep. Raúl Grijalva has pit an online influencer against the late congressman’s daughter
Published
July 13, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)
An aerial view shows the south side of the city of Douglas next to the double wall on the US-Mexico next to the Mexican city of Agua Prieta (L) in Douglas, Arizona, on October 15, 2024. (OLIVIER TOURON/AFP via Getty Images)
Everyone is running as an outsider in the Democratic primary to replace the late Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, speaking to the appetite for change within the party.
Grijalva, who died in March, always positioned himself as an outsider in Democratic politics throughout his 11 terms in Congress. In 2015, he was the first Democrat in Congress to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 presidential primary, and in Congress he was known as a principled environmentalist and advocate for Indigenous communities.
The two leading candidates vying to become his successor in Arizona’s 7th district also see an outsider campaign as the path to victory, with both Grijalva’s daughter, Adelita Grijalva, and activist Deja Foxx positioning themselves as anti-establishment. Both are competing in the July 15 Democratic primary, the winner of which will take part in a special election set for Sept. 23.
Adelita Grijalva, 54, has leaned on her experience in the district, serving for 20 years on the Tucson Unified School District board and, since 2021, on the Pima County Board of Supervisors. She has also picked up the endorsement of national progressive figures, like Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Foxx, 25, has positioned herself as representing a new generation of politics. Before running for Congress, Foxx worked on former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, advocated for women’s reproductive rights, and spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. She has garnered the support of one-time Vice DNC chair David Hogg, who decided not to run again, after the party voted to redo the vice chair election on a technicality. The decision capped off a months-long fight within the party, after promising to support primary challengers to Democrats he described as “asleep at the wheel.”
Daniel Hernandez, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives, Jose Malvido Jr., an Indigenous activist, and Patrick Harris, Sr., a retired health care executive, are also running in the primary.
In what little polling has been done on the race, however, Grijalva and Foxx have dominated the field. A Change Research survey from late June found that Grijalva led the field with 43% support while Foxx came in second with 35%. Hernandez was a distant third at 9%.
Thomas Volgy, a political scientist at the University of Arizona and the former mayor of Tucson, told Salon that “neither one of these are really establishment candidates in any sense.” Volgy added that the two are running on similar platforms and that, in large part, the decision in the district is coming “down to the tradeoff between Grijalva’s experience and Foxx’s youth.”
Both have centered standing up to Trump,