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Democrats Are Desperate to Flip an Arizona House Seat. They’re Rallying Around a Former Republican.

Three of the super PACs spending in Arizona have their eyes on different candidates — but they all have ties to AIPAC.

As the Democratic Party establishment consolidates around a former Republican they hope can flip a key Arizona congressional seat, super PACs are spreading their resources across candidates in the district’s upcoming Democratic primary — and three of the top spenders have ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Marlene Galán-Woods, who was a registered Republican until 2018 and is the widow of the state’s former Republican attorney general, picked up the endorsement of the Democrats’ powerful House campaign arm in May, raising eyebrows in a cycle dominated by anti-establishment sentiment. One of the three main super PACs spending in the Democratic primary for Arizona’s 1st Congressional District is backing her, while another is touting businessman Jonathan Treble as “the only lifelong Democrat” in the race. All three PACs are opposing the district’s former Democratic nominee Amish Shah, whose critics point out that he briefly registered as a Republican to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. (He’s said he thought it would help boost Hillary Clinton.)

The finger-pointing in the toss-up district suggests that candidates are walking a line between touting their abilities to work with Republicans and distancing themselves from the GOP before Democratic voters pick their nominee next Tuesday. Democrats consider the district — which includes wealthy exurbs northeast of Phoenix whose residents are mostly white and around 20 percent Hispanic — an example of a true median among voters and a bellwether for other competitive races.

“It’s what I call the old playbook,” said Rick McCartney, another Democratic candidate in the race, referring to the Democrats’ choice of a former Republican to appeal to swing-district voters. McCartney, himself a former Republican who mentioned his own ability to work with all parties, said it’s reasonable for people to question whether they align with a party’s values, but it’s also reasonable for voters to want transparency. Navigating both can be tricky.

For Galán-Woods, the balancing act rests in part on her commitment to reproductive rights. Of just under $3 million in outside spending on the primary this cycle, more than a half a million came from Pro-Choice Majority Action, which formed in May and says it works to elect women who support abortion. The PAC is primarily funded by its affiliate, the Democratic group EDW Action Fund, which received $1 million from United Democracy Project — AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC — in the spring. The PAC for Democratic Majority for Israel also gave $37,750 to EDW Action in April.

Abortion is a critical issue in Arizona, where voters passed a constitutional amendment codifying it as a right in 2024. Galán-Woods’s major backers are a mix of the Democratic establishment, women’s rights organizations, and pro-Israel interests. In addition to Pro-Choice Majority Action and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which gave Galán-Woods its biggest investment on primary ads so far this cycle, she’s backed by EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the PAC for Democratic Majority for Israel, and BOLD PAC, the campaign arm for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Lenny Young, a spokesperson for Pro-Choice Majority Action, said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss the group’s conversations with its partners, but it doesn’t pick candidates based on Israel policy. “Correlation is not........

© The Intercept