← Election Series · State Legislature coverage · Arizona districts
No endorsement
The district
Legislative District 24 covers parts of Central Phoenix and Glendale. Its partisan baseline is Democratic: the district voted Democratic by 20.5 points for president in 2024 (D+20.5).
Three seats are at stake: one in the Arizona Senate and two in the Arizona House, where voters vote for two. The Senate incumbent seeks a second term against the local Republican Party's own chairman. In the House, both seats turned over inside the Democratic primary — one incumbent retired and the other lost renomination — while Republicans fielded a single nominee.
The Senate race
Analise Ortiz (D) is the incumbent, in her first term. She was unopposed in 2024. She won the 2026 Democratic primary with 9,938 votes.
Ortiz's best honest case: she holds the seat, she was unopposed last cycle, and first-term incumbency in a D+20.5 district reflects her party's firm hold on this ground. Continuity and a clear primary win are what she offers.
Pros: Incumbent; unopposed in 2024; clear primary victory. Cons: She is a party-line Democrat. No documented break with her party toward our values — the Manchin test — was located in this record. That is enabler status; no personal extremist program was documented for her, and we do not claim one.
Frank Steele (R) is the Republican nominee. He is the chairman of the LD24 Republican Party — the district's own party organization — and won his primary with 4,066 votes. He had raised $0 as of the March 2026 finance reports.
Steele's best honest case: the man who chairs the local party is putting his own name on the ballot in a district his party usually loses, which at minimum gives general-election voters a choice that an unopposed race would deny them. A Republican Senate organizing vote, in the chamber where majorities control confirmations, is the heaviest argument any long-shot nominee carries.
Pros: Offers a contested ballot in a one-party district; leads the local party organization, so his candidacy is organizationally serious even where it is financially empty. Cons: $0 raised as of March 2026 is a documented fact, and it limits what a campaign can do. The record located here contains no record in office and no verified signature claims to test at endorsement depth — an insufficient record, stated plainly.
The flaw, plainly: For Ortiz, party-line enabler status with no Manchin-test break located. For Steele, no proven flaw was located; the bar is verification, and his file does not clear endorsement diligence.
The House race
Voters choose two. Incumbent Anna Abeytia is retiring. Incumbent Lydia Hernandez lost renomination. The Democratic nominees are therefore both newcomers: Alberto Flores (D), with 7,468 votes (39.95%), and Lisbeth Arescurenaga (D), with 6,930 votes (37.07%).
The only Republican nominee is Delores McLaughlin (R), with 3,987 primary votes, for two seats. As in several districts this cycle, a single Republican nominee can at most take one of the two seats.
Flores's and Arescurenaga's best case is democratic in the small-d sense: Democratic primary voters chose a fresh delegation, retiring one incumbent by choice and removing another at the ballot. McLaughlin's case is that she is the sole alternative organizing vote on the ballot, in the chamber where a Democrat's organizing vote is lighter — a stalled House is not a lost House when the Senate stays in control.
Pros / Cons, tightly: Flores — pro: led the Democratic primary; con: party-line Democrat on an unverified record, no Manchin-test break located. Arescurenaga — pro: won a contested nomination; con: same enabler pricing, same thin record. McLaughlin — pro: the only non-Democratic option; con: thin verified record, one nominee for two seats.
The flaw, plainly: No proven personal flaw was located for any House candidate in this record. The Democratic nominees are priced as enablers, not extremists.
OUR CALL
Senate — NO endorsement. Ortiz carries party-line enabler status in the chamber where an organizing vote weighs most. Steele's candidacy is brave and ballot-real, but $0 raised and an unverified record do not meet the diligence an endorsement demands. Unproven is not a demerit — it is why we watch rather than endorse.
House — NO endorsement, LEAN McLaughlin for one seat. She is the only nominee whose organizing vote points away from the party-line delegation the primary produced. A lean states direction; it does not pretend a thin file is a verified one.
For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.
Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "2026 Arizona Senate election" and "2026 Arizona House of Representatives election" (compiling Arizona Secretary of State primary results, July 21, 2026, and SeeTheMoney campaign-finance reports as of March 2026) — rosters, primary vote totals, fundraising figures, and the 2024 presidential baseline by district (Dave's Redistricting, via Wikipedia).
- Record gaps: Steele's, McLaughlin's, Flores's, and Arescurenaga's records, positions, and signature claims, and Ortiz's itemized vote record, could not be verified from the compiled source at this sourcing depth; no additional reputable outlet reporting on these races was used. Those gaps shape the calls above and are stated rather than filled.
- Standing check: no pedophile-association material meeting the proven standard was located for any candidate on this ballot
Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.
AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.
← All Arizona state-legislative districts · Full state-legislative enumeration