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Justine Wadsack trails Vince Leach in a too-close-to-call Southern Arizona Senate race • Arizona Mirror [1]
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Date: 2024-07
In the Republican primary race for the Arizona Senate’s Legislative District 17, Vince Leach was nursing a slim lead over incumbent Sen. Justine Wadsack on election night, with 51% of the vote to her 49%, according to initial unofficial vote counts.
A final tally will be completed in the coming days, as elections officials tabulate early ballots that were returned on Election Day.
Legislative District 17 covers the northeastern portion of Pima County and a southern sliver of Pinal County.
Wadsack, a vocal member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus who was elected to the Senate in 2022, beat then-Sen. Leach in that year’s Republican primary. The Tucson realtor who has backed numerous anti-LGBTQ bills and is a harsh critic of public schools.
Leach, of Saddlebrooke, was first elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2014, serving two terms before being elected to the state Senate in 2018. Before that, he worked in sales and management for more than three decades.
Wadsack quickly became one of the most controversial lawmakers in the Arizona Legislature, introducing legislation to make it a felony for kids to attend drag shows and accusing the State Bar of threatening lawyers with disbarment if they took COVID-19 related court cases. Even though Wadsack introduced legislation based on those claims, she refused to provide any evidence of those claims to the Arizona Mirror or her fellow lawmakers.
The State Bar has adamantly denied her claims.
Leach and Wadsack are not far apart in some of their beliefs. Leach also drafted an anti-drag bill in 2022 and, like his opponent, has railed against transgender girls playing girls sports.
But when Leach was a senator, he focused more on business to Wadsack’s focus on public schools and social issues.
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[1] Url:
https://azmirror.com/briefs/justine-wadsack-vince-leach-ld17-senate-gop/
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