Democrat Kirsten Engel, who last year represented southern Arizona and lost a tight contest in Congress, said Wednesday she will be back in the race in 2024.
U.S. Representative Juan Ciscomani won the 2022 election, filling the vacancy with nearly 5,000 more votes across constituencies. CD 6 extends from Pinal County to about half of Metrohe Tucson and includes most of Cochise County except Douglas.
Engel “looks like she’ll get the job done” in the upcoming election, her campaign said. Republican operatives countered that she was a “failed Democratic candidate.”
While the freshman Republican has repeatedly worked to associate his election story with the American dream, Engel said in her announcement, “For many of us, the American dream is increasingly out of reach. It keeps falling.
“And what are Juan Ciscomani and the Republican Congress doing? Retreating women’s rights, ignoring climate change, and prioritizing big business over working families and small businesses,” Engel said. rice field. “I will not sit back and let Juan Ciscomani back down.”
“Southern Arizona voters rejected the extreme liberal Kirsten Engel just five months ago,” the Republican Party said.
Ben Petersen, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a press release, “Her risky plan to defund the police, raise taxes and support open borders (sic) has gone mainstream. Engel will lose again because we are so far from.”
“We got very close last time,” Engel said, adding that CD 6 was added to the Democratic Party’s national “districts in play” list.
Democrats — the former state senator who was trying to replace former U.S. Representative Anne Kirkpatrick in Congress — have run out of money in the 2022 election. Engel says he has a 6 to 1 ratio.
That gap is largely due to Democratic congressional campaign committees focusing their efforts elsewhere rather than investing in hotly contested areas that have been hotly contested for years.
Her campaign raised more than $2.4 million, but Engel’s fundraising was overwhelmed by outside groups spending on behalf of the Republican candidate. She had used up nearly all of her war funds, and in March she reported that she had only $1,305 left and $518 in debt.
However, the competition between the two candidates was so fierce that it took the Tucson Sentinel and other news outlets a week after Election Day to announce the results.
That narrow gap “proved she was a candidate who could win this tough seat,” Engel’s campaign said Wednesday.
