4/5

Saying Congressman Tom O'Halleran is not great would be an understatement. O'Halleran is a retired Chicago police officer who served 8 years as a Republican in the Arizona state legislature before changing parties just prior to launching his bid for Congress in 2016. O'Halleran now serves as a co-chair of the Blue Dog Caucus, where he works to keep bills that have +80% support among Democratic voters from ever reaching the House floor.

O'Halleran votes with Republicans an upsetting amount of the time, and not just on issues of "immigration enforcement" that might be expected from a border state Democrat in a purple district. O'Halleran voted for a series of Trump-backed deregulation bills, including rolling back key parts of Dodd-Frank. Additionally, O'Halleran has seldom seen a bloated military spending bill he did not like, even while refusing to co-sponsor mainstream Democratic priorities such as paid family leave, ostensibly because the price tag is too high.

O'Halleran represents one of the most competitive districts in the country. AZ-01 is an odd mix of Native American reservations, small cities, and rural mining communities. It has split its votes several times between Democratic Congressional candidates and Republican Presidential nominees, going for Romney 50 to 48 and Trump 48 to 47. If O'Halleran were just a normal underwhelming Democrat, then we would probably leave him alone. However, his voting record is constantly worse than many of his colleagues from equally competitive districts.

There is clearly a hunger in AZ-01 for a more progressive alternative. In 2020 O'Halleran's heavily outspent opponent received 41% of the vote without any help from national progressive groups. We will see what the district looks like after the next redistricting cycle, but if AZ-01 gets even a few percent bluer, O'Halleran should start watching his back.