Progressive wave crashes in Sun Belt battleground as moderate holds his seat

After socialists won a series of Democratic primaries in New York, Colorado and Washington, D.C., the party’s moderate wing has secured what appears to be an increasingly rare victory in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District.

Incumbent Rep. Greg Stanton fended off progressive challenger Kai Newkirk on Tuesday night after months of bitter primary sparring. On the campaign trail, Newkirk accused Stanton of being too pro-business and too pro-Israel — accusations similar to those leveraged by socialists in New York who went on to dethrone establishment Democrats.

While those angles worked in New York, they fell flat in Arizona, allowing Stanton to advance to November’s general election, where he is a strong favorite to win a fifth term in the House of Representatives.

Stanton’s long-running support for Israel was a major flashpoint in the campaign.

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“He has refused to do anything to try to hold the extremist Israeli government accountable for its genocide in Gaza, for the war crimes around the region,” Newkirk said of Stanton.

The progressive specifically criticized Stanton for voting to send aid to Israel, for opposing the Biden administration’s efforts to restrict arms sales to the country and for voting to sanction the International Criminal Court for pursuing cases against Israeli leaders.

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Stanton, who receives support from AIPAC, has called for ceasefires and backed a two-state solution to end the war.

The incumbent congressman’s relationship with business interests was another sore spot for Newkirk.

“It’s always been clear to me that he’s a corporate Democrat who’s never going to fight for the kinds of changes that we need to really shift from oligarchy in our country to a real democracy that puts working-class people first,” Newkirk told Axios early in the campaign.

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Stanton is a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a center-left caucus within the House of Representatives that takes relatively pro-business stances when crafting policy. Newkirk, meanwhile, is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Newkirk became a DSA member just days after requesting their endorsement, a local DSA member told the Arizona Republic earlier in July. 

Newkirk also went after Stanton for his stances on immigration, specifically his support for the Laken Riley Act.

According to Newkirk, Stanton’s support for the Laken Riley Act “gave Trump a green light for his authoritarian mass deportation campaign and began this erosion of due process.”

The law, which was passed in 2025 after 46 House Democrats crossed party lines to support it, requires that federal immigration enforcement detain illegal immigrants who have been charged with serious crimes.

While Stanton voted for the Laken Riley Act and criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the border, he has also called for greater oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and criticized the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

The final stretch of the election was marred by controversy for Newkirk as a number of local activists and party organizations retracted their endorsements in July after former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner was accused of sexual assault, ultimately dooming his campaign.

A blog post from 2019, which Newkirk has called defamatory, accused him of “grooming” young female political activists. One of the post’s authors later denounced it, saying that it fell short of journalistic standards.

Despite this, the Young Democrats of Arizona pulled their endorsement of Newkirk on July 9, claiming that they were “recently made aware of some concerning patterns of behavior” from the candidate. A leader within the Democratic Socialists of America’s Phoenix chapter also rescinded his endorsement of Newkirk around that time, though declined to comment on the specific reasoning behind the decision.