Photos by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
In Arizona’s Legislative District 4, a GOP incumbent is trying to keep a grip on his seat by appealing to moderates, while his Democratic opponents who are working to flip the seat go after his record on abortion rights and gun control. The outcome of the District 4 race could determine if Republicans keep their slim hold on control at the legislature, or if it flips to Democratic control for the first time in more than 60 years.
Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, was Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget director before he was elected to represent District 4 in 2022. He was the top vote-getter in the race, ahead of the only Democrat that ran, Laura Terech, who didn’t seek reelection this year and resigned from the legislature in June.
This year, Gress and former Trump campaign advisor Pamela Carter are facing off against two Democratic candidates, former state Rep. Kelli Butler and Madison Elementary School Board President Karen Gresham.
LD 4 covers parts of northeast Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. The Independent Redistricting Committee rated it as a highly competitive district that leans Republican when it drew a new legislative map in 2021.
Both Butler and Gresham have gone after Gress for his record on abortion, after he celebrated the end of the constitutional right to abortion when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, and later sponsored five fetal personhood bills in the state House.
Among those proposals were measures allowing women to collect child support back to the date of a positive pregnancy test, allowing pregnant women to drive in the carpool lane and increasing penalties for perpetrators of domestic violence against pregnant victims.
“Those are very dangerous and those were his, so it was pretty clear where he stood,” Gresham told the Arizona Mirror.
Gress has maintained that the sole purpose of the bills was to support women and families, inspired by his own modest upbringing by a single mother in Oklahoma. But Republicans in U.S. Congress introduced bills similar to Gress’, at the urging of anti-abortion groups. One of the Senate bill’s sponsors, Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, explicitly said that the bill was intended as a way to establish “that life begins at conception.”
All five of Gress’ bills either failed to make it through both legislative chambers or were vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
In April, after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled a near-total abortion ban dating back to 1864 was enforceable, Gress was one of the first Republican lawmakers to speak out against the more than 160-year-old law. He was one of only three Republicans in the state House of Representatives who voted to repeal it.
Gress’ efforts to repeal the ban angered members of his own party, as well as some Democrats in the legislature who claimed that he was only trying to avoid political fallout from the ban, which was unpopular with voters from both parties.
Butler accused him of caring more about protecting his seat than protecting women.
Gress told the Mirror that the 1864 ban was not “workable or reasonable and didn’t respect women.”
Gress told the Mirror that he supports Arizona’s existing 15-week ban, voted into law by Republicans in 2022, but would prefer adding exceptions for rape and incest. The law currently only includes an exception for medical emergencies.
But during an America Pack candidate forum on May 3, Gress said that he voted to repeal the 1864 ban because he felt that, if Republicans maintained their commitment to a total ban, it would push voters to support the Arizona Abortion Access Act. He added that he believed the existing 15-week ban would be more palatable to voters.
“It’s a loser,” Gress said of the total ban. “Most Arizonans are not with us on that, and I think it was the right call for life.”
Both Gresham and Butler are pro-choice, and back the Arizona Abortion Access Act, a citizens initiative on the ballot this fall as Proposition 139 that would enshrine the right to abortion into the state constitution.
Pamela Carter, who did not respond to multiple interview requests, is a Christian minister who said in 2022 that she “would say no on any abortion.”
The political action committee for the Center for Arizona Policy, the anti-abortion group that has spearheaded virtually every Arizona law restricting abortion since the 1990s and backed the Civil-War-era near-total ban on abortion, endorsed both Carter and Gress.
While Carter, who badly lost a bid for Scottsdale City Council in 2022, claimed on her website to have the full support of her family, that’s not true. Her sister, actress Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman in the 1976 television series, has endorsed her older sister’s Democratic opponents.
“I have known Pam my entire life, which is why I sadly cannot endorse her for this or any public office,” Lynda Carter told Mother Jones last month.
The younger Carter is a staunch pro-choice advocate who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Gress has out-fundraised all of the other candidates in the LD4 race by a longshot, bringing in $406,715 ahead of the July primary, according to campaign finance reports. In the same time frame Butler brought in $196,714, Gresham raised $184,467 and Carter collected $84,988.
Republicans currently have a one-seat majority in the Arizona House, so the results of the LD4 race could help determine which party comes out on top, or whether there’s an even split.
Democrats haven’t controlled the state House since the 1960s, and except for two years when the chamber was evenly split, Republicans have ruled over the Arizona Senate since the 1990s. But with Katie Hobbs in the Governor’s Office, if they manage to flip both chambers, Democrats would have more power in state government than they’ve had in more than 60 years.
“I’m pretty confident that we are at least going to get to a tie, if not get a majority,” Butler said.
Democrats have been trying unsuccessfully to flip the legislature for the past few elections, but they believe 2024 is their best chance yet, while Republicans are working to hold onto their slim majority.
“It’ll be a close race for all of us in District 4,” Gress said, adding that Butler is an “avid campaigner” but that he thinks Republicans have “wind at their back.”
Gress said that he thinks Republicans will hold onto at least one seat in the district, and might pick up the second seat, though he admitted that he thinks whether that seat flips red will be a “coin toss.”
Education
Butler and Gresham are both running on plans to increase funding for public education in Arizona, which is one of the worst-funded systems in the nation.
Butler, who served as a state representative from 2017-2022, said she first ran for office in an effort to make funding public education a priority in the state budget after seeing firsthand how woefully underfunded her children’s school were.
She didn’t run for reelection in 2022 after becoming frustrated with the Republican majority’s unwillingness to work across the aisle, she said. Instead she successfully ran for a spot on the Maricopa County Community College Board. After Terech in March announced she wouldn’t seek reelection, Butler jumped into the race and Democrats rallied to ensure she qualified for the ballot.
But Butler said she has hope this year that Democratic candidates can flip one or both chambers, giving them more power in negotiating the state budget.
Gresham, who booted Gress from the Madison Elementary School Board when she ran against him in 2021, said her time on the board has given her an inside view of how fights over school funding at the Capitol impact public school districts. She added that increased funding would help to decrease classroom sizes, increase teacher salaries, helping to attract and retain quality teachers.
Gress, a former public school teacher, last year proposed a bill that would have raised teacher salaries by $10,000 per year, but Democrats criticized the proposal because it didn’t include raises for support staff like classroom aides. The bill never made it to a vote in the House.
Both Gress and Carter are advocates for the state’s school voucher program, which both Butler and Gresham have criticized for its ballooning budget to pay for private, parochial and home schooling while public school funding suffers.
On her campaign website, Carter claimed that her Democratic opponents support the “radicalization of our K-12 schools and their curriculum,” but did not elaborate on what she meant.
“I will work tirelessly to safeguard the innocence and well-being of our children, defending their right to a traditional upbringing free from uninvited ideological influence,” Carter wrote.
Carter worked as a Christian wellness influencer for many years, promising her followers that she could help them “learn how to increase (their) metabolism through Biblical eating habits,” Mother Jones reported.
Carter also previously claimed that she worked as a “prayer intercessor,” akin to an activist prayer warrior, while she was a poll worker in Arizona. She has mostly steered clear of overtly Christian language during her campaign, but her campaign website includes a link to Psalm 91, which purports that God will protect Christians from all harm.
Public safety
One of Gresham’s top concerns is safety in public schools, with promises to “pass gun safety legislation, including laws that mandate secure storage and universal background checks.”
Both Gresham and Butler — who also supports “common sense gun safety measures” — criticized Gress for his vote last year in favor of a bill that would have allowed concealed weapons on college campuses. Hobbs vetoed the bill.
Gress told the Mirror that his experience as a college student when the Virginia Tech shooting happened in 2007, leaving 33 people dead, informed his belief that, if someone was outside a classroom “mowing down” students, he would feel safer if someone inside the classroom had a gun.
“I’m going to go with the best option we have,” he said.
Carter has accused her Democratic opponents of wanting to defund the police — something neither has advocated — boasting that she stands with police and other first responders. She also claimed on her campaign website that her opponents support President Joe Biden’s “open border” policies, while saying that she believes the border should be secured.
Butler has promised work with the congressional delegation to bring legislation that would decrease illegal border crossings.
Gress earlier this year voted for a ballot referral that will ask voters to make it a state crime for migrants to cross the southern border and empower local police officers to arrest them.
Proposition 314 has been criticized by several immigrants rights groups and some members of law enforcement, who say that it would increase racial profiling, make immigrants feel unsafe and would cost law enforcement agencies hundreds of millions. Critics have also said it is unconstitutional because GOP lawmakers failed to provide any funding to implement it.
Appealing to the center
Butler, Gresham and Gress are all working to appeal to centrists, which they will all likely need to win in a district where 33% of the voters are registered as independents.
In addition to ensuring abortion rights and better education funding to both K-12 and higher education, expanding access to health care, Butler has promised to help attract new businesses to the state and help it to remain competitive.
“When Karen Gresham and I are elected, we are going to focus on serving the needs of the people in our district in Arizona,” Butler said. “I feel like the Republicans have gone too far to the extreme end of the political spectrum, and we need to come back to the middle and we need to be solving problems.”
Gresham wants to see the state fund all-day kindergarten, and said she will work to help create legislation to handle the state’s water crisis, an issue of concern for voters across the political spectrum.
Butler, Gress and Carter have all emphasized the importance of ensuring the future of Arizona’s water supply.
Gress has touted his experience working across the aisle at the Arizona House, saying that he hopes to bring a human-first approach to the housing crisis, by helping those living on the streets deal with addiction and mental health issues before providing them with housing.
“The housing first approach has been a dramatic failure,” he said.
Gress said that he’ll also work to get reauthorization for a program he advocated for last year that provides success coaching to kids just out of the foster care system who don’t have the same kind of support system as most recent high school graduates.
“At the end of the day, I don’t work for my caucus, I don’t work for the speaker — I work for the residents of District 4, and I think they want solution-oriented leaders,” Gress said.
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