Pima Supes set process to replace Grijalva in District 5 seat

The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to set up the process of appointing a new District 5 representative to replace Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who resigned this week to pursue her late father’s congressional seat.

The supervisors will accept applications for the position through 5 p.m. on Monday, April 7, and are scheduled to fill the vacancy at their April 15 meeting.

The appointed supervisor’s seat will be up for a special election in 2026 and the winner of that race will serve through 2028.

Grijalva’s resignation is effective on Friday, April 4.

“I just think that it is such a privilege and a gift to have the opportunity to talk to people about what is happening in our communities,” said a tearful Grijalva, who thanked the county staff for the work they have done. “We all have such a responsibility, and it has been my pleasure to be here and serve with all of you.”

Supervisor Steve Christy wished Grijalva well and joked that he would miss arguing with her “because I always win the argument.”

Grijalva, who was first elected in 2020 and reelected in November 2024, announced on Monday, March 31, she would be resigning when she launched her congressional campaign in Congressional District 7. Nominating petitions for that race are due April 14, the primary election is July 15 and the general election is Sept. 23.

Grijalva’s father, longtime Southern Arizona congressman Raúl Grijalva, died on March 13 at the age of 77 after a battle with lung cancer. He had represented Southern Arizona since he was first elected to Congress in 2002. His funeral was last Wednesday.

An applicant for the vacant District 5 Board of Supervisors seat must be 18 years old, a resident of District 5, a registered voter, literate in English and a Democrat to match Grijalva’s political party.

Applicants must submit a letter of interest, a resume, a financial disclosure statement and a conflict of interest form.

District 5 stretches through Central Tucson from the West Side  area of Tucson Mountain Park to East Side precincts around Wilmot Road. Nearly half the voters are registered Democrats —49 percent — while 15 percent are registered Republicans and the remainder are independent of the two major parties.

Supervisors told Clerk of the Board Melissa Manriquez to ask the League of Women Voters to schedule a public virtual forum for the potential appointees before the April 15 board meeting.

When the Board of Supervisors voted in 2023 to replace Democrat Sharon Bronson, a longtime member of the board, Supervisor Rex Scott said he would not support a candidate who planned to run for the seat in 2024, saying that it would give the candidate an unfair advantage at the ballot box.

But Scott said he did not feel it necessary to set the same approach for the District 5 seat.

“I certainly do not have the same feelings about this appointment that I did about Sharon’s because the circumstances are extraordinarily different,” Scott told the Tucson Sentinel.

In that case, Scott said, the 2024 election was just a year away and Bronson had served on the Board of Supervisors for more than a quarter-century.

Bronson “only had one year left, she already had at least one primary opponent, and it was going to be the first time that anybody besides her would have been in that seat since 1996, so that’s a significantly different situation than what we’re dealing with now,” Scott said.

Supervisor Jen Allen, who won the District 3 seat last year after being passed over for the appointment, said she wanted to appoint someone who would run in 2026.

“I’d like to appoint someone who will run and has the potential to win in 2026,” Allen told the Sentinel.

One likely candidate for the District 5 seat is former state lawmaker Andrés Cano, who started interning in the District 5 office under the late supervisor Richard Elias in 2007 when he was still in high school. Cano worked fulltime in the office from 2012 to 2019 until he won election to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2018.

Cano left the House of Representatives in 2023 to pursue graduate studies at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Cano said Monday he did not want to comment on his potential application until after the supervisors established the replacement process at their Tuesday meeting.