According to United States Census Bureau data, current U.S. House of Representatives candidates Yassamin Ansari and Abe Hamadeh collectively enjoy 54 points of gerrymandered political advantage in their respective districts – she in deep-blue Central Phoenix, he in the scarlet-red West Valley.
Which is to say: They’ve already essentially won. With apologies to Jeff Zink (Ansari’s Republican opponent in Arizona’s 3rd District) and Gregory Whitten (Hamadeh’s Democratic rival in District 8), both are virtually certain to emerge victorious November 7 and enter Congress as Arizona’s newest freshman lawmakers, somewhat to their mutual surprise.
“I’m a young man and I didn’t know what the hell I was getting myself into,” Hamadeh, 33, says of the fractious GOP primary that led to his nomination.
Ansari and Hamadeh have more in common than their likely Congressional incept dates. Both are well-educated offspring of families who emigrated from the Middle East; both are in their early 30s and unmarried; both with experience in Valley municipal positions; both survivors of hard-fought, open-seat primaries against opponents with deeper political connections. But it’s their differences that offer the most intrigue. Representing two diametrically opposed blocs in Arizona culture and politics, they are likely to clash ideologically – and tack even further from the middle during their initial two-year terms. Or dare we hope otherwise?
Arizona is a presidential swing state, supposedly a narrow toss-up between Republicans and Democrats. But you’d never know it looking at the current delegation it sends to the House of Representatives: three Democrats and six Republicans. Of these nine seats, seven are considered “safe” – i.e. a district in which one party enjoys a minimum 7- to 10-percent registered-voter advantage over the other. Independent voters and smart campaigning could realistically help a candidate wipe out, say, a 2-3 percent advantage – it routinely happened in Arizona’s old 9th district, in fact, where Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and then Greg Stanton successfully wooed Independents through five election cycles – but a 7-point deficit is another story. Arizona Republicans currently hold four such districts, compared to three for Democrats.
Republicans hold smaller but meaningful voter advantages in the remaining two, “competitive” districts.
Hamadeh at a Donald Trump rally in Glendale in September. Photo Courtesy Abe for AZ
Some of this ideological sorting can be laid at the door of the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission, tasked with setting Congressional boundaries after each 10-year Census. The last such redistricting, in 2021, resulted in a map that disproportionally favors Republicans, padding the party’s waning advantage in District 8 (where Democratic challenger Hiral Tipirneni nearly unseated incumbent Debbie Lesko in 2018) and other competitive districts while generally diverting Democratic voters to districts already considered safe for the party, such as Ansari’s 3rd District, soon to be vacated by U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego.
Somewhat mysteriously, Lesko elected to forgo reelection in 2024 to run for Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, setting the table for Hamadeh’s successful open-seat campaign and Arizona’s imminent freshman double feature.
Arizona’s two newest safe-seat holders, while young, will arrive in Washington with résumés to slap on the table. Ansari is a Stanford graduate from a wealthy family, a former intern for Nancy Pelosi who earned a graduate degree from St. John’s College, Cambridge. After her service as a climate advisor in the secretary general’s office in the United Nations, she ran for a seat on the Phoenix city council and became the youngest woman ever elected to the body in 2021. She will represent Downtown Phoenix, parts of Uptown and a broad swath of South Phoenix and Laveen, traditionally held by Hispanic lawmakers.
Hamadeh is a former prosecutor and U.S. Army intelligence officer, a devoted supporter of Donald Trump who calls his story of rising to political prominence from a working-class family a version of the American Dream. He has railed against “the lawless invasion at the border,” and will represent the retirement riviera of Sun City and its neighboring cities of Peoria and Glendale in the northwest part of the Valley.
in a city council meeting last January, Photo Courtesy Yassamin for Congress
Ansari tells PHOENIX that she hopes to bring into Congress some of the same issues she worked on as vice mayor of Phoenix: clean energy, job creation, housing affordability, infrastructure and transitioning fossil fuel consumption to solar generation. During her time on the council, she pushed for a federal grant to add low- and no-emission buses to the city’s public transit fleet.
Ansari joining a Phoenix Sky Harbor labor protest in February. Photo Courtesy Yassamin for Congress
Another of her crusades was for opening more shelter space for the unhoused during blazing summer days, an initiative she says that cities can’t handle on their own.
“I saw how so much of the work we were doing to build shelters that have the potential to end homelessness really needed the participation of the federal government,” she says. That also means persuading the Federal Emergency Management Agency to include extreme heat episodes on its list of natural disasters, as well as passing worker safety legislation to mandate protections for airport employees, construction workers, and other outdoor occupations that require summertime exposure.
“That will be a long-term goal,” she says. “Heat is a silent killer.”
For his part, Hamadeh plans to support initiatives to label Latin American drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations” in a bid to reduce fentanyl imports. “This is an issue that affects so many Arizonans in my district,” he says. “Fentanyl is no longer targeting the inner cities. It all stems from the cartels and the open borders.”
He also hopes to encourage Taiwanese computer chip manufacturers moving into the northwest Valley to hire more American workers.
An old political chestnut holds that the best vocational training for federal office is the performativity and occasional stupidity of a grueling election campaign. If so, both Ansari and Hamadeh should be well-equipped as freshman lawmakers. The duo emerged as giant-killers this summer, fending off better known and financed primary opponents.
In Downtown Phoenix, Ansari faced Raquel Terán, a former social worker who became an activist during Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s baleful reign, learned the folkways of campaigning, and rose to the state legislature and chairmanship of the state Democratic Party. When Gallego vacated the House seat to run for U.S. Senate, it seemed a natural next step for her.
She attacked Ansari’s elite college background, family wealth and money she raised from out-of-state political action committees, claiming Ansari is “very disconnected from what’s happening in our community.”
In turn, Ansari seized on two $500 donations made by Republican political operative Stan Barnes, airing television ads linking Terán to “MAGA extremists.”
Ansari further improved her hand with a long list of union endorsements and made the critical decision to hire field director Tony Valdovinos, whose story about trying to join the U.S. Marines as an undocumented immigrant was the subject of ¡Americano!, a locally produced stage musical. Valdovinos subsequently founded a political consulting shop and become an ally of Gallego. The association likely helped Ansari portray herself as the congressman’s heir in the eyes of voters – a role for which Terán also vied. Both spent long hours knocking on doors in sunshine and monsoons, and the race ultimately came down to a recount.
Terán conceded gracefully. “This 39-vote difference has been a testament to what we as Democrats already know: Every vote matters,” she said on X, formerly Twitter.
Even though Terán had far-flung connections as the chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party, Ansari had a local advantage that proved hard to beat. “City council people are generally better connected to the district than a state representative,” Valley political consultant Chuck Coughlin says. “Ansari was able to talk more directly about social justice issues related to the police department. She always had a deeper grassroots base by virtue of her service on the council. And she worked harder and out-politicked her opponent.”
Despite a potential surface assumption, Arizona will not be electing its first two Muslim Congresspersons come November 7. Ansari’s grandparents fled Iran after the revolution of 1979, and she says her family generally left religious practice behind in the trauma. “I actually consider myself agnostic… I respect everyone’s faith, but I do not personally practice one.”
Previously, Ansari was sworn into office as a Phoenix city councilwoman with her hand not on a book of scripture but the Arizona Constitution. This is a not a common practice, but it mirrors the decision of Kyrsten Sinema – a self-described “Mormon apostate” – to be sworn into Congress with her hand on the U.S. Constitution in 2013.
Hamadeh has also taken a turn away from the Islamic traditions of his family. The Chicago-born son of a Muslim father and a Druze mother who emigrated from Syria, he calls himself “nondenominational” without further labeling. “Faith is so personal,” he says. “What makes somebody Muslim? I’ve probably been to more churches than mosques in the last five years. When I was in Thailand, I loved going to the Buddhist temples. It’s a very beautiful place to be.”
During his Army service, Hamadeh was posted in Saudi Arabia to do background checks on military officers before they could train in the U.S. While there, he paid a visit to the holy city of Mecca – but it was less of a spiritual journey than a military job, he says.
During his own bruising primary – against former friend Blake Masters and several other GOP candidates – Hamadeh’s heritage was predictably used against him. He endured smears of being a “terrorist sympathizer” and was targeted in TV ads showing him in traditional Muslim garb at Mecca. Masters also resurrected an old post Hamadeh made on a libertarian website in 2009, averring that “America was founded on Islamic principles.”
in Saudi Arabia during his 2021 U.S. Army deployment, Photo Courtesy Abe for AZ
Hamadeh and Trump at Mar-a-Lago in March, Photo Courtesy Abe for AZ
Still, none of those arrows landed with enough impact to pierce Hamadeh’s endorsement from Trump. He ultimately won the nomination by garnering slightly less than 30 percent of the District 8 vote – roughly five points better than Masters and well ahead of Arizona House of Representatives speaker Ben Toma and former Congressman Trent Franks.
That Hamadeh was able to overcome nativist suspicions about his Syrian name and roots in a deeply conservative district is also testament to changing attitudes and demographics, even in Trump country. “He’s energetic, articulate and in line with Republicans in that district,” says Barnes, the GOP-aligned consultant who donated to Terán’s campaign. “They know who they are and they know what they like. You win there by saluting God, guns and country in some variety of that order.”
The story of how Hamadeh’s family came to the Valley is a quintessential Arizona tale: They were seduced by the weather. His father, Jamal, won $50,000 in the Illinois Lottery and the prize came along with a stay at the Scottsdale Princess resort right after it opened in 1987. Hamadeh was 4 years old at the time.
“As soon as they got off the plane, [my parents] said, ‘Wow we found the Middle East of America,’” he remembers.
His father moved the family to West Phoenix and worked for Caesar’s Jewelry at Thunderbird Road and 35th Avenue, a step up from the time when the family was on food stamps. “That’s the purpose of welfare, when you need a helping hand,” he says. “I don’t think people understand that my family had nothing. The United States really provided my family the American Dream.”
After law school at the University of Arizona, Hamadeh prosecuted misdemeanor cases for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office before making a run for Arizona attorney general at the age of 31, drawing attention for brash calls to deport immigrants who overstayed their visas. Critics pointed out his father had done the same thing in the 1990s and faced an order of deportation himself. When Hamadeh lost the AG race to Kris Mayes by 280 votes, he claimed the election had been “stolen” and filed multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn the results.
One of his challenges is still active: a petition claiming that Mayes is holding the seat illegally. “There’s a terrible legal precedent being set,” he says. “I’m a former prosecutor, and I don’t think this can stand in any fair legal system.”
His bid has virtually no chance of succeeding since he has made three court challenges already with no success. Yet he sidestepped the hypothetical question of whether he would attempt to serve simultaneously as a congressman and Arizona’s AG – an exotic, unprecedented scenario that would most likely be deemed illegal.
His election denialism will not be out of place among Republicans in the 119th Congress, and certainly not in Arizona’s delegation: Andy Biggs, Eli Crane and Paul Gosar have all made vociferous false claims that Trump won the 2020 election, and even the state’s moderate GOP Congressmen – Juan Ciscomani and David Schweikert – have made gestures in that direction.
Yet Hamadeh spokesperson Erica Knight says he will not seek membership in the Freedom Caucus, the far-right home for MAGA Congressmen. “Abe’s plans are to be beholden to only the people of Arizona,” she says in an email.
According to Coughlin, this is a smart move because the Freedom Caucus has been a persistent irritant to Republican House leadership. Its members may get a lot of attention for obstructing bills and snagging primetime spots on Fox News, but they don’t get good committee assignments or appropriations. “This is about playing the long game of developing relationships with the White House and your colleagues,” Coughlin says. “It’s about seniority and sticking around. You have to be flexible to be able to support leadership. Being a reliable vote is a smart move for a freshman congressman.”
Passing such big-ticket bills or getting anything substantial done as a freshman congressperson is notoriously hard, but Ansari demonstrated considerable political skill in her August primary. The 3rd District traditionally favors longevity (see: former congressman Ed Pastor’s 24-year reign over the seat) and takes face-to-face conversations seriously.
“It’s a district where retail politics can make or break the candidate,” Barnes says. “You have to be a toe-the-line loyal Democrat. You have to be careful on immigration. You have to be about the government solving the problem of the day. These two candidates agreed on everything, so they had to fight about who was the most Democratic.”
Ansari prepping with “science guy” Bill Nye at a 2016 climate summit, Photo Courtesy Yassamin for Congress
And here lies an important point: While incumbents have generally been safe in Congressional races in Arizona, both Ansari and Hamadeh seem vulnerable – not to the other party, but to their own, via the primary. Ansari could be primaried because she flashes moderate tendencies – always a liability in heavily gerrymandered districts, where the “base” turns out more reliably than moderate voters – and is not Latino in a district that has had Latino representation since the days of Pastor. Hamadeh, also – because he’s a Trumpist, and if Trump loses, he’ll be contaminated with certain associations that future GOP voters may wish to forget.
But if they campaign effectively over the next few two-year cycles and solidify their constituencies, both Ansari and Hamadeh could be looking at long Congressional careers in seats that are virtually immune to the general election. Pundits have sometimes used the nasty word “sinecure” to describe such arrangements, but a safe seat in the U.S. House can be a public asset rather than a selfish tenancy – almost like a seat in the U.S. Senate, which the Framers intended to hold aloof from the grubby necessities of electoral politics, so that its members could actually legislate. Tucson-area lawmaker Raul Grijalva, for example, has been in Congress 21 years and has become one of the body’s fiercest advocates for the preservation of public lands and national parks. Former congressman John Rhodes held a safe Republican seat for 30 years (1953-1983), during which time he helped secure funding for the Central Arizona Project.
If Ansari and Hamadeh don’t ultimately perform that effectively for Arizona, they’re sure to claim one distinction: being part of the most culturally and ethnically diverse congressional contingent in Arizona history. (Two other potential freshmen, Democrats Kirsten Engel and Amish Shah, are also up for election November 7, albeit in competitive races too close to predict. Shah is a Mayo Clinic emergency room doctor who, like Hamadeh, was born in Chicago to immigrant parents.)
To consultant Coughlin, this kind of representational diversity speaks to broader issues in Maricopa County. “The whole face of the economy has changed,” he says. “It used to be agriculture and mining and homebuilding. Now it’s more high-tech and health care.”
Whether this more modern view of the Valley will translate to greater political consensus and civility remains to be seen – but hope springs eternal in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Despite some of his sharp rhetoric and Trump endorsement, Hamadeh insists he will look for opportunities for bipartisan cooperation.
“I completely understand that idea that you have to work across the aisle,” he says. “You’d be surprised – a lot of Yassamin’s supporters supported me as well. I see myself as a bridge between the traditional wing of the Republican Party and the MAGA wing. Hopefully we can go back to that old America where you can disagree without being disagreeable.”
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