Opinion: Opinion: Sal DiCiccio was expected to be a front-runner in the Republican primary for a vacant county supervisor seat. But he’s all but bowed out.
What promised to be a crowded GOP race to replace outgoing Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates now appears less so.
Longtime Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, a provocateur on fiscal issues who didn’t shy from picking fights with city staff, has all but formally announced he’s not running.
He was presumed to be one of the front-runners, given his fundraising capacity and reputation as an unabashed partisan, for an office that could serve as a litmus test on the power of the extreme wing of the Republican Party.
DiCiccio’s pass leaves former state lawmaker Kate Brophy-McGee, a moderate, and attorney Tabatha LaVoie, who served on the Arizona-Mexico Commission under Gov. Janet Napolitano, as the two declared candidates for the seat.
Why so few running for a vacant seat?
On the Democratic side, Daniel Valenzuela, a Phoenix firefighter and a former Phoenix City Council member, has filed an intent to run.
Another Republican, Beau Lane, an advertising executive who made his first foray into politics when he was recruited to run last year for secretary of state, said Wednesday he decided against entering the race.
Lane plans to endorse Brophy-McGee.
The lack of candidates for the District 3 seat that Gates is vacating is intriguing, given the barrage of attacks against the board of supervisors over the 2020 and 2022 elections, and the supervisors’ defense of both the process and the results.
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Gates served as the board chairman during the 2022 midterms, when supervisors withstood angry protesters and correctly certified the results. He said in May that he was diagnosed with PTSD from election-related harassment, including threats of violence against him and his family.
Gates, like DiCiccio, served as a Phoenix city councilman before being elected to the board of supervisors.
Could DiCiccio have won in this district?
DiCiccio said on Wednesday that his decision pivoted on pending real-estate deals he committed to with business partners.
He remains the co-chair of the “Back the Blue Act,” a legislatively referred initiative that would levy a new $20 fine on each criminal conviction to pay an extra $250,000 to the families of first-responders killed on the job because of a criminal act.
Leading up to this week, DiCiccio’s camp had talked up his chances of winning in the north-central Valley District 3, citing internal polling of Republican and independent voters that had him besting Brophy-McGee.
That presumption would have been tested in a district that, unlike the other four supervisor districts, is evenly split among registered Republican and Democrats and where independents are the largest cohort of voters.
The GOP primary for District 3 now appears Brophy-McGee’s to lose.
Reach Abe Kwok at [email protected]. On X, formerly Twitter: @abekwok.