(The Center Square)—Congressional candidates in Arizona sailed to victory with endorsements from President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Trump’s endorsement in the primary election played a key role in several races where control of Congress may hang in the balance. Some races are yet to be decided.
Here are early results in some of the races.
District 1
Former NFL analyst and Trump-endorsed Republican Jay Feely will face off against a Democrat who is yet to be determined in the Nov. 3 general election for one of the most highly contested congressional races in the country.
Feely, with 49.4% of the vote at 9 p.m. local time Tuesday, overcame challenges from Arizona state Rep. Joseph Chaplik and technology consultant John Trobough.
Democrats Amish Shah and Marlene Galán-Woods were in the top two spots for the party’s nomination. Shah previously ran against David Schweikert, the Scottsdale Republican who sought a bid for Arizona governor instead of reelection to Congress.
Shah had 42% of the vote over Galán-Woods who had 32.3% at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
“Arizonans just chose a fmr. NFL player, sportscaster, business & charity leader, dad & coach ready to fight to lower taxes, grow the economy & lower costs,” the National Republican Congressional Committee wrote in a social media post congratulating Feely on Tuesday night
Feely received more than $1.6 million in contributions over Shah who held $1.3 million in contributions. However, Galán-Woods received more than $2.1 million in campaign contributions.
District 2
Incumbent Rep. Eli Crane, R-Arizona, easily sailed to secure the party’s nomination against Democrat Jonathan Nez on Tuesday night. Crane received more than 51,000 votes compared to Nez with 39,000 at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
Nez and Crane were the only candidates running for their respective party nominations. Crane is seeking his third term in Congress. Nez, a former president of the Navajo Nation, is seeking to oust him.
Crane has touted legislation to end immigrant visa programs, like the H-1B, dedicated to high-skilled foreign workers. The End H-1B Visa Abuse Act of 2026 would pause the issuance of visas until the cap is lowered from 50,000 to 25,000.
Crane has a significant fundraising advantage over Nez with more than $8.6 million in contributions according to most recent FEC filings. Nez has slightly more than $3.2 million.
Nez has received $1,000 from the Sunflower Seeds Political Action Committee, $3,600 from the Zinc Collective PAC and $7,000 from James McClave, a trader from the Jane Street Group. Crane has received donations of more than $10,000 from the American Revival PAC; $5,000 from the Freedom Caucus Fund and $2,000 from Elevance Health.
District 3
Incumbent Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Arizona, also sailed to victory on Tuesday night without a primary competitor as she seeks her second term. Nicholas Glenn, a Republican write-in candidate, is seeking to challenge Ansari.
Ansari received 27,383 votes as of Tuesday night at 9 p.m. Glenn received 265 votes for his write-in campaign.
Ansari has remained critical of the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of documents associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has called for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to be impeached over the conflict in Iran.
“When it comes to Hegseth, this is a man that is willfully incompetent,” Ansari said in a video on social media. “The man has committed many impeachable offenses prior to the war in Iran, but it was that bombing in the school in Minab that killed more than 160 children that was the final straw for me.”
Ansari has received more than $1.3 million in contributions toward her campaign. She received $10,000 over the last year from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers PAC.
District 4
Republican Zuhdi Jasser will face off against Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Arizona, in November’s election for the 4th Congressional District. Stanton beat out progressive challenger Kai Newkirk with 68.1% of the vote and 29,425 votes as of 9 p.m. local time on Tuesday.
Jasser has focused his campaign on balancing the federal budget, providing appropriations for immigration enforcement and supporting the Trump administration’s affordable healthcare push.
“I support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Jasser’s website reads. “In Congress, I’ll fight to get our spending under control. For too long, both parties have spent without regard for whether we can afford it.”
Jasser earned 27,137 votes in the Republican primary election.
Stanton leads the pack in fundraising with more than $2.1 million in contributions, according to most recent filings from the Federal Elections Commission. Jasser follows behind with around $564,000 in contributions, according to the FEC.
Stanton has contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and UnitedHealth Group PAC. Jasser received contributions from David Alexander, president of The Jet Companies Inc. and Leanne Wilhardt, general counsel for 21st Century Healthcare.
District 5
Democrat Elizabeth Lee will face off against Mark Lamb in the November general election to replace U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, who won the Republican primary for governor Tuesday with a landslide victory.
Lamb, the Trump-endorsed candidate and former sheriff, overcame a challenge from Daniel Keenan and secured 58.7% of the vote in the Republican primary as of 9 p.m. local time Tuesday. He secured 33,072 votes over Keenan with 23,259.
Lee overcame challenges from Chris James and Brian Hualde for the Democratic nomination with 64.4% of the vote. Lee received 22,377 votes over James with 7,692 votes.
Lamb received more than $1.1 million in campaign contributions over Lee who earned more than $147,000 in campaign contributions. Lamb received more than $30,000 over the past year from the Club for Growth PAC, Lee’s contributions are primarily small individual donations.
District 6
In another one of the most closely watched elections across the country, U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Arizona, easily secured his party’s nomination to face off against Democratic candidate JoAnna Mendoza in November.
Both Mendoza and Ciscomani ran unopposed in their parties’ primaries Tuesday.
The 6th Congressional District, which includes portions of the U.S.-Mexico border. is especially vulnerable as President Donald Trump’s immigration policies grow more unpopular with Latino voters – a core constituency in the area.
Mendoza received more than 64,000 votes compared to Ciscomani with slightly more than 49,000, a potential sign of greater motivation for a Democrat to flip the contentious seat.
Mendoza outpaced Ciscomani in campaign contributions, with more than $6.4 million compared to Ciscomani’s $3.9 million. However, Ciscomani has nearly $1 million more in cash on hand compared to Mendoza.
District 9
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, is set to face Democrat Danielle Sterbinsky in the Nov. 3 election. Both candidates in Arizona’s 9th Congressional District ran unopposed in their parties’ primaries Tuesday.
Gosar received more than 52,000 votes compared to 28,000 votes for Sterbinsky.
Gosar has touted his legislation to block the creation of a national gun owner registry. Sterbinsky has applauded passage of the ROAD to Housing Act, legislation that bars institutional investors from purchasing large swaths of single-family homes
Gosar leads in fundraising with more than $575,000 in contributions, according to the Federal Elections Commission. Sterbinsky has slightly more than $354,000 in contributions.
Most of Sterbinsky’s contributions are small individual donations. Gosar’s contributions include $10,000 from the Anti-Woke Fund; $1,000 from the National Rifle Association; and $2,500 from the Halliburton Company PAC.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
