Board of Supervisors
The Pima County Board of Supervisors races seemed to be decided by a large margin, barring District 1.
Incumbent Republican Ally Miller won by a 7 percent margin, 53.5 to 46.5, against Democrat Brian Bickel, who said that regardless of the race’s result, he is positive.
“I think we let the incumbent know there’s a direction the public feels the county needs to continue to move in and we’re going to be here to make sure that direction gets moved in,” Bickel said.
In District 3, incumbent Democrat Sharon Bronson is projected to beat Republican challenger Kim DeMarco 52 percent to 48 percent.
However, Demarco told the Arizona Daily Star that she wasn’t giving up hope yet.
“We are feeling pretty good still,” DeMarco said. “These are early ballots and they tend to be a little more Democrat heavy. We are still very, very optimistic and I still think that we can pull this off.”
In District 4, where the seat was vacated after Democrat Ray Carroll decided not to run for reelection, Republican Steve Christy will beat Green Party candidate Joshua Reilly with 72.9 percent of the vote.
Christy focused on the way Republicans swept the elections as a whole in his acceptance speech.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we got our county back, we got our state back and we got our country back,” Christy said.
In District 5, incumbent Democrat Richard Elias got 78.8 percent of the vote compared to Green Party candidate Martin Bastidas’s 21.2 percent.
In District 2, incumbent Democrat Ramon Valadez ran unopposed.
Pima County Sheriff
Pima County’s new Sheriff, Republican Mark Napier got 56.3 percent of the vote to incumbent Democrat Chris Nanos’s 43.7 percent. Nanos was appointed to the post after Clarence Dupnik resigned last year.
Napier previously worked for both the UA and the Tucson Police Department. He said he will focus on breaking down partisan barriers and addressing corruption in the department.
“Public safety is a community issue, it’s a quality of life issue, it’s not a Republican or Democrat issue,” Napier said. “So I think we need to break that down. We certainly need to do a reset on the organization because obviously there’s a lot of concern about corruption and mistreatment of the deputies there.”
In his acceptance speech Tuesday night, Napier thanked his family, everyone who supported him in his campaign and his deputies.
“They’re the people who risk their lives every day for us, and they deserve good leadership, don’t they?” Napier said. “Well, they’re about to get it, folks.”
Follow Marissa Heffernan on Twitter.
