2022 Arizona Secretary of State election (Jake's World)

The **2022 Arizona Secretary of State election** took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the Secretary of State of Arizona, concurrently with the election of Arizona's Class III U.S. Senate seat, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.

Incumbent Katie Hobbs was first elected in 2018 but Katie Hobbs declined to run for a second term to instead run to succeed then term limited Governor Doug Ducey. Democratic state representative won the Democratic nomination against former Maricopa County Recorder, Adrian Fontes by 10 points. Republican state senator, Michelle Ugenti-Rita won in a very contested primary against Kirk Adams and Mark Finchem by only 2%.

Although initial results had showed Ugenti-Rita up despite Hobbs lead in the governor race at the time the next morning at about 9 am over 30% of precincts reported votes which gave Bolding a very narrow lead of 263 votes. On November 10th the AP projected Bolding the winner by a narrow margin of 29,265 votes.

## Table of Contents

* 1 Democratic primary
	+ 1.1 Candidates
		- 1.1.1 Nominee
		- 1.1.2 Defeated in primary
		- 1.1.3 Declined
	+ 1.2 Polling
	+ 1.3 Endorsements
		- 1.3.1 Reginald Bolding
		- 1.3.2 Adrian Fontes
	+ 1.4 Results
* 2 Republican primary
	+ 2.1 Candidates
		- 2.1.1 Nominee
		- 2.1.2 Defeated in primary
		- 2.1.3 Declined
	+ 2.2 Polling
	+ 2.3 Endorsements
		- 2.3.1 Kirk Adams
		- 2.3.2 Michelle Ugenti-Rita
		- 2.3.3 Mark Finchem
	+ 2.4 Results

## Democratic primary

On the Democratic side only 2 candidates entered the race. The candidates were state representative, Reginald Bolding and former Maricopa County Recorder, Adrian Fontes. Although this primary wasn't covered by much Arizona media the Arizona Democrats had heavily focused on this race considering the 2020 election results that resulted in the 2021 Maricopa county audit that was ran by Trump supporters. Bolding ended up defeating Fontes by around 10% in the end.

### Candidates

#### Nominee

* Reginald Bolding, minority leader of the Arizona House of Representatives

#### Defeated in primary

* Adrian Fontes, former Maricopa County Recorder (2017–2021)

#### Declined

* Katie Hobbs, incumbent Secretary of State (ran for Governor)

### Polling

administered
Size
of Error
(D)
(D)
 FOX News

### Endorsements

#### **Reginald Bolding**

* Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States
* Mark Kelly, U.S. Senator from Arizona
* Katie Hobbs, Incumbent Secretary of State
* Charlene Fernandez, former minority leader of the Arizona House of Representatives
* Ruben Gallego, U.S. Representative
* Raúl Grijalva, U.S. Representative
* Kate Gallego, mayor of Phoenix
* David Garcia, Democratic nominee for Arizona governor in 2018
* Randy Friese, state representative

#### **Adrian Fontes**

* Krysten Sinema, U.S. Senator from Arizona
* Greg Stanton, U.S. Representative
* Ann Kirkpatrick, U.S. Representative
* Tom O'Halleran, U.S. Representative
* Harry Mitchell, former U.S. Representative
* Paul Penzone, Sheriff of Maricopa County
* Terry Goddard, former Arizona Attorney General

## Republican primary

The GOP primary was considered a 3 way showdown between Kirk Adams, the former Chief of Staff to Gov. Doug Ducey, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a state senator and Mark Finchem, a state representative. The media had heavily covered this primary due to the moderate vs Trump royalist type primary. Early on there was reports that former president, Donald Trump was planning on endorsing Ugenti-Rita or Finchem and the media reported that Trump wouldn't endorse Kirk Adams since he was "too liberal" to due his connection with governor, Doug Ducey. By early June, Trump had officially endorsed Ugenti-Rita had a rally saying that she would be a great secretary of state. Although polls going into the primary on August 30th had showed Adams above in the end Ugenti-Rita ended up winning by 2% in what was considered an upset.

### Candidates

#### Defeated in primary

* Kirk Adams, former Chief of Staff to Gov. Doug Ducey and former Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives
* Mark Finchem, state representative

#### Declined

* Michele Reagan, former officeholder
* Steve Gaynor, 2018 nominee

### Endorsements

#### **Michelle Ugenti-Rita**

* Donald Trump, former President of the United States
* Karen Fann, state senator