Unlike some of the challengers to incumbent Republican members of the House, Dr. Amish Shah isn’t yet a household name. Credit that to a late competitive primary in Arizona. Here’s what kind of Democratic candidate Shah is.
Postcards to Voters have already been written for addresses in Phoenix for this campaign. Here is the introductory biography for Dr. Amish Shah.
Here is the background on Dr. Shah’s campaign:
When Dr. Amish Shah emerged victorious from a packed Democratic primary last month to become a nominee for Congress, the National Republican Congressional Committee wasted no time before labeling him as "an extreme liberal" and claimed that he endorsed socialism. The path to flipping the U.S. House back to blue in November runs right through Arizona's 1st Congressional district.
This race is one of the most competitive in the country and has been designated one of the few Red to Blue races by the DCCC. There is a clear path to victory as this seat was only narrowly lost in 2022 by 0.8%
Why do so many on our side believe that Dr. Shah is the best candidate to defeat the extremist Republican incumbent? As a three-term state legislator, Democrat Amish Shah was one of the most effective in the Arizona House passing more bills into law than any other Democrat in over a decade. Amish's common-sense bipartisan approach makes him appealing to those Independent and moderate Republican voters that are looking for an alternative this election
You watch the news. You read the headlines. You know that record numbers of voters are motivated by the fight to protect access to abortion. These voters will be drawn to Dr. Shah's 20+ years in the practice of medicine, his Emergency Room experience, and his 100% pro-choice voting record in the state legislature. We hope that you and your postcard-writing friends will be drawn to his candidacy to spread the word. We're writing to his voters now since Early Voting begins October 9.
Let's help his campaign "lock in" as many early votes as possible. It will give them the ability to focus resources on persuadable voters needed to flip this seat blue.
Write on!
Shah is running against a former House Freedom Caucus member, Rep. David Schweikert. The incumbent embodies the worst of the modern GOP and all of its problems in Washington, DC. Schweikert abandoned the House Freedom Caucus in 2023 basically in an attempt to save his own skin. But leopards cannot change their own spots, and the incumbent cannot run and hide from his atrocious voting record.
The question for Dr. Amish Shah is whether he can win this Biden seat and be the cure for poor representation.
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Dr. Amish Shah for Arizona-1
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What’s the Big Idea?
Precinct results for AZ-01 in 2022.
THIS HOUSE RACE IS RATED AS A TOSSUP, with an R+2 PVI
This district has been a swing seat for a couple of decades now. The competitive history of this district starts in 2006. That is when the blue-wave swept away Republican Rep. JD Hayworth and brought Democratic Rep. Harry Mitchell to represent them. It was a surprise win for the Democratic candidate, as this district voted comfortably for GW Bush in 2004.
Rep. Harry Mitchell was one of the most conservative Democrats in the House from the period of 2006 to 2010 but that wasn’t enough. Mitchell was defeated in the 2010 red wave election by current Rep. David Schweikert. Schweikert’s 52%-43% margin was more in line with the district than Mitchell’s surprise wins.
Schweikert was effectively unchallenged for most of the last decade. That includes facing a weak opponent during the 2018 blue wave election. Dr. Hiral Tirpirneni gave him the closest race in the 2010s when it was numbered the 6th district, holding him to a 52%-48% win in 2020 while Biden carried the district by 50.1% to 48.6%.
2022 brought limited changes to the district, as Arizona’s independent redistricting commission selected a plan from the GOP. Rep. David Schweikert was thought less vulnerable due to the supposed “red-wave election”. Jevin Hodge was an extremely flawed nominee but still held Schweikert to a small 50.4% to 49.6% result or about a 3200 vote margin. This relatively poor result for Schweikert has Democrats excited about flipping this district in 2024. 361k citizens voted in the 2022 midterm election, while 417k voted in a similar district during the 2020 election. With Trump and Kari Lake on top of the ballot, all will depend on the McCain Republicans found in the district.
This district has a gradient that is very visible in precinct maps. The further north and east you travel in the district, the more favorable the precincts are to the GOP. That means the southwestern portion of the district is where our voters mostly reside.
Here’s where this 1st district race will be won.
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Central Phoenix: The areas and neighborhoods close to the center of the downtown area are quite blue, and they form the Democratic anchor of the district. Dr. Amish Shah will need maximum turnout from this area to have a shot at winning the district.
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Southern Scottsdale: These are the McCain GOP voters that flipped in the last election and helped win Arizona for Biden. Shah will have to court them to vote for him if he has any chance of beating Schweikert. It may be a tough task, as they tend to vote more for the GOP down the ballot in Congress and state legislative races.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down, or we lose.
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Northern Phoenix: As you travel to the north in the city, the precincts get more GOP voters. Many of the precincts are pink or light blue in color, meaning they are competitive and Shah needs to contest them.
- Northern Scottsdale and Suburbs: This is the GOP anchor of the district, with quite a few red cities such as Paradise Valley, Fountain Hills, Carefree, and Cave Creek. Northern Scottsdale is also fairly red in nature. Shah will have to try and keep the margins down in this area.
Dr. Amish Shah: Freedom Caucus Cure
Dr. Amish Shah emerged from a very crowded primary election as the winner.
Dr. Amish Shah was born in Chicago in the 1960s. His parents emigrated from India to be engineers in the United States. Shah went to Northwestern University and received a bachelor’s degree in economics . Shah completed his medical degree at Northwestern. He attended UC Berkeley to obtain a Master of Public Health degree. Then Shah went to New York City to complete a residency in emergency medicine. He received top honors as a resident from the American Academy of Emergency Medicine for developing new critical care methods.
Dr. Amish Shah served as a full-time faculty member and a researcher at Mt. Sinai Medical Center. He also served as a physician for the New York Jets football team. Later on, Shah served as the chief medical officer of Urgent Consult. He is still an emergency physician at the Mayo Clinic of Arizona as of 2023.
Shah first ran for office in 2018 by running for a seat in the Arizona State House. Arizona has a different system where each state house district selects two people to represent them. Shah knocked off an incumbent Democrat and a different primary challenger in the primary. That was tantamount to election in what was then a deep-blue seat in central Phoenix. Shah would also win this seat comfortably in 2020 and 2022, despite the redistricting.
Shah is running as a member of the New Democratic Coalition and on the bipartisan alliances he built while serving as a member of the Arizona State House. Even though he was a member of the minority party, Shah saw quite a few of his bills become law. He touts many of his accomplishments on his campaign website.
Public health and health care are why Shah first ran for a seat in the state legislature. He will be particularly strong on these issues if he is elected to Congress. Shah promises to protect Medicare and Medicaid while expanding coverage to more individuals. He also pledges to work to lower prescription drug prices.
Shah is running on restoring reproductive rights. He is a vote to codify Roe into law as well as protect birth control, abortion medication, and IVF from being outlawed by fanatical Republicans.
The state of education is abysmal in Arizona (trust me, I know as a former teacher there). Shah is running on protecting the Department of Education from dissolution. He is also running on raising pay for teachers as Arizona has some of the lowest teacher pay in the nation. He’s also standing against voucher schemes as he witnessed first-hand how they have drained the budget in Arizona.
Finally, Shah is running on protecting democracy from those who seek to dismantle it. This is an important issue for the district given that Schweikert is a Freedom Caucus true believer. Shah will vote to certify the election no matter who wins. He will also vote for the John Lewis VRA and the For the People Act to strengthen our democratic guardrails.
Dr. Amish Shah is a decent cure for the (former) Freedom Caucus representative that still ails the citizens of Arizona’s 1st district.
Rep. David Schweikert: A Leopard Cannot Change His Spots
He left the Freedom Caucus in 2023 but Rep. David Schweikert still votes like them.
Rep. David Schweikert was born to an unwed teenage mother in Los Angeles in 1962. Instead of seeking an abortion, his mother put him up for adoption. He settled in with his adopted family in Scottsdale, Arizona and earned degrees in finance and real estate from Arizona State University. He would eventually earn an MBA from the same school. He has worked as a realtor and a business consultant during his long tenure in politics.
Schweikert first ran for elected office in the Arizona State House in 1990. He was a touted prospect and even chaired a committee as a freshman legislator. In his second term he was Majority Whip for the GOP. He left the Arizona legislature in 1994 for his first run for Congress. He ran for Arizona’s 6th district but lost the GOP primary to JD Hayworth. His stinging defeat led him to travel the world for a while.
Schweikert resurfaced in local politics the next year when he was appointed chair of the Board of Equalization. This board handles tax disputes in Arizona. Schweikert was also under consideration for the Arizona Corporation Commission, a regulatory body in Arizona with many different tasks. Schweikert eventually became Treasurer of Maricopa County in 2004 but resigned in 2007 to run for Congress again. He lost in 2008 but won in 2010.
Schweikert’s record on the issues is abysmal, but it’s the way he abuses the office that stands out. In 2020, he admitted to 11 counts of breaching House ethics rules and was sanctioned by the House of Representatives. According to Wikipedia,
The committee found undisclosed loans and campaign contributions; misuse of campaign contributions for personal use; improper spending by his office; and pressuring staffers to do political work. The House Ethics Committee also faulted him for evasive, misleading, and stalling tactics that helped him skirt more serious violations The report laid out a "surprisingly sizable amount of misconduct over a seven year period." Schweikert said these were inadvertent errors, but the committee reported that "the weight of the evidence" did not support his contention.
That’s not all. Schweikert was further fined $125,000 by the FEC for the same financial violations and for failing to report other monetary transactions. This is a pattern of looking out for just himself: Schweikert made a fortune on real estate during the 2008 financial crisis before making it to Congress.
I can see where Schweikert is coming from on abortion given the circumstances of his birth but his record on reproductive health issues is still troubling. He is a six-time sponsor of the Life at Conception Act which would ban abortion in all circumstances and even imperial IVF and birth control. The Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs pleased him but the ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court on the 1864 abortion ban “troubled” him despite one leading to the other. Schweikert has consistently voted against funding for Planned Parenthood. He has even bragged that he will continue to be anti-abortion in Congress despite being in a swing seat!
Schweikert is on the record stating that entitlement programs need to be cut. He has called for cutting Social Security and even suggests raising the retirement age. His comments on Medicare are equally abhorrent, saying that Medicare is a “three times bigger problem” than Social Security. He’s even warned that the “republic will end” if these programs aren’t cut! He’s also a proponent of killing the ACA and even went further than any other Republican in stripping its protections in 2017.
Schweikert threatens democracy because he is an election denier. He voted to uphold Arizona’s election results but voted to object to the results produced by Pennsylvania. The incumbent voted against impeaching Donald Trump for the events of January 6th, 2021. He voted against the Electoral Count Reform Act as well which was meant to prevent those events from ever happening again.
There are very few NDAAs and budgets that Rep. David Schweikert has voted in the affirmative for. He consistently votes to shut the government down time after time. He voted against the American Rescue Plan of 2021 during the pandemic. He also has a record of voting against infrastructure improvements such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. He even voted against the CHIPS and Science Act and the Honoring Our PACT Act! That hasn’t stopped him from touting the benefits of the legislation he voted against though.
When it comes to gun safety, Schweikert votes to loosen gun restrictions constantly and has never voted for protecting people. He introduced legislation to remove gun selling from a list of high-risk industries in 2015. In 2016, he attempted to roll back Washington, DC gun laws through legislation. More recently, he voted against an assault weapons ban and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act after Uvalde.
Finally, Schweikert is a religious bigot that looks to strip away rights from people who are LGBTQ+. He voted against the Equality Act which would’ve enshrined protections of that class into law. He even voted against the Respect for Marriage Act which would’ve enshrined Obergefell into law. It is clear that no rights are safe from the ravages of Schweikert if he gets his way.
Rep. David Schweikert is belatedly trying to change his politics to match the swing seat he now finds himself in. However, a leopard cannot change its spots and the incumbent cannot run from his horrible record on ethics and the issues.
How Can You Help?
I don’t have the Q3 fundraising numbers for Dr. Amish Shah so it is difficult to know whether or not he needs donations. The late primary date suggests that he needs to replenish his coffers and so does this filing from July. He had little cash-on-hand before the primary and likely needed to spend it all to win. Meanwhile, Schweikert is sitting on $1.5M although he is likely spending it right now for the general election.
This race is one of the more active races for independent expenditures from both sides of the aisle. The DCCC and its allies have spent close to $1.9M so far with more likely to come. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the ally of the NRCC, has spent $1.4M on this race so far. Phoenix is an expensive media market so there is guaranteed to be more funds incoming.
It is getting really close to the election, meaning that volunteering opportunities are really hitting their stride. Activate America is running a virtual phone bank for Dr. Amish Shah on weekdays. It allows anyone in the nation to help out on this critical campaign to flip the House.
Swing Left is knocking doors in the Phoenix area for Dr. Amish Shah. This event happened 10/5 but there is a promise of more events soon. This is in conjunction with Shah doing a canvassing operation today with South Asian Voters for Harris. These are the official events associated with the challenger but there are plenty of other events in the district that will help him as well! To best help Shah, it is best to sign up to volunteer using the link at the top or the bottom of the article.
Rep. David Schweikert recognizes that he is in danger of losing his seat as he sits in the 11th most vulnerable seat the GOP holds. His outspokenness against the Arizona 1864 abortion ban and his departure from the House Freedom Caucus demonstrate that. However, a leopard cannot change his spots and Schweikert is still a Freedom Caucus member at heart.
Dr. Amish Shah is the cure for Arizona’s 1st district from the House Freedom Caucus. This moderate district isn’t one that should support the antics that we’ve seen from the 118th Congress. Shah promises to reach across the aisle where possible and to truly represent all of his constituents.
The question for Dr. Amish Shah is whether he can convince enough voters in a Biden-won seat and be the cure for the poor representation for this district.
Dr. Amish Shah for Arizona-1
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