Clockwise from upper left: Rep. Matt Gress, Karen Gresham, Rep. Pamela Carter and Tammy Caputi. (Photos by Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA 2.0 and submitted)
If Republicans can’t hold on to a pair of legislative seats in a competitive and wealthy legislative district, Democrats could find themselves in control of the Arizona House of Representatives for the first time in 60 years.
While Republicans labor to maintain the majority they’ve held in the chamber uninterrupted since 1966, Democrats see this year as their best chance ever to flip control of one or both chambers.
With sentiments nationwide turning against Republicans, but in Republican-leaning Legislative District 4, incumbent Republicans Reps. Matt Gress and Pamela Carter and their Democratic challengers Karen Gresham and Tammy Caputi are locked in a battle to see who will win the district’s two House seats.
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LD4 covers northeast Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, where candidates on both sides of the aisle are striving to appeal to independent and moderate voters.
“I’ve had 25 bills signed into law with bipartisan support, because whether you voted for me or not, I work for you,” Gress said in an ad posted on his campaign website. “I don’t want the title of representative. I want to be your representative. I’m here to earn your trust and do the work.”
Gress, a former budget director for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey who now works as a lobbyist for an anti-union advocacy group, has been one of his party’s key budget architects since he was elected in 2023, at the same time as Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. That means his only option to get any legislation passed, which requires a signature from the governor, was to gain support from Democrats.
During budget discussions, Gress was not always so willing to consider the opinion of Democrats.
“We don’t need Democratic votes to pass this budget,” he said during an April hearing on the budget. “I understand the Democrats believe the governor will veto this bill. And then what? We have a unified Republican majority.”
Gresham, a school board member who is facing Gress for a second time after failing to unseat him in 2024, told the Arizona Mirror that she’s not sure he has the expertise to be given so much sway over the state budget. Gresham has an accounting degree from Arizona State University and worked as a certified public accountant. Gress has a Master’s degree in public administration.
“I would like to know how many people have an actual accounting background and financial background in our legislature,” she said.
Gresham said that balancing the budget and putting more money toward schools, water and infrastructure were top priorities for her.
There has to be balance, Gresham said, between spending and cutting. She criticized the state’s budgeting process, which often leaves many Democratic legislators in the dark, with final deals between Hobbs and Republican legislative leaders rapidly put to a vote after they’re made.
“Right now, Democrats are completely shut out of the process,” Gresham said. “So, we have the governor who can negotiate, but other than that, it’s the Republicans behind closed doors. Literally in the middle of the night, they will pass these, and they won’t allow anyone in the gallery.”
She pointed out that school boards, like the Madison Elementary School Board, where she’s in her second term, must have multiple public budget hearings each year.
“I don’t know why the legislature does not have to follow the same rules,” Gresham said. “Like, this is billions of dollars. So, there needs to be more transparency and more input. And yes, right now, it’s a lot of political games.”
Both Gress and Gresham are particularly focused on schools and have a history of facing each other on the ballot.
Gress, a former teacher, was a member of the Madison Elementary School Board in 2021 when Gresham ran against him, and booted him from his seat.
In one of his ads, Gress said some of his accomplishments as a legislator were making schools safer and increasing pay for teachers.
You can’t strengthen Arizona schools by dismantling the team behind our teachers
Gress was one of the sponsors of legislation that became Prop. 320, a measure on the November ballot that, if voters approve it, would require schools to spend 60% of their funding on direct instructional spending. Proponents say that the measure would increase teacher pay, but the language of the measure wouldn’t guarantee that, and some law enforcement organizations like the Arizona School Resource Officers Association believe it would put funding for school safety at risk.
Gress and Carter are also fierce advocates for the state’s universal school voucher program, which Caputi and Gresham have criticized for its ballooning budget while public school funding suffers and for parents improperly using the money to purchase things like lingerie and major appliances.
Neither Gress nor Carter responded to requests for an interview.
Caputi, who built her own construction business over the last 25 years, says she has the background and skills to understand the state’s building projects and has a history of building consensus during four years on the Scottsdale City Council.
“I was one of seven, and everybody’s very different on council, and you can’t do anything without a counting of four,” Caputi told the Mirror. “And so that skillset of finding consensus, figuring out how to land the plane on an issue where no one is together, was incredibly valuable to me.”
Caputi said she already has experience collaborating on legislation with Republican legislators like Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who she worked with to restore water access to Rio Verde Foothills in 2023.
And she says she’s the person to keep working across the aisle, taking a pragmatic approach to make positive change for Arizonans.
“I don’t want to play partisan politics,” Caputi said. “I don’t want to waste time on fringe issues. I’m very focused on staying in the middle, on having a strong, growing economy, on getting a handle on the cost of living, paying our cops and firefighters, and having great schools. That’s it. That’s where I want to land, and I will work with anyone who wants to work on these issues with me.”
All of the candidates in the highly competitive race for LD4 are marketing themselves to the middle.
On her website Carter describes herself as a “common sense Republican.”
But the two Republicans are far enough that the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA Action, which has been most successful in getting far-right Republicans to win in primary elections, saw fit to endorse both Gress and Carter.
Carter is a former Trump campaign advisor and Christian minister who says that her faith motivates her work as a legislator. She worked as a Christian wellness influencer for many years, promising her followers that she could help them “learn how to increase (their) metabolism through Biblical eating habits,” Mother Jones reported.
“Faith isn’t a footnote on a campaign biography for me,” her campaign website says. “It’s the ground I stand on, the way I treat people, and the reason I stand up for parental rights, religious freedom, and the protection of children online.”
Carter’s website says that she uses her background running a sports medicine and performance company in Scottsdale to get things done at the Capitol.
“Leading that operation taught me how to balance a budget, manage people, and deliver results under pressure,” she wrote.
Carter’s campaign website says that some of her biggest wins in her two years as a legislator were sponsoring Cade’s Law, which expands the definition of manslaughter to include people who encourage someone to take their own life. The law was named after Cade Keller, a teen who died by suicide in 2022.
Other accomplishments included sponsoring an extension of Arizona’s Lemon Law to apply to leased vehicles and doing away with vehicle taxes for deployed members of the military.
Caputi and Gresham described their opponents as too extreme for Arizona.
“They’re definitely lined up with the far right,” Gresham said. “They both vote with their party every time. So, these are not reasonable moderates we’re dealing with. Those really don’t exist in the Republican Party anymore.”
Gresham criticized Gress for working as an anti-union lobbyist in other states, at the same time he sponsored anti-union bills as an Arizona legislator, bills that would benefit his employer, Americans for Fair Treatment.
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Courtesy of Arizona Mirror
