Competitive Tucson-area primary could shape fight for Legislature
By Gary Grado - April 28, 2026
Two Tucson Republicans will square off in the July 21 GOP primary for the chance to replace Republican Sen. Vince Leach, who is vacating the Legislative District 17 Senate seat.
The politically competitive district wraps around Tucson's north and east sides, from Rincon Valley and Tanque Verde north through Oro Valley and Marana to SaddleBrooke in southern Pinal County.
Christopher King, a U.S. Air Force veteran with an enthusiasm for education, will go against Anthony Dunham, an Iraq war veteran, former U.S. Bureau of Prisons officer, and Turning Point Action-endorsed candidate.
LD17 is also one of Arizona’s most competitive districts in the November election. So the candidate that Republicans nominate in the primary will have a huge impact on whether Republicans are able to hold that seat in November. And winning that seat is critical to Democrats’ plans to flip control of the state Legislature this year.
The GOP Senate candidates have been invited to a debate sponsored by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and moderated by the Tucson Agenda’s Joe Ferguson on Thursday, April 30, at 6 p.m.
The winner of the Senate GOP primary will take on Democrat Edgar Soto in the November election.
King has the most political experience of the two Republicans. Voters elected him to the Vail Unified School District governing board in 2020 and again in 2024. He sits on the board of the Arizona School Boards Association and is a former Pima County Republican Party chairman.
According to King’s biography on the VUSD website, he retired from the military, where he was a bomb disposal expert, and became obsessed with education, earning his master’s degree and a substitute teaching certificate.
He has also been a plaintiff in two political lawsuits. He joined several other plaintiffs as part of a 2020 federal lawsuit led by Sidney Powell, who led efforts to overturn President Trump’s loss, and Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who served as the local lawyer for the suit. The lawsuit alleged a “troubling, insidious, and egregious ploy” to stuff the ballot for former President Joe Biden.
A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit within days for lack of evidence and standing, and Kolodin was disciplined by the State Bar of Arizona.
King was a plaintiff in a second lawsuit that was more successful. A judge in 2024 ruled in favor of King and the Arizona Citizens Defense League when they challenged a Tucson ordinance that slapped $1,000 fines on residents who didn't report lost or stolen firearms within two days.
Dunham, a precinct committeeman, is a political newcomer who came under media scrutiny this month for temporarily losing his parental rights after he allowed his ex-wife — the stepmother of his children — to force his daughter to drink vinegar until she vomited.
Dunham told the Arizona Republic that he filed for divorce shortly after and hasn’t spoken to his ex-wife since.
The newspaper also dug up a racy Twitter post from 2022, which Dunham claimed was put there by a hacker.
Both candidates allude to Trump on their websites when they describe their positions on immigration, and they both call for lowering taxes. King also calls for school choice, freedom and prosperity and defending the Constitution.
Dunham calls for housing affordability, school choice and backing law enforcement.
Whoever wins the GOP primary for the Senate will face Soto, a Pima Community College vice president and a precinct committeeman who made an unsuccessful run for the Pima County Board of Supervisors in 2024.
Republicans have a roughly 10-percentage-point voter registration edge over Democrats in LD17, and the GOP outnumbers voters who aren’t registered under either party.
The district, however, has a divided representation in the House and close elections.
Leach beat Democrat John McLean by just over 1 percentage point in the 2024 election. McLean died shortly after the race when his car was struck by an alleged drunken driver.
And in the House race that year, Democrat Kevin Volk got more votes than the two GOP incumbents, Reps. Rachel Keshel and Cory McGarr, defeating McGarr and delivering one of the district’s House seats to Democrats.
Neither party faces a contested primary for the district’s two House seats.
On the Republican side, John Winchester, the senior director of government and community engagement for Arizona State University in southern Arizona, and Keshel will be the party’s nominees. Keshel has concentrated on election and family court reform during her reelection. Winchester made an unsuccessful run for the Pima County Board of Supervisors in 2016.
Volk will be joined on the November ballot by Democrat Holly Lyon, a former 7th-grade math teacher and retired Air Force colonel. Lyon made unsuccessful runs for the Legislature in 2014 and 2018.
The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission will sponsor the debate, which will be broadcast live on the commission’s YouTube channel at 6 p.m. on Thursday.
Visit azcleanelections.gov for the full debate schedule and to submit a question for the candidates.