The two candidates in the Arizona District 7 Congressional special election wasted no time at Saturday’s PRT-presented candidate forum in Patagonia succinctly pointing out where the line is drawn between them.
The first question posed by forum moderator Thomas Fink, Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge, asked the candidates to expound on the “greatest distance between you and your opponent.”
Democrat Adelita Grijalva, speaking first, said: “My understanding is my opponent is very supportive of Trump’s current agenda, and that’s where we differ greatly.”
On this point, there was no disagreement from Republican candidate Daniel Butierez: “I actually believe in what Trump’s doing, she’s right,” Butierez said. “I agree with what Trump says.”
Grijalva and Butierez are vying for the District 7 congressional seat that became vacant following the death of Rep. Raul Grijalva, Adelita’s father, on March 13. The special election will be held on Sept. 23, with the winner serving through the end of 2026.
The forum attracted a standing-room-only audience to the Tin Shed Theater. While the tone of the dialogue was respectful, there was very little common ground between the two candidates.
Grijalva, 54, former Pima County supervisor and Tucson Unified School District board member, focused much of her remarks on the policies put in place by the Trump administration and the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” describing it as “the largest redistribution of wealth in our nation’s history.” She was specifically critical of the dismantling of the Department of Education and the financial impact on public schools, cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, and the rollback of environmental protections.
“Right now Trump has carte blanche to be able to make a lot of decisions without consulting Congress or the Senate,” she said. “We need to create a better balance of power so all branches of government have a voice.”
Butierez, 58, a painting contractor from Tucson, described many of the concerns Grijalva pointed out as “fear-mongering.”
“Most of these things people are talking about aren’t true,” he said. “He’s not taking our Medicaid. He’s not taking our Medicare. These are just lies being pushed out by local media because they have nothing else to run on except to hate Trump.”
Butierez, who was defeated by Raul Grijalva in the 2024 general election for Congressional District 7, said his alignment with Trump makes him better positioned to serve the district.
“That’s the plus of me not having attacked Trump, because if I’m elected, I can go in there and work with the administration and Congress to protect Arizona,” he said.
“I will be able to go in and do some things in Washington because right now I have more power than my opponent as it is a Republican administration, Republican House, Republican Senate.”
Butierez’s campaign signage emphasizes the need to “make Arizona safe again,” and he made multiple references to the need to address the homeless crisis and combat drug trafficking, citing businesses throughout the district that have been shuttered due to shoplifting, loitering and safety concerns.
“That directly comes down to we need to secure our border and stop the drugs from coming in, and we need to address the homeless crisis,” he said. “Those are directly impacting the crime that’s happening in our streets.”
Grijalva countered that the Trump administration’s cuts to public safety programs are counterproductive to cleaning up the root causes. “Those are cuts that are helping with prevention; those are early intervention programs that are keeping kids in school,” she said.
“When we look at those cuts and what that means, there’s going to be an increase in violence because we’re going to have frustrated communities, and we don’t have opportunities for people to get ahead.”
Other topics that sparked spirited disagreement were education, Medicaid and immigration enforcement.
On education, Grijalva lamented the cuts in federal grants that are needed to prop up a state that ranks 50th in spending on public education. “My frustration is what we are doing is creating a system of the haves and have-nots,” she said.
“We’re going to see increased class sizes, we’re going to see stressed teachers, we’re going to see more and more people opt not to go into education,” she said. “I don’t think in our nation you should have somebody that wants to be a teacher but can make more money working at Starbucks.”
Butierez acknowledged that Arizona schools are struggling but doesn’t consider it a financial issue: “As a business owner, when something’s not going right, the job’s not getting done in a way that I’m satisfied with, I evaluate the problem, I don’t throw more money at it.”
The two also clashed on the impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on Medicaid, which provides health-care for low-income residents. Grijalva said some 376,000 Arizonans, including 142,000 children, are facing cuts to health-care availability unless the state picks up the slack. Butierez disagreed with the assessment: “There’s a lot of people that don’t agree with you. It’s an opinion. A lot of people think it’s going to run out. I don’t have that opinion.”
The candidates also diverged sharply when asked about the administration’s immigration enforcement and militarization of the border.
“I don’t believe our National Guard should be deployed to police American citizens,’’ Grijalva said. “[Trump]’s creating his own government with not doubling ICE’s budget, but 20 times the budget, so he’s going to have his own military force that he’s going to be able to directly target individuals, people who look like me. I think it’s sort of like a test to see how much we can be desensitized to these issues.”
Butierez said the crackdown is necessary. “This has been a really big problem, and the Trump administration is trying to address it,” he said. “He is going after the dangerous criminals, and if there’s someone with them that happens to be illegal, they’re getting sucked up in it.”