Get ready to vote for U.S. Rep. in District 2

One number continues to define the Congressional District 2 race — 161.

That’s the razor-thin margin that forced a recount before Republican Martha McSally officially defeated Democratic incumbent and Jan. 8 shooting survivor Rep. Ron Barber.

That was nearly two years ago, but the number is still relevant — even as the local political conversation is largely eclipsed by the presidential campaign.

McSally and her Democratic rival this time around, former state representative and emergency room physician Matt Heinz, are keenly aware of how competitive the district is. Both are campaigning hard to win over voters.

For her part, McSally has amassed a massive campaign war chest to flood local airwaves, social media channels and mailboxes. As of the last reporting period, McSally had more than $2 million in the bank, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Democrats have rallied behind Heinz, with support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, several political actions committees and local politicians — even his rival in last month’s primary, former state Rep. Victoria Steele.

Heinz and McSally both ran in 2012 for the seat, although never directly against each other.

Heinz was defeated by Barber, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ one-time chief of staff, in the Democratic primary.

Both candidates are playing to their strengths in the campaign.

Heinz paints himself as an experienced lawmaker with the ability to work across the aisle. He also draws comparisons as an emergency room physician — when a patient comes in, the focus is on the patient and everyone on duty must work together to help that person.

A retired Air Force colonel, McSally relies on her 26 years of service to focus on national-security issues and veterans. She also is an advocate for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Fort Huachuca army post.

She and other members of Congress fought successfully to keep A-10s — D-M’s primary mission — flying when the Air Force wanted to begin phasing out the aircraft.

Both candidates are distancing themselves from the presidential election.

“My vote is between me and God and the ballot box,” McSally said when asked about whether she will support Republican nominee Donald Trump for president.

Heinz has been equally coy, saying he is focused on the CD2 election.

Planned Parenthood

Sitting in the corner of his cramped campaign office, Heinz leans in as he talks about what brought him back into the political arena.

“I don’t see shared values in my opponent that are consistent with Southern Arizona,” he said.

Specifically, he pointed to McSally’s repeated votes to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.

“That is not this district. That is not Gabby Giffords’ district. That is not Jim Kolbe’s district,” he said. “It is not what Congress should be voting on.”

It isn’t a blue versus red issue centering on abortion, Heinz noted — Planned Parenthood clinics also offer breast-cancer screenings and well-woman health checks. To Heinz, the issue goes back to the “do not harm” philosophy associated with the Hippocratic Oath.

“And do not harm,” Heinz quips, counting out loud the number of times McSally has voted to take away health-care options.

The McSally campaign has rejected Heinz’s claims, noting a recent fact check by the Arizona Republic found Heinz was making false statements about how many people were treated by Planned Parenthood.

The Heinz campaign apologized for the error on Friday.

As for the floor votes against Planned Parenthood funding, the McSally campaign said all members of Congress were required to vote on the issue.

McSally advocated her position as redirecting federal funding to health-care centers in underserved areas.

Still, Heinz is confident going into the final weeks before early ballots are mailed out.

“This is the closest district by registration in the country,” he said.

The Arizona secretary of state lists nearly identical numbers — 132,697 registered Democrats and 132,710 registered Republicans in CD2.

Voter-registration drives and other efforts to get out the vote have Heinz confident that the figures from the secretary of state are outdated.

“I am quite sure we have a very slightly Democratic district now,” he said.

The outlier continues to be independents, the ever-growing group of active voters with no ties to either party.

Heinz believes independents likely lean more conservative in Cochise County, while a majority of them in Pima County are more likely to vote for a Democrat.

“Independents are a little bit like jicama — they take on the flavors of the things around them,” he said.

MORE COMPLICATED THAN BUILDING A WALL

McSally says one of her top issues continues to the be securing the border and addressing a broken immigration system.

She championed the same issue two years ago, but has made little progress in a deadlocked Congress. She has been able to pass some legislation, including the Border Jobs for Veterans Act of 2015, which is designed to speed up hiring of military veterans for jobs with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service along the border.

McSally calls for modernization of the country’s immigration laws. She wants to speed up the process for work visas, but would require some kind of “balance” to make sure the move doesn’t take jobs from Americans.

“We have been in a situation for decades with a system that is very cumbersome and doesn’t necessarily make sense to be able to grow our economy,” McSally said.

With a national conversation focusing on whether to build a massive wall along the international border, including in her district, McSally said in some areas, a wall might be helpful. However, a contiguous barrier isn’t a solution, she said.

While the issue of Mexicans crossing the border gets most of the attention, the issue is far more complicated, she said. She mentioned specifically those who have overstayed their legal visas.

“There is a lot of dynamics here,” she said.

Regarding the economy, McSally is concerned how federal sequestration is hampering economic growth, especially in CD2.

Cuts in military spending could harm two Southern Arizona “treasures,” she says, Davis-Monthan and Fort Huachuca.

“Sierra Vista is really suffering, not just in the number of troops, but the number of defense contractors and others that were supporting the war effort,” she said. “We need to make sure we have a strong military, that our defense spending is appropriate to make sure they are keeping us safe.”

McSally’s office announced last month that the National Defense Authorization Act contained full funding for aircraft stationed at D-M and provisions to retain and expand missions at Fort Huachuca.

The former A-10 pilot has also advocated for new missions for D-M, including bringing in drone pilots to be housed in Tucson. D-M is one of five finalists for the new mission.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan online newsletter that analyzes elections and campaigns, gives McSally the edge in the race, listing Congressional District 2 as “leans Republican.”

Phoenix-based political analyst Chris Herstam predicts McSally has little to worry about , since she has kept away from the controversies surrounding the Republican presidential nominee.

“Because McSally has successfully distanced herself from Donald Trump and projected an effective mainstream image, she seems unbeatable,” Herstam said.

A new poll has Rep. Martha McSally well ahead of her Democratic challenger, physician Matt Heinz, in Congressional District 2.

In a poll of 400 likely voters, Wilson Perkins Allen Research released results of a poll that has Republican incumbent, with 56 percent of the vote, while Heinz has 37 percent. Seven percent of those responding to the live phone poll were undecided.

The margin of error of the poll is 4.9 percent.

The poll also gives a theoretical edge to Republican nominee Donald Trump in the presidential race, with 43 percent of the vote compared to the 38 percent saying they are backing Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.

Another 10 percent went to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, while 3 percent said they were undecided.

According to WPA, 38 percent of the respondents were contacted on a cell phone, which usually skews to a younger population.

Nicole Johnson, the spokeswoman for the Heinz campaign, said she would have liked to see more than the single page released by the McSally campaign, which funded the poll.

This district has always been incredibly close, and we expect this year to be no different.

"I think it's important to note that demographics were not included in the release," she aid. "This is a 50-50 district, and in order to get those results the demographics must be incredibly skewed."

Johnson said that the Heinz campaign will have some heavy hitters from the Democratic Party come to Arizona to support Heinz.

"The campaign is only getting stronger in this final stretch. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer will be in AZ campaigning for Matt in October, signaling the confidence national Democrats have in his candidacy," she said.

The Congressional Leadership Fund has announced it will spend $700,000 in Congressional District 2 targeting Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally's Democratic rival, Matt Heinz.

CLF spokeswoman Ruth Guerra said the SuperPAC was proud to support McSally in the weeks before the general election.

"Matt Heinz has made no attempts to hide his embrace of Obamacare, which has been disastrous for one too many Arizonians," said Guerra. "Voters have a clear choice this election between Martha McSally’s results-oriented leadership or Matt Heinz’ rubberstamp of the failed Nancy Pelosi agenda.” 

In 2014, CLF and its sister organization, American Action Network, spent a combined $1.8 million in the AZ-02 race, supporting Martha McSally’s victory over Ron Barber. 

The ads will begin running in the Tucson media market next week.

In their lone debate, rivals Martha McSally and Matt Heinz vowed to fight to bring new missions to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Fort Huachuca, to fix the Affordable Care Act and to secure the border.

But the two often split on their solutions to the problems in Wednesday night’s Congressional District 2 debate in Sierra Vista.

Incumbent U.S. Rep. McSally, a Republican, told the audience it is obvious the Affordable Care Act has failed in Arizona, as residents in rural counties have few choices in terms of the health care marketplace.

“It doesn’t take a doctor to diagnose that Obamacare is not working,” she said, in a pointed reference to Democrat Heinz, who is an emergency-room physician as well as a former state representative.

McSally conceded the system in place before Obamacare was flawed, but said the decision to replace it with a radically different, mandatory system was not the answer.

The candidates argued about who is to blame for the problems with the Affordable Care Act.

McSally said it was fault of the Obama administration, while Heinz said that “big pharma” and health care insurance providers wrote the legislation.

Heinz said the ACA has done a lot of good across the country, which he’s seen first-hand as a physician, but admitted some changes are needed.

McSally said the entire system needs to be replaced.

In terms of border security, McSally called for “a better strategy” when it comes to national security.

She said the federal government has done a poor job of tracking immigrants who have overstayed their visas, and has also placed Border Patrol agents too far away from the physical border. But she praised a decision to replace seven miles of physical border wall in Southern Arizona.

Heinz said the underlying issues can’t be ignored while the U.S. focuses on physical solutions like walls, and that a comprehensive solution is needed to address how to handle the millions of undocumented people living in the United States.

“We can’t just fix the heart and ignore the lungs and the kidneys,” he said.

Asked about the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, McSally railed against “unelected bureaucrats” who could force closure of the Apache Generating Station, a coal-fired plant in Cochise County.

“Thankfully, the courts have stopped it,” she said; the plan is on hold while states including Arizona challenge it.

She said she voted with Congress to send a disapproval resolution to President Obama about the energy plan, but he vetoed it.

Heinz countered that McSally was part of what he called the least productive congressional session in the nation’s history, forcing federal agencies to act when Congress should.

Environmental policy should be balanced, he said, warning that a lack of environmental monitoring led to poisoned water in Flint, Michigan.

The congressional district, which covers a portion of Pima County and most of Cochise County, is considered very competitive. McSally defeated then-Congressman Ron Barber in 2014 by a 161-vote margin.

In August, the Secretary of State’s Office reported that Republicans and Democrats each have about 132,000 voters registered, the Republican Party had a razor-thin lead with just 13 more registered voters than the Democratic Party had.

Independents are coveted in the district, making up nearly one-third of its total registered voters.

The debate in Sierra Vista is the only planned public meeting between the two candidates. Both campaigns have indicated they would be open to another debate in the Tucson area but none is planned.

Four years ago, when Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel, first ran for public office, she was a newcomer to politics. Her clear intelligence and drive were obvious, as was her mastery of military matters. But she spoke in generalities about policy matters — as many novice candidates do.

That was then. Four years later, with two years in Congress under her belt, McSally is a strong, smart and pragmatic representative of Congressional District 2, one of the state’s most evenly divided districts politically.

This is why we endorse Martha McSally for Congress in CD2.

McSally, a Republican, is facing a challenge from Democrat Matt Heinz, a physician and former state lawmaker.

Heinz is a solid candidate with good legislative experience. We believe that his bipartisan work and expertise in health policy in the Legislature recommends him as a problem-solver.

But the representative from CD2 will be one of 435 members of the U.S. House, and Southern Arizona needs someone who can effectively advocate for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Fort Huachuca and our region’s other military installations.

McSally is that person.

She first came to Tucson when she was stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and has established herself as an expert on the A-10 fighter. She was stationed at D-M four times and commanded the deployable squadron of A-10s.

She knows the importance of the A-10 to D-M and has made defending the viability of the aircraft a top priority. She’s focused on the A-10 in the short term, but also looks to the future by working to attract and expand other missions — such as drones or F-16s — to the base. “I come with credibility,” she said.

The Air Force wants to retire the A-10s and replace them with the much more technologically advanced —and much louder — F-35s. McSally held hearings on the viability of the A-10 to emphasize its effectiveness in close-air support in combat.

She’s also advocated to keep the EC-130H Compass Call electronic warfare and jamming squadron at D-M.

McSally has been successful for two years in keeping full funding for the A-10 and EC-130H. She also was a strong advocate for preventing the Air Force from retiring the A-10 until there was a fly-off between the A-10 and the F-35 to evaluate the two fighters. She wrote the requirements for that fly-off test.

Much of McSally’s thinking is rooted in the military mindset. “Veterans know how to come up with an objective” and figure out what needs to happen to accomplish that goal.

“I have situational awareness,” McSally said. “What can we get done?”

She did this with her WASP legislation. It allows women who served in World War II — the Women Airforce Service Pilots — to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

We do have our difference with McSally on issues, such women’s access to the full range of reproductive health care. But when it comes to Southern Arizona issues, McSally has been there, doing the work and getting results.

When faced with a challenge, McSally said she asks herself, “What’s the best way to get this done?” That’s a question key toward being effective in a divided Congress and representing a politically divided district.