Opinion: Butierez faces uphill battle against Grijalva

November’s 7th Congressional District election in Southern Arizona could be three strikes and you’re out for Daniel Butierez Sr.

Butierez, a Republican, faces Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, to whom he lost in a 2025 special election for the seat vacated when Grijalva’s father, Raúl M. Grijalva, died two months into his 12th term. The elder Grijalva had defeated Butierez for that term in 2024. Those landslide losses were strikes one and two on Butierez.

Adelita Grijalva is heavily favored in the Democratic-dominated district, and one wonders if another landslide — strike three — will dissuade Butierez from trying again.

His chances are slim, and flip-flopping on the issues doesn’t help, especially immigration. Latinos are 60% of the 7th District’s residents, and 20% are immigrants, U.S. Census figures show.

Campaigning last year, Butierez said, “... we need to remove anyone who came in illegally.” This year, in an interview with Arizona Public Media’s Tony Perkins, Butierez said he supports the bipartisan Dignity Act to temporarily protect certain undocumented people living in the country five years or more.

His website earlier this year called for more Border Patrol funding, above the 31% increase in immigration enforcement money approved last year. The topic now is barely mentioned on butierezforcongress.com, and immigration isn’t on his policy issues list.

His stances on other issues have also become moving targets. Three Sonorans Newsletter on Substack said of Butierez on Sept. 29: “His positions on healthcare, immigration, mail voting and Arizona’s water crisis put him at odds with parts of his own party”; those “parts” include MAGA.

Does that mean his own GOP voters won’t support him? In a district where just one in five voters are registered Republicans, Grijalva could win by an even bigger margin, with an army of eager young campaign volunteers that has so far outperformed even what was her late father’s formidable get-out-the-vote organization.

Despite the odds, Grijalva is wisely campaigning as if victory is uncertain. Should Democrats prevail nationally, she will be part of a House majority putting a hard check on the president’s impenitent pursuit of policies devastating people of color, laying waste to the economy for most Americans and weakening U.S. global standing.

Nothing should stop another landslide where Democrats have prevailed for most of the last seven decades, from 1961 when the late Morris K. Udall began his 30-year congressional tenure.

Raúl Grijalva won 11 competitive House races starting in 2002, including by 27 points over Butierez in 2024. After the congressman’s death, Adelita Grijalva won the special election over Butierez by 39.5 points.

She did so as a proud, unapologetic liberal with an inherently deep sense of justice. Success begun in the special election should continue for as long as she wants to serve.

Butierez calls himself a conservative in harmony with the GOP, despite recent desperate flips on some MAGA issues. He is out of tune with district voters.

Grijalva has consistently expressed full-throated support for immigrants, condemning the administration’s trampling of civil rights and its disregard for justice and the rule of law.

She has called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as “completely, fundamentally corrupt.”

That’s unrealistic, but she could help push Congress toward sanity in immigration enforcement and reform, based on economic and humanitarian considerations , to resurrect the nation's immigrant legacy.

For that reason and many others, Adelita Grijalva deserves re-election on Nov. 3, and Daniel Butierez Sr. deserves rejection – strike three. Voters should send him to the bench, permanently.