As hardworking Arizona families continue to reel from the impacts of Eli Crane’s reckless agenda, Former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez is running to be the independent leader Arizonans deserve.
New reporting from the Arizona Mirror details Nez’s campaign to reach voters on all sides of the aisle. He’s holding Crane’s feet to the fire over his cost-hiking agenda, “focusing on Crane’s votes to continue the Iran War, give tax breaks to companies that build data centers and cut food assistance and healthcare programs.”
While hardworking Arizonans continue to feel buyer’s remorse from Crane’s laundry list of broken promises, Nez is ready to deliver real results: “I wouldn’t start the day that I get sworn in. I would start after we win this election.”
DCCC Spokesperson Lindsay Reilly:
“Jonathan Nez is a bipartisan leader with a proven track record of getting things done for Arizona families. Born and raised in Northern Arizona, Nez has dedicated his career to fighting for his community, while Eli Crane has left them behind time and time again. This November, Arizonans will kick Crane to the curb and send Jonathan Nez to Congress.”
Read more:
Arizona Mirror: Jonathan Nez bets on ‘buyer’s remorse’ in rematch against Eli Crane in rural Arizona
- Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus…[has] remained loyal to President Donald Trump, even as his approval ratings have been in a freefall for much of the past year.
- Voter attitudes about Trump and the Republican Party have cratered in the past two years, according to public polling. The Nez campaign is leaning into that, focusing on Crane’s votes to continue the Iran War, give tax breaks to companies that build data centers and cut food assistance and healthcare programs.
- “My opponent has made some very bad decisions in supporting legislation that is negatively impacting the quality of life in our district,” Nez said.
- Crane voted last year for President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which made massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program and to Medicaid. But even with those spending reductions, the cost of the tax cuts in the bill is expected to increase the national debt by $4.7 trillion.
- Crane has repeatedly voted to allow Trump to unilaterally go to war with Iran — a conflict now in its eighth month — and has scrubbed his website of his previous opposition to spending money on foreign “forever wars.”
- Crane’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for interviews.
- Nez described this change as another example of a politician courting rural voters during election season and then ignoring them after taking office.
- “The frustration is that they have been lied to and ignored for way too long,” Nez said. “Last election, there was a big campaign about America First. And I ask people, ‘Do you all feel like America’s first right now?’ A supermajority of the people say ‘no’. And they feel it. Look at the gas prices right now.”
- “You see those high gas prices throughout the state and this district,” Nez said. “And people are feeling the negative impact on our economy. And it goes back to people that are in office.”
- A poll commissioned by [the Nez] campaign in August showed him in a statistical tie with Crane. The poll of 500 likely voters in CD2 found that 46% favored Crane to Nez’s 44%, with 10% undecided.
- If Nez ekes out a win in November, he’ll be the first Native American to represent Arizona in Congress.
- “I wouldn’t start the day that I get sworn in,” Nez said. “I would start after we win this election by bringing federal agencies together and to start talking with the local elected leaders.”
- Nez said that Crane was too extreme for most Arizonans, and promised to listen to the needs of rural and Indigenous Arizonans.
- “This country is really divided,” Nez said. “The loud ones are the far right, the far left. I think the quiet ones are right in the middle. And the majority is right in the middle, where people want everyone to work together to get things done.”
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