Washington D.C. – Former State Senate President Ken Bennett was the latest in a long line of potential Republican candidates to decline to run in Arizona's sprawling First Congressional District, leaving some in the party desperate to find a replacement and others resigned to losing the seat in November.

At this point, Arizona and national Republicans concede, Democrats are heavily favored to win retiring Rep. Rick Renzi's seat in Congress.

The GOP is getting so panicked prior to the June 4 filing deadline that it has revisited other candidates who have also declined to make a bid. It is all an effort, several Republican sources said, to avoid a nominee they see as too conservative for the district, which stretches from the Four Corners along the New Mexico border and south and into parts of Pinal County.

The current Republican front-runner, Arizona Mining Association President Sydney Hay, finished virtually tied for second and only four points behind Renzi in the 2002 Republican primary. But because of her conservative stands, especially on immigration and social issues, some worry she might not fit the district.

"There's a general sense that Hay has a very hard time winning that general (election)," said one knowledgeable Republican who asked that his name not be used while speaking frankly about his party's chances in the First District. "It's a real tough hill for Republicans if she's the nominee."

"There's some concern that her position on immigration tracks fine for hardcore Republican voters but doesn't help with crossover Democrat voters," he said. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the First District by about 20,000, though the seat has voted reliably Republican in recent years, especially because Renzi spent significant energy building inroads to the district's significant Native American population.

Republicans are once again approaching state Corporations Commissioner Kris Mayes, who said as recently as two weeks ago she would not run, and state Rep. Bill Konopnicki, who established an exploratory committee before bowing out himself. If he begins to once again contemplate a run, it would be the third time in the past several months Konopnicki has taken a look at the seat.

National Democrats, though, point to the continued failure of Republicans to recruit another candidate as evidence that the seat is bound to flip control. "If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Yon Cohen told the ~Capitol Times~.

Bennett, he said, is the latest once-potential candidate "to acknowledge that national Republicans lack resources and won't be able to invest in Arizona's First Congressional District." According to the latest reports available from the Federal Election Commission, the DCCC had more than $44 million in the bank as of April 1, while the National Republican Congressional Committee had just $7.17 million on hand.

"To some degree, Kirkpatrick starts off as the favorite (for the general election) because she's got the money," said Republican consultant Constantin Querard. But for Hay, "not having to run a primary is pretty good." Too, Querard said, because of her 2002 campaign, Hay "is basically vetted," making her a potentially stronger candidate in November.

While immigration has proven to be a hot-button issue in other states, a hard line on enforcement has rarely proven an effective electoral strategy in Arizona. In 2006, anti-illegal immigration activist Randy Graf handily lost to Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, who toed a much more moderate line, in the state's Eighth Congressional District.

In November, Hay held a press conference outside a federal prison north of Phoenix to call on President Bush to pardon two Border Patrol agents who were arrested and convicted of several charges after shooting a man on the Mexican border in 2005. The two have become a cause celebre among conservative activists, but that scares some Republican strategists, one of whom called Hay's press conference "Randy Graf-esque."

National and local Republicans, though, hold out some hope for the seat, based largely on the premise that the Democratic primary could provide a surprise. Former State Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is the establishment favorite, and she remains the Democratic front-runner. But she will have to get by attorney Howard Shanker, who has deep roots in some Native American communities, and former television reporter Mary Kim Titla, who was born on the San Carlos Apache Reservation.

"The one thing going for Republicans in this seat is the divisive and late Democratic primary that won't occur until September," said one Washington Republican insider with ties to Arizona. The presence of several candidates who could run well among Native Americans "could create even further division among tribal communities in the district, which will work against the Democratic candidate."

Republicans spin the departures of Bennett, Mayes and others as a positive because of that late primary. "There are a number of Republicans in the First District who would have been able to win the seat as our nominee. Two of them recently opted out of a late primary process that leaves just two months to campaign for the general election," Arizona Republican Party executive director Sean McCaffrey said. "Sydney Hay is now the presumptive Republican nominee, and as such the district goes back to the toss-up column because she works as hard as any candidate I know."

But the fact that, just a month before the filing deadline, some Republicans are still looking around for a candidate is troubling.

If Democrats win the seat and hold on to two seats they won from Republicans in 2006, it would give them a five-to-three majority in the Congressional delegation. According to The Hotline, a nonpartisan political tipsheet in Washington, it would be the first time Democrats have held a majority of the state's House seats since 1966, when two Democrats outnumbered one Republican in the Arizona delegation.