Allen holds off Dem challenger Carlisle

Ben Giles//November 6, 2018

Despite Democrats’ best efforts, Sen. Sylvia Allen isn’t going anywhere.

The Snowflake Republican surged to a commanding lead overnight against Democrat Wade Carlisle, continuing her biennial tradition of holding the Legislative District 6 seat for the Republican Party.

Allen has now won three consecutive terms in the northern Arizona district, and did so again in routine fashion.

After early ballot results gave Allen a narrow lead of a few hundred votes on election, day-of voting reports from Gila and Navajo counties helped her surge to a commanding lead. Allen also narrowly won the majority of the vote in Yavapai County, while Carlisle, the vice mayor of Holbrook, handily won in Coconino County. A nearly identical scenario played out on election night two years ago, when Allen beat Democrat Nikki Bagley.

Carlisle, a railroad worker, was backed by a healthy dose of independent expenditures hoping to boost his campaign and harm Allen, a conservative Republican who’s routinely targeted as a beatable candidate.

Allen has proven immune to those efforts, thanks in part to her own penchant for fundraising – she raised nearly $70,000 for the campaign – and a healthy dose of spending by the Senate Victory PAC to help ensure the chamber stays in control of Republicans, as it has been for more than a decade.

For Democrats, the loss is a blow to their chances of picking up any seats in the Arizona Senate, where they’ve spent the better part of the last six years on the short end of a 17-13 split.

—LD6 Senate by the numbers

100 percent of precincts reporting in Coconino, Gila, Navajo and Yavapai counties

Republican

Sylvia Allen 52 percent

Democrat

Wade Carlisle 48 percent