Kris Mayes, Democratic candidate for Attorney General is now neck and neck with Republican nominee Abe Hamadeh, with 50.1% of the vote to Hamadeh’s 49.9%.  

Democrats were expected to be favored in early results, since a greater portion of Democrats voted by early ballots that can be tabulated before election day. Republican candidates closed the gaps across races as Republican-heavy election day votes flow in.  

The race pitted a moderate candidate with decades of experience in Arizona state politics against a fiery young candidate endorsed by a former president. 

The moderate is Mayes, 50, a law professor and former Republican who worked on former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano’s campaign and served seven years on the Arizona Corporation Commission. The firebrand is Abe Hamadeh, 31, an army reservist and “MAGA”-style Republican with no prior political experience. Mayes grew up in Prescott and touts her Arizona roots; Hamadeh was born in Chicago to Syrian immigrant parents who later moved the family to Arizona. 

Mayes has criticized current Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, for politicizing the office and staked her campaign on a pledge to return the office to its core priorities, like consumer protection and corporate accountability. 

“If you’re looking for sanity, if you’re looking for an attorney general’s office that is not political, if you’re looking for an AG who will just get down to business and do the job, then I’m your gal,” Mayes said at a campaign event last month. 

An environmental lawyer, Mayes also promised to take action on issues like a controversial water deal with the Saudi government. She has said she’ll protect abortion access in Arizona by using novel interpretation of Arizona’s state constitution. Her platform also includes nods to priorities among Republican voters including border security. 

Mayes ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, after former legislator Diego Rodriguez dropped out of the race in the spring. Rodriguez had failed to raise significant campaign funds in the early stages of the race. Mayes switched her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat in 2019. 

Hamadeh has campaigned as a law-and-order candidate and emphasized his plans to address crime and unauthorized migration as Attorney General. His campaign was sharply partisan, appealing to voters dissatisfied with liberal politicians. 

“I worry about the direction of our country… America is still the land of opportunity, but in order to have prosperity, we must have security,” he said at a debate in September. 

He’s also leaned into former president Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that he was the rightful winner of Arizona’s 2020 election. “I’m going to prosecute the crimes of the rigged 2020 election,” he tweeted in June, shortly after Trump endorsed him in the primary. 

That endorsement from the former president likely helped Hamadeh on his way to the primary win. The six-person GOP primary field that also included former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould, who left his seat on the bench to campaign for AG; and serial candidate Rodney Glassman. Hamadeh won with a plurality of 32%, Glassman trailed him in second and Gould was third. 

On abortion, Hamadeh has said he’s pro-life and that he’ll enforce whatever state abortion laws are on the books. 

“I could disagree with the law, but ultimately I am tasked to enforce the law,” Hamadeh said in the September debate – without revealing whether he disagrees with either of Arizona’s two abortion laws. “It’s a sign of maturity to understand your role as an attorney general is not to put your personal beliefs into your decision-making.” 

Mayes, for her part, says there’s more leeway for the AG. She has argued that the Arizona Constitution, which contains an express right to privacy, should be interpreted as providing a right to abortion access. That thinking is in line with the legal interpretation that led to the Roe v. Wade decision, but in Arizona it’s an untested theory (Mayes pointed to ongoing litigation in Florida as a potential test of the idea). 

“The race for Attorney General will determine whether or not a woman has the right to make the healthcare decisions that she needs to make over her own body,” Mayes said in August. 

The candidates also split over the death penalty. Hamadeh says he’s for it. Mayes argues Arizona’s history with the death penalty is troubled, but hasn’t explicitly said she’s against it. 

Speaking in May about a man executed this year for the 1978 murder of an Arizona State University student, Hamadeh said: “I don’t think it’s a sad day at all – I think it’s actually a good thing that he was killed.” 

Mayes raised $2.7 million for her campaign through Oct. 22, according to campaign finance reports. Hamadeh had pulled in just under $2 million by that date. 

During the primary, shortly before a campaign finance reporting deadline, Hamadeh’s brother donated $1,000,000 to the campaign, a figure that dwarfed Hamadeh’s previous contributions and led to an impressing fundraising report. But the money was returned three days later, leading to criticism that the brief loan had been used to project financial strength. 

On top of the donation, Hamadeh’s campaign came with other baggage.  

In old blog posts unearthed by reporters, he claimed to have voted using his mother’s ballot when he was a teenager – something that might amount to election fraud. And in 2013, he was sued, along with his brother, by his father in a property dispute case. 

In the latter stages of the race, Hamadeh hit the campaign trail with fellow MAGA candidates. He spent the last weekend of the campaign at events with GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, and Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem. 

At an event on Monday, he offered his closing pitch, a sweeping indictment of Democratic politicians.  

“They opened our secure border,” he said at the Nov. 7 rally. “It’s not just the border either, look what they’ve done to our streets. They unleashed criminals on our streets instead of putting them behind bars in jail. Every single policy that Democrats have implemented has led to misery and chaos.” 

Mayes didn’t share the campaign stage as frequently with fellow Democrats, but she did adopt the party’s primary midterm message to attach her opponent. “We have phenomenal candidates,” she said at a Democratic Party event in August, “the Republicans nominated crazy.”