The special election race to fill a vacancy in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District has been won by Democratic candidate Adelita Grijalva, a former Pima County supervisor and member of the Tucson school board, narrowing the already-slim Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Grijalva’s win on Tuesday also means that there will likely be enough support in the House to force a bipartisan vote on releasing federal investigative files relating to disgraced financier and accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Grijalva will serve out the remainder of the term that the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva, her father, was set to complete before he passed away in March. In winning her race, Grijalva becomes the first-ever Latina congresswoman to represent Arizona in Washington.
Grijalva handily defeated her Republican opponent, Daniel Butierez. With 87 percent of the votes counted, Grijalva had a commanding lead of 68.5 percent, while Butierez attained only 29.8 percent of the vote.
In her victory speech, Grijalva referenced her father’s commitment to serving his community, both at home and in the nation’s capital.
“More than 50 years ago, my dad started a movement based on dignity and equity for all. Fifty years later, that movement is alive,” Grijalva told her supporters.
She then vowed to push for a vote on releasing the Epstein files on her first day in office.
“We reject the MAGA agenda and we will hold this administration accountable,” Grijalva said.
Grijalva’s win on Tuesday narrows the Republican House majority, with the GOP now holding 219 seats to Democrats’ 214 seats. (Two spots remain vacant.) That means Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson can only afford two dissenting votes from his own party to pass bills, at least for the time being.
Grijalva’s win also makes her the 218th lawmaker in the House to support a bipartisan call for the release of the Epstein files, as a few Republicans agree with the Democratic conference on doing so. With that number reached, lawmakers in the chamber can now file a discharge petition, allowing them to put a bill up for a vote without prior approval from the speaker. If that bill passes, it would then head to the Senate for debate and a vote.
The House vote would be a political embarrassment for Johnson, who has been a staunch defender of President Donald Trump, especially when it comes to the Epstein files. Trump, who was once friends with Epstein, has characterized demands for the files’ release as a “hoax” against him, and Johnson has defended the president at every juncture where the Epstein files are brought up.
Johnson, for example, at one point defended Trump by claiming that the president was an FBI informant in the Epstein case. The speaker then walked those comments back, instead saying that Trump was cooperative with the FBI on the matter, as implying that he was an “informant” gave the impression that Trump knew about Epstein’s misdeeds.
There is huge distrust among the American public when it comes to the Epstein files. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published in July, 69 percent of respondents said they believed the federal government was withholding important facts about Epstein and his associates. Only 6 percent said they didn’t believe such facts were being kept secret, while another 25 percent said they were unsure.
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