Grijalva returned to office in Congressional District 7
FINAL - Yuma voters seemed to want to re-elect U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva to a fourth term in Congress based on unofficial results from Tuesday night's general election, but the race was a tight one in Yuma county.
With 35 of the county's 42 precincts reporting at presstime, Grijalva, the Tucson-born Democrat, was slightly ahead of his Republican opponent Joseph Sweeney in Yuma county. By the end of the night, Grijalva finished ahead with 15,829, beating out Sweeney's 14,438 Yuma county votes. A third candidate in the race, Libertarian Raymond Petrulsky only received 1,525 Yuma votes.
Statewide, with 94 percent of District 7 precincts reporting in, Grijalva had 62.5
percent of votes compared to 33.5 percent in favor of Sweeney and 3.9%
for Petrulsky. In all Grijalva was returned to office with 98,170 votes in District 7, while Sweeney had 52,685 and Petrulsky only 6,189.
Congressional District 7, which includes Yuma County is the second largest Congressional district in Arizona.
In addition to all of Yuma County, District 7 includes portions of Pima, Maricopa, Pinal, La Paz and Santa Cruz counties.
Out of the 435 Congressional districts in the country, it is the 26th largest in land area, covering 22,872 square miles. The population within the district is predominantly working-class families, from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds.
District 7 is also home to seven sovereign nations: the Ak-Chin, Cocopah, Colorado River Indian Tribes, Gila River, Pascua Yaqui, Quechan, and Tohono O'odham. The district also has both the oldest reservation in Arizona as well as the newest.
Grijalva worked from 1974 to 1986 as an unpaid member of the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board, then served on the Pima County Board of Supervisors from 1988 until he went to Congress in 2002.
Sweeney, who won the Republican nomination in the 2008 congressional elections, is the dean of an unaccredited law school in Tucson, which he started in 1978, and has run for Congress during every election cycle since 1984 but has never won a seat.
Petrulsky, a first-time candidate, is an Arizona City resident and the manager of a call center that conducts political polls.
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James Gilbert can be reached at jgilbert@yumasun.com or 539-6854.
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Congressional District 7
Raul Grijalva -- 99,906 votes or 62.8
%
Joesph Sweeney -- 52,956 votes or 33.3
%
Raymond Petrulsky -- 6,258 votes or 3.9
%
Unofficial results from 256 of 261 District 7 precincts in Yuma and portions of Pima, Maricopa, Pinal, La Paz and Santa Cruz counties, and do not include all provisional or late early ballots dropped off at the polls election day. Results courtesy AP. Updated at 3:34 a.m.
