Ballot Math / Arizona Legislature / LD22
Candidate races: Arizona Legislature, District 22

LD22: two legislative races with no opponent on the ballot

November 3, 2026 general election. District 22 is entirely in Maricopa County: all of Avondale and Tolleson, plus parts of Phoenix, Glendale, and Goodyear, about 238,000 people. Registration: about 38 percent Democratic, 20 percent Republican, 40 percent other. The district was drawn as a majority Latino constituency, with 64 percent of residents Hispanic or Latino. The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission rated it outside the competitive range and leaning Democratic. Recent results match: the Democratic Senate candidate won 64.6 percent in 2024, and the district voted Democratic by about 21 points in the 2024 presidential race. No forecaster publishes a rating for these specific races, and none is needed: see the race boxes below.

State Senate: Eva Diaz, alone on the ballot

The structural fact: this race is uncontested. Incumbent Sen. Eva Diaz (D) is the only candidate on the general election ballot. No Republican nominee advanced, and the Secretary of State's official general election write-in list, revised September 9, 2026, names no official write-in for this seat, so a write-in vote here will not be counted for anyone. Diaz won her primary unopposed with 10,499 votes. The contest in this district happened, to the extent it happened at all, inside the Democratic Party.

Eva Diaz (Democrat, incumbent)

LD22 state senator since January 2023. She first won the seat in 2022 as a write-in candidate, after the only candidate on the ballot, Diego Espinoza, withdrew to take a job at Salt River Project. Career educator: doctorate from Arizona State University in curriculum and instruction and educational leadership; principal in the Avondale Elementary School District; assistant principal in the Isaac Elementary School District; instructor at ASU and South Mountain Community College; co-owner of a language preschool. Chair of the Tolleson Planning Commission since 2013. Senate committees, per FastDemocracy: Education, Government, and Federalism and Family Law.

Record and key votes (with the sourcing caveat in the verification box):

  • HB 2677 (2024), repeal of the 1864 near-total abortion ban: YES, by party unanimity reporting. The Senate passed the repeal 16 to 14, a margin that required every Senate Democrat plus two Republicans. This page did not retrieve a name-level Senate roll call line for Diaz, and the verification box says so plainly.
  • Education is her stated center of gravity. Her candidate biographies say she has "long been fighting for improvements to our educational system" and wants every teacher supported and every child given "the education they deserve." The Arizona Republic describes her tenure the same way: support for public education funding and reproductive rights.
  • Endorsements, attributed: the Human Rights Campaign and several local unions, per the Arizona Republic; Reproductive Freedom for All endorsed her in October 2026.

Stated priorities, from her candidate materials: effective public education; access to quality, affordable health care; clean water and fresh air; championing women's and minority rights.

Money: no campaign finance total for Diaz was located in the sources retrieved for this page, including the March 2026 See the Money tables published with the 2026 Senate election summary, which list no fundraising table for District 22. That is a gap, stated here rather than filled in. An unopposed incumbent can still raise and spend money; this page simply could not verify how much.

Controversies: none of significance found in the coverage retrieved. Her unusual 2022 write-in path to the seat is a fact of district history, not a controversy about her conduct.

State House: two seats, exactly two candidates

How this race works, and why it is already decided: vote for up to two, and only two candidates are on the ballot, both Democrats. Elda Luna-Nájera and Betsy Munoz will take the two seats unless something extraordinary intervenes. The seat opened because Rep. Lupe Contreras (D) is not running again; he is running for Agua Fria justice of the peace. Two Republicans, Blaine Griffin Sr. and Diana Jones, ran as write-ins in the July Republican primary and received 118 and 116 votes; neither advanced to the general election, and neither appears on any general election candidate listing retrieved for this page. The real contest was the five-way Democratic primary, where Luna-Nájera took 5,682 votes and Munoz 5,392, ahead of Veronica Bejarano-Malone at 4,846.

Elda Luna-Nájera (Democrat, incumbent)

LD22 state representative since March 1, 2024, appointed to replace Rep. Leezah Sun after Sun resigned following a House Ethics Committee report accusing Sun of a pattern of inappropriate behavior. Licensed master social worker. Tolleson Union High School District governing board member since an appointment in 2020, and its former president; she is also running for reelection to that school board this year, at the same time as this House race. House committees, per FastDemocracy: Transportation and Infrastructure, Ways and Means, and Health and Human Services.

Stated priorities (her campaign, via the Arizona Republic): protecting civil rights, expanding access to education, and investing in infrastructure. Scorecard, attributed: the NRA Political Victory Fund graded her F in 2026.

Key votes: HB 2677 (2024, repeal of the 1864 abortion ban): she was in the House by April 2024 and the bill passed 32 to 28 with all House Democrats plus three Republicans, so her yes vote rests on the same party unanimity sourcing described in the verification box, not on a name-level roll call retrieved for this page. No other individual votes are printed for her, because none were verified to that standard.

Money: no campaign finance total located in the sources retrieved.

Controversy, and it is a school board controversy, not a legislative one: Tolleson Union Superintendent Jeremy Calles accused Luna-Nájera of sexual harassment in 2024, while she was board president. An investigation found the two had an "inappropriate" sexual relationship, "even if that relationship was fully consensual between the two individuals," according to a statement read by the board's vice president at the time; the investigation itself was not made public. Luna-Nájera was removed as board president. In early 2025 the newly seated board granted Calles a $450,000 settlement, saying the previous board's actions were retaliatory. In August 2026 Calles filed a new retaliation complaint against the district, alleging Luna-Nájera gave him a poor performance rating in June 2025, missed bonus and retirement effects followed, and citing a June 2026 board meeting confrontation. Her response, as of the Arizona Republic's October 7, 2026 account: she had not yet filed a response to the complaint and did not respond when asked to comment. A local accountability group, Citizens for Schools Accountability, supports her board reelection; the district teachers union does not list her among its recommended board candidates. All of this is alleged, settled, or reported as noted; nothing here has been adjudicated as sexual harassment by a court in the reporting retrieved.

Betsy Munoz (Democrat)

First-time candidate. Born and raised in Tolleson and West Phoenix, daughter of immigrants, educated in local public schools, bachelor's degree from Arizona State University. She has worked for education nonprofit organizations on college access, coaching school staff across the West Valley and helping students with college applications and scholarships. Running as a Clean Elections candidate, which means public financing after qualifying contributions, not a traditional donor campaign: her own fundraising page says she is "not taking money from corporations, PACs, or special interest groups."
  • Stated priorities: increased funding for public schools, including teacher and staff recruitment and retention; affordable housing pathways; jobs with fair wages and benefits as West Valley economic development grows; support for unions; increased access to health care; water and sustainability; addressing gaps in public education.
  • Endorsements, attributed: Reps. Quantá Crews and Cesar Aguilar and former Rep. Anna Hernandez, now on the Phoenix City Council, per the Arizona Republic. A candidate profile aggregator also lists Sen. Analise Ortiz and Rep. Lorena Austin among her endorsers.
  • Money: Clean Elections status is the money story; no private fundraising total is printed, because that model is the point of her candidacy and no cycle total was located.
  • Controversies: none found.

Verification notes

  • Key vote depth is this page's known shortfall, as on the LD12 page. The HB 2677 votes for Diaz and Luna-Nájera rest on chamber margins that required unanimous Democratic support (Senate 16 to 14, House 32 to 28), plus, for the House, reporting that all Democrats voted yes. That is strong sourcing, but it is not an individual roll call line, and other tempting party line votes were deliberately not added without name-level sources. No individual HB 2677 vote is printed for any Republican on this page because there is no Republican candidate on this ballot.
  • The Arizona Republic's September 29, 2026 legislature guide appears to have swapped the location lines for District 22 and District 23: its District 22 section describes Yuma, Gila Bend, Goodyear, and Tucson, which is District 23 geography, and its District 23 section describes Avondale, Tolleson, and Glendale, which is this district. Because of that swap, this page does not use that guide's vote spread figures for either district; it uses the district registration figures and the 2024 presidential margin from the sources in the Sources section instead.
  • Money is thin across this page. No campaign finance totals were located for Diaz or Luna-Nájera, and Munoz is a Clean Elections candidate. Totals will exist in state filings; they were not retrieved, and none is invented here.
  • The claim that Griffin and Jones did not advance rests on three things together: the July primary table, which does not list them as nominees; the Arizona Republic guide, which lists only the two Democrats for this race; and a general election candidate listing that names only Luna-Nájera and Munoz for District 22 House. If a certified list later shows otherwise, this page should be corrected.
  • Spelling: the incumbent's surname appears as Luna-Nájera and Luna-Najera in different sources; this page uses the accented form the Arizona Republic uses. Munoz appears as Muñoz in some profiles; her own campaign materials use Munoz.

How to vote without getting your ballot rejected

  • Mail it by Tuesday, October 27, 2026. After that day, do not mail it: use a drop box or a vote center instead.
  • It must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3. Postmarks do not count.
  • Sign and date the affidavit envelope, and write a current phone number on it.
  • For write-ins: only votes for officially filed write-in candidates are counted. The Secretary of State's general election write-in list, revised September 9, 2026, names no official write-in in either District 22 legislative race.
  • Leaving any item blank is allowed. It does not affect the rest of your ballot.

Sources

Ballot Math: analysis only, no endorsements. Same template as every race on this site: offices and record, key votes, money with dates, stated priorities, controversies with responses, and gaps admitted in the open.