On Wednesday the battle for Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District was still too close to call.
The contest pitted Republican Rep. Eli Crane against Democrat Jonathan Nez, who’s the former president of the Navajo Nation.
According to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, Nez led Crane by only 86 votes early Wednesday morning — just .03%. Throughout Tuesday night and early Wednesday the lead flip-flopped multiple times between the two as counties tallied additional ballots.
The neck-and-neck results are likely to trigger a recount under state law.
The race is the second time Crane and Nez have faced off in Arizona’s 2nd District. In 2024, Crane won the election by 9 points in the Republican-leaning district that includes Flagstaff, Prescott and a huge swath of northern and central Arizona, and stretches down to the outskirts of Tucson.
If Nez ultimately wins the race, he’d be the first Native American member of Congress from Arizona.
During the campaign Nez tried to tie Crane to Trump as well as national frustration with high cost of living.
“Based on the votes of my opponent, it just shows that some of our elected leaders are bound to the ultra-wealthy, the most powerful in this country, and not the constituents that they represent,” Nez told KNAU during the campaign earlier this year. “You got high prices of groceries. High prices of almost everything today. And our economy is going in a concerning direction.”
As recently as September, the Cook Political Report considered the race a likely Republican win. But that shifted in recent weeks as Democrats’ prospects to retake the House as well as the U.S. Senate increased throughout the country.
Crane is a former Navy SEAL and is seeking a third term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He’s a close ally of President Donald Trump and a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
During this year’s campaign Crane focused on economic and immigration issues. He also touted a bipartisan effort to speed up recovery at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon following the 2025 Dragon Bravo Fire.
“This is a bipartisan effort to move forward and make the Grand Canyon better than ever, and you know, we're not, we're not sitting around twiddling our thumbs,” Crane told KNAU last year.
