If there is one congressional district where last year’s vote to slash renewable energy tax credits will matter in the midterm elections, it might be in southeastern Arizona.
The sprawling 6th District has seen a clean energy boom in recent years fueled by tax incentives from the Democrats’ 2022 climate law. But Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani — seeking a third term — voted with nearly every member of his party last year to phase out those credits.
It’s a vote Democrats and their allies hope will haunt Ciscomani as they try once again to unseat him in a race that could help decide the balance of power in Washington next year.
“Juan Ciscomani claimed to support clean energy, renewables, all those things, and then turned around and voted against them,” JoAnna Mendoza, the leading Democratic candidate in the race to take on Ciscomani, told POLITICO.
Major clean energy projects in the district have included the SunZia transmission line, meant to carry electricity from a major wind farm in New Mexico, and a Lucid Motors electric vehicle factory.
But Lucid has moved to lay off hundreds of workers this year, including more than 700 in Arizona announced in June. The company also cut a shift at the plant.
Lucid told investors in February the tax law’s elimination of the EV tax credit and penalties for not complying with emissions rules — along with other factors — “could reduce demand for our products and have a material adverse effect on our business, prospects, results of operations and financial condition.”
Ciscomani defended his vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which Republicans are working to rebrand the Working Families Tax Cuts Act — as a compromise of competing interests.
“I’m very proud of that whole bill,” he said in an interview.
Ciscomani — like other moderate Republicans — pointed to helping lessen the blow on wind and solar companies by working to create an off-ramp for the credits.
“It was an overall very solid bill,” he said. “In terms of taxes, when you look at all the tax cuts and exemptions out there for small businesses, individuals, families.”
Ciscomani signed onto a number of public letters starting in 2024 with a handful of other Republicans asking party leadership to keep at least some of the tax incentives.
But it’s that kind of effort — which preceded the nearly unanimous Republican vote for the tax law — that has made Ciscomani frustrating to clean energy advocates.
The League of Conservation Voters and Honest Arizona targeted him in a May advertising campaign, saying that he voted to “increase your utility bill by more than $200 a year, cut clean energy production.” That number is based on data from the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
Ciscomani was also a main target of an April billboard campaign by Climate Power that sought to blame several vulnerable Republicans for high energy prices.
“He said that he understood how important these issues were for his constituents, and that we needed to protect these tax credits. But then he turned around and was a rubber stamp for Trump’s policies, which gutted clean energy and led to the affordability crisis that we’ve seen,” said Alex Glass, communications director of the Democratic-aligned advocacy group Climate Power.
Climate Power has been closely tracking clean-energy-related projects across the country since the Democrats’ climate law passed, and said that seven projects have been canceled in Arizona, though none in Ciscomani’s district.
Still, Ciscomani’s record — along with Mendoza’s positions in favor of renewable energy incentives — make the race ripe for clean energy advocacy, Glass said.
“It’s a very important race, especially with how out front Mendoza is on clean energy and affordability, and how much Rep. Ciscomani’s rubber-stamping Trump’s agenda has hurt the district and will continue to hurt the district,” she said. “He has really abandoned his constituents.”
Toss-up race
The 6th District race was already expected to be one of the closest in the midterms because of its evenly divided political makeup. Couple that with the president’s unpopularity and the party in power usually losing seats during the midterms. Handicappers call it a toss-up.
A June survey sponsored by the House Majority PAC, which is aligned with Democrats, found Mendoza 2 percentage points ahead. Another poll backed by Conservatives for America in March had her 3 percentage points ahead.
Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona political strategist who used to be Republican but is now independent, said that while Ciscomani has been a strong politician, the dynamics in this year’s race make him unlikely to win reelection.
“Juan’s a good congressman, he’s done a good job. But it’s the hill that Trump has created in this cycle that is significantly impacting candidates like him from being able to be successful,” Coughlin said, pointing to factors like the president’s immigration policies and the Iran War.
Coughlin added that Mendoza is a “pretty good candidate” with an “excellent” profile who has broad support among Democrats. She’s a veteran of both the Navy and Marine Corps, where she was a drill sergeant, and a single mother.
Mendoza previously advocated for clean energy policies when she did work for VetsForward, a liberal advocacy group in Arizona. She frames the issue as one about affordability, in line with national Democratic messages.
“My top concern is ensuring that constituents have the ability to pay for their energy to cool their homes,” said Mendoza, calling energy “a matter of national security.”
“We really need to ensure that we have a diversity of resources when it comes to energy. So I take an all-of-the-above approach there. We can’t be dependent on one source.”
Mendoza also supports proposals to change the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding formula to better account for cooling needs in hot areas like Arizona, and to include extreme heat events as disasters eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency aid.
Ciscomani, meanwhile, argued that there’s room for more work to incentivize clean energy and battery projects, particularly in ways that help domestic manufacturing.
“I’ll continue to work on that bipartisan basis,” he said. “This is one of the areas that there’s a lot of opportunity to be able to do that, to advance good policy that creates jobs, and they’re also responsible many times on the environment as well.”
Data center politics
The national fervor over data centers could play into the race, but it’s unclear how.
The district in recent months has seen at least two highly contentious data campuses proposed — one in Pima County near Tucson and one farther north in Marana. The facilities are facing strong opposition over their potential impacts on the electric grid, water supplies and noise.
“There’s a lot of discontent in the community,” Coughlin said.
Ciscomani aides did not respond to requests for comment on the data centers, and he has not publicly spoken about them.
Mendoza hasn’t weighed in on the specific projects, but said she’s concerned about data center development, particularly in the desert climate where water is scarce.
“There are some serious concerns that communities in this district have, and rightfully so,” she said.
Mendoza wants federal action to make sure the facilities don’t increase utility bills and require transparency about their water use.
“I’m not completely against the data centers, but I do think that the concerns of the communities need to be addressed, and we need transparency,” she said.
