Rachel Mitchell leads Republican primary for Maricopa County attorney
Preliminary election results released Tuesday evening show Rachel Mitchell with a commanding lead in the Republican race for Maricopa County attorney.
Mitchell ran against Gina Godbehere for the Republican nomination to serve out the remaining two years of the Maricopa County attorney's four-year term. The winner will face Julie Gunnigle, the sole Democratic candidate, in November's general election.
Once thought of as a "down-ballot" race, civil rights organizations and criminal justice advocacy groups have levied criticism and pressure campaigns against the county attorney's office in recent years, emphasizing its importance and potential for abuse of power.
Several high profile incidents, including a failed attempt to prosecute protesters as gang members, nearly 200 botched criminal cases, and scrutiny from her staff and other elected officials about her sobriety and absence from work, prompted former County Attorney Allister Adel to resign in March.
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Adel's resignation triggered a special election to select who would serve out the remainder of her term, which ends on Jan. 1, 2025. Adel died 6 weeks after her resignation at age 45.
The first results from the primary election were released about an hour after polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
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2 candidates for Republican nomination: Rachel Mitchell and Gina Godbehere
After Adel's resignation, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted to appoint Mitchell as the interim county attorney in April.
Mitchell has 30 years of experience as a prosecutor. She served as a bureau chief at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office “overseeing teams of prosecutors for 17 years, including the sex crimes bureau, which prosecutes crimes that involve child molestation and adult sexual assault.”
Mitchell was one of five criminal division chiefs at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office who wrote a letter to former County Attorney Adel in February urging her to resign, citing ethical concerns over her continued sobriety and judgment.
Running against Mitchell is Godbehere, a former bureau chief and trial attorney who handled juvenile, gang, homicide and repeat offender cases at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Godbehere was the designated bias crimes prosecutor for over a decade and currently serves as a municipal prosecutor in Goodyear.
She is the CEO and co-founder of Speak Up, Stand Up, Save a Life, a conference that focuses on “encouraging students to speak up about depression, suicide, grief, abuse and bullying.”
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Julie Gunnigle, the sole Democratic candidate
Most of Gunnigle's career has been in private practice, but she worked as a prosecutor in Indiana between 2006 and 2007 and in Illinois from 2009 to 2011. She previously ran for county attorney but lost to Adel in the 2020 general election.
Gunnigle gathered the 4,289 signatures she needed to get on the ballot in less than a day. She has remained the sole Democratic candidate throughout the campaign.
Gunnigle has said she wants to stop over-incarceration, pledged to make expungement of marijuana convictions universal and automatic, and she is the only candidate to say she would not prosecute abortion or birth control-related cases in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Maricopa County attorney primary results: Mitchell leads GOP race
