Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva says his ongoing re-election campaign will be his last. Grijalva, who is 76 years old, is seeking reelection to the southern Arizona district he has represented since 2003.
Grijalva told KOLD News 13 in Tucson that he won’t run again in 2026.
“I think 22 years is pretty good. It’s a retirement age,” Grijalva said. “Not that I’m abandoning what I do now but that it’s time for someone else, and it’s time for somebody younger.”
The announcement comes less than a year after Grijalva announced he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He missed over 300 votes while receiving treatment, though he argued those votes were “inconsequential.”
Grijalva, a staunch progressive and environmentalist, is the highest ranking Democrat on the House’s House Committee on Natural Resources and a political institution in southern Arizona, where his daughter, Adelita Grijalva, serves on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
He was also one of the first Democrats to call for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election, which he said initially drew the ire of many members of his own party.
“And then when it started to turn around, then it became some clairvoyant that I knew what was going to happen,” Grijalva said. “I had no idea.”
Grijalva is virtually guaranteed to win reelection this year over Republican Daniel Butierez in Congressional District 7, where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.
