On September 23rd, Adelita Grijalva cruised to victory in the special election to fill the House seat previously occupied by her father, the late Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona.
She would defeat her Republican opponent, Daniel Butierez, by a resounding margin of close to 40 percentage points to become the first Latina elected to Congress from Arizona. For the record, her margin of victory in this special election exceeded the margin of victory of 26.8 percentage points secured by her late father in his re-election bid in November of 2024 against the same Republican opponent.
The only problem, at least at this point, is that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is apparently refusing to swear-in Representative-elect Grijalva.
After rejecting Democrats’ requests to seat Grijalva during a September 30th pro-forma session, Speaker Johnson indicated that he would swear her in during the week of October 6th when Congress was scheduled to return to regular session. He then proceeded within the space of a day to redesignate the week as a district work period. At this point, the House is not scheduled to reconvene until October 14th at the earliest.
As noted by Rolling Stone, “Precedent establishes that in an uncontested election, there is no procedural rule barring a representative-elect from being sworn in during a pro-forma session.” In April, for example, “Reps. Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine — both Republicans representing Florida — were sworn in by Johnson during a pro-forma session the day after their special elections,” and, in September, Johnson “swore in Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) less than 24 hours after Walkinshaw won his special election.”
Grijalva and other Democrats are claiming the delay is politically motivated. Grijalva, after all, has vowed to supply the final signature needed on the discharge petition that would force the House to take a vote on legislation compelling the Justice Department to release all unclassified documents relating to the cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
A discharge petition is a rarely used procedural mechanism that allows members of the House to submit legislation for a vote even if House leadership refuses to schedule a particular piece of legislation for consideration.
A group of mayors from southern Arizona including Regina Romero of Tucson recently forwarded a letter to Speaker Johnson “urging him to swear in Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva.”
The Democratic Women’s Caucus has also written a letter to Johnson requesting that he swear in Grijalva. According to Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), the chair of the group, it’s “common practice in the House of Representatives that Representatives-elect are sworn in immediately following their decisive election, with some being sworn in as little as 24 hours after they have won.”
Once seated, Grijalva will represent Arizona’s Congressional District 7 which includes a sprawling expanse of land that borders the Mexican state of Sonora to the south and extends approximately from Palominas near the New Mexico border in the east to the California border on the west.
Following her victory over Deja Foxx, a “Gen Z activist,” in the Democratic primary in July, a New York Times article characterized Grijalva as some type of counterpoint to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor.
But Grijalva is clearly not just another “establishment” Democrat. In fact, once seated, Grijalva seems likely to become a determined opponent of the Trump administration. Grijalva herself has characterized her victory in the special election as a categorical “rejection of the MAGA agenda” and has vowed to “hold the Trump administration accountable.”
A recent analysis offered by the Arizona Republic places her “squarely on Capitol Hill’s left wing, a space her father occupied for two decades.” The New Republic similarly describes Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva as a “fierce progressive” whose victory in the special election could teach the Democrats some “early lessons” as they “prepare for the 2026 midterms and work to win over Latino voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024.”
This article is a partnership between Fronterizo News and El Paso Herald Post.
