Arizona's new Democratic majorities have chosen the people who will run the state Legislature. At caucus meetings in Phoenix on Friday, November 6, House Democrats elected Representative Oscar De Los Santos of Phoenix as the next Speaker of the Arizona House — the first Democratic speaker since 1966 — and Senate Democrats unanimously chose Senator Priya Sundareshan of Tucson as the next Senate President, giving Democrats the Senate majority leadership for the first time since 1992. The choices are the direct follow-through of the November 3 midterm result Awaaz Punjab reported on November 4, when Democrats won a state-government trifecta — the governorship and both legislative chambers — for the first time in 60 years.
Source: Tucson Daily Brief / Arizona Mirror / Arizona Daily Star / KGUN 9
The leadership votes turn an election result into a governing team. Whoever holds the speaker's and president's gavels controls which bills get hearings, which committees they go to, and what reaches the floor — in a state where Republicans entered election day holding the Senate 17 to 13 and the House 33 to 27, and had run the Legislature, with brief interruptions, for six decades.
Source: Arizona Globe
The House team: De Los Santos takes the gavel
House Democrats, meeting Friday inside the historic Senate chambers of the Capitol in Phoenix, chose De Los Santos, who served as the party's minority leader over the last two years, to lead the chamber. The former South Phoenix teacher, now 33, was introduced on election night as the prospective speaker and confirmed that standing with his caucus on Friday. His leadership team for 2027 includes Representative Nancy Gutierrez of Tucson as majority leader and Representatives Brian Garcia of Tempe and Kevin Volk of Tucson as majority whips. Representative Steve Montenegro of Surprise, the outgoing Republican speaker, will serve as the House minority leader in the 58th Legislature, which opens on January 11.
Source: The Center Square via Prickly Pear / Newsbug
The Senate team: Sundareshan, unanimously
Hours later, Senate Democrats settled their own leadership in a thirty-minute meeting and chose unanimously. Sundareshan — a Tucson lawyer and former Environmental Defense Fund staffer who has been the Senate Democratic leader since 2025 — becomes Senate President. Her team includes Senator Christine Marsh as majority leader, Senator Analise Ortiz as majority whip, Senators-elect Alma Hernandez and Edgar Soto as co-presidents pro tempore, and Senator Rosanna Gabaldon and Senator-elect Aaron Lieberman as majority co-chairs. She succeeds outgoing Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican who lost the attorney general's race to Democratic incumbent Kris Mayes by 55.25 percent to 44.68 percent, according to the results reported Friday.
Source: Blog for Arizona
"We heard you loud and clear. Arizonans rejected partisan extremism and chose a new direction," Sundareshan said in a statement on her election. She said early returns showed the Senate Democratic caucus on track to grow from 13 to 20 members — "a historic supermajority" — and listed the work ahead as "lowering costs for working families, keeping our communities safe, and giving every Arizonan a fair shot at getting ahead." The 20-seat figure is her caucus's projection from early returns; the count formally secured by Friday afternoon was at least 17 seats.
First fight already named: school vouchers
Both new leaders moved quickly to name their first policy target: the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) programme, Arizona's universal school-voucher system, which lets families use public money for private schooling and other education expenses. Meeting reporters after her election, Sundareshan told NBC 12's Craig Harris that 'ESA reform is coming', and Harris reported talk among Democrats of guardrails, income caps and even eliminating universal ESAs. De Los Santos has said the new majority's priorities include more money for public schools alongside changes to the ESA programme. The fight will extend beyond the Capitol: Teresa Leyba Ruiz, the projected winner of the race for superintendent of public instruction according to the Associated Press, has said she will revisit the automatic approval of ESA purchases.
Source: Blog for Arizona / Craig Harris, NBC 12; Tucson Daily Brief
Water is the second named priority. Sundareshan has long focused on water policy as well as ESA guardrails, and in a desert state where cities, farms and fast-growing suburbs compete for Colorado River and groundwater supplies, control of the Legislature's water committees matters as much as any single bill. With Governor Katie Hobbs re-elected, Democrats now hold the governorship and both chambers — a trifecta that removes the veto-and-gridlock pattern that defined Arizona government for a generation.
What it means for residents — and what happens next
For Arizona families, the practical effect begins on January 11, when the 58th Legislature opens: Democratic chairs will run every committee, Democratic leaders will decide which bills are heard, and the ESA, water, housing-cost and public-school debates that were blocked under Republican control will get votes. Arizona's large Phoenix-metro Punjabi community — centred in Phoenix, and in suburbs where many families weigh public schools against private options — will feel the ESA debate directly in school budgets and voucher rules. Final seat counts were still being completed as late ballots were counted, and Republicans, now the minority in both chambers for the first time in decades, begin the session under Montenegro in the House with their own Senate leadership chosen the same Friday. The gavels change hands in January; the argument over what to do with them has already started.