Tucson, Arizona
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Opening a brand new restaurant is all the time a threat, however this one much more so: It’s a scorching summer season in the Arizona desert, meat prices are up and the economy is unpredictable.
“I’m a little nervous,” proprietor Ray Flores tells a customer to his new mission on Tucson’s northern edge. “Are you a gambler?”
Charro Steak North is nearly prepared: The bar is stocked, the provides delivered and the new crew employed. For that final half, Flores provides President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress some credit score, particularly for his or her sweeping new coverage invoice, which among many other changes temporarily eliminates taxes on tipped wages and additional time for many workers.
“We had a really robust hiring fair,” Flores stated in an interview. “Lots of applicants. Way more than we have had in previous hiring fairs. A lot of quality applicants. A little higher quality, it seems, than in the past four or five years. …. I do believe that those messages of some kind of tax relief created some of this.”
The steakhouse is in Arizona’s sixth Congressional District, one of the high battlegrounds as Republicans attempt to maintain their tiny House majority in subsequent yr’s midterm elections. GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani is the incumbent, and Flores has supported him in the previous.
Ciscomani voted for the coverage invoice, championed by Trump, that features the adjustments Flores believes would possibly assist his new restaurant launch. But Flores isn’t able to decide to backing the district’s GOP incumbent once more in 2026.
“Right now, we are in the middle of the off-season,” Flores stated. “It’s probably a question that needs to be asked a year from today.”
Flores is an impartial and a late decider. And he worries Ciscomani is maybe extra involved together with his personal standing in Washington — and with Trump — than he’s about his evenly divided district right here in southern Arizona.
“Unfortunately, once you are elected, that is the treadmill that you are on,” Flores stated. “You get nothing done anymore because you are just trying to get reelected or get your party elected. … I always felt that he was somebody for our community. I hope that still remains the case.”
Our go to was half of our “All Over the Map” mission; Flores was amongst the greater than 100 voters we visited repeatedly in battleground states final yr to trace the 2024 marketing campaign by means of the eyes and experiences of on a regular basis Americans.
Now, our aim is to trace public sentiment about the president and his agenda heading into the 2026 midterm elections. This most up-to-date Arizona go to was to get some first impressions of the GOP agenda bundle, marketed by Trump and his Republican allies as their “big, beautiful bill.”
For a restauranteur like Flores, the invoice’s influence on the financial system might be the best check. So his acknowledgment that the GOP measure probably helped him discover a higher workers for Charro Steak North may doubtlessly work in Ciscomani’s favor.
But Flores additionally finds quite a bit to not like in the new measure.
“I don’t know if we are big enough for it to help us,” stated Flores, whose firm runs greater than a dozen eating places now. “They’ve got their work cut out to make sure this pays off. I’m concerned that businesses are … all being lumped (in with) these billionaires, and that’s not the case.”
Flores stated the GOP agenda invoice does nothing to assist “back-of-house” restaurant staff — cooks and dishwashers and others who don’t get ideas. And it did nothing to unravel what Flores considers an issue for the hospitality trade: wildly disparate state legal guidelines setting minimal wages for tipped versus different classes of staff.
“I would like to see more from (Ciscomani) and their team focusing on small business,” Flores stated. “I wish they would talk to operators more than they do now.”
The economic influence is one metric to trace right here as we rely down the 15 months to the midterm vote.
Latino voter sentiment is one other. The district is 25% Hispanic, and Republicans hope to construct on the party’s recent gains with Latino voters.
Trump, for instance, gained 37% of the Latino vote in Arizona in 2020. He narrowly misplaced the state. In 2024, Trump’s share of Arizona Latino voters jumped to 44%. He gained the sixth District and the state on his approach again to the White House.
We will get a glimpse of Latino voter sentiment subsequent month, when there’s a particular election in the neighboring seventh Congressional District. It is overwhelmingly Democratic and 60% Hispanic.
A 3rd midterm check for the Republican agenda invoice, right here and in different battleground districts, is the influence of massive adjustments to social safety net programs. Democrats are already framing these adjustments as mean-spirited, accusing Republicans of hurting the poor to assist pay for tax and different advantages that primarily profit the extra prosperous.
Those coming adjustments are the supply of fixed dialog at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, which serves each the sixth and the seventh congressional districts.
“Demand is already up,” stated Claudio Rodriguez, the meals financial institution’s vice chairman for coverage and advocacy. “We have a lot of newcomers.”
The meals financial institution served 171,000 folks final yr. It tasks that quantity will climb near 200,000 in 2025. Many of the folks it serves come a number of occasions a yr, if not each month. The meals financial institution had 900,000 whole visits final yr and tasks surpassing 1.2 million visits this yr.
Those will increase come regardless of the undeniable fact that, so far, the influence of Trump administration adjustments on the meals financial institution has been comparatively modest. Rodriguez stated a associate company lately misplaced federal funding for a lunch program. During a tour of the meals warehouse he paused at an space stacked with contemporary produce, together with a pallet of boxed tomatoes.
“I believe these are from Mexico,” Rodriguez stated. “That is going to change soon with the tariffs and all that. So we’re going to see less produce come in.”
Rodriguez predicted some extra cuts or adjustments when the subsequent fiscal yr begins on October 1. But the largest influence on the working households who rely upon the meals financial institution are nonetheless down the highway a bit.
Popular GOP agenda objects comparable to the short-term elimination of taxes on ideas took effect immediately. But the extra politically dangerous coverage adjustments — comparable to new work requirements for Medicaid and eligibility and adjustments that would end result in people losing food assistance — don’t start to kick in till 2027.
It creates a problem for the meals financial institution’s administrative workers. New candidates for assist are briefed on the coming adjustments, so that they know that their eligibility for meals help or medical protection may very well be affected as extra of the new GOP insurance policies take effect.
“Whether it is cuts to Medicaid, cuts to SNAP, maybe cuts to the resources that are in the Farm Bill, we have to adjust,” Rodriguez stated. “So we know there is going to be a change. We just don’t know what the impact is going to look like.”
That many of the provisions kick in at totally different occasions over the subsequent a number of years is a problem when the meals financial institution tries to make projections about how many individuals it would discover itself serving or how a lot personal cash it would want to lift to offset misplaced federal funds.
That identical drawn-out implementation schedule may additionally make it tougher for Democrats to gain political advantage.
“Some things are going to roll out after the midterms, which is a very nice play for some folks to wait until after that,” Rodriguez stated. “All we can do is prepare and make sure that our community is being served.”
We first met Rodriguez earlier than the 2024 election, in his different work as an organizer for a progressive group. The meals financial institution is a nonprofit that doesn’t take sides in elections, so Rodriguez is cautious when on the clock there.
He wouldn’t, for instance, say whether or not be believes Ciscomani deserves one other time period.
“For some people, he did what he had to do,” Rodriguez stated. “For others, they were disappointed.”
Rodriguez did share an e-mail to the GOP congressman, written on behalf of the meals financial institution, urging him to vote no on the massive GOP agenda invoice as a result of of its social security web cuts.
Ciscomani finally rejected the concept that the measure would damage working households.
“He believes that it won’t, that he’s attacking the fraud, the abuse, the scam,” Rodriguez stated. “When we come here every day on the line, we don’t really see any of that. And if it is one or two people that do do that, why punish the rest? Why punish the seniors? Why punish the kids, the veterans?”