The Digital Landscape #001: AZ-01
(The premise of this series is this: What does the digital landscape of a given race look like on the Democratic side? In other words, who seems to have the best chance purely off of each candidate’s social presence? Disclaimer: there will be no analysis on issues or ideologies. This is purely an analysis of social media presence.)
Arizona’s first Congressional district (AZ-01) is a toss-up according to the Cook Political Report. There are 10 candidates in the Democratic primary as of 12/18/25.
Inactive Candidates
Brian Del Vecchio and Brandon Donnelly are both completely inactive on the social media platforms they do have a presence on.
Based on cross-referencing their FEC fundraising data, the most probable scenario is they’ve informally shut down their campaigns.
Usually candidates will at least post photos of themselves on the campaign trail to maintain a political digital presence.
Candidates doing the bare minimum
I classify the bare minimum as choosing 1 platform (usually Instagram) to post campaign trail photo dumps and endorsement announcements, and then cross-posting them to other platforms (usually X and Facebook).
There are 2 candidates doing the bare minimum:
Amish Shah is particularly surprising, because he has a solid following on all of the social media platforms he’s on, and he’s raised over a solid amount of money.
If I were him, I’d invest in a political marketing agency that could help him maximize the presence he already has while optimizing for growth, since he clearly has no interest in investing the time to do it himself.
Marlene Galan-Wood has the most video potential
When I saw that Marlene has a broadcast journalism background, I was immediately disappointed when I saw she’s sporadic at best with video.
80% of succeeding at video is knowing what it takes to be comfortable on camera, and she has professional experience with it.
I’d be cranking out one video a day if I were her, as I think she has the easiest path out of the candidates to establish herself as the trusted source of political commentary and analysis within AZ-01.
Daniel Lucio has the most unique personal branding
Daniel is a systems engineer, and he has one video in which he talks about America needing a systems upgrade.
I was immediately drawn to this branding. It might be too wonky for anyone besides college-educated voters with an elementary understanding of engineering, but I think it could be workshopped into a message that resonates with a wider swath of voters than that.
If I was him, I’d create videos that focus on a singular issue, and then frame my proposed solution as the system upgrade.
Angie Montoya shows the most personality and transparency
Angie is really the only one who uses Threads, and she does so as an actual user of the platform, not as a politician who created an account for their campaign.
As a voter, I’d be drawn to check her out because she shows her personality through her Threads. Voters want to be able to relate to their representatives.
She also does campaign finance posts on Instagram where she posts her spending. I love that transparency vibe.
Rick McCartney and David Redkey have traction on TikTok
Rick and David both fall into the boat of having achieved a decent foundation on TikTok.
If I were them, I’d study political influencers for little stylistic tweaks to their content to make it more scroll-stopping, and then just commit to doing more of what they’ve already been doing.
Jonathan Tremble is crushing it with Instagram video
Jonathan is doing the best of the bunch right now when it comes to pure performance. He has several videos on Instagram with over 10k views and gets a decent amount of traction when he quote-tweet’s stuff on X.
But, surprisingly, he’s not on TikTok. There is an extremely high probability he would be able to achieve similar numbers there simply by cross-posting, which is an extra 30 seconds of work max if you use a third-party scheduling tool.
I’d also invest more time into Threads if I were him. He seems to have an intuitive grasp of X, and the Threads algorithm isn’t much different.
Want to get more out of social media for your political campaign?
I create and execute a political digital marketing strategy that treats Threads as the crown jewel, but is optimized for generating endless ideas for video, which allows you to maintain a strategically valuable political presence on:
Threads
X
Bluesky
IG & FB stories
IG & FB reels
TikTok
YouTube shorts
Static image content on FB and IG
Let’s set up a call and we can discuss affordable options for turning your digital presence into the X-factor of your campaign.
Note: I considered including FEC fundraising data for each client, but I didn’t want to unintentionally influence anyone’s decision. Vote for who best represents your ideas in the primary, not who you think has the best shot because they have the most resources.
