2022 Election: Eli Crane defeats 3-term Democratic Arizona Rep. Tom O'Halleran

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PHOENIX - Democratic Rep. Tom O'Halleran, the most vulnerable incumbent in Arizona’s nine-member congressional delegation, has been defeated after a spirited challenge from a Republican.

Businessman and former Navy Seal Eli Crane defeated the three-term incumbent on Thursday as more votes were counted from the election. Crane banked on redistricting, making it easy to knock off O'Halleran.

Crane will now represent the sprawling 2nd Congressional District, which covers much of northeastern Arizona and dips south to the northern Tucson suburbs. Redistricting remade the district into one that strongly favors the GOP by drawing in the Prescott area.

O’Halleran leaned on his moderate voting record, name ID and consistent work across the district that includes the Navajo Nation to hold onto the seat.

Crane banked on redistricting making it easy to knock off O’Halleran. His victory helps Republicans as they eye taking control of the U.S. House as more votes are counted from the election that concluded on Tuesday.

Besides O’Halleran’s district, three others among Arizona’s nine congressional seats were in play in the election that concluded on Tuesday, two now held by Democrats and just one by Republicans. All were too early to call.

Crane did not return messages seeking an interview, but his campaign issued a statement where he thanked his wife, Jen, and two daughters, and said he was proud of the campaign and volunteers and staff.

"In Congress, I will never forget whom I serve or why the people sent me to represent them," Crane’s statement said. "I will always be your voice."

He said his victory was a message from the "America First" movement pushed by Trump.

"Now begins the real work of getting the country we love back on track," he wrote.

O'Halleran reflects on campaign

Redistricting made O'Halleran's campaign virtually unwinnable, something that he fully understood.

"Obviously, the registration was not where it needed to be," he told the AP. "But I also felt that if we could get our message across to people that our country is too great of a country to allow us to be torn apart that that was worth moving forward on.

"And I still believe that," he continued. "I think that we have to find common ground. And you can’t find it by running away from it and saying, ‘Oh, that’s just too tough.’ You only find that by working towards it."

O’Halleran said he will spend his final two months in Congress continuing to work on issues close to Arizona, like water, the state’s forests and border security. And he said his final floor speech will be about the nation and the need to reunite.

"We have to be able to overcome what people say off the top of their heads, whether it’s truthful or not, and start to work back to the fact that we’re neighbors, we’re Americans," he said. "And we have a responsibility to listen to the factual discussion and try to find an area of compromise based on the facts."