Greg Stanton

Incumbent Rep. Greg Stanton clashed with Republican challenger Zuhdi Jasser on economic issues in an Oct. 5 debate while their third-party rival, who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024, said she's soured on the GOP.

Stanton, D-Arizona, is facing Jasser and "No Labels" party nominee Tisha Benoit in the race to represent Arizona's 4th Congressional District in the Phoenix area.

Jasser blamed economic issues on pandemic-era government spending that began under Trump and continued under former President Joe Biden. He argued the Biden administration "printing cash" worsened economic stressors.

"As much as Congressman Stanton and his party bosses tell him to use the robotic talking points blaming the administration, and blaming everybody else, they are the cause of the problem," Jasser said. "Any Econ 101 (student) knows that if you print trillions of dollars, a few years later, you're going to have growing inflation."

Stanton pointed a finger at Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have been reluctant to use their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to hold back the president's agenda.

"The last thing we need is another Trump sycophant in Congress," Stanton said.

Benoit meanwhile said she is disillusioned with both major political parties. Trump made a lot of promises when he ran for president, she told reporters after the debate.

"It doesn't appear to have happened, as far as gas prices and things like that," she said.

The debate was hosted by Arizona's Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

Candidates clash over 'socialism' attack

Stanton is running for his fifth term in Congress. He has served in a leadership role for the party's centrist New Democrats bloc in the U.S. House. A former mayor of Phoenix, he has been reelected every two years since 2018. He won by a roughly 7-point margin in 2024.

Jasser is a Muslim doctor who has criticized the Affordable Care Act and the influence of "radical Islam." During the debate, Jasser called for price transparency in health care and spoke against institutional investors from buying homes and businesses, naming private equity, Chinese government, Qatari government and hedge funds as forces to rein in.

Stanton in turn highlighted his vote for the ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at keeping big investors out of the country's housing market, and called for an end to federal tax breaks for data centers. He also said the country should keep AI out of health insurance decisions.

Benoit said the United States needs to focus more on preventive health care. She praised a measure that would expand Medicare to cover acupuncture for seniors.

Stanton was one of Arizona's seven members of Congress who voted in favor of a measure that denounced "the horrors of socialism" in 2025. But from the debate stage Jasser said Stanton "couldn't get himself to vote against socialism."

After the debate, Jasser clarified he was referring to a Sept. 1 vote on a package most Democrats opposed because, unlike the 2025 resolution, it included a call to pass the SAVE Act, a controversial piece of voting legislation supported by Trump.

He downplayed Stanton's work supporting moderate candidates across the country as part of the New Democrat caucus. Stanton is "a propagandist who pretends to be all about moderation" and "a person who doesn't want to suppress the socialists in his party," he said.

That's "a strange argument," Stanton told reporters after the debate. "The number one argument of my (primary) opponent was that I'm too moderate."

Stanton listed off business organizations who are supporting his campaign, including the national, statewide, and local Chambers of Commerce. He has "less social media followers" than people who are not as bipartisan, he said.

"If I write a book, very few people will read it," he said. "But it's how you govern effectively."

No Labels candidate supported Trump in 2024

Benoit, who is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, is backing away from Trump after supporting him in 2024.

Benoit said she has gone back and forth between political parties several times during her life. Her time living in Seattle during the 1980s left her skeptical of Democratic leadership, she said, and she moved to the Republican party because she was "fiscally conservative and socially liberal."

She supported Republicans in 2024. She felt the public was misled about Biden's health and shared Trump's value of lowering taxes.

"Like so many other Americans, who believed that a new administration would solve all the problems, I voted for Trump," she said.

That changed after he took office.

"All of the stuff that's happening with Turning Point USA and President Trump ... it just led me to realize that I'm a moderate," she said.

She is pitching herself to voters as an independent-minded candidate.

"I don't have to answer to any particular party," she said from the debate stage.

The election is Nov. 3, 2026. Early voting begins Oct. 7.