No matter how the November election turns out, there will be some MAJOR changes in AZ's political landscape...

As a result of Tuesday's primary election, there will be a slew of new faces in many of Arizona's highest profile elected offices.

Statewide offices, where every holder of an office that's in a "line of succession" office (in line for the governor's office) will be new to the office:

Office	Current holder	Reason for vacancy	Contenders (D/R)
Governor	Brewer	Term limits	Duval/Ducey
SOS	Bennett	Term limits	Goddard/Reagan
AG	Horne	Primary loss	Rotellini/Brnovich
Superintendent	Huppenthal	Primary loss	Garcia/Douglas
Treasurer	Ducey	Running for governor	DeWit ®

Also new at the Capitol in January:  The AZ House of Representatives will have a new speaker as the current Speaker of the House, Rep. Andy Tobin, is term-limited and running for Congress (his primary there is still considered too close to call, though he is ahead by 346 votes).

Others:

Arizona's CD7, long held by the soon-to-be retired Ed Pastor, will have a new face.  Ruben Gallego emerged from the Democratic primary.  He faces an Independent candidate and a Libertarian in the general election.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors District 5, long held by Mary Rose Wilcox, who resigned to run for CD7, will have a new member - Steve Gallardo, a state senator won the D primary in the race to serve out Wilcox' term on the BOS.  Note: for a low profile (but *very* powerful) board that almost no one pays attention to, the MCBOS has undergone a huge upheaval: Of the five people elected to it in 2008 - Don Stapley, Fulton Brock, Max Wilson, Mary Rose Wilcox, and Andy Kunasek - four are gone.  The reasons are varied, but the bottom line is that all but Kunasek are done.

Tempe's city council has three seats up for election, with two of the incumbents, Robin Arredondo-Savage and Shana Ellis, running to retain their seats.  However, only one of them will return as on Tuesday, newcomers (to the city council, not politics or community activism) Lauren Kuby and David Schapira won seats outright.  Arredondo-Savage and Ellis will face off in November for the third seat.

Mesa, AZ's third-largest city, will have a new mayor as the person who was last elected to the job, Scott Smith, resigned to run for governor.  On Tuesday, John Giles rolled to an easy victory by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

- And none of this even begins to cover the legislature, where there are new faces every cycle.


Come January, one really will need a scorecard to keep track of the new players...