Senator Justine Wadsack Contact information

Justine Wadsack is an American politician and a member of the Republican Party. She was elected in 2022 to serve in the Arizona State Senate representing District 17.

Before running for office, Wadsack was a real estate agent and political activist. She first filed to run for office in 2019, and in 2020 unsuccessfully sought election to the U.S. Congress and Arizona State Senate. In 2020, Wadsack posted a QAnon conspiracy theory slogan and QAnon hashtags on social media. She later stated that she was unaware at the time of what QAnon claims involved, and later realized it was “crap.”

In 2022, Wadsack ran for Arizona state senate as a Trump-aligned candidate supported by the Arizona Tea Party and “Purple for Parents” (a group formed to oppose the Arizona “Red for Ed” movement). She ran in the newly created Legislative District 17, which covers most of Tucson’s northwest and far east sides, as well as Rita Ranch.

In the August 2022 Republican primary election, Wadsack defeated incumbent Vince Leach, the senate president pro tempore. Wadsack took 41% of the vote, Leach took 35%, and Robert Barr took 24%. Supporters of Leach and other candidates sued to block Wadsack from the ballot, arguing that Wadsack did not live in LD 17 and was thus ineligible to be a candidate.

Wadsack jointly owns a home in midtown Tucson (outside LD 17) in a trust with her husband; she testified that she moved into the home of a supporter in LD 17 in February 2022 after separating from her husband, but acknowledged that she continued to list the midtown Tucson address as her current residence after that time.

In a hearing in Pima County Superior Court, Wadsack claimed in testimony that she had moved to the home of a campaign donor after being repeated attacked by “antifa”; Tucson Police Department reports did not support this claim, making no mention of any “political or organized” attack on Wadsack’s property. The Tucson police records did reflect that Wadsack had been taunted by one Texas man who was charged with misdemeanor hate crime and disorderly conduct. Wadsack later said that the police reports had missed some incidents.

A state judge rejected the effort to remove Wadsack from the ballot, saying that the circumstances were “suspicious” but that the petitioners had not proven by “clear and convincing evidence” that she was not an LD 17 resident at the time of the primary.

In the November 2022 general election, Wadsack narrowly defeated Democratic nominee Mike Nickerson, a retired pastor. Wadsack won 63,501 votes to Nickerson’s 60,420 votes.