Petersen campaigns in Yuma, pitches law-and-order attorney general bid

Warren Petersen used a Tuesday night stop in Yuma to cast his bid for Arizona attorney general as a fight over border crime, drug enforcement and keeping the state on the path he wants. Speaking to voters at the Yuma Community Food Bank, the Arizona Senate president said he wants to keep Arizona safe, free and prosperous and warned that he does not want the state to become like California.

The setting fit the message. The food bank says it serves more than 20,000 people each month, has distributed 10 million pounds of food and has spent 48 years serving Yuma and southwestern Arizona. Petersen’s decision to campaign there put a statewide race in a place where residents see daily pressure from rising costs, border enforcement disputes and the legal fights that often land at the attorney general’s office.

For Yuma County, the office is about more than campaign rhetoric. The attorney general can sue, defend state laws, coordinate with law enforcement and step into conflicts that reach from consumer protection to border policy. Petersen’s promise to lean into public safety and conservative priorities, including the Second Amendment and Arizona’s Women’s Sports Act, would matter here only if it translated into action on the issues that hit this county most directly: cross-border crime, drug trafficking, fraud and the legal battles that involve state and local agencies.

That local context has only sharpened since Gov. Katie Hobbs signed an executive order on Feb. 25, 2025, creating Operation Desert Guardian to work with local law enforcement, including Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot, and federal authorities on cartel activity, drug smuggling, human trafficking and other border-related crimes. The state is already using Yuma as a front line for border coordination, and any Republican attorney general would likely be expected to weigh in on that effort.

Petersen is running in the Republican primary against former Tucson city councilor Rodney Glassman, with the vote set for July 21, 2026. The race has already turned sharp. In June, Petersen publicly said he would work with the federal government to deport people in the country without authorization, including DACA recipients, a position Attorney General Kris Mayes called “disqualifying.” Petersen’s campaign manager also filed a State Bar complaint over a column backing Glassman, underscoring how quickly the contest has moved from party politics to personal trench warfare.

For Yuma voters, the test is simple: if Petersen wins, what changes here beyond campaign language? The answer will show up in how the state handles border enforcement, whether it pushes harder into legal fights with local and federal agencies, and how much of the attorney general’s attention reaches the county beyond the border issue itself.