Quacy Smith is an avowed moderate, which makes him to the left of the majority of the Congressional district he seeks to represent.

He’s running for the District 9 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives against Republican incumbent Paul Gosar, who has been in the house since 2011. The Western Arizona district takes in Yuma, Bullhead City, Lake Havasu City and Kingman — as well as swaths of Buckeye, Goodyear and Surprise and the far western chunk of Glendale.

CD9 is commonly described as ruby red, but Smith said he has seen signs of a shift on the campaign trail this year. His campaign team said this is not based on formal polling, instead rooted in anecdotal evidence on the ground.

“What’s been more pronounced to me, especially running out in a very conservative district — I think the thing was R +16 before the election. I know it’s not that now — is how pitted the people have become and how partisan they have become,” Smith said after a 1-on-1 interview Wednesday led by the Arizona Media Association in partnership with the Clean Elections Commission. “You could be saying the right thing ... I’ve had people say, ‘If this guy would change his party and run as an a Republican or an Independent, he’d win in a landslide.’”

During the interview, he said Congress needs to get back to common ground politics instead of “stand your ground” politics.

This year, he said, he has visited MAGA-heavy enclaves and sought to find some common ground. While he is a life-long Democrat, his messages are: Republicans have to know that every Democrat is not your enemy and Democrats have to know that every Republican is not crazy.

“I was interviewed yesterday on a very conservative radio station. It was an hour long. And within 10 minutes of it starting we went on break and the guy said, ‘Why aren’t you running for president?’ A MAGA Donald Trump supporter said that because I’m where the people are. And that’s in the middle,” Smith said.

His grass roots campaign is not funded by the Democratic National Committee.

Despite that, and the heavily right-leaning district, Smith said Gosar’s far right stances and behaviors present a window of opportunity.

“Frankly, I don’t know that with that district and this particular opponent, that we’ll have this type of opportunity again. Paul Gosar is vulnerable because he’s an extremist,” Smith said.

His hot button local issues are water rights and housing affordability. He and his wife bought a house in 2016 for around $400,000 and sold it in 2021 for double the price. Now every house in that Goodyear neighborhood is valued at more than $1 million

On the flip side, his daughter is a second-grade teacher and cannot afford to buy a home.

“I think we need to revisit the infrastructure and make sure more of that money that President Biden passed is coming to this side of town. I love it. I love the growth. I hope they open an airport out here soon so we can quit driving to Sky Harbor. But it’s going to take more infrastructure,” Smith said.

Gosar declined the invitation to debate. During the Arizona Media Association interview with Nohelani Graf, Smith laid out his positions on several issues, including.

Water resources: “Then we come back to the table to make sure that we are increasing our underground water aquifers and expanding our ability to capture rainwater during our Monsoon season and to ensure that we have adequate water for the 100-year water table,” Smith said.

Immigration: “We need to secure the border, whatever that takes. President Trump was not wrong about that. Some of the things that he was trying to do, he was not wrong about that. I think the bombast, bluster and rhetoric was unnecessary. If he becomes president, I will work with him in every way possible. But if he starts saying too much I’ll be telling him not to talk like that. These are citizens and they are human beings.”

“We need more immigration judges. Did you know there are only 600 immigration judges and over 2.5 million cases backed up in the system? If you were to hire 1,200 more judges at an average pay — about $128,000 a year — it would take $153 million to hire those judges and fill six immigration courts. We don’t have time to get caught up in all this stuff and this border should have been secure a long time ago,” Smith said.

Climate change: “I’m a moderate. I think we need to find the middle of the road on it and do things that are meaningful, specific to areas. We can’t broad stroke it,” Smith said.

Government spending: “Our current congressman, out of all the representatives, spends far more than other Congressional representatives on travel alone. The only people that came close to him were the two representatives that flew out into the Guam area,” Smith said.

Inflation: “We should do some of the ideas Vice President Harris has about home ownership. Wealth starts with home ownership. Young folks graduating from college and starting a family have been priced out of the housing market. I agree whole-heartedly with capping interest rates and capping the price of rental properties so that we don’t have these folks from California buying up swaths of homes and raising prices,” Smith said.