If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — say, two election cycles later. 

This proved a winning strategy for Rich Vitiello, the Cobblestone Farms Republican and former Maricopa vice mayor whom InMaricopa now projects will win his bid for Pinal County supervisor — a race he has lost in the past.

At his home on Sedona Trail this evening, past the campaign signs standing proudly in the lawn and through the front door, were Vitiello’s family and friends, area dignitaries and journalists. 

Spirits were high at 8:30 p.m. when Vitiello led by an eye-watering 15 percentage points with 97 percent of precincts reporting, 26,000 total votes, and higher so when those journalists declared they had called the race. 

“I’m extremely satisfied, extremely happy,” Vitiello told InMaricopa in his home office while a dinner party raged on the other side of French doors. 

Vitiello, dressed as a walking, talking campaign sign one last time tonight, kept the cold beer flowing and the chicken wings appropriately piquant, as in the eleventh-hour barrage of provocative opinion editorials fired from either side of the aisle. Vitiello on one, George Arredondo Sr. (D-Coolidge) on the other. 

“George has been a worthy opponent,” Vitiello said. 

Tonight’s victory seemed similarly decisive for the former businessman Vitiello, a “diehard New Yorker” and 20-year Maricopan who started his political career a decade ago 0-2. 

Vitiello, as a political newcomer in 2014, ran a losing Maricopa City Council campaign against now-Mayor Nancy Smith. Two years later, he filed for the same office, pulled his packet early and floated a new bid for Pinal County supervisor in District 4 with encouragement from then-Sheriff Paul Babeu. 

He would lose to the incumbent Anthony Smith (R-Maricopa), who advanced to the general election where he ran uncontested. Vitiello, reinvigorated with tenures as a city councilman and vice mayor under his belt, did not have such a luxury this year. 

“Quitting isn’t in my vocabulary,” Vitiello said. “I was unknown then … my name recognition kept building, and so did my intensity to run. I campaign hard.” 

Smith had the benefit of incumbency in 2020 when he won District 4, which, at the time, encompassed the city of Maricopa, Arizona City, parts of Eloy and a 50-mile strip of land on the Pima County border. 

In 2022, Maricopa City Council, Vitiello included, successfully lobbied during a redistricting to keep the city intact, counter to PCBOS proposals that would have bisected the city, Pinal County’s most populous, into two districts. 

Now, Vitiello claims the seat vacated by Kevin Cavanaugh (R-Coolidge), the embattled election denier who made national news after pivoting from his Pinal County sheriff primary election flunk to a spiteful write-in campaign for Pinal County recorder, which he also lost tonight. 

Cavanaugh in 2020 was elected to represent District 1, a yawning swath of a district that encompassed most of the eastern two-thirds of Pinal County, including Cavanaugh’s base of operations in Coolidge. As such, he inherited the city of Maricopa in 2022.

Before the redistricting, District 1 was the only battleground district among five in the county. Former Arizona House Rep. Pete Rios (D-Dudleyville) was the only Democrat on the board after an eight-point win over Republican Tom Sorensen in 2016. 

Cavanaugh had defeated Rios on a knife’s-edge in the next election — 432 votes of some 20,000 cast. Come redistricting in 2022, not only had Democrats lost representation on the county board — so did Maricopa.

Vitiello — perhaps thanks in part to several straight months of waking at 3 a.m., he said, and standing in prominent locations along State Route 347 to wave at passing motorists every morning — has returned Maricopa’s new district to what many might say was its rightful heir. 

Well, at least 14,481 voters would say that. 

“We’ve been misrepresented the last two years,” Vitiello said. “We’ve been the stepchild. I plan on not being a stepchild anymore.”