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For Pima County Democrats, District 29 is about as close as you can get to a sure thing.

Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly two to one in the district, which stretches from Downtown across the city's Southeast Side. Because of those numbers, the two Democrats running for state representative in the district, Matt Heinz and Daniel Patterson, have more or less kicked their campaigns into second gear.

Meanwhile, the two Republican hopefuls, Juan Ciscomani and Pat Kilburn, are stepping up their campaigns, hoping to snag independent and Democratic voters and crash the legislative party this fall.

Can either Ciscomani or Kilburn pull off a November win? Both think so, but conventional wisdom says otherwise.

"It's very unlikely," said Tucson pollster Carol Zimmerman. "They always have consistently voted Democratic, and I would be quite surprised if a Republican won. It would have to be against a Democrat who shot himself in the foot."

Patterson and Heinz won, in large part, because of hard work they put in during the primary. Both made their presences known in the district, walking precincts regularly while getting their message out in a variety of ways.

With the primary behind them, they are teaming up with prominent politico Linda Lopez, who is running for the district's state Senate seat.

"We are feeling confident, but we are going to continue to run an aggressive campaign," said Patterson, 37, an ecologist and neighborhood leader. "We are going to continue to listen to voters, continue to talk about the economy."

Ciscomani and Kilburn are two GOP candidates with solid conservative credentials. For example, neither is running on Clean Elections funding because they view it as a waste of taxpayer dollars.

"I started off running in Clean Elections, and as I saw our (state) budget get worse and worse and worse, I said: 'I am not going to do this. This isn't right,' " Kilburn said.

Kilburn, 61, is a former U.S. Border Patrol agent and immigration officer.

Perhaps because of the large discrepancy in voter registrations, he doesn't play his Republican affiliation too prominently on his Web site or on his signs. And in an interview, Kilburn stressed his ability to reach across party lines to get work done.

"I want to show the people that a Republican can get along with both the Republicans and Democrats and get together," he said, adding the issue he will push is taking state action to help keep Davis-Monthan Air Force Base viable in the future.

Ciscomani, 26, is relying more on his ties to the district and personal narrative to reach voters. His family immigrated to the country legally in 1994 from Mexico when he was 11 years old.

He is deeply connected to his church, Centro Cristiano Carismatico.

"We have a lot of churches in the area. I am a pro-life candidate," he said. "We are really working hard, getting out there, focusing on the south side of the district."

As far as government goes, he said he would like to see it limited and would push for more accountability with state agencies, particularly around education and child welfare.

"The main thing really is that there is money — the lack of money is not the only problem," he said. But "there is a lack of accountability with school districts regarding that money."

Some of Tucson's largest growth has happened in District 29 on the Southeast Side, where new housing developments have slightly changed the district's demographics from 10 years ago.

Kilburn and Ciscomani may do well in those areas.

"Because the district is growing by leaps and bounds, it is changing from a super-Democratic stronghold," said Heinz, a physician who was the top Democratic vote-getter in the state representative primary. "The demographics are shifting."

But Heinz, 31, didn't see that shift as enough to make any real change in this year's election, and besides, he said, his message of reforming state health care is one that appeals across party lines and ideology.

"Those far, far East (Side) people who are largely Democratic, conservative Democrats, those are my people," he said. "I walked over 3,000 houses."