Today is Primary Elections day in many parts of the country. Voters go to the polls in Virginia, Maine, Nevada,North Dakota, and South Carolina. But all eyes are on the special election that is taking place in Arizona, where the race to fill former representative Gabrielle Gifford's seat for her current term is occurring. That term expires this year in that Republican leaning district.

Gifford resigned from her position as Representative in January to focus on her recovery from injuries she sustained in the shooting spree that took the lives of six people and injured another 13 more last year. She was shot at an event she was hosting outside of a Tucson supermarket.

Gifford was one of the legislators targetted in former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s Political PAC’s imfamous crosshairs map. Palin Aide Rebecca Mansour said of the website and its crosshairs later in the day, the crosshairs were “never, ever intended to be gun sights” but could instead be interpreted as surveyor marks. She explained that they were “simply crosshairs like you’d see on maps.” The controversial “Don’t Retreat, instead RELOAD” site was scrubbed from the Internet shortly after the shooting.

The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, the suspended college student who had a history of drug possession charges was arrested at the scene. He invoked his right to remain silent and so the motive for the shootings have always been unclear. Based on medical evaluations, Loughner was found unfit to stand trial. Investigations into the incident showed that Loughner had fixated on Giffords after meeting her at a Tucson Mall in 2007.

In today’s elections, her former District office director Ron Barber is facing off against Republican Jesse Kelly. Although the Republican shares the same last name of Gifford’s astronaut husband Mark Kelly, the two are not related.

This battle is taking place in Arizona’s eighth district. That district’s Republicans have a distinct 26,000 vote advantage over the Democrats according to voter registrations, but the races there are always very competitive. Gifford won there against Kelly in 2010 by 4,000 votes.

Tea Partiers have rallied to the suport of 30-year-old Kelly, a former marine who is calling for lower taxes and a roll back of federal regulations and environmental protection laws. Kelly also has taken up the immigration issue and is calling for a double layer fence along the district’s border with Mexico.He is also pushing for the privatization of Medicare and Social Security, as stad that may cost him votes in the steadily growing rtetiree population of the district.

Meanwhile Barber has been trying to relate to voters that he understands their concerns. He has voiced a need for a buildup in the solar energy arena as well as tax cuts for the middle class. He is also pushing for training for vetrens and tax incentives for small businesses. Barber points out that the privatizing of social security and medicare would bring on the collapse of those systems.

Giffords, who has made very few public appearnces since the shooting incident, has returned to Tucson in recent days to help bolster the vote for Barber. Gifford and her husband attended a concert on Saturday night and her husband also spoke out in praise of Barber.

The choice of Representatives in that district is crucial as Democrats work toward gaining 25 seats in the House to re-take the majority.