(Headline USA) Trump-backed candidate Blake Masters secured the GOP nod for Senate in Arizona, the Associated Press reported, capping off a strong night for the former president in spite of ambiguity over his Missouri endorsement and an Arizona gubernatorial race for the GOP nomination that remained too close to call.
Masters, a 35-year-old first-time candidate, connected with the segment of Republican primary voters eager to confront Democrats, technology companies and other enemies of the Right in the November midterm elections.
Boosted by former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, Masters gobbled up most of the attention in a primary to take on Sen. Mark Kelly, who is considered to be among the most vulnerable Democrats, despite having only been elected in 2020 as part of a special election to replace the late Sen. John McCain.
A Masters victory in November would mark a dramatic shift toward conservatism in the vaunted seat previously held by two failed Republican presidential nominees who both held views to the left of the GOP at large: McCain and libertarian Sen. Barry Goldwater.
Although reliably red at times, Arizona’s Republican politics, long dominated by weak-kneed RINOs including Sen. Jeff Flake and current Gov. Doug Ducey, have only recently found their conservative voice in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, in which the state fell to Democrat Joe Biden by a narrow margin.
Tuesday’s GOP primary did not fit easily into the Trump vs. GOP establishment pattern that has defined so many contests this year, including the race for Arizona governor.
All the major candidates aggressively sought Trump’s imprimatur and were not shy about criticizing the election fraud in the 2020 election. Ducey declined to run, and the party’s mainstream never coalesced around any particular candidate.
Masters faced businessman Jim Lamon, who founded and sold a solar energy company; and Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who started the race as the best-known candidate but has been weighed down by fierce criticism from Trump.
Retired Maj. Gen. Michael McGuire, the former head of the Arizona National Guard; and Justin Olson, a former lawmaker and member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, struggled to gain traction.
Despite a venture capital career tied closely with Silicon Valley startups, Masters is running as a critic of Big Tech and is calling for regulating social media giants such as Facebook, which he says is unfair to conservatives.
It’s an ironic position for a candidate who owes virtually his entire professional career to Facebook’s first investor, billionaire Peter Thiel.
Masters took a class from Thiel as a Stanford law student and formed an enduring bond. They wrote a book together, Masters worked for Thiel’s investment firm and foundation, and the billionaire is now bankrolling Masters’ run for Senate through a super political action committee to which he’s so far contributed $15 million.
Trump last week called Masters “a brilliant mind who truly supports the MAGA movement and America First.”
Masters was once a strident libertarian whose online posts as a college student became fodder for his rivals.
He called for unrestricted immigration and wrote that “the U.S. hasn’t been involved in a just war in over 140 years,” a period that notably excludes World War II. Masters later told Jewish Insider, which first reported on the comments, that he “went too far.” He’s been critical of his rivals and the media for dwelling on his writings as a teenager.
More recently, he’s reasserted his support for immigration sovereignty in opposition to the Biden administration’s open-borders policies. He has accused Democrats of trying to flood the nation with millions of immigrants “to change the demographics of our country.”
Masters also has called Democratic leaders “psychopaths” and posed with a rifle declaring “this is designed to kill people,” saying the Second Amendment is not about hunting.
Trump’s support has been “great for my campaign,” Masters said.
“Do you know how many independents I meet who say, like, ‘We’re sorry, we voted for Biden. Please bring back the mean tweets because we want $2 gas, we want a border,’” Masters added.
After trying hard but failing to get the Trump endorsement, Lamon said the former president got it wrong in Arizona. At a recent campaign stop in Tempe, he claimed Trump endorsed Masters because of business ties to Thiel.
“All of these writings Masters did about open borders, open free drug trade and blah, blah, blah—I don’t think President Trump knew that when he endorsed,” Lamon told a woman who wanted to know why Trump wasn’t supporting him.
He later said he wasn’t worried about alienating the former president or his supporters, pointing to Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania as another example of Trump making a bad endorsement of a Republican Senate candidate.
“How’s Oz working out for us? Oz has got a boatload of experience compared to Masters,” Lamon said in an interview, noting polls that show Oz trailing Democrat John Fetterman.
Brnovich, in his second term as attorney general, was the only major candidate with experience in elected office. But he saw his star fade since Trump soured on him because he did not deliver what conservatives wanted most—indictments of election officials who helped to facilitate vote fraud in the state.
Brnovich initially vouched for the integrity of the 2020 election and sat alongside the governor and secretary of state as they certified the election results. More recently, he says he’s looking into allegations of irregularities in Maricopa County.
At one recent debate, Brnovich was repeatedly heckled by the crowd as he tried to speak.
“Look, I’m respecting you, please respect me and let me finish my answer,” he eventually clapped back. “If the truth hurts, then just shut the hell up, all right? Let me just talk.”
Masters now shifts his focus to Kelly, a fundraising powerhouse who raised $52 million through the end of June for what is likely to be one of the most expensive campaigns in the country this year, with half of it still in his bank account.
He’s been using that fortune to bolster his image with a barrage of positive television ads as the Republicans remain focused on one another.
Republicans, meanwhile, have struggled mightily with fundraising. The candidates combined have raised less than half of Kelly’s haul, with much of that money coming from Lamon himself.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
