In Arizona, Kari Lake has a decent shot of winning the governor’s race, while Blake Masters looks like roadkill in the U.S. Senate race.
When all is said and done in the 2022 midterm elections, a lot of people who root for or against Donald Trump will insist that he was the key figure, and either blame him for Republican losses or credit him for Republican wins. If Republicans disappoint, you’ll see a lot of voices on the Right arguing that the GOP hurt its chances by nominating Trump-endorsed, inexperienced, lightweight candidates who simply weren’t ready for prime time or who were too extreme for the states they wanted to represent. From where I sit, that’s a generally accurate argument, but that’s only part of the picture.
Exhibit A for the “Trump tanked the Republicans” argument is likely to be Ohio, where the relatively milquetoast incumbent governor Mike DeWine is on course to absolutely crush Democratic challenger Nan Whaley. (Trump only endorsed DeWine in September, and didn’t endorse DeWine in the primary.) Meanwhile, Ohio GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance is doing…. eh, okay against Democrat Tim Ryan. Vance will probably win, but he’s on pace to do it by a few percentage points. Keep in mind, this is a state that Trump won in 2020 by eight percentage points.
But the state of Arizona’s gubernatorial and Senate races suggest the outcomes of these highly-contested statewide races are a little more complicated than simply being too supportive of Trump. Both GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters are pro-Trump, and outspoken about their support and loyalty to the former president. Trump endorsed both; Lake is described as one of Trump’s favorites, while Masters, portray[s] himself as “a fighter in a culture war in the model of Trump,” who has campaigned with the Senate candidate.
Lake has a decent shot at winning, and is leading about half the recent polls. Meanwhile, Blake Masters looks like roadkill. Strange as it may seem to those who consistently prefer one party over the other, there are going to be some Arizonans who vote for Lake in the gubernatorial race and incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly in the Senate race. This could be for a variety of reasons, but Lake spending 22 years in front of the camera as a news anchor for a Phoenix television station probably helps a bunch — she’s just a more charismatic candidate and more comfortable on the stump and in retail campaigning.
Arizona is a once-red state that looks pretty purple lately, and with Democrats currently holding two Senate seats, the secretary of state’s office, and both houses of the state legislature nearly evenly split, some might argue it’s looking increasingly blue.
If Lake’s polling numbers hold, it will indicate that support for Trump is a double-edged sword for Arizona Republicans, repelling some voters but attracting others. After that, it comes down to the candidate’s other qualities. The overt association with Trump didn’t help many of these MAGA candidates, particularly those running in states that Trump never won in a general election, like Connecticut, Maryland or Massachusetts.
Oh, and finally, remember that when push came to shove in the Arizona Republican gubernatorial primary, Democrats did what they could to help Lake:
Kari Lake watched her lead narrow in the polls and big players in Arizona’s Republican establishment coalesce around her top rival weeks before the state’s Aug. 2 primary for governor.
So Democrats stepped in.
The state party, in an email blast this week, thanked her opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, for past donations she made to Democratic candidates. The move was quickly interpreted as another example of Democrats’ meddling in midterm election primaries to help draw the general election opponent believed to offer the easier matchup in November — in this case Lake, an election denier endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
“As the Republican primary for governor continues to stir toxic infighting, the Arizona Democratic Party will always be grateful for Robson’s longtime support in helping elect Democrats up and down the ballot, including this November,” Josselyn Berry, a spokesperson for the state party, said in a quotation tacked on to the bottom of the email.
Democrats were warned these tactics could backfire on them, but they didn’t want to listen.