One Week Out, Senate “Primary Fight Divides Arizona GOP” As Masters & Lamon Trade “Series Of Attack Ads”

Wall Street Journal: “Primary Fight Divides Arizona GOP”

Arizona Republic: “As I researched the candidates, I felt an overwhelming sense of mediocrity”

Ahead of next week’s Arizona GOP Senate primary, new reporting is highlighting how “Arizona Republicans have splintered multiple ways” as Masters and Lamon trade a “series of attack ads” and Peter Thiel “continued this month to pour money” into the increasingly nasty and expensive race.

See for yourself:

Arizona Republic (Opinion):  ‘None of the above’ should be on the Republican ballot in Arizona’s Senate race
By Laurie Roberts
July 25, 2022

• Every day I get emails from Republicans and independents who wonder whether this is the best Arizona has to offer.

• Consider this from Brenda, a longtime Republican who already knows who she’s voting for in the general election: Mark Kelly. “I will never vote for a candidate who agrees with vouchers or who believes that Trump won the election,” she told me.

• Consider this from Steven Schrade of Phoenix, an independent voter who is still mulling over the choices on his Republican ballot and is, let’s just say, underwhelmed. “As I researched the candidates, I felt an overwhelming sense of mediocrity,” he wrote.

Wall Street Journal: Primary Fight Divides Arizona GOP Effort to Unseat Mark Kelly

By Eliza Collins
July 25, 2022

• Arizona Republicans have splintered multiple ways as the party tries to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

• All three men have tried to cast varying degrees of doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election—a topic that has ripped apart the state GOP since Mr. Trump lost the state to Joe Biden by about 10,000 votes.

• Mr. Lamon has embraced false claims of a stolen election. He said he provided funding for the partisan audit of the most populous county’s election results—the audit found Mr. Biden won the election—and signed up to represent the state as an elector for Mr. Trump despite President Biden’s win.

• There is a wide gulf between Democratic and GOP candidate fundraising, which could prove a challenge for the Republican nominee. According to data from the Federal Election Commission as of July 21, Mr. Kelly had raised nearly $56 million.

• Democrats already are targeting both Mr. Masters and Mr. Lamon, who they say have views, including on abortion, that are too far to the right in a state where independent voters make up a third of the electorate.

• Mr. Masters also has drawn criticism for several controversial statements, including when he said in April that gun violence was caused by “Black people, frankly,” on the Jeff Oravits Show podcast.

• His writings as a college student, including saying he opposed U.S. involvement in both World Wars and quoting a Nazi war criminal, as reported by the New York Times, also have drawn negative attention.

Newsmax: Jim Lamon to Newsmax: Trump Made ‘Bad Endorsement’ in Arizona GOP Senate Race
By Solange Reyner
July 23, 2022

• Arizona GOP Senate candidate Jim Lamon said former President Donald Trump made a bad endorsement in backing opponent Blake Masters.

• Lamon… has aimed his fire at current front-runner Blake Masters.

• Lamon has challenged Masters for supporting immigration, being “owned” by his wealthy out-of-state donors, and not working to “fix” Big Tech when Masters was a part of that powerful industry.

POLITICO: Thiel drops another $1.5M for Masters as campaign feels cash pinch
By Natalie Allison
July 22, 2022

• Billionaire Peter Thiel’s support for Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters has now grown to $15 million as the venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur continued this month to pour money into the race to boost Masters’ cash-strapped campaign.

• Lamon to date has spent more than $9 million on television ads, including a series of advertisements attacking Masters’ ties to the tech world. The latest in Lamon’s series of attack ads opens with a recently uncovered 2008 satirical video of Masters rapping — lamenting how rappers “get no hoes” — and features a clip of Masters earlier this year touting Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” as a “subversive thinker that’s underrated.” The ad ends by calling Masters a “California liberal.”

• Saving Arizona, meanwhile, has dropped $7.8 million on ads to boost Masters.

Los Angeles Times (Opinion): Senate candidate Blake Masters doesn’t just want to ‘build the wall.’ He’s building a dystopia
By Jean Guerrero
July 25, 2022

• Masters is…  the Hollywood-actor version of Stephen Miller, the architect of former President Trump’s most draconian immigration policies.

• His performance is pretty good. Neo-Nazi publisher Andrew Anglin and other white nationalists, who’ve publicly cheered him on, seem convinced. Masters parrots their hateful rhetoric about Democrats changing U.S. demographics.

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