Despite It All, Can Blake Masters Win?

Arizona’s Senate race looked all but over in September. But Blake Masters is capitalizing on a new wave of voter angst.

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Blake Masters carries 2-year-old son Rex to the stage at a campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

PHOENIX, Ariz.—In early September, Blake Masters’ campaign looked doomed. Arizona’s Republican Senate hopeful was struggling to make up ground against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in the polls, buried under a barrage of negative ads and lacking the campaign funds to hit back. And when a prominent Republican super PAC affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced in late September it was cutting bait to focus its spending on other states, it felt like Masters’ epitaph.

But now a perfect storm of circumstance has buoyed Masters’ campaign, and Kelly’s once-comfortable six-point lead in RealClearPolitics’ polling average one month ago has suddenly shrunk to 2.5. One Republican pollster last week put the campaigns just one point apart—a fact Kelly’s campaign highlighted in a Sunday fundraising email warning that “this race could not be any closer.”

In a 50-50 Senate with a whole buffet of swing states up for grabs, there are a few viable paths to a Republican majority. But any map that includes a Masters win is a very grim sign for Democrats.

“If Blake can pull it out, it’ll show just how bad the environment is for a middle-of-the-road, well-funded Democrat,” Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist who worked with Masters during the primary, told The Dispatch. “Blake has the wind at his back, but that’s mostly because of the terrible inflation and economic climate we face.”

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  1. Deleted Comment

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    The clips I've seen of both Hobbs and Lake indicate Kari Lake is very good at campaigning. I won't be surprised to see her win. She is surprisingly very disciplined with her messaging.

    I saw an ad with Lake, Masters and someone else, and she was head and shoulders better on the mic than he. She may carry him across the finish line.

    She'll make someone an awesome Veep candidate in 2024. Unless they find her in bed a dead boy or a live dog.

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    1. Retired Prosecutor

      "]D]ead boy or live dog." That's a great line.

      The first time I heard a version of it was from ethically sketchy Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards who said that "the only way he'd be beaten in the election was if he was caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl." Classic political stuff --Louisiana politicians are real characters. Whatever your politics, for instance, you have to find Sen. John Kennedy's comments to often be totally amusing.

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    2. Beth_blinn

      That's what decades of being in front of a camera does - of course she's good at campaigning. Unfortunately, being good at putting on a front is what people in this country count as the most important characteristic of public servants. I hope someone finds something on her, because she's one scary lady.

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    Earl King

    I don’t know enough about him and living in NJ I have no sense of what is going on in AZ. I’ll just point out that a 10,000 vote win for Biden was due to an overwhelming turnout by Democrats. That will not happen now that Biden has proven to NOT be the uniter he promised. He obviously promised Progressives that he would enact their policies if they and Bernie would stand down. He presented himself as a moderate, a caretaker. Instead he acted as if he wanted to be the next FDR. A activist President. In other words he lied to the American public.

    The anger flowed back to those who feel that. People who feel the economic pain. The public, much to the chagrin of never Trumpers, anti Trumpers, Trump haters and Democrats who want to push the narrative that the GOP is a dangerous group of voters along with those that have moved on from Jan 6th. It has proven to be a bust as an issue with everybody but the above. I try in live in reality, so I’m not going to make a pronouncement as to whether they should have. Shoulda woulda is a waste of time.

    What GOP voters need to decide is can they elect someone who can get reelected. There is no benefit to a one term anything. Do I have a wish for who GOP voters should elect? Of course, but in this environment my wish is worthless. In the end I hope voters will pick someone that won’t embarrass their state. To that I ask this questions to my fellow residents in NJ. How many times does a Senator have to be indicted before the voters say, maybe we shouldn’t vote for him again.

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    1. Retired Prosecutor

      Of course you are talking about Robert Menendez (D-NJ). I feel your pain, but it is NJ, similar to Cali where I live -- a one party state where we've elected dead people. Ironically, when Menendez appears on TV, he makes more sense to me than most on foreign policy, particularly his criticisms of the moronic attempts to craft a nuclear deal with Iran.

      I find the way that the Democrats have ignored the real concerns of voters who are living their current life experiences this cycle, while gas lighting them with things voters know from personal experience to be untrue, to be amazing.

      When 80% of likely voters think the Nation is "out of control," as recently polled, the current Administration and Congress should be very very afraid.

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        Earl King

        Indeed and I agree with you about his foreign policy positions. I don’t understand much of what Biden is doing and especially NOT doing vis a vis foreign policy. The Iran excursion is just bizarre to me and only seems to be driven to reverse Trump rather than re looking at the deal and what was left out. He’s has done nothing about China’s efforts in South America. No effort in making a Trade deal with Britain. What is he doing about Taiwan? Nothing. Is he going to make the same mistake with Taiwan as he did with Ukraine? Not giving them defensive weapons “prior” to a an invasion effort?
        Of the biggest misnomer Biden has promulgated on the American public is the “transition” to clean energy. Democrats have this religious fervor with solar and wind......but with 275 million cars and trucks registered in America and a typical ownership of 11 years of a vehicle his transition is non-existent. They are attempting to do something that simply is not feasible or possible for a multitude of reasons. With the avg. price of an E Vehicle at $62,000 it may be a while for the avg. American before they buy one. Thanks for the input.

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        1. Retired Prosecutor

          I think Biden totally lost foreign policy credibility early, with the Afghanistan debacle. Our allies took notice - perhaps Ukraine has repaired some of the damage. Biden, (ironically) like Trump, is a transactional politician. Despite his history (you know, all those foreign policy decisions Obama defense secretary Gates talked about), domestic policy seems supreme because that's how you win (buy) votes to stay in office.

          His energy policy is incoherent: he and his Democrats simply refuse to understand the economic consequences of their assault on American fossil fuels. They have come to believe that climate is an impending crisis and that banishing oil and gas is urgent. (And if true, why is China and India ignored, places where several times more carbon emissions occur?)

          But their policies mean higher prices fuel prices, which they now blame on the very companies they want to go out of business. Those companies had huge losses during the pandemic but of course we won't talk about that either. Here in California, Newsom and company want to stop the use of natural gas, that is when they aren't warning us to immediately conserve electricity, because our grid is approaching the breaking point. Simple economics just seems to puzzle this crew.

          So economic logic won’t persuade them, but perhaps if they are routed at the ballot box they might be. But I doubt even if that occurs, this rhetoric will in any way change.

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    3. Thconnors

      Well said!

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    Honest Ape

    If I was a political consultant advising Blake Masters, I would tell him that in this last week-and-a-half of campaigning against Mark Kelly he should make sure to point out his opponent's involvement in this illegal scheme: https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/victory-arizona-court-strikes-down-pima-countys-balloondoggle/.

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    JohnD

    In the end, I think Lake will win, but McMasters really does come across as weak, without any core principles, and frankly not ready for prime time. Lake, while presenting herself as very Trumpie, is in fact no dummy. I think though that people like Lake are less interested in governing a state like Arizona, and more interested in building their national profile.

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  6. Megan

    Can he win? Much to the Chagrin of the staff of the Dispatch he will win easily.

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  7. Keith Blank

    "like we need to call for an investigative team that forcefully embeds in Google six weeks before every election to make sure that they’re not changing their algorithms to put their thumb on the scale"

    I don't know where to even start with this one. Maybe, we're going to embed teams in all corporations that reach the public? Or would we not put them in places like Truth Social, Fox, and CNN because the general public is already aware of their bias? How about teams to audit Palantir data and the systems that present it?

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    Char T

    "Arizona can be a tricky state for Republicans to navigate in general these days." Tell me about it.

    I live in AZ, and I've considered ignoring my ballot entirely because, well...you wrote all of it. It's a mess. I will, eventually, at least partially fill out my ballot. This article has shed some light on things I was wondering about; especially in this era of radical candidates. In the voting guide pamphlets, it's interesting that many, if not all, of the Republicans running mention nothing about their efforts to "stop the steal" or insisting that Trump won. Almost NONE. This is strategic, and annoys me. It makes making a wise decision very hard. How do I find out just how many Republicans on the ballot are ones I perhaps shouldn't be voting for? Can you guys do a deep dive and provide short summaries? Is there a reliable source I can use for this? I feel like I'm going to have to read dozens of articles, and hope that they're right, in order to vote!

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    1. Randall Briggs

      In Oklahoma, am operating on the assumption that any Republican who doesn't denounce the Big Lie supports it. And none of them have denounced it, so I will be voting for Democrats for only the second time in my life.

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      John A Johnson

      Finchem was actually at the Capitol on January 6; he is an embarrassment. Lake does not seem any better nor Hamadeh (A-G candidate). Masters has backtracked and I only am voting for him because I trust that the "R" by his name will determine his Senate votes. We have an incredibly poor choice of candidates

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      1. Retired Prosecutor

        I agree. The really bad ones were pushed by Trump and then the Democrats got busy in the GOP primaries and did everything they could and spent $43 million to get them nominated. As we say in the legal business, if any of them get elected, the Dems should be 'estopped' from criticizing them as dangers to democracy.

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      2. Randall Briggs

        The "R" label has become very untrustworthy since 2016.

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  9. Jim S

    I saw a Lake ad last night about homelessness. Lots of shots of unfortunate folks. Soft voice over about not allowing the problem to spout out of control. I was like what the heck? This kind of warm fuzzy is not what you would expect from a MAGA head like Lake.

    The the shoe drops. The denouement is Lake announcing that only she can keep Arizona SAFE. That the point is to vilify these unfortunates as criminals and thugs that she would ‘clean up’ and get rid of. Scary stuff.

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    1. Retired Prosecutor

      Drug addled and mentally challenged individuals need to be taken off the streets. And keeping people safe may simply mean that we need to return to institutions for some of these people, not criminally prosecuting them.

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    Robert Knudson

    I will be interested to see if the Libertarian candidate in this race ends up playing spoiler (also the candidate in Georgia). Libertarians have always been weird (eg. the guy who turned himself blue from silver supplements or the Presidential nominee being bitten by a rabid bat) and the AZ guy is no exception (I keep thinking of New Order because of his interest in re-visiting the age of consent) but I'm pretty sure that a vote for him is a vote that Masters doesn't win.

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      John A Johnson

      I voted Libertarian past 2 Presidential Races; on this one more likely to vote “D” because more possible it will matter

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