According to The Wall Street Journal, Blake Masters is about to announce a run for the U.S. Senate, potentially as soon as next week. Masters lost the Arizona senate race last year to incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly and will join a Republican primary field that includes Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb. Kari Lake is expected to announce her run in October. Incumbent Kyrsten Sinema, who switched her party registration from Democrat to Independent and is now seen as vulnerable, has not announced whether she is running for re-election. State Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) is widely expected to obtain the Democratic nomination, challenging her from the Left.
The Messenger reported on Wednesday, “A Republican operative in Arizona who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations told The Messenger that Masters made his decision a couple of weeks ago and that an announcement video is ready to launch next week.”
Masters posted on X a few days ago that he participated in a space with legislative candidate Dr. Andrew Jackson called “Blake Masters & Praying for America and Arizona.”
Lake responded, “I hope you bring up election fraud, and Election crime. You’ve been quite silent. And ‘Dr’ Andrew doesn’t think it exists.”
She replied to another comment, “The question is what has ‘Dr.’ Jackson and Blake done to root out voter fraud, or simply show support those of us who are pushing for election reform??Answer? Nothing.”
Masters lost the Senate race by 125,719 votes. He did not challenge his election loss, unlike the other three Trump-endorsed major Arizona candidates who lost their races last fall: Lake, Abe Hamadeh, and Mark Finchem. However, unlike those candidates, a Rasmussen Reports exit poll found that voters did not choose him; they said they chose Kelly over Masters 50 percent to 46 percent. Kelly maintained a slight lead over Masters in poll averages immediately before the election. Masters backed off on criticizing election fraud after the 2020 election, now referring to Joe Biden as “the legitimate president” and “duly sworn and certified.”
Masters angered conservatives during the general election race by flip-flopping on abortion and retreating on other issues. He scrubbed some of his positions on abortion from his website, including support for a federal personhood law and the statement, “I am 100% pro-life.”
Masters received a significant amount of funding in the primary race due to his mentor, Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel, helping him defeat several other candidates, including then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich and businessman Jim Lamon, but the money dried up in the general election. Thiel contributed $17.5 million to the Saving Arizona PAC, which raised $31 million in support of Masters, but the money was mostly raised for the primary.
A Super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate Leadership Fund, pulled all of its funding in the general election after “Masters had scored the worst focus group results of any candidate” the PAC’s leader had ever seen. Even though the Libertarian candidate Marc Victor dropped out of the race shortly after early ballots were mailed out, it didn’t appear to benefit Masters.
Since Lake has remained very close with Trump after the election, campaigning with him, Trump is widely expected to endorse her in the race. Political consultant Barrett Marson told Politico, “I’ll tell you if Lake and Blake are both in, he is wasting his time … she has much better positive name ID among Republicans than Blake does. If Kari Lake runs, there is no lane for Blake Masters.” Political consultant Kirk Adams, former chief of staff to Governor Doug Ducey, agreed, telling Axios that Lake is the “800-pound gorilla” in the race. Masters and Lake campaigned together last fall.
While Sinema angered Democrats for crossing sides to vote with Republicans on a few key bills in the Senate, her lifetime score from the American Conservative Union is a low 14.19, not much higher than her seatmate Kelly at 9.86. Gallego has a lifetime rating of 4.23. Recent polls show Gallego easily beating Sinema. A poll taken in August showed Lake 31 points ahead of Lamb and 35 points ahead of Masters.
Although Sinema has not announced whether she is running again, she has been raising funds. Gallego has taken in $6.8 million. Lamb has raised about $600,000.
The Arizona Sun Times asked Masters and Lamb for comment but did not receive a response by the time this article went to publication.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Blake Masters” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
