For Immediate Release
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org
AP: “Fealty to Trump Defines Republican Senate Primary in Arizona”
PHOENIX — Ahead of today’s GOP Senate primary, AP published an overview of this “bitter” brawl, drawing special attention to Trump’s dominant role in the race.
For over a year, Brnovich, Lamon, and Masters worked to win the support of supposed “kingmaker” Trump and his far-right supporters — even when it meant ignoring the issues that matter to Arizonans. After incessantly trumpeting the former president’s baseless election lies, Masters scored the endorsement and suddenly became a serious contender, leaving everyone with the same question: “Is an endorsement all a Republican needs to win an Arizona primary race?”
Check back in tonight and we’ll know the answer. For now, see below for key excerpts or read the entire story here:
- All the major candidates aggressively sought Trump’s imprimatur and have not been shy about advancing his false claims of election fraud from the 2020 presidential election.
- Despite a venture capital career tied closely with Silicon Valley startups, Masters is running as a critic of Big Tech…it’s an interesting position for a candidate who owes virtually his entire professional career to Facebook’s first investor, billionaire Peter Thiel.
- Masters was once a strident libertarian… 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.
- More recently, he’s an immigration hard-liner who espouses the “great replacement theory,” accusing Democrats of trying to flood the nation with millions of immigrants “to change the demographics of our country.”
- After trying hard but failing to get the Trump endorsement, Lamon says 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.
- [Brnovich] is the only major candidate with experience in elected office. But he’s seen his star fade since Trump soured on him because he did not deliver what Trump wanted most — indictments of election officials who he claims, without any evidence, illegally deprived him of a second term as president.
- 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.
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