For Immediate Release
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org
Arizona Republic Editorial Board: GOP Primary Voters Are Left With No Good Options for #AZSen
“Sizable Portion of GOP Voters Find None of the Candidates Worthy of Backing.”
PHOENIX — On Sunday, the Arizona Republic Editorial Board published a brutal pre-primary review of the “decidedly weak” and terribly flawed field of “lesser-known Republicans” running for U.S. Senate.
Despite California tech bro Blake Masters’ bump in the polls after his recent endorsement from Donald Trump, with more than a third of GOP voters still undecided and Election Day two weeks away, it’s clear that even Republicans are disappointed with the C-List candidates.
And it’s really no wonder why, Brnovich, Lamon, and Masters are all running on a shared, out-of-touch MAGA agenda: Sowing doubt in the 2020 election, banning abortion, and privatizing Social Security.
All of this led the Editorial Board to a key conclusion: There are no good options.
Read the full piece here, or see below for key excerpts:
- It can’t be a coincidence that while Masters has surged in recent weeks, a whopping 35% of likely Republican voters remain undecided, according to the most recent OH Predictive Insights’ poll. It suggests a sizable portion of GOP voters find none of the candidates worthy of backing.
- There are important, if subtle, differences among them. Lamon, for instance, not only promoted false claims that the election was stolen from Trump, he also was among the 11 Arizona Republicans who signed a document falsely claiming they were authorized to cast the state’s electoral votes for Trump.
- Masters’ meteoric rise to front-runner status is not just due to the millions spent supporting him but also his populist views that appeal to the partisan core of the Arizona Republican Party. He touts militarizing the border and accuses Democrats of trying to flood the nation with millions of immigrants “to change the demographics of our country.”
- Masters, Lamon and Brnovich talk tough on border security, advocate strict bans on abortion and cast doubt – or outright promoted lies – over the 2020 election results.
- Instead of resigning to run, [Brnovich] has transformed the Attorney General’s Office into his campaign headquarters and used it to further his candidacy…More disturbingly, he chose to not defend Arizona, his office’s very client, against Republican lawsuits, including one that asserts that early voting used by an overwhelming percentage of Arizonans for years is unconstitutional. His abandonment of the office’s responsibility is breathtaking.
- So, if character and adherence to the truth and the law matters, where does that leave Republican voters (and independents who cast a Republican primary ballot)?
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