For Immediate Release
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org

MIDWEEK MADNESS: Bad News Abounds For The “Splintered” AZGOP One Week Out From the “Bloody” and “Bitter” #AZSen Primary 
PHOENIX — It’s only Tuesday and the dumpster fire GOP Senate primary is already burning up, just seven days before Primary Day.
On Friday, news broke that a nervous Peter Thiel is doling out more cash to boost his boy Blake, bringing his total — and Masters’ obligations — up to $15 million. 
And just yesterday, the Arizona Republic, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal all published scathing reviews of the GOP Senate primary candidates and the “splintered” AZ GOP. As Arizona Republican primary voters gear up to choose between an “energy tycoon, a billionaire-backed populist, [and] Arizona’s attorney general,” one thing is abundantly clear: None of these “C-listers” are fit to serve.
See below for a rundown: 
Arizona Republic: ‘None of the above’ should be on the Republican ballot in Arizona’s Senate race

• I wonder. Are all these voters really undecided or are they simply unhappy with the cast of characters set before them?
• [On Blake Masters] The 35-year-old political neophyte whose sole qualifications seem to be his fealty to Donald Trump and his rather lucrative relationship with tech bazillionaire Peter Thiel.
• [On Jim Lamon] The fake elector who pays fealty to Donald Trump and fashions himself as Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral.
• [On Mark Brnovich] The attorney general who runs over to Fox every hour on the hour to announce he’s suing the Biden administration again. And, oh yeah, pays fealty to Donald Trump.
• [From GOP primary voters] “As I researched the candidates, I felt an overwhelming sense of mediocrity,”…“I am definitely NOT ‘un-decided’. I am disgusted, discouraged and disheartened with what the GOP has become.”

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

• Arizona Republicans have splintered multiple ways as the party tries to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
• 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. 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 … and signed up to represent the state as an elector for Mr. Trump despite President Biden’s win.
• 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.

POLITICO: Thiel drops another $1.5M for Masters as campaign feels cash pinch

• 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, a solar power executive, has loaned his campaign more than $14 million while Masters has relied heavily on support from Thiel, his friend and longtime employer.
• Lamon to date has spent more than $9 million on television ads…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.”

NBC News: Billionaire Peter Thiel makes August primary bets

• Tech executive Peter Thiel is dropping millions on Arizona’s Senate race in the hopes that his hand-picked candidate can win.

Los Angeles Times: Senate candidate Blake Masters doesn’t just want to ‘build the wall.’ He’s building a dystopia

• A 35-year-old crypto evangelist, Masters is cribbing the nativist script to convince you he’ll stop the so-called border “invasion.”
• Neo-Nazi publisher Andrew Anglin and other white nationalists, who’ve publicly cheered him on, seem convinced.
• Masters is so close to Thiel that if he scores a Senate seat, his longtime boss would “effectively have a seat of his own,” journalist Noah Lanard argues in his recent profile of Masters in Mother Jones.

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