For Immediate Release
Thursday, September 29, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org

New York Times: Blake Masters “Strains to Win Over Arizona Independents” 

One AZ Independent: “I Wouldn’t Trust Him As Far As I Could Throw Him”
PHOENIX — Yesterday, The New York Times published a story highlighting Blake Masters’ failure to capture the support of Arizona’s Independent voters — who make up a third of Arizona’s electorate.

And looking at Masters’ dangerous, out-of-touch beliefs, it’s really no wonder. Masters has pushed to ban abortion nationwide and privatize Social Security — two deeply unpopular positions that would indisputably harm Arizonans. What’s more, Masters has built a reputation as one of the nation’s most “fringe” and “extreme” candidates because of his statements promoting the Unabomber, repeatedly criticizing our military, blaming Black people for gun violence, and saying that American women are paid less than men simply because they don’t do the “dangerous jobs.”

It’s clear: Arizonans across the political spectrum know a fake when they see it, and Blake Masters cannot be trusted.

See below for key excerpts or read the full story here: 

• Independents and voters unaffiliated with either major party matter more in Arizona than in nearly any other battleground state.
• Skepticism from voters in the political center is emerging as a stubborn problem for Mr. Masters…
• In nearly a dozen interviews in Phoenix and Tucson, as well as in the purplish Phoenix suburbs of Arcadia, Chandler and Scottsdale, most independent voters expressed views of Mr. Masters as inauthentic, slippery on the issues and not truly dedicated to Arizona.
• “I just don’t think he has an opinion on much until he is pressed for it, and then he kind of just comes up with whatever is popular at the moment,” she said as she strolled through a park with her three young children. [An independent woman voter] called Mr. Masters “a flip-flopper.”
• “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” said Thomas Budinger, 26, an assistant manager at a store in a Tucson mall. A few other independents scrunched their noses or rolled their eyes at the mention of the candidate’s name.
• But more common were perceptions of Mr. Masters like that of Hector Astacio, another independent who called him a “flip-flopper.” Mr. Astacio, 62, a manufacturing engineer in Chandler, said he did not like that Mr. Masters seemed to echo Mr. Trump’s bigotry in his immigration messaging.

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