For Immediate Release
Saturday, April 9, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org
Senate Showdown: The GOP #AZSen Primary is Brning Up
PHOENIX — Welcome to this week’s edition of the ‘Senate Showdown’ — a weekly roundup of the latest news in Arizona’s “crowded,” “costly,” and “chaotic” GOP Senate primary.
With “no clear frontrunner,” these amateur candidates will be busy duking it out well into the summer, ahead of Arizona’s August primary date. Until then, the Arizona Democratic Party’s ‘Showdown’ is here to help you keep track of this race’s breaking news, cringiest Tweets, and nastiest doses of infighting.
Here’s what you missed this week:
DEAR DONALD: After weeks of targeted threats from Trump and attacks from his primary rivals, Mark Brnovich caved and released an “interim report” of his investigation into Arizona’s 2020 election. Yet again, Brnovich politicized his office for personal gain and used taxpayer money to advance his career, but hey, that’s Brno baby!
NOT GOOD ENOUGH: Right on cue, mere hours after Brnovich dropped his report, his primary rivals attacked him for not going far enough to peddle Trump’s election conspiracies. Jim Lamon called the effort a “Nothing Burger” and Blake Masters wrote it off as “unbelievably weak.” For reference, the two have long said Trump won in 2020, so their bar for Brno was pretty high.
NOT META BUT MAGA: Blake Masters snagged yet another invite to Mar-A-Lago, this time for an exclusive dinner with uber-rich pro-Trump donors courtesy of his Big Tech billionaire benefactor Peter Thiel. Afterward, Masters stayed for the premiere of a propaganda-esque documentary that criticizes Mark Zuckerberg. Given Thiel and Masters’ tech bro origin stories — including Thiel’s influential role in shaping Facebook — the irony is almost…too much.
I’LL TAKE THAT: Both Jim Lamon and Blake Masters were caught running to rip away earned entitlements like Social Security and Medicare from hardworking Arizonans. We feel like this is becoming a pattern — just last month, Lamon was caught calling the Washington GOP plan to hike taxes “pretty good stuff.” It’s almost as if the self-funded candidate and the Silicon Valley sweetheart are…out of touch? Imagine that.
THE GANG’S ALL HERE: Last weekend, the entire(!) GOP primary Senate field came together for a forum in Scottsdale. Turns out, Blake Masters was just as surprised to see Mark Brnovich show up as we were and even admitted he’d never seen the elusive AG IRL before. Need a recap? Read ours here.
THREE’S A CROWD: But it doesn’t look like anyone’s going anywhere anytime soon. Two new polls released earlier this week suggest that this wide-open primary is a three-way horserace between Brnovich, Lamon, and Masters. Our takeaway: We’re going to be here awhile.
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