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| Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R-AZ) |
Joe Arpaio, should he win the primary, would certainly be the most uniquely unqualified major party candidate I can remember in recent history...certainly the most unqualified person to run for public office in a seat that was very winnable I can remember (worse, in fact, than Christine O'Donnell). He cost Maricopa County, a Republican haven, $146 million in his racial profiling, and up until last year (when he lost his reelection battle) was arguably the most flagrantly racist person to currently hold public office in the United States. Some will point to his age as a problem (he'll be 86 in November), making him older than the oldest currently serving senator (Dianne Feinstein is 83), and yet he'd go into the Senate as a freshman. He's a convicted criminal, a bigot, and someone who's qualified for social security for decades. In any rational world, he wouldn't get more votes than his immediate family members humoring him. But an ABC poll commissioned this week put him at 29% of the vote, just two-points behind McSally and insinuated that if President Trump endorsed him (certainly a possibility considering his support of Arpaio in the past and McSally's refusal to endorse Trump in 2016) he might gain the lead.
Both-siderism is always a dangerous route in American politics, so it has to be said-this doesn't happen to Democrats. Sure, we'll occasionally nominate someone too liberal for a seat, but we don't nominate racist, unqualified bigots for major federal office when it's a seat we could win (or currently hold), and yet in the past 18 months this has happened twice for the Republicans (first Trump, then Roy Moore), and Arpaio's poll numbers suggest that if he stays in the race until the primary (a question mark because of his age, criminal record, and the fact that it's always a possibility this is just a publicity stunt to scam people out of donation money), he could have a chance of besting McSally. That the Republican Party will continually to humor such people and even nominate them for federal office isn't indicative of them "not being true Republicans," it's that the Republican Party is the party of Trump, Moore, & Arpaio, and those left holding the bag aren't acknowledging that the building is not only on fire, but a smoldering pile of ash.
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| Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) |
Arpaio's entry arguably hurts State Sen. Kelli Ward the most in this race, as he becomes the most famous Trump backer in the race, and also has her Bannon-backed right wing base splintered. Ward was starting to look like a probable contender to beat McSally until Arpaio entered the race, as McSally seemed too anti-Trump to make it through a primary. A split primary could help McSally on that front, since Ward/Arpaio have the same base-of-support, and McSally remains the best general election candidate of all those running, even in a wave (she seems inline with Arizona's tradition of electing center-right Republicans with congressional experience). If he stays until the finish line, or damages Ward enough before he gets out, this could be a blessing in disguise for Mitch McConnell.
But lately blessings-in-disguise have been a horror show for Mitch McConnell (see also Trump, Moore), and Arpaio's in that same camp. For starters, McSally now has two critics calling her a "liberal Democrat" in a primary where even a three-way split will require her to win over loads of Trump supporters. It's entirely possible that McSally can hug the right in a way that they will never reciprocate, and it's also possible she'll have to deal with making political statements that will hurt her general election chances to win the primary. Imagine that Joe Arpaio says "I think POTUS should fire Robert Mueller" or "Sessions Needs to Arrest Hillary Clinton" (it is not far-fetched to see him saying either, and trust me, I suspect if he stays in the race it will get a lot more incendiary than that). These comments would be anathema in a general election, and come back to haunt McSally, but it's possible that by not agreeing, she risks losing a Trump endorsement, which could go a long way to help Arpaio. Lest we forget, former Sen. Luther Strange thought he had it made when he got two hard-right challengers in the Alabama Senate primary. Then Strange saw one of those candidate's support crater, and ended up losing a primary to Roy Moore. There's no guarantee that McSally will benefit here if the primary electorate simply just doesn't like her.
Which means the biggest winner this week might be Sinema. The Democratic congresswoman has the primary to herself, and can just sit back and watch the Republicans tear each other apart while she collects a mountain of cash sending out mailers saying "Do You Want Joe Arpaio in the Senate?" to scared Democrats who are petrified of another Trump in Washington. Provided Arpaio stays until the election, she'll either face a hard-right conservative with little general election appeal in a light red state (Ward, Arpaio), or a badly-bruised Republican opponent who will have had to run-to-the-right to win the primary (McSally). Either way, this should help her chances of being the first Democrat since Dennis DeConcini to take an Arizona Senate seat.
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| Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) |
The second billing story in all of this is that the Democrats probably just got closer to winning the US House with McSally's announcement. With the congresswoman officially getting out of the race for her suburban Tucson district, she leaves open a district that has been friendly to Republicans in the past, but took a sharp left turn in 2016, giving Hillary Clinton a win of five-points. AZ-2 is one of several districts in the country that voted for back-to-back presidential losers (going for Mitt Romney in 2012, Clinton in 2016), but considering its voting history, is probably anti-Trump in a wave election where Trump is going to dominate the ballot.
This isn't to say that this is a lost cause for the Republicans, but historically it's very hard in wave elections to hold open seats that went for the other party's presidential nominee (Dave Wasserman pointed this out on Twitter, but in the last three midterms 0% of such seats were held by the opposing party in this case). Republicans have a strong bench here (State Sen. Majority Whip Gail Griffin seems in particular like a good candidate), but the Democrats aren't slouches and have former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick as their prohibitive frontrunner. I'd say that Democrats would have the edge here, particularly if our current political environment stays as toxic as it is for Republicans (and especially if Ward or Arpaio are dragging down the ticket), and that would get them one step closer to 24. In a week where the NRCC saw the retirements of other Hillary-district Republicans (Ed Royce & Darrell Issa in California), officially losing McSally is another step closer to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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| State Sen. Kelli Ward (R-AZ) |
Overall this sounds like a busy race, but one that you might quibble over whether it's the "most interesting Senate race of the cycle" as I alluded to above. What makes it most interesting is that we could still have two Senate races in Arizona. It feels indelicate to discuss, as ever, but Sen. John McCain's diagnosis of a serious brain cancer last year puts into play the fact that he might resign due to health reasons. If this were the case, this entire field gets upended, but it's not entirely clear how that would affect either party, as it could go a number of ways. We'll start with the Republicans.
Though she callously said McCain should resign (in part so she could get his seat), State Sen. Kelli Ward would be very tempted to head to a race that wouldn't feature Joe Arpaio, and could go over to McCain's seat. This would cause McSally's advantage of splitting the vote to disappear, though it's also possible that McSally would be appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey to replace McCain, giving her at least a tertiary incumbency (which doesn't help much, but I do argue helps to a degree). This would leave Flake's seat vulnerable to Ward or Arpaio getting the nomination, and it's doubtful Mitch McConnell would just hand over a seat to Sinema to focus on holding a seat he already has-that's a terrible chess move. It's definitely possible that McSally wouldn't want the appointment (McCain's seat would have to stand for reelection in 2022, while Flake's seat gets until 2024), inviting someone like gubernatorial Chief of Staff Kirk Adams into the race as the interim senator, setting up two Tea Party vs. Mainstream GOP primaries that could end with the GOP having two solid candidates for the general, or more petrifying for the party, they could have Arpaio AND Ward as their nominees, inviting the real possibility that both seats flip in November. Keep in mind that with Doug Jones' recent win in Alabama, the Democrats only need two seats to gain a majority, and they already have a very strong possibility in Nevada. If they were to win both Arizona Senate seats (which is a stretch, but not implausible considering the players involved), they could afford to lose Nevada or (perhaps more likely) have some cover if someone like Joe Donnelly or Claire McCaskill didn't win reelection.
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| Captain Mark Kelly (D-AZ) |
I've read a lot of speculation about the impact for Republicans if McCain leaves office early, but not so much for Democrats, but the left also has a unique set of issues here. For starters, Sinema is their best on-paper candidate in the state, and they got her into the race. But if you open up a second primary, you're left with the deficit of finding another strong candidate, and this exposes a major issue Grand Canyon State Dems will have to encounter-they don't have a good bench.
If the nominees are Arpaio and Ward, this might not matter-it could be a warm body principle. But Republicans have DOMINATED state politics for years, and there aren't a lot of options outside of Sinema. It's possible that Rep. Ruben Gallego could run, as he's a young Democrat and might help balance Sinema in terms of statewide turnout by upping the crucial Latino/Hispanic population sectors of the state, but he's also much to the left of the state as a whole, and could struggle, particularly against someone like McSally if she ends up being his opponent; it's also worth noting that Gallego might want to work his way up the House leadership instead. Rep. Raul Grijalva has the same issue with being too liberal, and Rep. Tom O'Halleran leaves a Dem-held Trump district open. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick or Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton could run, but both are already frontrunners in their House seats, and would they want to make a gamble run for the Senate when they have a much better shot at the House (and in Kirkpatrick's case, run the risk of looking like she's office-shopping)? And finally there's Mark Kelly, who as the husband of Gabby Giffords (who has a strong military profile) would be an attractive option, but has never run for public office in his own right and has so far been resistant even when he would have had a cleared field (like the 2012 Senate race). It's probable one of these people is the nominee should a race occur, but which one? And will they be able to overcome their faults in a once-in-a-lifetime sort of race?
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