Hey, remember two months ago when Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters roughed up a 73-year-old man at a campaign event? It seems Masters has fully won over the “old men have it coming” constituency. A new poll from Emerson College shows America’s venture capitalist sweetheart leading the primary race with 40 percent support. There’s a frankly embarrassing gap of 18 points between Masters and his closest rival, businessman Jim Lamon. Nine percent of voters are undecided, but when asked who they’re leaning toward, Masters still crushes Lamon 42 to 24 percent. Mark Brnovich and retired US Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael McGuire are barely registering with 14 and 12 percent respectively.
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GOP Senate Candidate Blake Masters Knows Who Does The Gun Violence: Black Folks
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Masters has only expanded his lead in recent weeks, even after Lamon tried to smear him as a “California globalist.” He also suggested the 35-year-old Masters was “too young” for the job that has a minimum age requirement of 30. (Marsha Blackburn and Tommy Tuberville both prove the Senate has no minimum IQ requirement.)
A self-described “anti-progressive,” Masters is one of Peter Thiel’s corporate candidates. He’s promoted the racist Great Replacement Theory, which claims that Democrats are “flooding” the nation with (brown) immigrants for nefarious (white genocide) purpose. He’s said that “black people, frankly” are the primary source of gun violence and accused Democrats of wanting to disarm law-abiding (white) people so they can’t defend themselves from the Purge.
Donald Trump eagerly endorsed Masters, who has no problem claiming the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He doesn’t rant about hacked voting machines but he insists Trump would’ve won if mail-in voting hadn’t been expanded (during a global pandemic) and social media hadn’t “censored” bullshit stories about Biden. That’s distinctly different from saying Trump “won in landslide,” as the twice-impeached thug still insists, or that Hugo Chavez’s ghost flipped votes from Trump to Biden. That’s not literally “theft.” You’re just pissed about the rules. After all, Hillary Clinton probably would’ve won if the Supreme Court hadn’t gutted the Voting Rights Act, and Al Gore might’ve prevailed if the Supreme Court hadn’t stopped the Florida vote count. (Wow, the Supreme Court has fucked democracy sideways!)
Tucker Carlson has described Masters as the “future of the Republican Party,” which is perhaps the most compelling reason to keep him out of office. There’s a dearth of polling so far for the general election, but incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly is considered especially vulnerable. He previously ran against professional Senate race loser Martha McSally, who desperately tried to remain in Trump’s good graces while not seeming fully comfortable with Trump dancing the Macarena on John McCain’s grave. Masters has no such scruples. He’s claimed Trump first impressed him as a candidate in 2015 when he boasted that he’d “only” viciously insulted Rosie O’Donnell and not all women. The Fox News crowd had cheered and applauded.
MASTERS: Somehow he just busted through some wall … He didn’t apologize. He kind of just picked on her as this target. That’s when I really started to pay attention. I thought it could be powerful.
Meanwhile, Sen. Kelly is a former astronaut and functioning adult who’s not inspired by gross demonstrations of toxic masculinity. You couldn’t ask for a clearer contrast between candidates. However, Kelly’s fate reportedly depends on just how Republican Arizona remains. Although Democrats (including, we guess, Kyrsten Sinema) have won in 2018 and 2020, the state still voted more Republican than the national popular vote in both elections.
Please Arizona, choose the astronaut and not the creepy space alien candidate.
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