Arizona Governor- Race of the Day

96 Days Until Election Day

Arizona Governor

 

Status:  Republican Open

2020 Presidential Result: Blue State (West)

Outlook: Leans Democrat

The heat in Arizona has clearly fried the brains of many Republicans. At least a plurality of them, whom this past Tuesday nominated, in mostly crowded fields, a slew of Trump endorsed whackjobs and conspiracy theorists. While they were able to beat back what remains of the one-time GOP establishment in John McCain's home state, they may find it harder to win against their Democrat opponents in November. As the Arizona Republican Party has moved towards Trump since 2016, Democrats have been doing better statewide. Many who support Trump are taking it for granted that Arizona is still the traditionally conservative state it has long since been identified as and that any Republican nominee is going to have little difficulty winning the big races this year. They may be in for a rude awakening. Of course, they will then claim massive voter fraud.

Arizona has had a lot of female Governors in recent history. It seemed like an ironic glass ceiling was broken when Republican Doug Ducey, a male, was elected eight years ago, Now, with Ducey term limited, the state will once again elect a female Governor. Once considered a hard-line conservative outsider himself, Ducey took steps to not alienate more traditional Republicans, and easily won a second term in 2018, even as the GOP Senate nominee lost a race the same day in an upset. The outgoing Governor is believed to have Presidential ambitions, but he is certainly no friend of the MAGA crowd. Despite his strong support for Trump during his time in office, Ducey joined other Arizona Republicans in not engaging in illegal or unethical activities to back up Trump's disputed claim that he did not lose the state's electoral votes in 2020 to Joe Biden. In a memorable scene, with television cameras rolling, Ducey literally avoided a cell phone call from Trump while he was signing the state's electoral certification. All of this makes Ducey a RINO in the eyes of Trump's unyielding followers.

All things considered in this midterm elections, Republicans should be favored to hold the Governorship, but they have just completed, with the results apparently now final as of tonight, a very messy primary with a very unorthodox and flamboyant nominee emerging. The party had seen large fields before when the Governorship was open and it looked like that would be the case again for the 2022 cycle. Some looked to Kimberly Yee, the conservative State Treasurer with a Chinese-American background. Her campaign for Governor never really took off and she decided it would be easier to run instead for another term as Treasurer and she survived a primary challenge for that office this week.

Then, there was Matt Salmon, also a staunch conservative, who served two separate terms in Congress before and after his loss as the Republicans' 2002 nominee for Governor. Back then, he was considered too much of a hardliner and somewhat surprisingly lost to a Democrat. When he sought the office again 20 years later, the party had pretty much moved on and not seeing a path to victory, he dropped out in late June.

This was too late though to have his name removed from the ballot and that might have made a big difference as his nearly four percent showing on Primary Day has been close to the margin of difference between the two remaining major Republican candidates. (A political gadfly and an absolute attention seeking troll also rounded out the final field.)

After he dropped out, Salmon made the decision to support a candidate that looked like the last remaining hope of preventing somebody leading in the polls from winning the nomination. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the unsuccessful Republican effort to stop Donald Trump in 2016 primaries. Salmon endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson a businesswoman and former state University Regent. She had never sought office before, but was the daughter of a prominent Republican political figure and in 2017, married her second husband, a billionaire real estate developer.

Throughout her primary run, Robson had staked out very right-wing positions and could easily be described as "MAGA Lite" with there being a "MAGA Ultra" candidate in the race, in the person of Kari Lake, whom many in the party did not trust or feared could risk losing in November. At around the time of Salmon endorsing Robson, so did the incumbent Governor Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence. It looked like the effort to coalesce around Robson could work, and she certainly had plenty of financial resources to spend. While she pointedly avoided saying that Joe Biden had been legitimately elected, she said it was time to move forward and not dwell on the 2020 Presidential race, as many others wanted to do.

On the same day that Pence held a rally for Robson, his former running mate Donald Trump, also held a bigger rally in the state for Lake and other candidates he had endorsed. Kari Lake's background and path to the Republican nomination for Governor is one of the most interesting and in ways mysterious stories in recent politics.

A long time journalist whom for decades was the well-liked television news anchor for the local Fox affiliate in Phoenix. While working in television news, she alternated a couple of times between being a registered Republican and a registered Democrat. She donated money to the campaigns of Barack Obama and other Democrats and had taken some liberal positions publicly. At one point she also said she supported making it easier to vote by doing so via cellphone.

Around 2018, she ran afoul of her bosses at the television station for some statements she had made and sharing misinformation for which she would apologize. Eventually, she took a leave of absence from the air for reasons that were not explained to viewers. After that, she released a video saying she was leaving her job because she was no longer proud to be a journalist due to media bias.She told her fans to be on the lookout for her next movie, which wound up being a campaign for Governor, in which she has combatively and reflexively supported Donald Trump down the line on everything and has come closer to actively hero-worshiping him than just about anybody who has run for a major office.

Some have speculated that Lake had simply gone crazy. Perhaps it is just an instance of how Trump has brought over many former Democrats (as he was once one) to his side with his non-traditional approach to politics and how he has changed so much of the Republican Party in the process. It is sort of hard to reconcile though just how completely to the right the one time anchorwoman with a close cropped hairstyle has gone. How much of it is genuine?

Those who have opposed Lake have offered theories that it is all an act and I cannot find myself able to dismiss it out of hand. There may not be any evidence to suggest she is actively working with Democrats, but her behavior and rhetoric is so brazen that it seems like she was embarking on a strategy to appeal to enough of the "own the libs" crowd to win a primary and then deliberately tank the general election, handing the office of Governor to Democrats. Perhaps this is is an elaborate act of immersive, undercover journalism designed to make conservatives look bad that she will brag about after the campaign. "Look how many people bought into it..., etc." This might be way off base of course, but her campaign and backers sure talk enough about conspiracy theories surrounding the last election, Covid, and other matters, that I might as well join in. Robson did run an ad alluding indirectly to this being a possibility.

Earlier this summer, there was a part of the campaign that received some national attention. Throughout this campaign, Lake, like many other Republicans this cycle, has been focusing on the big issues of transgenderism and drag queens and what a threat they supposedly pose to children as part of the agenda of pedophile Democrats to groom young people. It turns out though that Lake had once been friends with a drag queen herself and once hired Barbra/Richard to perform at a party in which her young daughter was in attendance. Of course, all this found a way into a Robson attack ad on Lake. You can hardly blame Robson for wanting to point out the hypocrisy at the minimum. There are photos of Lake herself, in drag as Elvis Presley, posing with the former friend whom Lake claims was simply a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (as if that is different than drag if the impersonator is male.) With the drag queen speaking to the media about Lake, a cease and desist letter was served against him/her at some sort of show.

The final days of the primary campaign between Lake and Robson was very bitter and personal with each accusing each other of being RINOS (though Lake likely called her a Marxist as well.) Lake leveled allegations of criminal financial fraud against Robson and her husband and while some polls showed a tightening race (with Lake ahead after the Trump rally in other polls), the candidate claimed the only way she could lose the primary was if there was massive fraud and that she would never concede.

When the votes started coming in on Tuesday, the first results showed Robson with a substantial lead, to the surprise of many. Many Trump opponents from across the country wondered if Arizona voters had somewhat come to their senses at the end? Predictably, Lake declared that she believed massive cheating was occurring and that the polls showing her ahead was proof she was going to win. It is is interesting when a pro-Trump politico declares we should believe polls. By the time people across teh country woke up in the morning, Lake had pulled narrowly ahead and she quickly declared victory on Wednesday (though still insisting it was only close because of fraud.) She had directed her supporters to vote on Election Day instead of voting early or by mail, and those votes were apparently the last to get counted. Again, how ironic. Less than two years ago, when Trump saw his lead in some key states evaporate with "dumps" of votes coming in, he declared that it was all extremely fraudulent, yet Lake embraced benefiting from the exact same thing. As of now, about 90 percent of the vote has been counted and Lake has extended her lead over Robson to 47-44 (with the former candidate Salmon who endorsed Robson at 4 percent.) Some media outlets have now called the primary for Lake.

So, if it is indeed on the general election, Lake will be facing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who Tuesday's primary for Democrats with 73 percent. All sorts of Republicans, even those who are not willing to say the election was stolen in Arizona from Trump, have criticized Hobbs for her handling of election duties as Secretary of State and said she has been too political in office. Indeed, she was very much over the news in the days after the election insisting that the vote in Arizona was fair and counted accurately. That might be political to some, but can also be seen as part of her job.

Hobbs was an early frontrunner for her party, having won statewide election in 2018, when most of those offices went to Republicans. She was opposed initially by State Representative Aaron Lieberman, although he dropped out in late May saying there was no path to victory. Like Salmon, his name also remained on the ballot and I am not sure why Arizona cannot find a way (and this might be under Hobbs' jurisdiction) to remove the names of candidates who drop out well ahead of the vote. His five percent of the vote would not matter though, as the second place finisher former Nogales Mayor Marco Lopez received just about 23 percent of the vote. During the Democrats' campaign, both Lieberman and Lopez seemed to criticize Hobbs for not running an active campaign and engaging them, as if she was just trying to coast to a primary victory.

People will be on the lookout for the first batch of Lake vs. Hobbs polls and everyone should expect a pretty ugly campaign all around. Recently, surveys have showed that Hobbs held a solid but far from insurmountable lead over Lake and also would be leading Robson, by a similar, if not somewhat smaller margin statistically. The Republican primary for Governor in Arizona (and for other offices) has likely taken a toll and the party will have to find a way to come together if they have any chance of victory.

If the primary is any indication, Lake will continue to focus on an election that some claim was stolen from Donald Trump. Clearly, about 40 to 45 percent of Republicans in Arizona believe it and are not willing to move on from it. Will that be enough to win statewide though in a higher turnout general election? While Arizona has a long history of conservatism, there is also a libertarian streak which could make the pre-statehood Arizona abortion ban with no exceptions problematic politically for Republicans in the post Roe vs. Wade world. I also have to point out that Hobbs and her allies apparently do not believe there should ever be an exception for someone who wants an abortion to not have one, at any point. There will be similar dynamics at play, especially as it relates to an unconventional and divisive Republican U.S. Senate nominee in the state, but we will get into all that tomorrow.

Again, MAGA Republicans seem confident that Kari Lake can win in November, If there is indeed the massive red wave that many of them are anticipating, that could happen, but I have major doubts that Lake can actually win. Republicans did lose winnable Senate races in Arizona in both 2018 and 2020 and Trump did lose the state as well (as first accurately projected by Fox News Channel.)

People like me who yearn for the Republican Party of people like John McCain and Jeff Flake need to realize that at least for now, those days are gone in Arizona. The party, at least a sizeable plurality of it, has gone in a different direction in the Grand Canyon State and Katie Hobbs and her party should both be as concerned as anyone else, but also realize that they have gotten pretty lucky.

Gubernatorial Races predicted thus far:

1 D (1 Leans) , 2 R (1 Safe, 1 Likely)

Total with predictions thus far:

7 D (6 Holdovers, 1 Leans),  10 R (8 Holdovers, 1 Safe, 1 Likely)