Martha McSally had a clear objective in the Republican Senate primary
in Arizona: keep Donald Trump from endorsing one of her two rivals who
were, without question, more like the outlandish President than she
would ever be.
So she quoted Trump and played up her use of
profanity in her ads. “I’m a fighter pilot and I talk like one!” she
said gleefully in one TV spot. She ditched her support for a bill to
protect young people who came to this country illegally with their
parents, the so-called Dreamers. She boosted the President’s proposed
border wall, even though in flashes it was clear she thought the whole
thing a boondoggle. She banned reporters, called legitimate news
organizations “fake news” and prayed no one would ask her about Trump.
On Election Day, when asked her view on Sen. Jeff Flake,
a vocal Trump critic who is leaving the seat she seeks, she told NBC
News “you guys can sort that out.” She even started to hold Sen. John McCain, who was battling brain cancer, at arm’s length.
In the end, it was sufficient. The two-term
Congresswoman prevailed Tuesday in her primary against former state
Senator Kelli Ward and convicted sheriff Joe Arpaio, an anti-immigration
crusader. The campaign had been messy, but McSally, the former Air
Force fighter pilot, kept her head down and let the fight on her right
fizzle out.
Republicans in Washington let out a sigh of relief,
too. Perhaps, finally, they could stop worrying about Ward, seen in
Establishment circles as a kooky fringe candidate who in 2016 set out to
primary McCain. “Bullet dodged,” one Republican strategist texted TIME
as the first numbers came in. The general election, the strategist
added, is “still gonna be tight.”
McSally survived, but at what cost? Is the top
Republican recruit in the country now too aligned with Trump to prevail
in November’s general election against Democratic nominee Kyrsten Sinema
in a state that is trending purple? While Trump carried Arizona in
2016, he did so with just 49% of the vote. Without Trump atop the
Republican ticket, is it possible a Trump-styled candidate can do
better, in an election that is expected to have lower turnout?
In other words, did McSally lurch so far to the right
as to jerk a potential win over a mesa’s edge? Can she slide back to
the middle, a comfortable spot for her? After all, in 2016, she carried
her district by 14 points while Hillary Clinton carried it by just 5
points.
McSally had few better choices. There was no way she
could out-scream Ward, so she refused to participate in televised
debates. She met just once for a head-to-head conversation, moderated by
the Arizona Republic editorial board, and the results were
terrible. So McSally didn’t spend much time on Ward, instead running
television ads against her likely rival Sinema.
McSally also knew the voters. Arizona’s Republicans
have been some of the most Trump-aligned in the country. Flake decided
he’d rather leave his seat at the end of his term early next year than
cozy up to Trump to survive. That opened the door for McSally, although
it necessitated a reinvention of sorts into a Make America Great Again
supporter. The change could yet cause her trouble with moderate and
independent voters in the general election, just 10 weeks away.
Republicans in Washington and Phoenix alike view
Sinema as a formidable rival who might be able to peel off some Trump
backers, too. After all, when asked on Election Day about Flake, she
gushed to NBC News: “I’m a fan of Jeff Flake. He is a friend of mine and
someone with whom I sometimes disagree on policy, but who I believe has
the utmost character and integrity.”
All of this leaves McSally with some change on deck. Sinema is a far more polished candidate than McSally’s primary rivals.
True, Ward had sanded off some of her rough edges
for most of the campaign. But in the final run-up to Election Day, some
of her harsher traits came to the fore. When McCain’s family announced
that he was ending medical treatment for his brain cancer on Friday,
Ward seemed to suggest the McCains were releasing the information to
step on her momentum. She doubled down on that claim in a session with
reporters and, after McCain died
on Saturday, tweeted that political correctness is a “cancer” — a clear
effort to inspire outrage and offense in a state where McCain was once
so deeply unpopular with a corner of the state’s conservatives that the
state GOP censured him. The early numbers suggested she would come up
well short of the 40% she drew when she ran against McCain in 2016.
Arpaio, a favorite of anti-immigration hardliners,
did little to run a traditional campaign. In fact, for stretches of the
campaign, his strategists seemed more interested in mobilizing followers
to keep conspiracy theorists online than actually winning votes in
Arizona. Arpaio, whom Trump pardoned
shortly after a federal judge held the former sheriff in contempt,
might have helped dilute the far-right vote with Ward and helped McSally
across the finish line.
In fact, such a strong hard-right showing failed to
win the nomination but sent a signal to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who has
the power to name McCain’s successor until a new election can be held
in 2020. Ducey faced an unsuccessful primary challenge from a former
state official who sued for then-President Barack Obama’s birth
certificate and tried to make the Senate appointment into an election
issue. While the votes are still coming it, it’s possible that McSally
wins the nomination with only a plurality and not a majority, something
that will weigh on Ducey.
Ducey says he will not name a McCain successor
until after McCain is buried at the U.S. Naval Academy. Those who are
close to Ducey say he will wait to run his choice past the McCain family
as a courtesy, meaning it’s highly unlikely Ward will be in the
running.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging
Ducey to name someone to the seat who will run in 2020 and discouraging
him from naming someone who will serve as placeholder. McConnell, a
shrewd tactician, understands Arizona’s fading deep-red standing as more
people move into the state and shift its politics.
Arizona Republicans are split about this strategy. Some party insiders are urging
Ducey to name former Sen. Jon Kyl to the seat. Others are urging Ducey
to consider former state legislator Kirk Adams, currently a top Ducey
aide, or Barbara Barrett, a former diplomat in the George W. Bush
Administration and respected business executive.
But, for the moment, Arizona Republicans were
enjoying a brief moment of success. While the state GOP remained
officially neutral, most of its strategists were preparing to plug into
the McSally campaign. Now, the state’s political machine — one
unofficially run as part of the McCain orbit and largely untouched by
pro-Trump forces — will prepare for what is expected to be a challenging
race against Sinema.
Wasting no time, McSally quickly turned to the
general election. “It’s a choice between a doer and a talker. Between a
patriot and a protester,” McSally said. “I’m not a talker, I’m a doer.
I’m an aviator, not a bloviator.”
And, for good measure so the President will take
notice, she tried a little Trump-style branding of her own. “Hollywood
Sinema” doesn’t roll of the tongue like “Little Marco” or “Crooked
Hillary,” but it is a signal to the White House that McSally has
completed her embrace of Trump and wouldn’t mind it now if the President
returned the favor.
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