“Fearful” McSally Tries Campaign Reset, Immediately Repeats Mistakes & Could “Lose Not One but Two Senate Seats”

As polls show “red flags everywhere” around her campaign, unelected Senator Martha McSally is trying desperately to hit the reset button, again, only to repeat the mistakes that cost her the last election just a few months ago. 

Facing low approval ratings and a potential primary threat, McSally caved to political and big donor pressure to change her campaign team and appealed again to Mitch McConnell and President Trump to help keep her campaign afloat, lest she become the “first Arizona Republican to lose not one but two Senate seats to Democrats.”

McSally is right to be worried, but sticking with Trump “all the way” is another misstep: Trump’s approval is underwater in Arizona and McSally’s own campaign memo blamed him for her “disappointing” loss last year. Read more about the early challenges the unelected Senator is facing:

POLITICO: Martha McSally moves to head off GOP primary challenge

By Alex Isenstadt

Key Points:

• Arizona Sen. Martha McSally has grown fearful of a 2020 primary challenge in recent days, kicking off a flurry of efforts to protect her at the highest levels of the Republican Party.

• In a series of conversations with senior Republicans including President Donald Trump, the senator has raised alarms about Daniel McCarthy, a skincare company executive who helped bankroll Trump’s 2016 campaign. McSally, who was appointed to her seat in early 2019 after losing a 2018 Senate race, faces a treacherous special election next year in a state that’s growing increasingly friendly to Democrats, and Republicans worry that a primary fight will further complicate her prospects.

• McSally hewed close to the president in 2018, a decision that helped her win a primary but ultimately may have cost her the general election against Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.

• Word of McCarthy’s flirtation with a GOP Senate run against her filtered back to McSally, who has directly expressed concern to Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Todd Young. McConnell and Trump spoke about the issue last Thursday as well, when McConnell asked the president to endorse McSally.

Arizona Republic: Trump endorses Arizona Sen. Martha McSally as she overhauls 2020 campaign team  

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez 

Key Points: 

• After her 2018 Senate defeat, Martha McSally is revamping her campaign team…

• The moves — made last week and first reported by Politico — are intended to inject fresh energy into McSally’s campaign structure as she gears up for what may be her toughest race yet.

• McSally’s staff restructuring could help her standing with GOP donors who may have been reluctant to invest in another campaign carrying the same leadership as her unsuccessful 2018 bid, and with allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. 

• Among other things, the memo cited strong Democratic fundraising, GOP hostility against Trump and the confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as contributing to McSally’s loss. 

Arizona Republic (Opinion): 4 reasons Martha McSally could lose in 2020

By Laurie Roberts

Key Points:

• We are now T-minus 17 months before Arizona elects a second senator and if you’re Martha McSally, red flags are flapping all over the place.

• A recent poll suggests Mark Kelly could dispatch her political career to the boneyard, giving the appointed senator the distinction of becoming the first Arizona Republican to lose not one but two Senate seats to Democrats.

• Apparently, McSally agrees with the poll’s findings because on Monday, Politico reported that she demoted her top campaign consultant, bringing in a new team that will try to recast her as someone who could actually win.

• “McSally thought she had it hard last time. It is now harder …,” pollster Mike Noble of OH Predictive Insights told me. “There are red flags everywhere.”

• While McSally may adore the president, a sizable number of the voters she needs to win clearly don’t.

• Trump’s job approval numbers in Arizona dipped to 49 percent in May, down from 54 percent in October. But among moderates, a whopping 69 percent disapprove of the president, along with 30 percent of those who lean conservative.

• The former combat pilot is well known across the state but that’s not always a good thing. Forty percent of those polled say they don’t like McSally.

• Trump, by the way, tweeted a ringing endorsement of McSally on Tuesday,  a move likely meant to warn off Republicans who are quietly considering a challenge to McSally in next year’s GOP primary.

• But it isn’t likely to help her win those moderate voters she needs to be get to Washington as an elected representative.

Arizona Republic (Opinion): Donald Trump gives ‘complete endorsement’ to Martha McSally, who’s with him ‘all the way’

By EJ Montini

Key Points:

• So now it’s official. Donald Trump and Sen. Martha McSally are a couple – politically speaking.

• “She is with us all the way,” the president said.

• And on the same day that McSally chose not to criticize Trump or his administration over the inhumane treatment of those migrant children being held in detention.

• If this crisis was only about access to money couldn’t the president declare an emergency? Wasn’t Trump able to free up some funding by declaring an emergency so that he could begin construction on his wall?

• Is the border wall an emergency while sick, malnourished children being warehoused in tents are not?

• Would that not be a question a senator might want to ask a president?

• No wonder Trump said McSally has his complete and total endorsement. She really is with him all the way.

POLITICO: McSally shuffles campaign leadership ahead of 2020

By James Arkin

Key Points:

• Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) is shaking up her campaign team ahead of her 2020 race, turning the page on her disappointing loss last year as she tries to protect a critical battleground Senate seat.

• McSally lost to Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema last fall, but she was appointed several weeks later to fill late Sen. John McCain’s former seat. She is running next year to complete the final two years of that term and already faces a high-profile Democratic challenger, former astronaut Mark Kelly, in what will likely be one of the most expensive and closely watched campaigns of the cycle in an emerging presidential battleground state.

• There was frustration about Roe’s continued presence leading the campaign team in some Republican circles — including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, allies of Senate leadership and some party donors — according to multiple Republican officials. Some of these Republicans were eager for different leadership on McSally’s campaign this cycle after disagreements over the campaign’s operation last year in a race McSally lost by 2 percentage points.

• The new hires underscore McSally’s effort to approach her reelection as an incumbent differently than her first campaign for Senate. McSally had been under pressure from Republicans at multiple levels of the party, both in Arizona and Washington, to make changes after the 2018 loss. There were some Republicans frustrated by her campaign’s operation last year who were equally vexed by a memo published after the election that largely blamed the loss on external factors.

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