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Roll Call: “Senate Candidates Walk Trump Tightrope As He Returns To Arizona”

Veteran AZ GOP strategist: “It’s a minefield”

New reporting from Roll Call details how the candidates in Arizona’s GOP Senate primary are walking a “Trump tightrope” as the former president heads to Phoenix for a rally this weekend.

The four Republican candidates are all “embracing Trump’s policies but aren’t mentioning Trump by name” — pandering to the former president and embracing the controversial Maricopa County audit while conspicuously omitting Trump’s name from their launch videos and campaign websites.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Roll Call: Senate candidates walk Trump tightrope as he returns to Arizona
By Bridget Bowman
July 22, 2021

Key Points:

  • Unlike candidates in other states with contested Senate GOP primaries, the top four Republicans vying to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly next year are embracing Trump’s policies but aren’t mentioning Trump by name in their early messaging.
  • Some Republicans expect that to change as the jockeying for Trump’s endorsement picks up. Doing that, however, requires walking a political tightrope. Candidates need to win over enough Trump supporters to secure the GOP nomination without alienating the broader coalition needed to win in November 2022. Arizona Republican strategists largely agree that the broader coalition includes disaffected Republicans who were fed up with Trump’s rhetoric.
  • Trump’s name was mostly missing from each of the four top candidates’ launch videos and campaign websites.
  • “The only question that remains is: which candidate will go the farthest to sell out Arizonans to try and earn Trump’s support?” Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Sarah Guggenheimer said in a statement.
  • While they aren’t initially mentioning Trump, the GOP Senate candidates aren’t disavowing him, either.
  • Brnovich’s campaign did not respond to questions about whether he would also attend Saturday’s rally. The attorney general drew Trump’s ire over the controversial audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County. Trump said in a May statement that Brnovich was “always on television promoting himself, but never mentions the Crime of the Century, that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election.”
  • The controversial audit has been a microcosm for the dilemma facing the Republicans running for Senate. They have generally supported the audit as they appeal to Trump and his supporters, but some Republicans in the state warn the audit could backfire in the general election, by depressing GOP turnout or turning off more moderate voters.
  • “It’s a minefield,” said veteran Arizona strategist Chuck Coughlin, a former Republican who is now not registered with any party…Coughlin said he has never seen such a wide-open primary field in his 30-year career in Arizona politics.
  • Republicans are concerned a contested primary, which won’t be decided until August 2022, could leave the eventual nominee with less than three months to focus solely on Kelly.
  • As Republicans fight amongst themselves, Kelly can continue to raise millions for his campaign.
  • “There’s about 10 other issues … that we would rather be talking about than relitigating 2020,” one GOP strategist involved in Senate races said.

See also: CNN: 2020 election becomes early dividing line for Republicans in crucial 2022 Senate race in Arizona; POLITICO: Thiel ally’s entrance kicks off protracted GOP Senate fight in Arizona.

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