In Final Arizona Push, Blake Masters Blasts The Washington Establishment

PHOENIX — Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters, a political novice who has never run for elected office, is in a statistical tie with Democrat incumbent Mark Kelly heading into Election Day, and he’s done it without much help from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“My job is to win with or without Mitch McConnell’s money, and I think we’re on track to win without,” Masters told The Federalist in an exclusive interview on the first day of his finalé bus tour this past weekend.

Two months ago, McConnell’s super PAC to reclaim the majority in the upper chamber opened September with an axe to the rest of its planned spending against Kelly. With Masters down 6 points in the polls against a Democrat who narrowly captured the seat just two years ago, the Senate Leadership Fund gutted $18 million from the race. Kelly won by fewer than 80,000 votes in 2020 and tied himself to an unpopular president over his two years as a senator, voting 95 percent of the time with the Biden White House agenda. Instead, McConnell bankrolled the defense of GOP Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, spending more than $5 million in a race between two Republicans.

“I try not to feel entitled to other people’s money,” Masters told The Federalist on Saturday. “That’s a left-wing value. I’d be like [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] if I felt entitled to other people’s money. So when Mitch McConnell cut funding for Arizona, I could have gotten mad, I could have just started throwing bombs at him in the media, but I didn’t.”

Masters didn’t need to. Where McConnell has chosen to spend money this cycle speaks for itself. Instead of throwing support and funding behind Masters to flip a seat to the GOP, he has bent over backward to protect old-guard Republicans from insurgent GOP candidates who have pledged not to support the octogenarian lawmaker for another term in leadership, even if it means sacrificing chances to reclaim a Senate majority.

If Masters prevails on Tuesday without McConnell’s aid, it will be yet another sign of the new era of Republican politics, in which young, populist outsiders forge a new GOP without asking the establishment for permission.

Masters, who announced during the crowded state primary that he would cast his vote for a more conservative alternative for leader should one arise, never bowed to McConnell in order to garner the Republican Senate chief’s approval and the money that comes with it. McConnell made clear this fall that his money comes with strings attached, and Masters was willing to cut them.

“I’ve said I’m going to vote for the most conservative person running,” Masters told The Federalist, maintaining a posture of defiance to the party establishment that has come to define his campaign.

A New Generation of Republican Leadership

As far as McConnell is concerned, the threat Masters poses is about more than a vote for Senate leadership. It’s also about the generational change Masters represents: a