Today, a new report from CNN details how Trump endorsed Arizona Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters “has turned to questioning whether the 2022 midterm election will be legitimate.”
Ahead of the August Republican primary, Masters and his primary opponents Jim Lamon and Mark Brnovich have been leading proponents of the Big Lie in an effort to undermine the electoral system.
For his part, Lamon helped to fund security for Arizona Republicans’ discredited “audit” and was one of Arizona’s fake electors. Meanwhile, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich has used taxpayer-funded AG office resources to “investigate” the fake “audit,” which has cost millions of dollars and found no fraud.
CNN: Trump-backed Arizona Senate candidate escalates election fears ahead of GOP primary
By Alex Rogers | July 30, 2022
Key Points:
- “Arizona Republican Blake Masters, who earned Donald Trump’s endorsement for the Senate race by embracing the former President’s lies that he won the 2020 election, has turned to questioning whether the 2022 midterm election will be legitimate, as he tries to lock up support among the party faithful ahead of next month’s primary.”
- “That the first-time candidate is escalating doubts about the election system in Arizona — home to a months-long partisan review of 2020 ballots — is a sign of just how resonant some Republicans continue to believe those lies are with their base, even if similar pitches from Trump-backed candidates failed in Georgia, for example, earlier this year.”
- “But the election denialism that has become a powerful force in Arizona GOP primaries since Joe Biden narrowly won the state in 2020 has also raised questions about whether a GOP nominee who says Trump won in 2020 can carry a purple state that’s crucial to Republicans’ hopes of winning Senate control.”
- “But Lamon, who’s largely self-funding his campaign, also has ties to election denialism — touting his efforts to help fund the controversial, partisan audit of the vote in Maricopa County, which failed to prove fraud in the 2020 election. Hitting Masters on immigration and his ties to billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Lamon is widely seen as the biggest threat to Masters for the nomination.”
- “Masters, trying to mobilize primary voters ahead of August 2, escalated his efforts to sow doubt about US elections late last month, posing questions about whether the cheating he claimed happened in 2020 will happen in 2022.”
- “’Whatever their cheating capacity is, I’m pretty sure they pulled out all the stops,” Masters said of the last election, speaking to a room full of potential supporters at June 30 campaign event in Cave Creek, Arizona, according to a video posted on the sharing platform Rumble. “And the question is, will that happen again?”
Read the full report here.
Published: Jul 20, 2022 | Last Modified: Aug 28, 2022