What Arizona's Results Say About Donald Trump
Many people blaming former president Donald Trump for the Republican win in the House this November and for holding almost all seats they needed to defend in the Senate, were expecting more wins despite the existence of Trump and “his” candidates. This shows that their post-election anti-Trump takes are dishonest. Regardless, let’s look at Arizona for some interesting perspectives.
“Trump Candidates” were largely first-time, fully Trumpian candidates who focused a lot on the 2020 outcome. Results? The AG candidate broke even; the Governor candidate came up only 0.6% short, and the Senate candidate lost by a larger margin but only after the incumbent Democrat outspent him by tens of millions of dollars and the Republican machine in AZ rejected the Republican. For context, the Machine-Backed Martha McSally lost her Senate election in 2020 by 2.4 points in Arizona despite having ran in 2018, and her 2.4 point loss in 2020 was when Trump lost Arizona by only 0.3 percentage points. Did McSally drag Trump down?
Without those inner party rejections by blackmailing saboteurs, without long lines on Election Day that disproportionately impact Republicans, and with a slightly better GOTV operation, the outcome for Trump in 2020 in the state and the outcomes for the Gov and AG candidates this year would be wins. But the Never Trump wing of the GOP is more interested in owning Trump than having him or “his” candidates win elections. It’s indeed their prerogative to blow seats up, but opposing Trump “because we lose” when those narrow losses are caused mainly by inner-party sabotage is a weird stance. Stop the sabotage, and the losses will stop too.
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