After a fatal number one campaign, Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters and his team will focus their general election in front of incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly on what they call “cultural issues,” immigration, inflation and COVID-19, among other issues. . .
A recent speech by Master at a Turning Point Action event, where he was joined via GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, suggests he sees the simmering frustration with lockdowns and mask mandates of the past two years as a factor that can attract the electorate. November.
Masters never once spoken about the politically questionable former President Donald Trump, whose approval he promoted until his victory in the Republican primary. Instead, he talked about the new COVID-19 rules from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. .
And he reviewed the public fitness conducted by Democratic governors Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo in California and New York.
“They locked themselves in,” Masters said of public protection decisions made at the beginning of the pandemic. “And we can never do that. These Democrats shut down their states. They closed deals. They closed schools. They abandoned our children, of course, and locked up other people internally for no reason.
Last week, the CDC got rid of masking and isolation rules for unvaccinated people, officially detecting that their COVID-19 threat is the same as that of vaccinated people, who have not complied with maximum COVID-19 protocols for more than a year. It’s an admission that even if the pandemic rarely ends, it never will, and a step that CDC guideline writer Greta Massetti said “helps us succeed at a point where COVID-19 no longer seriously disrupts our daily lives. “
Win: Blake Masters expects Mitch McConnell to be in the race for the U. S. Senate. USA in Arizona
And on Wednesday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky called for sweeping changes to cdc’s public communications programming. He said many of the methods contracted through the company about the COVID-19 pandemic have failed to adequately inform the public and build trust.
But previous CDC guidelines, which acted on the very genuine differences in immunity between other people who chose to get vaccinated and not vaccinated, made clinical sense for much of the year.
Things are different now. COVID-19, a much more deadly disease two and a half years ago, before most Americans gained immunity from past vaccines and infections.
Republicans see the new regulations as evidence that the previous ones didn’t work and that Democrats rather than “blue states” have gone too far in their health care policies in the pandemic era.
“Even now they admit that their recommendation, their recommendation does not replace, whether you are vaccinated or not,” Masters said at the Turning Point Rally. “And they will replace it after November, right? In other words, two years of persecution, two years of incompetence, two years of economic destruction, can be summed up in two words. ‘I’m kidding. ‘
Masters gained prominence among Arizona Republicans as a conservative outsider. He suggested federal lawmakers “take offense” at abortion and called on Congress to ban the medical procedure nationwide. His crusade now claims that Masters only sells a federal ban on third-trimester abortions. After garnering Trump’s coveted approval, Masters went from being a black horse at number one in the Republican Senate to his winner in a bracket that included Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
Masters now aims to shoot over issues that will impeach Republicans in November. His crusade calls them “problems of culture,” inflation, and immigration. But also COVID-19 policies.
Kevin DiMenna, a longtime Republican political representative from Phoenix, said that’s sometimes how peak general election campaigns in Arizona have been conducted. Candidates will have to moderate after the number one election to choose an electorate in the middle of the political spectrum.
“We are looking for the middle ground, the demilitarized zone, the safe place,” he said.
Masters’ crusade questioned whether the candidate is moving in the middle. They say he has just been allowed to explain long-standing political positions. Trump’s endorsement is still prominently displayed on Masters’ Twitter account. His crusade indicates that his positions on abortion and safety have replaced since elementary school: they have just been clarified.
Lake, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, has been talking about COVID-19 since the beginning of her crusade. He said he had “woken up” to the country’s political realities during the pandemic. Lake has long argued that she opposes closures and vaccination orders, and one of the main arguments of her crusade has been that she “will not mask our children. “
“It’s the greatest awakening you can imagine,” Lake said at the Turning Point rally that Masters also addressed. “We’ve realized how vital it is to have strong governors. they can use it to hurt us.
An official with the Masters Crusade said that while Lake and Masters are making COVID-19 a central factor ahead of the Nov. 8 election, the two Crusades are looking at other methods in the run-up to the general election.
A look at their Twitter accounts provides a window into this difference. Lake went on to trumpet questionable messages about abortion rights. His Twitter is home to memes spreading lies about the validity of the 2020 election.
Masters remains in the message. He tweets about the disorders of his crusade and attacks Kelly for what he sees at the border.
A spokesman for Kelly’s crusade declined to comment Friday on the electoral strategy of the Masters’ crusade.
The COVID-19 Masters may end in a wash, with little chance of replacing the Trajectory of the Masters campaign, said Paul Bentz, a phoenix-area pollster and political strategist. He doesn’t see the same fatigue that gripped the country when pandemic restrictions were more widespread.
“If the FAA still had the mask requirement on flights or some of the other things that had been in position earlier in the year, that might be a more effective strategy,” Bentz said. not hunting at their ballot boxes, I don’t know if they’ve done extensive studies on COVID to see if it’s effective. But it does result in capitalizing or playing beyond the disorders to be checked to divert attention from all the existing disorders. “
DiMenna said he believes the math of the general election gives the Masters plan a greater chance of electoral success in November. Arizona’s top conservative Republicans, those who vote in the primaries, constitute too few votes for a candidate to count on. win a general election without going to the middle.
“The distance you have to travel to get closer to the middle after winning an Arizona Republican number one is extraordinary,” DiMenna said. “It’s no longer a conventional party. The Republican Party has extremes that dictate the calendar for now. Leaving that and fitting a viable candidate into the general election in 90 days is almost impossible.
“Blake Masters is on the right track. It turns out that Kari Lake rejected this as a strategy. “
Gregory Svirnovskiy is a pulliam member in Arizona Republic. You can follow him on Twitter @gsvirnovskiy or succeed in it via email gregory. svirnovskiy@gannett. com.