Among Senate Republicans' top targets this cycle, Arizona initially looked promising. While Senate Democrats are defending seats in even tougher territory such as Ohio and Montana, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s retirement in Arizona left Democrats fighting to protect a seat no longer anchored by a Democratic incumbent.
But election denier and MAGA diehard Kari Lake, the likely GOP nominee, is upending Senate Republicans' calculus in the state. Arizona Republicans are privately wincing at Lake's chances, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently declined to name Arizona as a seat they are focused on flipping.
Lake's likely Democratic challenger, Rep. Ruben Gallego, is currently lapping her in fundraising while Senate Democrats are also roundly outgunning their GOP counterparts.
The Democrats' Senate Majority PAC has reserved $23 million in ad buys for the fall, according to Politico, while Senate Republicans are still holding their fire.
And Gallego, who has already spent $7.9 million in advertising, ended March with $9.6 million in cash on hand. Lake has spent just $170,000 in advertising to date, with $2.5 million on hand.
As they say, don't spend it all in one place, Kari.
But amid all the GOP doomsayers, one Senate Republican voiced a refreshingly contrarian view of Lake's apparent collapse.
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Senate GOP's third in command, argued that Lake's dire cash flow problem was just par for the course among Republicans. Barrasso said he is “expecting that just about every Republican candidate is going to be outspent.”
Barrasso, who reportedly speaks with Lake often, argued that Republicans couldn't afford to turn their backs on Arizona.
“To me, Arizona is a top-tier state. Because it’s an open Senate seat,” he told Politico.
Barrasso’s first assertion is correct: Democratic candidates and incumbents are already crushing Republicans in fundraising.
But precisely because that's true, Senate Republicans may have no choice but to abandon a potential nominee who is already flailing. The competition to suck up Senate GOP resources is already on and the budget will likely only get tighter. That's at least partially why McConnell is presently training his sights on flipping fewer than a handful of seats: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. That could change but, for now, Senate Republicans don't have much room to maneuver.
And Lake certainly can't count on help from Donald Trump, who is beginning to see her as more of roadblock to his election than a help. Trump's Arizona operation is damn near nonexistent, according to fresh reporting from The Washington Post.
“There is no sign of life,” Kim Owens, an Arizona Republican operative, told the Post. “Especially in a state that Trump lost so closely last time, you’d expect to have more of a presence. I would think, ‘Let’s step it up.’ I think it’s a terrible mistake.”
Whether they want to be or not, it sounds like Lake and Trump are in lockstep and going nowhere fast.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
