Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb will reportedly be in the race for the U.S. Senate this week.
If you’re Senator Kirsten Cinema, you’re… thrilled.
“Pomp on the champagne cork, baby,” Chuck Coughlin, a longtime Republican political consultant, told me. “It’s exactly what she needs.”
Four months after being kicked out of the Democratic Party, Cinema looks increasingly close to running for re-election.
What seemed impossible in December now seems almost inevitable.
Cinema nearly announced another run
The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that she had her staff vacated last week to make a schedule. May operate as an independent.
Meanwhile, she was a keynote speaker at the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s spring gathering on Thursday, where she laid out the focus of her campaign.
“We all know I’ve always been a pain in the ass for both parties, right? Nothing about that has changed,” she told the boardroom audience. It was an independent voice.”
This sounds like a winning message to many voters weary of seeking alternatives to the angry politics of the far right and far left.
Progressive Gallego may be hard to sell
Already, she has Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego on her left. He’s the pride of a progressive and a likely candidate for the Democratic Party.
But there’s a reason Cinema and Democratic Senator Mark Kelly ran center during their respective Senate campaigns.
Contrary to appearances, Arizona is not actually a blue state.
Since the struggling days of Kerry Ward and Kari Lake, Paul Gosser and Wendy Rogers, and the rest of the far-right fanatics, a significant number of moderate Republican and independent voters have retained their support. is. Nose and vote for Democrats.
This brings me to what is likely to be cinema’s ticket to a second season: Republican status.
“What will determine whether she wins is whether the Republican Party nominates another polarizing candidate,” Republican consultant Chris Baker told me. Question, multi-million dollar question, she already knows the Democrats are going to do it.
What is that old saying? Is the Pope Catholic?
Republicans Haven’t Learned From Their Losses
It’s revealed that the former Grand Old Party hasn’t learned anything from the last six years.
Martha McSally, Donald Trump, Martha McSally (again), Blake Masters, Kari Lake, Abe Hamade, Mark Finkem. Again and again, August loyal Republicans nominate those who weren’t elected to run dog pounds coming November.
So far, there is no reason to believe that 2024 will change.
Mr. Lake is still a right-wing rock star and could use his failed gubernatorial run to launch a run for the Senate.
“always independent”:Cinema advertises party changes
But after a short trip to Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s indictment party, Lake was back in Iowa for the weekend, hoping for the second spot on Trump’s ticket. It seems to be expanding day by day.
Blake Masters and Jim Lamon, who have been eyeing Trump’s confirmation in the 2022 Senate race, could be a new sensation. I was there, I saw it.
The Republican Party has no moderate candidate
Karin Taylor-Robson would be the Republican’s best chance to win back the Senate seat.
But Republican primary voters have sent her a package, and several people in her circle say she can’t run for the Senate next year.
Various (frustrated) Republican strategists say the party desperately needs to return to the old days when mainstream Republicans ran and routinely won every major election race across the state. told me
But the failure of 2022, and more specifically the failure of traditional Republicans to win the Republican primary, left a void in the 2024 front-runner.
Mark Lamb has strong ties with MAGA
Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is expected to announce his desire to take the position later this week.
“I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’m skeptical,” one sulky strategist told me. What kind of campaign do you think you’ll do based on that? It’s pretty obvious.”
Lam, like Lake, hails from the far right of the party and, like Lake, could easily be strangled in the general election due to his strong MAGA ties.
He is trying to distance himself from the election-denying crowd.
Asked if there was any serious fraud in the 2020 election, Lam told a congressional panel in February, “As a law enforcement officer, I have never seen any evidence that there was.”
but he playing card circuitright up there with who the electoral deniers are.
Is there a reason why cinema wins?
When a mob stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, Lamb joined about 1,000 Trump supporters in the state capitol to protest Joe Biden’s election certification.
He helped found Protect America Now. launched an initiative With True the Vote (think “2000 Mules” people), urge fellow sheriffs across the country to monitor last year’s midterm elections through drop-box monitoring and a hotline to report election fraud. I was.
At a July Trump rally in President Trump’s Prescott on Lake and the rest of Arizona, Sheriff Lamb vowed to do more to hold people accountable for violating election laws.
“we won’t wake What happened in 2020,” he said. And it was a message so triumphant in 2022 that Republicans plan to repeat it in 2024.
And you want to know why Cinema thinks it’s possible to get re-elected?
reach roberts laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.comFollow her on Twitter. @ Laurie Roberts.
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