Oh I fucking love this:
Kari Lake is toast, at least according to a conservative Arizona megadonor.
On Thursday, The Washington Post published an email authored by Randy Kendrick, the wife of Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick and a board member of the Goldwater Institute. Sent to what the Post called Kendrick’s entire “Christmas card list,” the email urged her inner circle to support Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb over Lake in the Republican U.S. Senate primary.
The reason, according to Kendrick: Lake, the newscaster-turned-MAGA fanatic “cannot win the general election” against the likely Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Here’s some more context from WaPo:
“I have tried to help [Lake] and worked on this, and apparently cannot overcome it,” Kendrick wrote in the email obtained by The Washington Post. “There is no time for blame or analysis. These are just the facts.”
Kendrick instead urged them to vote for Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
“I am trying to make more people aware of Lamb because, according to our polls, if people are made aware of him they prefer him over Lake and certainly over [Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben] Gallego,” Kendrick wrote. “Yes it is late, but I am trying!”
Kendrick stood by her letter in an interview with The Post.
“If [Lake] wins the primary election, I’ll support her in the general against Ruben Gallego,” she said.
This is Lake’s strategy to win over voters:
Kari Lake continues her outreach to moderate Republicans and independents, calling MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene “one of the greatest fighters in our country.”
Greene is one of the biggest conspiracy kooks in Congress.
On Tuesday, she demanded “proof of life … by 5 p.m. today” that Joe Biden was still alive, accepting hook, line and sinker the social media hysterics that Biden was dead and the deep state was covering it up.
Naturally, Greene has proclaimed the attempted assassination of Donald Trump was a conspiracy.
“Democrats don’t just want President Trump in jail, they want him dead,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, as Lake continues to run a shitty campaign, GOP Super PACs are picking up the slack in attacking Re[. Ruben Gallego (D. AZ):
Win it Back PAC, a political group affiliated with Club for Growth Action, is launching a new ad targeting Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who’s running for the Senate in Arizona, on crime and immigration.
“Sgt. Brandon Mendoza spent Mother’s Day with his mom,” states the narrator in the 30–second ad, called “Justice,”, noting he told his mother he loved her.
“Then headed off to protect the City of Mesa, killed hours later by a criminal illegal alien,” the narrator says. “Yet Ruben Gallego voted against a bipartisan bill encouraging the death penalty for killing a police officer. For Ruben Gallego, justice means just one death sentence. When illegal aliens kill cops.”
The ad, which was first shared with The Hill, will air in the Phoenix market between Wednesday and Aug. 13 and is backed by a $900,000 broadcast ad buy.
Arizona has always been a top focus state for both parties. Especially now that Harris is vetting her VP choices. Especially now that U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D. AZ) is being considered:
Mr. Kelly, 60, is a relative newcomer to politics. But he would bring to the Democratic ticket a résumé as remarkable as any political consultant could dream of: He is the working-class son of New Jersey police officers, a Navy pilot who flew 39 combat missions off the U.S.S. Midway in Operation Desert Storm, and a NASA astronaut and engineer who collected debris from the Columbia disaster, commanded a shuttle as the United States returned to space and flew the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final mission.
Oh, and he is married to Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona representative whose near-fatal brain injury in a mass shooting made her a symbol against gun violence, in her battleground state and beyond.
All of that could be hugely helpful to Ms. Harris as she tries to recapture momentum among working-class voters and keep Arizona, where former President Donald J. Trump has been gaining an edge, winnable for Democrats.
But Mr. Kelly’s special appeal, beyond what other potential running mates from swing states could provide, is his expertise on the technical issues and politics of the U.S.-Mexico border, perhaps Ms. Harris’s biggest vulnerability, his backers say.
And Kelly is certainly auditioning for the VP slot:
Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), a contender to become Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket, told HuffPost on Wednesday that he would vote in favor of the pro-union legislation known as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.
Kelly’s lack of full commitment to the PRO Act, as it’s known, has stood as a possible barrier to him becoming Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, since labor unions are a crucial part of the Democratic coalition. Harris has become the presumptive nominee since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race on Sunday.
“Why would the Democrats even consider a senator for the vice presidency if the senator doesn’t support the PRO Act?” John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union, told ABC News.
But Kelly on Wednesday made clear in an interview with HuffPost that he would support the bill if it came to the Senate floor, affirming enthusiastic support for labor unions. He is not listed as a co-sponsor on the Senate’s most recent version.
Gallego is making the case for her to pick Kelly as her running mate:
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) lauded Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-Ariz.) record, saying the senator would give Democrats a “jolt” ahead of November if Vice President Harris selected him to be her running mate.
“Adding Kelly to the ticket will add that extra jolt to the campaign,” Gallego told CNN’s Manu Raju in an interview Wednesday.
“And I think it’d be great for Democrats across the country … again as a border state senator, understands border issues; as an astronaut, married to Gabby Giffords … It’s a good combination right there,” he added.
And Harris is campaigning hard to win Arizona:
With President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race, all eyes now turn to Vice President Kamala Harris as she kicks off her campaign to win the White House – a path that will likely head through Arizona.
Harris, who has already secured enough delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, is launching an all-out blitz in the desert this week hosting more than 65 events across the state.
The “Weekend of Action” will kick off Thursday and go through the Sunday – engaging more than 1,300 people through canvass launches, watch parties, press events and visits from national political figures like Civil Rights activist Dolores Huerta and Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez.
“One hundred days before Election Day, Team Harris is leveraging the historic grassroots enthusiasm we’ve seen for our campaign and putting it to work. For over a year, our team has been building the battleground infrastructure needed to reach and persuade the voters who will decide this election — and now, we’re kicking it into overdrive,” said Harris for President Battleground States Director Dan Kanninen. “We have an enormous battleground advantage over Donald Trump, and this weekend that is going to be painfully clear to the Trump-Vance campaign. Our campaign is off to a running start and doing the work to defeat Donald Trump and send Vice President Harris to the Oval Office.”
The goal is to not only gain support for Harris, but also democratic candidates down the ballot ahead of the July 30th primary election.
And Dolores Huerta wasn’t holding back:
Huerta joined Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, for a rally at the Southwest Carpenters Training Center. The pair made a stop at a Harris campaign office in Maryvale earlier in the day to meet with staff and volunteers as the new campaign takes shape.
Harris “stands with our friends in labor” and is “Trump’s worst nightmare,” Chavez Rodriguez told the crowd.
Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Association with Chavez, is a longtime Harris ally. She endorsed Harris for president in 2019 and served as a California co-chair on the Harris presidential primary campaign that year. Huerta made the case against Trump during her speech at the rally, warning against Trump’s promise for sweeping deportations of illegal immigrants.
“We want a democracy. We do not want a dictatorship,” Huerta said.
During her visit to the Maryvale office, Huerta said that campaign staff and volunteers are working to save the United States from the “fascism that is creeping in.” She likened the high stakes of the political moment to Nazi Germany.
“Every single person would have stood up to say we’re going stop Hitler, right?” Huerta said. “Every one of us is going to recruit as many people as we can to join to stop this fascism in the United States of America.”
Huerta and Chavez both made a point to note the labor movement’s ties to Arizona. Huerta reminded campaign staff and volunteers that Chavez, her partner in founding the United Farm Workers Association, was born in Yuma.
FYI:
A judge on Friday rejected an effort by GOP lawmakers to use the term “unborn human being” to refer to a fetus in the pamphlet that Arizona voters would use to weigh a ballot measure that would expand abortion access in the state.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Whitten said the wording the state legislative council suggested is “packed with emotion and partisan meaning” and asked for what he called more “neutral” language. The measure aims to expand abortion access from 15 weeks to 24 weeks, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb.
It would allow exemptions to save the woman’s life or to protect her physical or mental health. It would also prevent the state from adopting or enforcing laws that would forbid access to the procedure.
Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, a co-chair of the legislative council, said the group will appeal the court’s decision to the state Supreme Court.
Also:
A lawsuit has been filed by Arizona Right to Life that, if successful, would keep the Arizona for Abortion Access act from appearing on the ballot in November.
The group’s attorney called the initiative “misleading on its face.” An article by The Arizona Republic’s Stacey Barchenger expands on what is meant by that.
What it boils down to, ultimately, is desperation.
A while back a coalition of abortion rights groups turned in 823,685 signatures, more than double what was needed, to put the abortion access initiative on the ballot.
The act’s supporters believe that without such a law, the people most determined to control the reproductive rights of women would again push for something like the Civil War-era ban, which called for imprisoning doctors who perform abortions.
The lawsuit filed to keep the act off the ballot proves that those concerns are justified.
The 800,000-plus signatures collected to put the measure before voters are probably the most ever collected for a ballot initiative.
The people opposed to it aren’t naive. They know that if the initiative gets on the ballot, it will pass.
So, they’re trying to use the courts to revert back a couple of centuries, when it was easier to keep citizens from making decisions for themselves.
There’s also this:
Most Republicans want nothing to do with Sen. JD Vance’s resurfaced attack on Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats as “childless cat ladies.” But it fits right into one House candidate’s playbook.
“Political leaders should have children. Certainly they should at least be married,” Blake Masters, a venture capitalist locked in a tight race for an Arizona House seat, wrote Wednesday on X. “If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations? Skin in the game matters.”
The post, referencing a headline about Vance’s 2021 comments to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, quickly went viral. It came as Masters battles Abe Hamadeh to succeed outgoing Rep. Debbie Lesko in a Republican primary next week in Arizona’s deep-red 8th Congressional District. Masters has been endorsed by Vance, while his opponent has the backing of Vance’s running mate, former President Donald Trump.
Trump endorsed Masters during his failed 2022 Senate campaign, and he’s still coasting off of it. Earlier this month, Masters ran an ad touting the former president’s endorsement, and Trump’s campaign has reportedly urged Masters to pull it.
By the way, this asshole is the only one excited about Trump picking Vance as his running mate:
The Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel’s relationship with Donald J. Trump turned ice-cold in the middle of 2023, when the former president excoriated Mr. Thiel on a private phone call over his unwillingness to support Mr. Trump’s re-election bid.
Now, after Mr. Trump chose one of Mr. Thiel’s closest political acolytes as his running mate, there appears to be a thaw.
Mr. Thiel is warming toward supporting the Republican ticket, he said in an interview on Friday, although he stopped short of making a formal endorsement. He also said he was not yet prepared to make a big donation to help elect Mr. Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Senator JD Vance of Ohio — remaining noncommittal and sounding dour about whether his money could make a difference.
“I always try to resist getting swept up in excitement,” Mr. Thiel told The New York Times over breakfast in Washington, making his first comments about the Republican ticket since Mr. Vance’s selection. “But in spite of many misgivings I had earlier this year, it makes me more hopeful that a second Trump term will be better than the first.”
The Arizona primary for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is next Tuesday, July 30th. Click here to find your polling place.
Health and Democracy are on the ballot this year and we need to make sure Gallego and Biden win Arizona. Click below to donate and get involved with Gallego, Biden and their fellow Arizona Democrats campaigns:
Ruben Gallego
Kamala Harris
Arizona Democratic Party
