Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat is emerging as the toughest for Republicans to hold in 2020.
Sen. Martha McSally, the Republican incumbent, must defeat a challenge from astronaut and gun control advocate Mark Kelly, and she must succeed in a state that rejected her Senate bid in 2018.
Democrats are beginning to feel confident they’ll win Arizona and ultimately retake the Senate majority, which Republicans currently hold by a 53-47 margin.
McSally was appointed to the seat late last year following the death of Sen. John McCain. Former GOP Sen. Jon Kyl served as an interim replacement for three-and-a-half months before McSally’s appointment.
The winner in 2020 will finish McCain’s term, which ends in early January 2023.
While McSally is running as an incumbent, she was appointed to the seat after losing the 2018 race to replace outgoing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake to Democrat Krysten Sinema.
Democrats believe she’s already a weak candidate, and her support of the GOP and President Trump will give Kelly an advantage.
“While Mark is building a strong campaign with record-breaking grassroots support, McSally is being dragged down by her toxic record and is on track to lose another Senate race,” Stewart Boss, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic campaign arm, told the Washington Examiner.
But campaign analysts are far from declaring the race for Kelly.
Arizona voters have been fickle in recent elections and are hardly reliably Democratic.
The state picked President Trump over Hillary Clinton in by nearly four percentage points and has voted for a GOP president consistently since 2000.
In 2016, Senate Republican candidates won in every state dominated by Trump. It’s a pattern that could help McSally beat Kelly in 2020.
“Republicans have enjoyed, and still have, a light advantage under normal circumstances,” Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan newsletter covering U.S. House, Senate, and gubernatorial races.
But Gonzales added, “But I don’t know what normal is going to be in 2020.”
National polls show Democratic challengers beating Trump.
And new Arizona polling suggests Kelly is emerging as a serious threat to McSally.
Ohio Predictive Insights, based in Phoenix polled 600 likely voters and 46% picked Kelly, compared with 41% who chose McSally.
Thirteen percent said they were undecided.
Kelly’s advantage held up in key Maricopa County, where 6 in 10 of Arizona’s likely voters reside and where the winner will likely be decided.
Maricopa voters picked Kelly over McSally 48% to 39%, with 12% undecided.
“Expect the numbers to start moving when these two fundraising juggernauts start spending heavy and hard,” Predictive Insights Chief of Research and Managing Partner Mike Noble said in a statement.
Kelly has so far out-raised McSally. Democrats are touting Kelly’s $4.2 million haul in the second quarter of 2019. McSally raised about $3 million. Kelly also has more cash on hand to spend — $6 million compared to McSally’s $4.4 million.
McSally and Kelly are both former fighter pilots. Kelly is married to ex-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat who was shot in the head in Tucson, Arizona, during a constituent event in January 2011. The couple are now staunch national advocates for gun control.
In the Ohio Insights poll, Kelly fares better than McSally when it comes to favorability, 28% to 21%.
Forty-five precent rated McSally unfavorably, compared to just 25% for Kelly.
A full 31% had no opinion of Kelly, compared to 8% for McSally.
“The most interesting dynamic to watch in this early-developing Senate race is that McSally is defined and Kelly still has room to grow,” the poll noted.
Gonzales said while poll numbers may look daunting for McSally, Kelly must prove himself as a candidate seeking a highly competitive statewide office.
McSally lost the 2018 race, but it was close — Sinema won by 2.4%, or about 50,000 votes.
While Kelly has been in the national spotlight for years advocating for gun control, he has never run for office.
“He has never been through a race before, let alone a top tier race,” Gonzales said. “We’ll have to see how he performs. Before this race and before he became a candidate, the majority of his interviews took place on a couch, next to his wife, talking about one issue. This is much different.”
