When Kelli Ward launched her campaign for Senate in October 2017, she was riding high, leading incumbent Jeff Flake by double digits in the Arizona GOP primary. She had the backing of the president’s recently-departed chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had struck fear into the hearts of Republicans by vowing to defeat every Republican senator (with the exception of Ted Cruz) in a primary. In September, the Bannon-backed Roy Moore defeated a Trump-endorsed incumbent, Luther Strange, to win the GOP nomination for Senate in the Alabama special election. Flake was supposed to be next.
As TWS reported at the time:
But if the latest Arizona Senate poll is anywhere close to being correct, the scurrilous nationalists are having a tough time in their fight against the globalist elitists in Arizona: Ward is trailing by 20 points.
The story of Ward’s change of fortunes is pretty simple: Jeff Flake dropped out of the race and was replaced by Rep. Martha McSally, a stronger “establishment” candidate who didn’t routinely criticize the sitting Republican president. But even worse for Ward, former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio entered the race, thereby splitting the “scurrilous nationalist” vote two ways.
“Every vote for Arpaio comes out of Ward,” says the Cook Political Report’s Jennifer Duffy, who adds that even Flake would’ve been in a competitive three-way race against Ward and Arpaio.
“I’ve seen a variety of polls that don’t have [McSally’s] lead quite that much, but still have her ahead. I think she’s well-positioned, but this is a cycle where you don’t assume too much.”
The fact that Ward is losing votes to Arpaio explains why she’s heading into the homestretch of the primary campaign, which is set to conclude next Tuesday, on a bus tour with conspiracy theorist and alt-righter Mike Cernovich. Arpaio was, like President Donald Trump, one of the most prominent promoters of the “birther” conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama.
Trump pardoned Arpaio, who had been convicted of contempt of court, in 2017. As Jon Gabriel wrote in USA Today:
America’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff” was convicted of criminal contempt of court last month after refusing to obey court orders. This most recent legal battle involved numerous federal attempts to get Arpaio to stop racially profiling residents of Maricopa County. […]
During one three-year period, his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office didn’t properly investigate more than 400 alleged sex crimes, many of them involving child molestation.
In all, the department improperly cleared as many as 75% of cases without arrest or investigation, a fact outlined in a scathing report by the conservative Goldwater Institute.
When local journalists delved into Arpaio’s dealings, he had them arrested, a move that ultimately cost taxpayers $3.75 million. We paid $3.5 million more after the sheriff wrongfully arrested a county supervisor who had been critical of him.
So in order to win back some of the Arpaio vote, Ward is teaming up with Cernovich, who has promoted the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory that leading Democrats were raping children at a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. A man from North Carolina then showed up to the pizzeria with a semi-automatic rifle, which he discharged multiple times, while investigating the conspiracy theory.
“Are Jeff Flake and John McCain bigger disgraces than Mike Cernovich?” a reporter asked Ward Monday.
“It depends on who’s looking I guess,” Ward replied.
Ward herself previously indulged those who believe in the “chemtrail” conspiracy theory—that those white streaks left in the sky by passing jets aren’t simply engine exhaust but chemicals being dispersed by the government.
The problem for Ward (well, the electoral problem, not the moral or mental one) is that her efforts to consolidate the kook vote likely won’t propel her to victory. Even if every single Arpaio voter backed Ward, she would be trailing McSally 47 percent to 40 percent in that latest poll. Ward lost the August 2016 primary to John McCain 39 percent to 52 percent. (McCain said he was voting for Trump at the time, but revoked his support after the Access Hollywood tape was released.)
If McSally wins in Arizona, that will be part of a broader trend in which the more ideological and temperamental Trumpists not named Donald Trump have failed to gain traction over the past two years. Yes, Roy Moore won his primary in 2017, over an establishment candidate connected to a huge scandal in Alabama. But Moore lost the general election after allegations emerged that he molested a 14-year-old girl and routinely pursued romantic relationships with teenagers when he was in his 30s.
Perhaps a Democratic victory over Moore in ruby-red Alabama was a “learning experience” for GOP primary voters. In West Virginia, Don Blankenship of “Cocaine Mitch” fame lost to Attorney General Patrick Morrissey. In Nevada, Danny Tarkanian dropped out of his race against incumbent Dean Heller. In Mississippi, Chris McDaniel, who nearly defeated an incumbent Republican senator in 2014, seems unlikely to make it to the run-off.
Mainstream conservatives or establishment Republicans are the standard bearers in the Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Dakota Senate races, to name a few. Corey Stewart, who narrowly defeated a libertarian Republican in Virginia, is really the only extremist who won a Senate GOP primary this year in a state where the race could have potentially been competitive in November. (Virginia was always going to be an uphill battle for Republicans, but Stewart’s nomination has taken Virginia off the map entirely.)
It’s true that the GOP establishment has fended off the Bannonite populists by cozying up to Trump, moving in Trump’s direction on trade and declining to criticize the president for much of anything at all. That may carry its own costs, political and moral, now and for years to come. But in 2018, it’s been enough to keep the Bannonites mostly outside the gates. As Bannon himself said this summer, “the anti-establishment thing is kind of a luxury we can’t afford right now.”
