Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Arizona showed two things. First, President Trump’s scorched-earth presidency continues to inspire hard-right candidates to court the party’s lunatic fringe. And second, these candidates continue to learn too late that embracing policies like Trump’s and rhetoric like Trump’s doesn’t necessarily give you Trump’s own political invulnerability.
Establishment-backed Rep. Martha McSally handily won the three-way contest against former state senator Kelli Ward and ex-Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio Tuesday, capturing 52 percent of the vote: a true majority. Ward and Arpaio took 28 percent and 20 percent, respectively. McSally will face a fellow member of the House, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, in the race to replace outgoing Senator Jeff Flake this November.
McSally, a fighter pilot before she joined Congress in 2015, is certainly no Flake, whose support in Arizona dried up quickly last year after he became one of the president’s loudest and most persistent Republican critics. A one-time immigration moderate and Trump agnostic, McSally made her peace with him during the primary campaign, praising his border security proposals and quoting him in TV ads.
“I have been leading the effort to modernize our legal immigration system, close legal loopholes that the cartels exploit, and build President Trump’s wall,” McSally said in her victory speech Tuesday night.
In other words, she’s a more-or-less standard issue Senate Republican—a blessing, considering the alternatives.
At first glance, Kelli Ward seemed to fit the description of a stereotypical grassroots rabble-rouser, all brash rhetoric and loyalty to the president and rock-ribbed stances on social issues and immigration policy. Beyond that, her chief distinguishing characteristic has been her remarkable willingness to pal around with out-and-out cranks: During a previous attempt to primary the late Sen. John McCain in 2016, she appeared on InfoWars founder Alex Jones’s radio show, where the two swapped banter about the possibility that McCain might try to have her killed. This month, she brought conspiracy theorist, Pizzagate truther, and men’s rights activist Mike Cernovich on board as a campaign surrogate. She maintains that such stunts are intended simply to capture more eyeballs for her message:
“To get you guys to come on out,” she recently told reporters at an appearance with Cernovich.
“I think there’s an audience of people out there that do listen to InfoWars, and should they be left in the dark about options that are out there?” Ward told THE WEEKLY STANDARD earlier this year. “I mean, Donald Trump went on InfoWars too, and so have many other people.”
In recent days, Ward has raised eyebrows even further by suggesting that John McCain’s family had timed the public announcement of his imminent death to “have a particular narrative that they hope is negative to me.” She later apologized for these remarks. But that wasn’t even the first time she had used McCain’s brain cancer as a prop for political greed: She was criticized last year after McCain made his ailment public for calling for him to resign and for Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to appoint her in his place.
Ward was the first challenger to jump into the race last year before Flake announced his retirement, and enjoyed a large lead in early polling as she slammed the incumbent’s anti-Trump stances and painted herself as the true conservative alternative to Flake. But then came another challenger: Arpaio, who entered the race in January. Arpaio’s entire pitch to voters hinged on two promises: He would be a rock on immigration and law enforcement, and he would be a rock of support for President Trump. Voters had good reason to believe both, given Arpaio’s own track record of racial profiling and staggering cruelty to prisoners during his tenure as sheriff, and the pardon Donald Trump issued him to spare him the legal repercussions. Arpaio also seemed to draw great confidence from the fact that he had never before lost a GOP primary. He has now.
McSally had been expected to win for months, with the smart money predicting that Arpaio would gouge into the fringy elements Ward seemed to have safely locked down when she was Flake’s first challenger. But McSally’s win was more than just a lucky break due to internecine squabbling among the state’s tin-hats and xenophobes. After all, she won a full majority—had Ward and Arpaio been able to run on a single ticket, they still would not have succeeded. Perhaps it is a small comfort that only 48 percent of GOP voters in the state that sent Flake and McCain to Washington threw their weight behind Ward or Arpaio. But it is a comfort nevertheless.
