Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon appeared in the Valley to endorse Kelli Ward’s Senate campaign against incumbent GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.
Former strategist appears at campaign kickoff event
Steve Bannon on Tuesday rallied Arizona’s conservative grass-roots activists on behalf of Kelli Ward’s insurgent Republican campaign against GOP incumbent Sen. Jeff Flake. It was the biggest indicator to date that the allies of President Donald Trump are settling on Ward as their preferred challenger to Flake.
Bannon, Trump’s controversial former White House strategist and the man many credit with his unlikely victory in the presidential race, ripped Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and vowed that the Republican elite are destined to “reap the whirlwind” and “that whirlwind is Kelli Ward.”
The “new aristocracy,” he said, referring to establishment Republicans, could not care less about the economic well-being of Americans. McConnell and other Republican senators disrespect and try to destroy Trump every day, said Bannon, who returned to Breitbart News after leaving the White House in August.
His remarks were another salvo in the “war” Bannon has declared on the GOP establishment.
“It’s an open revolt, and it should be,” Bannon said before introducing Ward at her campaign’s formal kickoff event at the Hilton Scottsdale Resort.
“These people hold you in total contempt,” he said. “When they attack a Donald Trump and a Dr. Kelli Ward, it’s not Donald Trump and Kelli Ward that they’re trying to shut up. It’s you they’re trying to shut up . ... They think you’re a group of morons.”
This revolt, he said, is moving from Alabama, where the Bannon-supported Roy Moore just defeated incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in a Republican runoff, to Arizona, where the first-term Flake is up for re-election in 2018 after refusing to endorse or vote for Trump last year.
“It’s going to be their money versus your money,” Bannon said.
Ward, a former state senator from Lake Havasu City, last year unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the primary.
This year, some on the right have been searching for another candidate
to take on Flake, who this summer published a book, “Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politicis and A Return to Principle,” in which he criticized the Republican Party for embracing Trumpism.
However, early polls have shown Flake to be deeply vulnerable, and with Ward leading him.
Ward will secure the southern border and build a wall, Bannon said, will repeal and replace “Obamacare,” and will negotiate Trump-style trade deals that “represent you and the American people.”
“We’re building a grass-roots army,” Bannon said.
Bannon came to Ward’s event at the invitation of conservative radio talkshow host Laura Ingraham. She was the advertised headliner but was overshadowed by Bannon, whom Ingraham introduced as “the man in black.”
“Jeff Flake doesn’t trust you, and I think, probably in his gut, he doesn’t like you,” Ingraham told the ballroom full of Ward supporters. “Kelli Ward will represent Arizona proudly.”
Ward echoed Trump’s favored campaign themes in her remarks, talking about the need to build a wall on the U.S.Mexico border and repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, former President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law.
Ahead of the event, the Bannonaligned Great America PAC — a super PAC that aggressively supports Trump and his agenda — announced it was officially endorsing Ward over Flake in Arizona’s Aug. 28 Republican Senate primary.
“We sort of call it, for lack of a better term, an arm of Team Bannon, whatever that is,” said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes U.S. Senate races for the influential and nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C.
“Let me put it this way: Great America would not endorse a candidate that he opposed,” she said.
Trump himself has not endorsed Ward, but in August did tweet a message supportive of her candidacy against Flake, whom he decried as a Senate nonentity and “toxic.”
“It looks like they (the Bannon group) are moving in the Ward direction, but I’m not sure that the White House is at the same place with her,” said Nathan Gonzales, a political analyst who edits and publishes the nonpartisan Inside Elections newsletter.
In other Ward-related drama, two former campaign staffers issued a statement condemning their former boss and apologizing to “America First activists and the people of Arizona for helping legitimize the candidacy of Kelli Ward.”
Dustin Stockton, Ward’s former political strategist, and Jennifer Lawrence, her former press secretary, parted ways with the campaign in September. One right-wing website reported an allegation that Ward was withholding Lawrence’s final paycheck. Their statement indicated that they are now disenchanted with Ward for reasons they did not fully articulate.
Ward’s campaign did not respond to an email requesting comment about the former staffers.
Nowicki is The Arizona Republic’s national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter, @dannowicki.