Did Green Party candidate play the role of spoiler in Arizona’s Senate contest?

She was barely a blip in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, with no rigorous campaign schedule, virtually no press operation and essentially no name identification.

She spent less than $1,000 on her campaign, and was laid off in the process, she wrote on social media.

Angela Green’s biggest moment of the election cycle came Tuesday night, as early results in the too-close-to-call race rolled in, and it appeared as though she was the only thing standing before a winner.

As of Wednesday, Green, who the Green Party’s candidate, pulled in 38,633 votes, with hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding. That number was double the difference that stood between Republican candidate Martha McSally

and Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema.

It’s still unclear whether Green could serve as a spoiler in the still-uncalled race, where tens of millions of dollars have been spent by the candidates and their allies to win the seat that one-term incumbent U.S. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is vacating.

In the final stretch of the race, the state GOP sent campaign mailers to some Democrats that tied Green to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., an apparent tactic to peel off left-leaning voters from Sinema, a former Green Party member and activist who ran her Senate campaign as a centrist Democrat.

Green, who could not be reached by

The Arizona Republic Wednesday, was trying to fend off accusations that her candidacy may deny Democrats their first win to a Senate seat in three decades.

“No 3rd party candidate should have to endure accusations of being ‘spoilers’ just because the ‘winner takes all’ two party system is severely broken,” Green’s website said on Wednesday. “This is a complete travesty. It’s time for change.”

According to her website, yeswewill makeadifference.com, Green was born in Bangkok and is in her late 40s.

Her mother was a seamstress from Bangkok and her dad was a retired African-American Army veteran from Little Rock who attended the University of Utah. She describes her cultural background as “Blasian, Black and Asian, or a ‘Female Tiger Woods, who just doesn’t golf ... yet.”

Green attended the University of Utah, earning an accounting degree. As a single mother of two young boys, she at times used government assistance programs to help her family.

She later moved from Salt Lake City to Scottsdale, and over the years worked as an accounting manager and in the mortgage industry. She found a passion in helping families overcome hardships and hurdles to buy a home.

She started a hemp-related business with her sons, she wrote on her campaign website. Arizona Corporation Commission records show the limited liability corporation was formed in 2015, using a Chandler address that matches her voter-registration information.

In July 2017, Green was registered as a Democrat, registration records show.

She has been registered with the Green Party as of July 19, according to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.

She garnered 389 votes during the Aug. 28 primary.

Policywise, Green’s website said that people should receive “the same healthcare benefits and services” as elected officials, and that “our VA Vets, parents and grandparents” should get “the social security they need, and treated with dignity and respect in group homes and hospice.”

She supported the 20 percent pay increase for teachers, but said they deserved more. She pledged to defend programs such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which protects young adults who were brought to the United States as children from deportation and allows them to work here.

Green also supports programs that bolster student-loan forgiveness and programs such as music, arts and “holistic natural healing studies.”

As one phase of the bitter race between McSally and Sinema began to close, Green announced that she was suspending her campaign and was throwing her support to Sinema. But her name remained on the ballot, and as of Wednesday afternoon, she had scored 38,655 votes, or 2.24 percent of the votes counted so far.

By contrast, McSally stood at 850,980, or 49.34 percent while Sinema had 835,142, or 48.42 percent.

Green is facing intense criticism on social media for potentially spoiling a win for Sinema.

“Hey Angela Green,” one person wrote on Facebook, “Next time drop out of the race BEFORE ballots are printed! Seriously Arizona how does this happen??”

Sinema’s campaign declined to comment on the notion that Green may have been a spoiler. McSally’s representative could not be reached for comment.

Although the major parties and casual observers tend to cast third-party candidates as villains, Republican consultant Kurt Davis dismissed the idea that the Senate race would have looked much different without Green.

Disaffected voters tend to not vote for the major-party candidates anyway, he said. Instead, they prefer to sit out the elections or vote for the minor candidates.

“It’s an overblown theory” that Green could be a spoiler, said Davis, who is not affiliated with either campaign. “Most of those voters would have either chosen not to vote for either and if they didn’t have that (Green Party) choice, they would have passed that race up on the ballot ... These are highly disaffected voters who don’t like either of the parties. “It’s much ado about nothing.” Lisa Fernandez, a Democratic consultant, said it’s too soon to tell whether Green ruined Sinema’s chances. With so many votes still outstanding in Maricopa County, the state of play remains unclear.

“There are just so many votes that need to be counted, I don’t know that we can say for certain why a candidate lost,” she said.