With Woods out, McSally must be thrilled

To the surprise of almost no one, Grant Woods announced he won’t be running for the Senate in 2020.

I’m not so sure that’s something Democrats should be celebrating today. In fact, I’d be willing to be bet that Republican Martha McSally is one happy senator today.

Woods, a former Republican attorney general, would have been a long shot to win a Democratic primary, unless Democrats were disciplined enough to avoid an all-out intraparty war.

They aren’t.

But Woods, a guy who left the Republican Party after the death of his friend Sen. John McCain, struck me as the Democrat with the best chance of beating McSally.

Moderate Republicans and independents already have demonstrated their dislike of McSally by sending Democrat Kyrsten Sinema to Washington to replace Jeff Flake.

McSally got a second chance when Gov. Doug Ducey appointed her to fill out the rest of the late Sen. John McCain’s term.

McSally could — and should — try to win them back by separating herself from Trump and reprising the role of the more moderate Martha who represented the state’s most competitive congressional district.

She had the perfect opportunity to do just that during the government shutdown. She could have joined six other Republican senators in voting to reopen the government while negotiations on the border wall continued.

Instead, she stuck with Trump until the bitter end, which came the next day when the cornered Trump agreed to the truce. Then, suddenly, McSally was for that which she had voted against just 24 hours earlier.

So yeah, she’s likely to continue to have trouble with moderate voters.

Unless, that is, Democrats put up a leftie.

Rep. Ruben Gallego already has staked out a claim, saying he’s “very interested” in running. Former astronaut Mark Kelly is frequently mentioned as a possibility. I can’t imagine that Rep. Greg Stanton doesn’t have his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.

Given the times, I’m guessing Democratic primary voters will veer left, having learned nothing from David Garcia’s disastrous run for governor.

Garcia went left — imagining no wall when he should have been imag-

Given the times, I’m guessing Democratic primary voters will veer left.

ining a plan to improve public education — and he lost. Meanwhile, Kyrsten Sinema steered to the center and became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Arizona in 30 years.

Woods could reprise Sinema's race. He is a man of moderate tendencies — or as they are known today, a man with no party.

But he told KTAR’s Bruce St. James and Pamela Hughes that liberal Democrats weren’t about to go along with that.

“It’s pretty clear to me there’s going to be a Democratic primary if I decide to run,” he said, adding that it would be a “bigtime, expensive, competitive primary.”

Regardless, there will be a bigtime, expensive general election and once again moderate voters will be in play.

Now one of their best chances for winning is off the board.