ARIZONA
Incumbent: Republican Jeff Flake
Inside Elections rating: Tilt Republican 2016 presidential election results: Trump: 49%, Clinton: 45%
Flake’s re-election bid gained national attention because Trump is trying to defeat him.
Flake has been an unwavering critic of the president. The senator’s new book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics
and a Return to Principle, decries Trump’s noise over substance, his embrace of alternative facts and his “volatile unpredictability.” Trump has bitten back, denouncing Flake in a tweet as “toxic” and applauding Flake’s opponent in the GOP primary, former Arizona state senator Kelli Ward. She lost a primary challenge against Sen. John McCain last year. Trump said Flake is “weak on borders.”
Flake, who grew up on a cattle ranch working alongside Mexican immigrants, helped craft a bipartisan immigration bill that would have beefed up border security while providing a pathway to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants living in the USA. The Senate passed the bill in 2013, but it died in the House.
Several Democrats are considering whether to run for the seat, including Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, the first openly bisexual person to be elected to Congress.