McSally forecasts trouble for state GOP

Potential donors warned of future liberal invasion

Arizona Republicans are getting more explicit about the political headwinds they face in next year’s congressional midterm elections.

In a secretly taped meeting with the Arizona Bankers Association that was released this week, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally warned prospective campaign donors recently she would lose her Tucson-based seat if the election were held now.

At the same time, U.S. Rep. David Schweikert’s campaign warned his potential donors that liberals could bring politically orchestrated violence to Maricopa County neighborhoods.

Indivisible of Southern Arizona, one of the pro-Democratic groups formed this year, shared McSally’s comments on its website.

Among the more notable comments in the group’s view is one where McSally acknowledges a perilous political environment in which she would lose an election today.

“They (Democrats) only need 23 seats. The path to that gavel being handed over is through my seat, and right now it doesn’t matter that it’s me,” McSally said. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve done. It doesn’t matter. It’s just that I have an ‘R’ next to my name, and right now this environment would have me not prevail.”

McSally, who is in her second term, represents one of the more evenly divided districts in the country. Voters there went for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by nearly 5 percentage points last year.

Several Democrats are expected to challenge her, and Democratic polling has suggested she could be vulnerable.

Schweikert, who is in his fourth term, likely faces an easier path to reelection in his northeast Valley district. Even so, he sought to ratchet up fear in a Monday mailer.

“The left is determined to disrupt and disorganize,” he wrote.

In the next paragraph, indented, and put in boldface italics, he said:

“Groups called ‘Resistance,’ ‘Stronger Together,’ ‘Indivisible,’ ‘We are the People,’ and ‘We feel the Bern’ are far left front groups determined to inflict the kind of violence that we have seen before . ... They drive a radical social agenda and will stop at no turn to ‘clash with police,’ ‘incite violence,’ ‘light cars on fire,’ ‘incite mass arrests,’ ‘and use women, children, and families to mass confusion.’ ”

That ignited a quick response from the groups Schweikert ripped.

Stronger Together AZ, for example, wrote to Schweikert that his letter is slanderous, libelous and puts their members in danger.

“There have been ZERO acts of violence at any of our events and we do not in any way promote or condone violence of any kind,” the group wrote in a letter to Schweikert shared on social media.