Pro-Sinema spots could backfire
Democrats who are hoping to make Kyrsten Sinema Arizona’s first Democratic U.S. senator in more than two decades should be careful what they wish for.
Some are spending big money to assure Sinema will face a more extremist Republican candidate in November — one they think will be easier for the carefully modulated, moderate-seeming Sinema to defeat.
Apparently nobody saw what happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Donald Trump’s victory showed the folly of dismissing candidates the mainstream sees as not housebroken. Outsiders are popular because politics remains highly suspect.
Yet the Democratic-leaning group Red and Gold spent nearly $1.7 million in ads attacking GOP primary candidate Rep. Martha McSally, according to reporting by The Republic’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez.
Democratic campaign strategist Rodd McLeod, a spokesman for Red and Gold, told Wingett Sanchez: “We are committed to electing Kyrsten Sinema to the Senate and we are committed to making sure that Martha McSally does not make it to the Senate.”
He said they’d be running ads against the GOP front-runner no matter who it was.
Currently, conventional wisdom says McSally, a two-term congresswoman and mainstream Republican, will be the GOP Senate candidate in November.
To get there, she is doing her Trumpthumping best to convince GOP primary voters she’s as conservative as her opponents.
But some Republicans find this a stretch, which is why the oh-so-careful McSally won’t debate her GOP opponents. (Sinema won’t debate her primary opponent Deedra Abboud, either.)
McSally’s opponents are take-noprisoners conservatives: former state Sen. Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Arizona’s Trump-loving Republicans may wonder whether McSally will respect them after the primary. They have no such doubts about Ward and Arpaio.
Ward tried and failed to get Trump’s support in this race. Still, she remains solidly in his camp — “He’s great!” — and is 150 percent behind “the Wall.”
Ward is routinely dismissed as a fringe candidate, but she held her own against McSally when the two met before The Arizona Republic editorial board.
Arpaio, who didn’t show up to talk to
The Republic Editorial Board, is McSally’s best friend in the primary because he will split the immigration hardliner vote with Ward.
Like Trump, Arpaio was an Obama birth-certificate denier. Arpaio also wrote the anti-immigrant playbook that became a primer for Trump’s successful presidential race.
Arpaio warmed up crowds for Trump the candidate and got a pardon from Trump the president after Arpaio’s conviction of criminal contempt of court.
Both Arpaio and Ward have what McSally wants: genuine credentials as rock-rib conservatives.
Only someone who doesn’t have a clue about the vote-getting power of those credentials in Arizona would do something to undermine the relatively mainstream McSally.
Which brings me back to the Democratic-leaning group that’s pouring money into a campaign designed to weaken McSally.
Democrats apparently think their favorite Kyrsten Sinema will have an easier time defeating Ward or Arpaio.
Sinema must think so, too. Her campaign also ran ads that mirror the criticism in Red and Gold’s attack on McSally. But Trump’s victory and his continued popularity with Republicans make that strategy highly suspect.
Trying to pick the winner for the opposition is tricky as best. In these days when outsiders rule, it could prove disastrous for Democrats in November.
The lack of enthusiasm for McSally among the GOP base in Arizona will be mitigated by the Democratic attacks against her.
If those attacks succeed in elevating one of McSally’s opponents, the presence of either Ward or Arpaio on the November ballot will energize far-right GOP voters.
What’s more, by refusing to debate Abboud, Sinema is dissing and dismissing an opponent who is willing to stand up for the kind of progressive ideals that Sinema apparently rejects.
The mainstream Democrats aren’t giving the progressives any reason to get excited.
It’s kind of like Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment dismissing Bernie Sanders.
It won’t energize Democratic turnout in November.
Which is another lesson Democrats should have learned in 2016. Reach Valdez at linda.valdez@ arizonarepublic.com.