He's running for CD8, which is in northwest Maricopa County, but not only does he live in Tucson, his FEC committee for this run is based in Virginia -
His committee number is C00854786.
So far as I know (I'm not a lawyer), this is all legal.
But I expect that it will be used against by the other candidates in his primary.
He won't be the last GOPer to declare their interest in the race to replace Debbie Lesko.
From Politico -
Blake Masters announces House bid in Arizona, forgoing another run for Senate
Former Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters announced Thursday that he would run for an open congressional seat in the Phoenix suburbs, changing course from a planned second run for Senate in 2024.
“I’m running for Congress, to fight for Arizona’s 8th,” Masters tweeted Thursday, along with a video featuring his family. “Biden has failed. We need Trump back. We need to stop inflation, Build the Wall, avoid WW3, and secure Arizona’s water future. We need to fight for our families.”
Neither Masters, nor anyone else, has yet to form a committee with the FEC for the run. That'll change.
From Politico -
Blake Masters plans another Arizona Senate bid — this time for Sinema’s seat
Blake Masters is making plans to launch another Arizona Senate bid, potentially as soon as next week, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Masters did not reply to a request for comment. Masters won the GOP nomination last year but lost to Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in a critical swing state.
Right now, I'm assuming that Kari Lake will get in the race, too, making the "Big 3" in the race for the R nomination Lake, Masters, and Mark Lamb, the sheriff in Pinal County.
Meaning that at least 3 Rs will be vying for the Bat Shit Crazy vote.
Unless one of them drops out or someone just as crazy as them gets in the race. Both are possibilities.
A "colorful" Pinal County sheriff not named Paul Babeu has announced his intent to run for the seat.
Mark Lamb, professional bigot and stone trumper (yes, I'm being redundant there) announced his candidacy today. He's not the first R in that particular primary, hence the "*", but he's the first recognizable name to form a committee.
His treasurer is Lisa Lisker of Virginia.
Other Rs who may be looking at the race include (some of this speculation I've heard in news reports, some I'm pulling out of my...ear :) ):
Kari Lake, Karrin Taylor Robson, Blake Masters, Doug Ducey, Mark Brnovich, Sal DiCiccio, and for a dark horse candidate, I'll toss out one name, Kyrsten Sinema. If she becomes a Republican. My guess is that even they won't accept her.
There will be others, of course, and not all of those listed will actually run, but I'll be surprised if at least two don't do so.
Pointed at this by Taegan Goddaed's Political Wire.
The original article is from The Financial Times, but that article is behind a paywall, so another source had to be found..
From The Hill -
Peter Thiel calls midterms ‘not merely disastrous but also depressing’ for GOP
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel called the Republican Party’s performance in this year’s midterm elections “disastrous” and “depressing” in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute on Tuesday.
“The part of it that’s not merely disastrous but also depressing is just the sense that if we don’t do something different, we’re just gonna be in this Groundhog Day where something like this is going to repeat in 2024, or throughout the rest of this decade,” Thiel said as part of the “A Time for Choosing” speaker series.
[snip]
Thiel spent millions backing Arizona GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters, who was also endorsed by former President Trump and lost his election. He also gave big to Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, another Trump-backed Republican candidate who won his race against Rep. Tim Ryan (D).
[snip]
“If you can’t sort of win in that kind of a context, how are you ever going to win?” Thiel asked, arguing that Republicans failed to put forward a “substantive agenda” and ran a “discombobulated” campaign overall.
Guess $30 million doesn't go as far as it used to.
Let me sum up Thiel's speech in three words -
Boo copulating wah
("copulating" is a euphemism, subject to replacement by readers)
Did Masters hear Peter Thiel's whip cracking did he respond to a silent tug on his leash as if he had heard the whip?
The Arizona race for a seat in the U.S Senate favors incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly.
In fact, it favors him so much, the race has been called for Kelly.
From Yahoo! -
Mark Kelly defeats Blake Masters in Arizona, leaving Democrats 1 seat away from holding the Senate
Incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly has defeated his Republican challenger, Blake Masters, in Arizona, boosting Democratic hopes of holding onto the Senate.
With 83% of votes counted, the Associated Press called the race Friday evening for Kelly — a Navy combat veteran, retired NASA astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz. He leads Masters, a 36-year-old “anti-progressive” venture capitalist, by an insurmountable 52% to 46% margin.
Yet that loss isn't slowing down Masters.
From an email from Conservative Intel (I'm on some really weird email lists. :) ) -
...If so, I guessing that at least one of them was a spelling book.
From Twitter -
From a certain state agency website, emphasis added by me -
Note: I didn't see any fire in the linked video. It was nearly 45 minutes long, so I skimmed it. It appeared to be just Masters and/or Lake talking.
A: Of course he does.
From BusinessInsider -
Billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel is in the process of acquiring Maltese citizenship, report says
Silicon Valley investor and former Trump adviser Peter Thiel is hoping to add Malta to his foreign passport collection, according to a Saturday report by The New York Times.
Thiel, who was born in Germany, is also an American and New Zealand citizen. The billionaire PayPal founder has donated approximately $30 million to Republican candidates running for office in next month's midterm elections, according to the Times, making him one of the race's most influential individual donors.
From the Central Bank of Malta -
[snip]
With the adoption of the euro in Malta on 1 January 2008, the Bank became responsible for the issuance of euro banknotes and coins in accordance with the principles and rules established within the Eurosystem.
On one hand, Malta *does* have an extradition treaty with the U.S. (which may be why Cheeto will never go there); on the other hand, the desire for a Malta citizenship may just be a tax avoidance scheme on Thiel's part.
From Price Waterhouse Coopers (emphasis added by me)-
Malta
Individual - Taxes on personal income
Malta taxes individuals who are both domiciled and ordinarily resident in Malta on their worldwide income.
Any person who is ordinarily resident in Malta but not domiciled in Malta is taxable only on income arising in Malta and on any foreign income remitted to Malta (i.e. on income and chargeable gains arising in Malta and on income outside Malta that is received in Malta). Such persons are not taxable in Malta on income arising outside Malta, which is not received in Malta, and on capital gains arising outside Malta, regardless of whether they are received in Malta, or otherwise.
However, persons who are married to an individual ordinarily resident and domiciled in Malta are subject to a worldwide basis of taxation (and not on a source and remittance basis).
A non-resident individual is taxed only on income and chargeable gains arising in Malta.
Of course, it may not matter if Thiel's financial largesse to Masters is in dollars or euros. Masters is already expecting to lose the race, and is trotting out his story/excuse.
From The Daily Beast -
Blake Masters Is Already Claiming His Election Will Be Stolen
In his campaign to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Republican Blake Masters has consistently amplified skepticism and conspiracy theories surrounding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
But during the final stretch of his own 2022 race, Masters is starting to cast doubt on the outcome of this election—before the votes are even counted.
I'm thinking yes.
But for elections that don't go their way?
The preemptive whining has already started.
From the New York Times via Yahoo! -
Echoing Trump, These Republicans Won't Promise to Accept 2022 Results
Nearly two years after President Donald Trump refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 election, some of his most loyal Republican acolytes might follow in his footsteps.
When asked, six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election results, and another five Republicans ignored or declined to answer a question about embracing the November outcome. All of them, along with many other GOP candidates, have preemptively cast doubt on how their states count votes.
[snip]
Aides to several Republican nominees for governor who have questioned the 2020 election’s legitimacy did not respond to repeated requests for comment on their own races in November. Those candidates included Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, Kari Lake of Arizona, Tim Michels of Wisconsin and Dan Cox of Maryland.
Lake was asked in a radio interview this month whether she would concede a defeat to Katie Hobbs, her Democratic rival and Arizona’s secretary of state. “I’m not losing to Katie Hobbs,” Lake replied.
Hobbs’ spokesperson, Sarah Robinson, said her candidate “will accept the results of the election in November.”
[snip]
In Arizona — where Republicans spent months on a government-funded review of 2020 ballots that failed to show any evidence of fraud — Masters, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for Senate, baselessly predicted to supporters in July that even if he defeated Sen. Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat, enough votes would somehow be produced to flip the result.
“There’s always cheating, probably, in every election,” Masters said. “The question is, what’s the cheating capacity?”
A Masters aide, Katie Miller, sent the Times an August article in The Arizona Republic in which Masters said there was “evidence of incompetence” but not of fraud in the state’s primary election. Miller declined to say if Masters would respect the November results.
Kelly “has total trust in Arizona’s electoral process,” said a spokesperson, Sarah Guggenheimer.
Get ready for a bumpy ride - the election may be over on November 8th, but the need for cheese to go with that whine will go on for a while.
A long while.
Pointed at this by Taegan Goddard's Political Wire.
Like the First Rule of Holes.
From Goodreads -
From AP, dated 7/30/2022 -
Fealty to Trump defines Republican Senate primary in Arizona
An interviewer asked Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters to pick
a “subversive thinker” whom people should know more about.
Masters gave it some thought and came up with a risky response for someone
running for elected office.
He picked the Unabomber.
“I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this,” Masters responded. “How about, like,
What does it say about his character that Masters loves some who famously killed people while I love someone who was famously fired from the New York Times for submitting a story that referred to a chicken festival as a "gang pluck"?
From CNN -
Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters scrubbed language on campaign website saying the 2020 election was stolen from Trump
Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters removed language from his website following his primary win that included the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, along with a section arguing the country would be better off if Trump was still the president.
A review of Masters' website by CNN's KFile showed he also removed controversial language saying Democrats were trying to "import" a new electorate -- language that has drawn fire for mirroring far-right conspiracies that Democrats are trying to weaken the power of native-born Americans of European descent through mass immigration of non-White immigrants.Both stances were on Masters' website on August 1, the day before he won the Republican primary to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in the closely watched Senate race. The sections were gone by August 26, according to screenshots from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine
Also from CNN, dated 8/26/2022 -
Arizona GOP Senate candidate attempts to soften anti-abortion stance in pivot to general election
Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters attempted to tone down his position on abortion Thursday, scrubbing his website of his support of a "federal personhood law" and a host of other strict anti-abortion positions while releasing a video in which the Republican nominee took a softer stance on the issue.
The shift signals the potency of abortion in the 2022 midterms and the fact that Republicans candidates, many of whom backed tough abortion restrictions during their primaries, now believe they need to soften those positions as they face a broader, less conservative electorate.
Wonder if he thinks that his website is like Peter Thiel's bathroom?
Mark Kelly can breathe a little easier tonight, but only a little.
From The Hill -
GOP super PAC canceling ads in Arizona, Alaska
A Republican super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is canceling advertisements in Arizona less than three months out from the midterm elections, a possible sign of problems for the Trump-backed GOP candidate challenging Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).
The Senate Leadership Fund called off its advertisement reservations that were set to air in Arizona between Sept. 6 and Oct. 3, according to AdImpact.
Well, at least we'll find out two things -
1. How big a rift develops between Cheeto and more mainstream GQPers like Mitch McConnell.
2. How golden the leash extending from Peter Thiel's hand to Blake Masters is at this point.
With pockets as deep as Thiel's, this race isn't over; he may just have to dig a little deeper.
Engel is a former state legislator and current candidate for Congress.
Now that the primaries are over and the general election candidates have been determined, it's about to hit the fan and southern AZ.
Notice any similarities between the two PACs? Like everything, except the sponsors?
Blake Masters may be scrubbing his ass off, but he and Peter Thiel have thoroughly embraced the "spaghetti" model in campaigning (throw a lot of it against the wall in hopes that some of it sticks). His TV ads are as incessant as they are false.
My guess is that Engel's opponent will do the same.
The only question is will Thiel spread his largesse to another contest?
Pointed at this by RealClearPolitics.
From OH Predictive Insights -
AZ GOP SENATE RACE: Masters of His own Destiny
Masters on the Rise, Brnovich Loses Ground, Lamon Stays Competitive – 35% Still Undecided
Toplines and Crosstabs can be found here
As Arizona’s primary elections race towards us – and with early ballots beginning hitting mailboxes this week – the race to face Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly for a Senate seat just got more interesting. According to OH Predictive Insights’ (OHPI) latest statewide Likely GOP Primary Voter Poll, Blake Masters has reared his head as the new frontrunner in Arizona’s GOP Senate Primary.
This AZPOP was conducted from June 30th – July 2nd, 2022 and surveyed 515 Arizonans qualified as likely GOP primary voters, giving the survey a margin of error of +/- 4.3%.
Guessing that the Kelly campaign team is studying their oppo research on Masters right about now.
Geez, and I thought AZ GOP primaries were crazy.
Oh wait...they are. It's just a question of how long before a candidate here goes to the same place.
My first guess: Blake Masters.
Second guess: Mark Finchem.
Third guess: Paul Gosar, but any AZGOPer could go here.
Actually, more than one could go here.
From CNN -
This GOP Senate candidate just released a video calling for some Republicans to be hunted
On Sunday, Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said he received a letter in the mail a few days ago that threatened to execute him, his wife and their newborn.
"There is violence in the future, I'm going to tell you," Kinzinger said on ABC's "This Week." "And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can't expect any differently."Less than 24 hours later, Eric Greitens, a leading contender for the Republican Senate nomination in Missouri, released a new video in which he is depicted as hunting RINOs (Republicans in Name Only)."I'm Eric Greitens, Navy SEAL, and today we're going RINO hunting." Greitens says as he walks down a sidewalk with a gun in hand.
And violence toward anyone, even GOPers, is a bad thing that should never be tolerated.
The silence from AZGOPers is deafening.
Pointed at this by Taegan Goddard's Political Wire.
From CNN (emphasis added by me)-
Audio shows Trump-endorsed Arizona Senate candidate questioned whether January 6 attack was set up by FBI
Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate from Arizona, met with conservative activists at a Phoenix IHOP this spring and was asked whether he would support investigating US intelligence operations to uncover the federal government's "nefarious activities."
Masters replied, "Absolutely," and then floated the conspiracy theory that the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol actually may have been a false-flag operation set up by the FBI, according to a recording of the March 30 meeting obtained by CNN.[snip]
Masters is part of a wave of Republicans who have won the coveted endorsement of former President Donald Trump after parroting his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and downplaying the actions of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol last year.
Of course, Cheeto may not be the only one that Masters is pandering to.
From Maddowblog on MSNBC -
Trump-backed Senate hopeful pushes racist line on gun violence
At face value, Blake Masters has an odd background for a U.S. Senate candidate. The Arizona Republican has worked as an executive at tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s company; he’s helped lead Thiel’s foundation; he’s helped promote Thiel’s ideas, and he’s been the beneficiary of Thiel’s electoral generosity.
The 35-year-old candidate, with effectively no background in government or policymaking, nevertheless launched a far-right campaign — and picked up an endorsement from Donald Trump, who not only tends to agree with Thiel, but who was also eager to undermine Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich for not doing more to advance the Big Lie.
Masters is proving to be quite a candidate. The Daily Beast reported on a newly unearthed quote in which the GOP Senate hopeful reflected on gun violence.
Tech investor and Arizona Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters acknowledges that the United States has a gun violence problem. But he also has a theory about why there’s a problem—it’s “Black people, frankly.” Masters boiled the issue down in an April 11 interview on the Jeff Oravits Show podcast, telling the host that “we do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence.”
Just a guess: No matter how much he panders to Cheeto (and Cheeto likes panderers), Masters will always be Thiel's pet.
Also, if you're going to put "Arizona" in your PAC's name, it may be a good idea to base it here.
From the Saving Arizona PAC's statement of organization filed with the FEC -
Thiel used $10,000,000 of his billions and funded the PAC.
From the PAC's mid-year 2021 filing -
Yet, while the PAC may have "Arizona" in its name, incredibly little of its money has been raised or spent here.
According to its FEC summary page, the PAC has raised a total of $10,558,039.78, yet of that total, $130K was raised here (and of that, $100K came from the same sources -
Anyway, I digress.
To make a long story short, 1.23% of the PAC's money has been raised here.
Which is actually higher than the percentage of the PAC's money spent here, which is 1.14% out of $6,146,710.68.
Anyway, while Thiel has spent $10M + on the race (the "+" comes from the fact that he given almost $6K directly to Masters' campaign committee), but I have to ask one thing -
How much more did Thiel have to spend to "win" Cheeto's endorsement of Masters?
It's pretty obvious that I am *not* a fan of Mark Brnovich - I think that he's a bigoted and opportunistic hack.
Having said that, at least he's an Arizona bigoted and opportunistic hack and not a carpetbagger looking to buy a nomination.
Thiel/Masters is.
Rich people trying to buy a political office is not a new idea, but in the age of Cheeto, they're not even trying to hide it any longer.
From Politico -
Big-spending billionaires are upending politics. The Los Angeles mayor's race is the latest test.
Even by the cash-flush standards of modern politics, Rick Caruso’s run for mayor of Los Angeles has been a shock-and-awe spending campaign.
The billionaire Republican-turned-Democrat has already dropped $34 million on the race, single-handedly making the June 7 primary one of the most expensive elections in the country. He’s spent $25 million on TV advertising alone this year, more than any other candidate for any office in America, save one prospect running for governor in Illinois, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. And in those TV ads, Caruso hammers away at homelessness, crime and corruption at City Hall, a trio of top issues for Los Angeles voters, while casting himself as an outsider — “not just a talker, a doer,” one TV ad narrator says.
Republicans have often been accused of wanting society to be returned to the '50s.
That seems to mean the 1950s, when coat hangers, lynchings, fire hoses, and other tools of oppression that Rs liked were ever present.
From Dillon Rosenblatt of the Arizona Mirror -
GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters wants to allow states to ban contraception use
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturns women’s constitutional right to abortion this summer, one Arizona Republican candidate for U.S. Senate thinks judges should also take aim at the right to buy and use contraception.
Blake Masters, a Tucson-based venture capitalist, boasts on his website that he will only vote to confirm federal judges “who understand that Roe and Griswold and Casey were ongly decided, and that there is no constitutional right to abortion.” Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decided in 1973 and 1992, respectively, both upheld a constitutional right to abortion access.
But the ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 protected a married couple’s right to buy and use contraceptives without government restrictions. The case centered on a Connecticut law that banned the use of contraceptives, which the court determined violated a married couple’s constitutional right to privacy, establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices.
[snip]
President Donald Trump hasn’t yet endorsed an Arizona Senate candidate, but Masters is viewed as the favorite to receive his endorsement. His campaign is also being supported by his former boss and mentor, technology investor Peter Thiel, who is spending at least $10 million to bankroll a campaign to support Masters. Masters has already won the support of some extremist Republicans, most recently Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spoke to a white nationalist conference earlier this year. Other media reports have noted his past praise for the Unabomber and Hermann Goering, one Hitler’s top military leaders and one of the most prominent members of the Nazi Party.
Mother Jones magazine offers its take here.
[Updated on 5/8 to edit]
Well, that didn't take long.
From The Daily Beast -
Jake Tapper Grills Mississippi Guv: ‘Are You Going to Force’ Pregnancy on Incest Victims?
The CNN anchor also pressed Reeves on whether the state of Mississippi would outlaw and criminalize emergency contraceptives and IUDs.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper repeatedly confronted Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on Sunday over that state’s trigger laws that will snap into effect if and when Roe v. Wade is overturned, pressing the Republican on forcing women to carry pregnancies resulting from incest to term.
Following the bombshell leak of a majority Supreme Court draft opinion that would strike down the landmark 1973 decision that established a federal right to abortion, much attention has focused on conservative-led states’ legislation that will automatically take effect if it is nullified. Mississippi, like many other Southern and Great Plains states, has a so-called “trigger law” that would effectively ban abortion right away, providing exceptions for rape and if the life of the mother is at risk.
[snip]
Eventually, Tapper turned his attention to Republican-led states seeking to potentially outlaw and criminalize the use of contraceptives because they are defining the moment of conception as fertilization. Louisiana, for instance, is considering a bill that would classify abortion as homicide—which could also conceivably include the use of emergency contraceptives and IUDs.
“So, I’m not making this up,” Tapper stated after flagging the potential Louisiana law. “These are the conversations going on in legislatures in your area. But just to be clear, you have no intention of seeking to ban IUDs or Plan B?”
Reeves wouldn’t fully take that possibility off the table.
“That is not what we are focused on at this time,” he responded. “We’re focused on looking at, seeing what the court allows for; the bill that is before the court is a 15-week ban. We believe that the overturning of Roe is the correct decision by the court. And so in Mississippi, we don’t have laws on the books that would lead to arresting individuals or anything along those lines.”
[/end edit]
