Masters rethinking a 2024 run for AZ's US Senate seat

Pointed at this by Taegan Goddard's Political Wire.

By "rethinking" I mean "Peter Thiel's financial largesse has its limits and he has no wish to throw good money after bad...even in his quest to buy a Senate seat."

But that was too long for a headline, so... :)

From Vanity Fair -

Blake Masters Might Be Getting Cold Feet About A Second Run for Senate in Arizona: Report

Blake Masters, the far-right venture capitalist who ran and lost in a 2022 Senate election in Arizona, is having second thoughts about trying and potentially failing for a second time, The Daily Beast reported Sunday.

Toward the end of August, multiple outlets reported that Masters was virtually guaranteed to enter the race. An Arizona-based GOP strategist who’d spoken to Masters told Politico that he was “pretty decisively in.” Now—not so much.

Apparently, Cheeto told Masters that he wasn't going to defeat Cheeto's favored candidate, Kari Lake, but on this, I expect that Thiel has more influence with Masters.

Peter Thiel calls midterm elections a depressing disaster for the GOP...and rich guys trying to buy Senate seats

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)

Q: Does Blake Masters Take Euros?

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.