“I built a campaign to win and to get the message out,” Sen. Mark Kelly told the Daily Beast. “My expectation was that this will be a competitive election. And my expectation is we’ll be successful.”
PHOENIX—When Arizona Republicans nominated Blake Masters to run against Sen. Mark Kelly , there were signs it marked the beginning of the end of the GOP’s chances to flip one of their most coveted Senate seats.
Less than two years removed from his narrow 2020 victory, Kelly is fighting for his political life—and Democrats’ hopes of holding the Senate majority—yet again. Masters has closed the gap in polls and Republicans are growing more bullish on the race. Kelly, of course, would be the last Democrat to expect an easy win in Arizona. On Wednesday, the senator stopped by a campaign office in south Phoenix to greet volunteers who were each making hundreds of calls to voters. “It’s the 1 to 3 percent that really has an impact,” he told them.
“Blake is running a great race and Arizona voters are realizing more and more that Mark Kelly isn’t the moderate, independent voice for Arizona that he’s portrayed himself to be,” said NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline. Kelly, meanwhile, has been a reliable vote for Democrats but has sought leadership on important local issues like water management, infrastructure, and manufacturing, and he has tried to appeal to Republicans with a more moderate message.
Indeed, in these hyper-polarized times, Kelly has an unusual advantage: even people who are voting him out don’t seem to dislike him. But the reasons they give for their decisions underscore the deeper issues that are making his re-election more difficult. Paul Erickson, a Scottsdale resident who works in industrial heating and cooling, didn’t have anything negative to say about Kelly personally, and only mentioned to The Daily Beast he had read discouraging information about the Democrat’s position on immigration.
Coughlin, the GOP pollster, said there was an “antipathy towards Masters” that doesn’t exist with Kelly. But, he said, Kelly is “carrying the desert backpack of Joe Biden, and that’s where Republicans are not going to forgive him.”