Combat Pilot Faceoff Puts Democrats on Path to Gain Arizona Seat

September 17, 2020, 4:00 AM EDT

The Cook Political Report on Sept. 16, 2020

The Arizona race for the U.S. Senate gives Democrats their biggest opportunity to pick up a crucial seat in their drive to retake the majority, in an election dogfight between two former combat pilots.

Martha McSally, an Air Force veteran with a mixed record of hard-fought election campaigns in the Southwest state, has failed to translate her two years as an appointed member of the Senate into a convincing poll lead in the final weeks of the campaign.

She’s up against Mark Kelly, a Navy veteran who went on to become a space shuttle pilot. The two are well known to each other: McSally ran for the U.S. House twice against a top aide to Kelly’s wife, Gabrielle Giffords, a representative who survived a 2011 assassination attempt. McSally won the second of those contests, in 2014, but then came up short in a 2018 run for the Senate—only to enter the upper chamber care of an appointment by the governor, a fellow Republican.

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McSally, 54, and Kelly, 56, are now locked into one of the most expensive congressional races in history, having raised a combined $75 million, with allies chipping in yet more. A little less than four months before the Nov. 3 vote, Kelly had roughly double McSally’s cash on hand.

Arizona was once reliably Republican, the home state of the late conservative standard bearer Barry Goldwater. With its ranks of conservative retirees and a significant rural population, it’s only voted once for a Democrat for president since 1948—Bill Clinton in 1996. But population growth, urbanization and an increasingly diverse electorate—especially in dominant Maricopa County—have turned it into a top-tier battleground.

In the four years since President Donald Trump’s election, Democrats have shrunk the GOP’s edge in voter registration in the state by about a third, to fewer than 100,000 votes. Census statistics show a nearly 50% surge in voter registration of Latinos from 2012 to 2018. The Pew Research Center reported this year that Latinos now represent about 24% of the eligible voter population, the fourth highest percentage in the nation.

McSally’s previous embrace of a standard Republican position, repealing much of the Affordable Care Act approved under President Barack Obama, has also flipped from asset to liability. And her mixed record of association with Trump, who’s himself battling to hold the Grand Canyon state in November, leaves an uncertain impact.

Jessica Taylor, Senate editor of the Cook Political Report, said McSally was at a strategic disadvantage from the start, when she was named by Governor Doug Ducey to fill the seat once held by the late John McCain. Arizona voters had just weeks earlier rejected McSally in favor of Democrat Kyrsten Sinema for the state’s other seat. And not enough time might have passed since that race, she said.

“Other candidates, if they had tough races six years ago, they had a little time to rehab their image,” Taylor said.

A poll from Fox News released early this month had McSally losing by 17 points to Kelly. While others have shown a much closer margin, she has been underperforming relative to Trump, making the seat one of the most commonly forecast to flip Democratic. Kelly had a six-point edge among registered voters—though just one-point in a low-turnout scenario—in a Monmouth University poll released Thursday.

Arizona Special Senate Race Polling Averages

Kelly has consistently led in polls against McSally.

Kelly
McSally

Source: Real Clear Politics

Republicans haven’t given up on the race by any means, and a super political action committee allied with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently allocated $10.6 million in additional spending in hopes of rescuing McSally. Trump himself, along with his allies, have made repeated visits to the state.

Outside groups plowed in some $20 million at last check, according to OpenSecrets.org—with most of that deployed on negative ads. Both candidates and their allies have been blanketing the airwaves.

Democrats Outspending Republicans on Ads in Arizona

Broadcast television ad spending by party in the 2020 Special Senate race

Democrat
Republican

Source: Advertising Analytics

The Democrats need just three seats to win the Senate in November should Biden defeat Trump, or four if he doesn’t. Along with McSally, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Maine’s Susan Collins are seen as key vulnerable Republicans.

Polls suggest other battlegrounds as well. Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump, is in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent, a Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters showed in the past week. Graham is seeking his fourth term in the Senate in what is a usually reliable Republican state—a sign of the headwinds facing Republicans in November. The party is favored to pick up Alabama, however, in a seat currently held by Democrat Doug Jones.

With the Covid-19 crisis raising the importance of health care, McSally has been forced to play defense on that front. She’s been running spots saying she would “always” act to protect people with pre-existing conditions. As a House member, she had voted for Republican legislation that would have allowed insurance companies to charge higher premiums for sicker people and slashed spending on subsidies and Medicaid, while cutting taxes.

“Health care was a big reason of course why Republicans lost the House in 2018 and why Democrats could gain back the Senate in 2020,” Taylor said. “That message is especially relevant in a pandemic and the worst national health crisis in a century.”

Arizona had a particularly bad Covid-19 outbreak this summer, after the governor, Ducey, reopened the economy. It’s had the eighth-highest death toll per capita of any state—with more than 5,000 dead.

Cumulative Covid-19 Deaths per 100,000 People

Source: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Kelly’s campaign has sought to hammer home the point, arguing that insurers could have counted a coronavirus diagnosis as a pre-existing condition, if not for the Affordable Care Act that McSally opposed.

Still, there’s a potential path to victory for McSally, says Stan Barnes, a former state legislator and Republican consultant. Unlike when she lost in 2018, she’ll have Trump at the top of the ballot, and could benefit from any coattails he offers. Barnes added that Democratic appeals for racial justice and better management of the pandemic may not prove big winners.

“National Democrats have overplayed the racial card and have overplayed the Covid card, and I think a great many voters are just over it,” he said.

Martha McSally speaks at a Trump rally in February in Phoenix, Arizona

Photographer: Caitlin O’Hara/Getty Images

McSally has strived to unify an Arizona GOP that can be fractious—as she saw in her three-way primary fight in 2018 against former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and now-state-party chair Kelli Ward, who ran on much tougher anti-immigrant platforms. Tying herself closely to Trump and showcasing her voting record backing the administration, this year, McSally faced a relatively easy primary.

She’s echoed Trump’s line against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in labeling Kelly a “Trojan horse” for liberal priorities including higher taxes.

McSally has similarly aped the president on China, blaming it for the coronavirus while attacking Kelly for Chinese investments received by a company he co-founded, World View Enterprises.

She’s also staked herself out as the law-and-order candidate in the context of the civil unrest that broke out this year in the wake of police violence against Black people.

At the same time, McSally didn’t endorse Trump in 2016, and she’s rarely been quick to defend him in his day-to-day controversies. She has touted a record of bipartisan legislation in an effort to appeal beyond the Trump base.

Then there’s her trailblazing biography as the first woman pilot to fly combat missions for the U.S. military. A former colonel, she had tours in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Kelly, however, also has an illustrious military record. After a career as a naval aviator that included missions in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, he joined NASA and became an astronaut. He’s promised to bring a bipartisan mindset, invoking the practical approach he brought to addressing problems as commander on the space shuttle. He’s tried to separate himself from national Democrats, saying he’d be an independent senator for Arizona and not “Washington.”

Mark Kelly waves to the crowd at his senate campaign kickoff event in February

Photographer Mike Christy/Arizona Daily Star via AP

Kelly has been careful to avoid some sensitive areas, such as whether he’d support any move to change the Senate’s filibuster rule. Some Democrats have advocated ditching that tradition, which generally requires 60 votes in the 100-seat body to advance legislation, should the party win a majority in November.

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Kelly has also rejected some left-wing proposals, like defunding the police—pointing out that he’s the son of two police officers. He’s described China as an adversary.

On gun control—a sensitive topic in a state with plenty of hunters and ranchers—Kelly has been a prominent advocate of stronger safety measures such as universal background checks and restrictions on ownership for the mentally ill. Giffords was shot in the head in a shooting near Tucson in which six people, including a federal judge, were killed. But Kelly has also backed the constitutional right to gun ownership, and cited having nine guns himself.

Everytown for Gun Safety announced plans earlier this year to spend $5 million in Arizona elections this year, including support for Kelly. Michael Bloomberg, the owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, founded and helps fund Everytown, a nonprofit that advocates for universal background checks and other gun violence prevention measures.

The unique campaign conditions caused by Covid-19 might have proved a help to Kelly, enabling him to avoid situations that could trip up a novice politician, said Taylor at Cook Political Report. McSally has charged him with hiding in his “bunker” and pressed for more than the two debates to which he’s agreed. But now time is running out.

“While some of the attacks against Kelly may be landing, McSally has a long way to go in a short period of time,” Taylor said.

Combat Pilot Faceoff Puts Democrats on Path to Gain Arizona Seat

2020 Senate Races

Arizona Election Results

Arizona Special Senate Race Polling Averages

Democrats Outspending Republicans on Ads in Arizona

Cumulative Covid-19 Deaths per 100,000 People