No honor among thieves
The rowdy primary in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District is a glimpse into the future of Republican politics.
On the surface level, the outcome of the Republican primary battle for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District doesn’t matter too much. This is a red district in the West Valley. Whoever wins the primary is likely to win the general. The candidates are similar in how they would vote on issues.
But this race is interesting because the candidates are avatars for competing impulses within the Republican coalition.
Eventually, Trump’s dominance over the party will fade. This will create a power void, and party infighting will intensify.
Arizona’s CD-8 primary is a glimpse into the future.
Here are the competitors:
Abe Hamadeh is endorsed by Donald Trump. A Trump endorsement has been like a video game cheat code in Arizona primaries — almost guaranteeing victory no matter the quality of the candidate.
Abe’s style is similar to Kari Lake. When they talk, they sound like actors in a bad movie about politics. Answering a question at the CD-8 debate last week about what makes him different from his primary competitors, Abe said this:
I’m quickly seeing that the people we’ve elected, the people who are in charge, have destroyed and pillaged our country right before our eyes. So what makes me different is I’ve got courage. I’ve taken on the corrupt media, the courts, the Maricopa County cabal, and I’ve fought them tooth and nail because I don’t back down.
Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine recently wrote a good profile of the Arizona Senate race. She mused about the difficulty of trying to have an authentic conversation with Kari Lake:
The unanswerable question, the one that hangs near the big light and the roving camera over any interaction with Lake, is this: Is she for real?
Abe Hamadeh gives off the same vibe. Kari Lake has endorsed Hamadeh in the CD-8 primary.
Even though the vibe is performative, it doesn’t make them less extreme as candidates. Both Lake and Hamadeh are caught in the orbit of figures like Steve Bannon, a self-professed revolutionary aiming to tear down American institutions so they can be rebuilt later.
Abe Hamadeh lost a close race for Arizona attorney general in 2022. Since then, he has mimicked Trump (and Lake) in complaining that the election was rigged. These complaints have consistently lost in court.
At the CD-8 debate, the moderator tried to ask Abe if he was going to accept the outcome of this primary election if he loses. Abe ignored the question several times, instead choosing to ramble about his previously lost election.
Blake Masters is a technology guy. He is endorsed by Senator J.D. Vance, a high priest of MAGA nationalism who is rumored to be a possible choice for Trump’s vice president. J.D. Vance and Blake Masters both used to work for tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
Blake’s main appeal, from the perspective of a rational person, is that he conceded his election loss to Mark Kelly in the 2022 race for Senate. Of course, this fact is a vulnerability in the CD-8 primary, because Abe is attacking him for “quitting.”
Blake Masters is running an absolutely heartless campaign against Abe Hamadeh. Blake is attacking Abe because Abe’s parents are immigrants who had overstayed their visas at the time of Abe’s birth. Hence, in Blake’s mind, Abe should not even be here.
Masters wants to end birthright citizenship. He says the only acceptable amount of illegal immigration is zero. He favors a plan for deporting millions of undocumented immigrants who are currently living here.
The Trump administration is talking about carrying out these mass deportations, which would require, according to Trump himself in a recent interview in Time Magazine, using the military and local police.
Even if you want a more secure border, you should be alarmed at the idea that we would create a quasi-police state to carry out a heartless mass deportation plan. Besides the damage it would do to civil liberties, this plan would severely disrupt the economy and cause chaos in our communities.
So that’s Blake Masters. He was once a libertarian blogger who lived in a vegan co-op at Stanford University. He is now a Republican politician who wants to militarize the southern border.
Ben Toma is a conservative. Before the Trump era, he would be the overwhelming favorite to win this primary. He has a long list of conservative accomplishments in the state legislature, and he is currently the Arizona Speaker of the House. In 2024, he is the underdog.
Like many old guard conservatives, Toma has made peace with the populists and authoritarians in his party. He endorsed Ron DeSantis early in the presidential primary, but immediately endorsed Trump after Ron DeSantis dropped out.
Toma’s candidacy represents sanity, but he is not explicitly campaigning on these grounds. He has quietly accepted the rigged election narrative. He is not defending our embattled elections officials, many of whom are fellow Republicans.
Republican voters who watched the CD-8 debate didn’t hear anybody refuting the smears of our elections. That’s a setback for the cause of rational conservatism.
Antony Kern was among the protestors at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. He didn’t riot, but he was with the crowd outside. He seems to truly believe that our elections are rigged — which is shocking news to Republicans who secretly know Trump lost.
Debbie Lesko is the current representative of CD-8.
Before the Capitol riot, Lesko started to become concerned about the potential for violence. Lesko was recorded talking to a group of Republican colleagues on the eve of January 6th, and this quote emerged from the January 6 Committee investigation:
I also asked leadership to come up with a safety plan for members. I’m actually very concerned about this because we have who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people coming here. We have Antifa. We also have, quite honestly, Trump supporters who actually believe that we are going to overturn the election. And when that doesn’t happen, most likely will not happen, they are going to go nuts.
The italics are mine.
Lesko was alarmed because Trump supporters actually believed that Republican lawmakers were going to do what they said they were trying to do — overturn the 2020 election.
Well, Anthony Kern was a Trump supporter who actually believed it. He is now under indictment for his participation in the fake elector scheme in Arizona.
Trent Franks represented the district before Lesko did. Franks resigned in disgrace in 2017 after asking female staffers about surrogacy. During the CD-8 debate, Franks did something uncharacteristic for Republicans in the Trump era: He acknowledged that what he did was wrong and expressed remorse for what he had done. Franks is not an avatar for any particular faction, but he is one of many old-timers who have sought a career makeover in this new, less virtuous Republican Party.
And those are the candidates.
The only character missing from the CD-8 primary is a Nikki Haley Republican.
At the national level, Nikki Haley has created a new kind of political identity. Not a Never Trumper, but a post-Trump conservative who is willing to call a spade a spade.
As we enter the twilight years of the Age of Trump (and hopefully not the twilight years of the American republic) the leadership of the Republican Party will be up for grabs.
It is probable that right-wing nationalists — of one shape or another — will enjoy continued dominance over the party into the future.
But you never know.
I continue to believe the District doesn’t have to be so deeply red if the right candidate runs. It’s a disservice to anyone without an “R” after their name that it’s rarely mentioned, even as an after/thought, “By the way, these candidates are not your only options.” The media’s continued failure to mention Democrats combined with their repeated elevation of only the most salacious candidates (the mea culpa’s & self recognition of their own contribution to Trump’s rise with the help of so much free media exposure seems to have been forgotten, as they’re back to doing the same) is probably a significant factor is why only Republicans get elected up here nowadays. There were once 5 decent Democratic candidates, some offering unique perspectives and different life/work experiences that would have been quite capable of representing a majority of the District, regardless of party. But when they cannot get even an acknowledgement of their candidacy in local media, it’s difficult to impossible to inform the electorate you even exist. The losers are the voters, once again left only with those that can buy their way in or gain exposure through infamy.