Can Martha McSally Win This Time: A Retrospective
The State of the State
The tectonic political shifts that pundits like to talk about are usually centered around Texas or maybe Georgia. Arizona is arguably a more shocking state to turn reddish-purple. It cannot be overstated how important Arizona has been to the making of the modern Republican party. Five-term Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater is debatably the father of the modern Conservative movement. Since 1948, Democrats won Arizona in a Presidential year only once and that was in 1996 under Clinton’s moderate presidency. Before 2016’s 3-point margin, the elections were also usually decisive double-digit wins for Republicans. Despite this, today the President is -4 in Arizona, below North Carolina and Georgia.
The 2016 Presidential election was more a prelude than an abnormality for Arizona’s political future. With the exception of the Governor’s race, Democrats won big across the board in 2018. Democrats managed to flip the competitive second district by 9 points and win the open Senate seat left behind by Jeff Flake by a slim 2.4 points. Down ballot, Democrats managed to pick up a number of state positions. Republican McSally initially ran against now Senator Kyrsten Sinema as a Moderate but eventually took a sharp turn to the right with a series of inflammatory comments. However, Sinema won despite a laundry-list of issues that throw into question both how Moderate Arizona really is and how viable McSally is as a candidate.
Sinema’s biography reads like a wish-list for an opponent running in a Conservative state. The second LGBTQ senator in the United States, Sinema also briefly had ties to an anarchist group in 2003. She also made a comment that was debatably taken out of context about Americans joining the Taliban saying, “Fine. I don’t care if you want to do that, go ahead”. While these two events occurred in 2003, well before Sinema’s shift to the middle, a tape leaked in 2018 of her calling Arizona “crazy” in a disparaging way in 2011. All of these scandals were well known in time for the midterm election. Both McSally and the President attacked Sinema numerous times for her past and perceived leftism going into the race. Yet, Sinema managed to win with a small buffer in a state that is ostensibly more Conservative than Iowa and tied with Georgia.
The Numbers
Despite losing in 2018, Martha McSally was asked by Governor Ducey to take interim Senator Jon Kyl’s seat. McSally has the 10th lowest approval of any Senator with a 39–37 approval rating. Worse for her, she has possibly the strongest competitor of any Senator up for reelection in 2020. If Sinema’s biography is everything Republicans would want from a Democratic competitor, Mark Kelly is surely the opposite.
An Independent until 2018, former Navy captain, astronaut and husband of popular Arizona politician Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly has a life story that resonates with the people of Arizona. His fundraising numbers have also be indomitable with $9.5M on hand by early October with a network of 150,000 donors, outpacing McSally by both metrics. A few polls have been conducted, and while McSally started with a 2-point lead, that has quickly eroded with the most recent poll having Kelly up by 5. Looking at the race at a higher level, candidates who lose in the Senate and run again two years later hardly ever win.
Don’t Trust Polls?
Taking a narrative-based view, as opposed to one based on political polls and cash on hand, tells a very different story. Arizona has more registered Republicans than Democrats. This is significant, even party registration points to upside for Republicans, and they have historically better turnout. Also, Arizona is 26% Evangelical and is 82% White with a large rural population. McSally’s story should also be a powerful tailwind for her campaign.
Martha McSally’s military and political accolades, while overshadowed by her 2018 loss, are impressive. As the first female pilot to see combat, McSally has been able to draw on an inspiring and heroic career during her many tough campaigns. This, coupled with her historically Moderate views, allowed her to win the 2nd district in 2014 over a Democrat incumbent by fewer than 200 votes. McSally held the seat until she ran against Sinema in 2018, holding the title as one of the most Moderate and bipartisan Republicans in the House. The Republican Primary for the Senate seat was filled with Conservative firebrands who also commanded national platforms such as Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio. Despite this, McSally managed to win with a sizable 51 percent of the Republican base. For these reasons, it’s unfair to simply write McSally off as a weak politician.
Conclusion
Given the results of the 2016 and 2018 elections in Arizona, it’s difficult to say if the state is shifting left because of Trump or just concurrently with his presidency. Regardless, going into 2020, McSally will at best be running without the President boosting her race. She will also be running against a candidate who hews more to the ethos of Arizona than Kyrsten Sinema did. The 2018 polls even looked better for McSally than this year’s do. There really is no reason to believe that she will outperform her 2018 loss. However, the political shift in Arizona is nothing short of whiplash, and maybe 2020 will be a reversion to the historical mean in the state. However, given the dearth of evidence otherwise, this race is Lean Democrat.
