Mark Kelly increases lead over Blake Masters for key U.S. Senate seat

With control of the U.S. Senate possibly at stake, Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democratic senator, is increasing his lead over Republican challenger Blake Masters.

With the latest vote tallies released Thursday night, Kelly has 51.7% of the vote to Masters' 46.1%, with the rest going to Libertarian Marc Victor.

Kelly is ahead by about 114,000 votes, up from 95,000 votes late Wednesday, with about about 500,000 ballots still to be counted.

The race has gained national attention as Democrats need to keep Kelly in the Senate if they hope to maintain the 50-50 balance. While Democrats picked up a Senate seat Tuesday in Pennsylvania, they risk losing the one they had in Nevada. Control of the Senate now depends on the final outcomes in Arizona and Nevada and a runoff in Georgia set for Dec. 6.

What could hold the balance in Arizona is whether voters found financial or social issues to be more important.

Masters has sought to portray Kelly, elected in 2020, as little more than a political clone of a president with popularity problems due to high gasoline prices, inflation and supply chain issues.

Kelly, by contrast, has sought to convey that he parts ways with President Joe Biden when he disagrees with him, particularly on issues of border security. That has not immunized Kelly from criticism over the numbers of migrants entering from Mexico as well the spread of fentanyl.

What Kelly may have working in his favor — aside from massive campaign spending of nearly $80 million as of Oct. 19 — are voters who may be more concerned about positions Masters has taken on the hot-button issue of abortion. Kelly’s supporters have spent at least another $15 million pointing up Masters’ sometimes conflicting statements on the issue.

There’s a video clip making the rounds on airwaves about what Masters thinks of abortion. “It’s a religious sacrifice to these people,’’ he says. “I think it’s demonic.’’

His campaign website said he was “100% pro life’’ and supported a “federal personhood law (ideally a constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.’’

Masters subsequently scrubbed such references from his campaign website. Instead, he announced his support for a ban at 15 weeks, something currently the law in Arizona while judges determine if that measure, approved earlier this year, supersedes a territorial-era law that forbids abortions at any stage of pregnancy except to save the life of the mother.

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Masters also said that 15-week limit should be made national law, which would overturn more liberal statutes in other states. It also would foreclose any possibility Arizonans could go to the ballot in 2024 to return the law here to the way it was before the Supreme Court voided Roe v. Wade this summer: allowing a pregnancy to be terminated up until a fetus is considered viable outside the womb, generally considered to be between 22 and 23 weeks.

Kelly, by contrast, said he supports a national law that would restore the legal standard to what it was under Roe.

He also voted in favor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have barred states from criminalizing abortion of a viable fetus in cases where the life or health of a woman was at risk.

Those abortions, which were rare — 99.6% of abortions in Arizona in the most recent reporting year were 20 weeks or less — were allowed under Roe and subsequent Supreme Court rulings. But Masters claimed that Kelly “voted to legalize abortion up until the moment of birth.’’

Masters had to answer questions about his statement during the GOP primary that “maybe we should privatize Social Security’’ and that “we’ve got to cut the knot at some point,’’ citing financial stability issues around the program.

But he took a more nuanced approach after becoming the Republican nominee, saying he doesn’t want to “pull the rug out’’ from current Social Security recipients and wants to take a look at other options and “shoring up the system.’’

All that may not matter if voters were focused on more immediate pocketbook issues.

Masters is also being carried along with some Republican faithful by gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, who promoted a Lake-Blake ticket.

There is no such campaign link between Kelly and Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is waging her own race for governor. But Kelly has other things working in his favor.

The campaign here has drawn national attention as the Senate is currently split 50-50, giving Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote. Republicans are hoping to pick up one seat to regain control, with the races in Arizona and Georgia being particular opportunities.