Republican Martha McSally borrowed a page from the Donald Trump playbook on Tuesday night, slapping a new nickname on Democratic challenger Mark Kelly during their only head-to-head debate.
McSally repeatedly referred to her opponent as “counterfeit Kelly” throughout the 90-minute debate hosted by The Arizona Republic, Arizona PBS, Tucson-based Arizona Public Media and Phoenix public radio station KJZZ.
It was a coordinated effort by the incumbent Senate appointee to paint Kelly as a left-wing radical masquerading as an independent. The nickname even came with its own website, announced by her campaign earlier in the day.
Predictably, perhaps, both candidates and their respective parties declared victory after the debate. National political analysts seemed less sure of the outcome or whether it would do much to win over voters on either side.
Kelly, a retired Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut, has been leading in both fundraising and the polls throughout the campaign.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a national election forecasting website run by political analyst Larry Sabato and the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, has rated the race as “leans Democrat” since March. Crystal Ball associate editor J. Miles Coleman said what he saw Tuesday night probably won’t change that.
If anyone receives a boost, Coleman said, it’s likely to be Kelly, who “did as much as he had to do” against McSally.
Early voting got underway Wednesday in Arizona.
Drew Savicki is a contributor to 270toWin, a nonpartisan website that projects presidential races and other political contests. He said nothing “earth-shattering” emerged during the debate, which featured a somewhat “robotic” Kelly mostly sticking to the Democratic script, especially on health care, while McSally tried to rattle him and knock him off message.
McSally, a former Air Force combat pilot, went on the offensive immediately, turning the first question about the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic into a sustained attack on her opponent.
“It’s been a really difficult year for everyone,” she said, “but what we don’t need is another lockdown, and that’s what would happen if Joe Biden and Mark Kelly are in charge.”
McSally went on to label Kelly as a sellout to both China and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and to blast him for leading what she called “one of the most radical political organizations in modern history,” a reference to the gun-control political action committee he founded with his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords — all in answer to a question about COVID-19.
“It didn’t take long for the senator to attack my patriotism. She did that last election cycle with Senator (Kyrsten) Sinema,” Kelly said in response. “I thought after two years, we’d see a different Senator McSally, but the same Senator McSally has shown up.”
Kelly did some attacking of his own, repeatedly accusing McSally of distorting her health-care record and doing the bidding of corporations and industry-backed PACs that have donated to her campaign.
As for the pandemic, Kelly pointed to “200,000 dead Americans” as evidence that the administration has not done a great job with the virus, as the president has claimed.
“We have 4% of the world’s population. We have 21% of the deaths from COVID-19,” Kelly said, a statistic that would become one of his most repeated talking points of the night.
McSally acknowledged that “mistakes were made at all levels” and that a lot has been learned about the virus, but she laid the blame for the ongoing pandemic on China. She vowed to hold that country responsible, something she said Kelly wouldn’t do because of his past travel and business connections there.
Moments later, in one of several such moments during the debate, McSally turned to Kelly and asked him a question of her own through the plexiglass that separated their two socially distanced podiums: Did he support President Trump’s ban on travel from China early this year?
“Yes,” Kelly said, “but senator, you would understand this as a pilot: You guys did step one of the emergency procedure and then you didn’t do anything else. And that is a colossal failure.”
Tuesday’s debate covered a wide range of topics including health care, immigration, border security, climate change, gun control, police reform, protests, the Supreme Court and the future of the filibuster in the Senate.
Despite several direct questions about President Trump, neither candidate seemed eager to talk about him.
Kelly gave mostly short statements of disapproval about Trump’s comments and conduct, while McSally consistently pivoted to her record of “fighting for Arizonans” rather than address the actions of her party’s leader, even when pressed for an answer.
She made more mention of so-called radical Democrats Schumer, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib than she did of Trump.
The one notable exception came during the latter half of the debate, when Kelly accused McSally of remaining silent as the president made repeated, “uncalled for” attacks on Sen. John McCain, “even after he passed away.”
McSally said she “absolutely” has stuck up for the late senator.
“I’ve publicly and privately, repeatedly talked to President Trump and asked him to stop attacking John McCain. Quite frankly it pisses me off when he does it,” she said.
Then McSally, a former two-term congresswoman and the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, turned the topic back on Kelly, just as she did throughout the night.
“One thing about Senator McCain we knew here in Arizona: Whether you agreed with him or you disagreed with him, we always knew where he stood,” she said. “And this is another example, Mark, where you’re trying to invoke him, but you can’t take simple positions on whether you’re going to support your recruiter and investor, Chuck Schumer, whether you’re going to abolish the filibuster, whether you support packing the Supreme Court, where you say one thing — a bunch of platitudes — but you can’t even tell Arizonans where you stand.”
Savicki from 270toWin said McSally’s evasiveness about Trump could be a sign that she wants to distance herself from the president in case the polls showing him trailing Joe Biden turn out to be correct.
Savicki was also struck by how little McSally talked about Biden on Tuesday night. “I think she sees the writing on the wall, like other Republicans do, and maybe she’s trying to appeal to Biden voters,” he said.
The winner of the Senate race could be seated as soon as the election results are certified in late November and will serve until January 2023, completing McCain’s final term.
Gov. Doug Ducey appointed McSally to the post in December 2018, the month after she lost her bid for Arizona’s other Senate seat to Sinema.
The Democratic senator recently threw her support behind Kelly in a campaign ad critical of McSally that debuted last week.
Meanwhile, Kelly’s finances have been the key line of attack by Republicans, who have hammered him in ads for being willing to “do anything for a buck.”
Before Tuesday’s debate, McSally released five years of tax returns to The Associated Press and called on Kelly to do the same.
Kelly spokesman Jacob Peters told the AP that Kelly has released all required financial disclosures and called McSally’s move “a desperate last-minute political stunt from a losing candidate.”
Coleman wasn’t impressed with the tax challenge or by McSally’s effort to put Kelly on the spot during her closing statement by challenging him to three more debates, something he called a “telltale sign” of a lagging candidate who is trying to make up ground.
He said he thought McSally was at her best when she talked about her impressive backstory and stuck to “bread-and-butter stuff” like the bills she has sponsored or being a fighter for Arizona.
Coleman found her less effective when she “tried to act like Trump,” he said, even while she did whatever she could to avoid talking about Trump.
