With the 2018 primary election now but a mere echo, Arizonans have spoken loud and clear and have brought us one step closer to determining who will be the next senator to replace Sen. Jeff Flake this upcoming November; arguably the most nationally consequential and sought-after seat in the state. It should be noted that this senatorial seat is being vied for by two noteworthy female candidates, so win or lose, Arizonans will have the unique opportunity to elect its first female U.S. Senator in the state’s history.
On the Republican side, we have retired combat pilot and U.S. Representative Martha McSally, and on the Democratic side, we have former Arizona senator and U.S. Representative Kyrsten Sinema.
McSally was overwhelmingly victorious in her primary, garnering 53 percent of the vote, which amounted to a 25 percent point lead over her closest opposition, Kelli Ward. Sinema had an even finer result by amassing 80 percent of the vote, constituting a 60 percent point lead over her rival, Deedra Abboud.
With our candidates chosen, what I’d like to do is examine why exactly these two candidates won their primaries, and what their victories say about the Arizonan electorate.
Among sundry reasons, McSally primarily won her primary because her rivals, Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, were simply too right-wing, and in the case of Arpaio, too unpalatable. What McSally did was imbue her candidacy in such a way that her ideological positions were not too right-wing, yet markedly more right than Flake’s, which is a quality that most Republican voters are looking for in the aftermath of President Trump.
In addition, as I argued before, McSally is undoubtedly cozy with the president, but not too cozy that she is praising Donald Trump in obsequious fashion. Her rivals failed to recognize this, and failed to acknowledge the president’s consistently low approval ratings. All Republican candidates should be warm with Trump, but not too warm, or risk being unpopular themselves.
Sinema on the other hand, won her primary because her opponent, Abboud, was a political newcomer, and was too far to the left. Sinema’s victory was expected, but what was arguably not expected, was the election a relatively moderate, Blue Dog Democrat.
One would think that Arizona Democrats would succumb to the influences of mainstream Democratic Party ideals, and elect a Bernie Sanders-like figure of their own. This was not the case however, as evident by Sinema’s political record, positions and lack of party allegiance.
In a July interview with Politico for example, Sinema explicitly said that if she were elected senator, she would not vote for Sen. Chuck Schumer as leader. To muddle matters more, according to the website FiveThirtyEight.com, Sinema has actually voted in line with President Trump’s policies 61 percent of the time.
Probing her political positions, she favors strong border security, a strong military, supports veterans and law enforcement, favors certain tax cuts, and even supports small business deregulation. Furthermore, she has not spoken of the president in derisive terms, nor chastised Republicans the same way her peers have. She is essentially, a socially liberal, politically centrist Democrat, and in the end, that may work in her favor.
With that in mind, what McSally’s and Sinema’s primary victories say about Arizona voters in its entirety, is that Democrats are not yet willing to elect far left-leaning candidates; Republicans yearned for a candidate more right-wing than Flake; both parties are willing to elect more female candidates into positions of preeminent power; and lastly, Arizona continues to prolong itself as an ideologically right of center state.
