Arizona AG's tragic implosion as a Trump wannabe likely cost GOP chance at a Senate seat: columnist

Republicans may have blown their hopes for beating a recently elected Democratic senator through the actions of one man, Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts wrote on Monday.

"When the story on Arizona’s 2022 election is written, surely one of the sorriest chapters will be the collapse of Mark Brnovich.

A year ago, Arizona’s attorney general looked to be the Republican Party’s best shot at reclaiming the Senate seat that Republicans had held since 1969 – until voters sent appointed Sen. Martha McSally packing in 2020," she wrote. "In the end, Mark Brnovich faced one obstacle he couldn’t overcome: Mark Brnovich."

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McSally lost the 2020 special election to fill the rest of John McCain's term to Democrat Mark Kelly.

"Last week, Brnovich dropped into third place in a Republican race that he might well have won had he simply stayed in his own lane and run as himself, a traditional conservative Republican," she wrote. "Early on, Brnovich was that rare Republican who was willing to tell the truth about the 2020 election, risking the wrath of his base by acknowledging that there was no grand conspiracy to defeat Trump in Arizona."

Roberts wrote that instead of running as a traditional conservative Republican, Brnovich started "pandering to far-right Republicans who were never going to vote for him."

As longtime Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin told Roberts, “He kept trying to court a portion of the electorate that was never going to be his."

Roberts noted that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ran as traditional conservative Republicans and "defeated Trump-backed candidates peddling their stolen election schtick."

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Roberts thinks Brnovich's choices will likely result in Kelly being elected to a full term.

"This is a race that should be the Republicans’ to win given history, an eight-point turnout advantage and a Democratic president whose approval ratings rank somewhere between dismal and I-didn’t-know-you-could-go-that-low.

Yet here they are, poised to nominate Blake Masters, a hard-right Trump pick who has no hope of knocking out Mark Kelly because he cannot credibly move to the middle where this race will be decided," she wrote.