Why J.D. Vance and Blake Masters are crucial to Josh Hawley’s 2023 strategy: report

Although countless pollsters are confident that Republicans will retake the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, November 8, they regard the U.S. Senate as a toss-up. Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and other key states are close, and the outcome of those races will determine whether Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky remains Senate minority leader or becomes Senate majority leader once again.

According to Politico’s Burgess Everett, two of the Republican Senate candidates who Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is especially enthusiastic about are J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona. Everett stresses in an article published on November 4, Vance and Masters will play a major role in Hawley’s strategy for the Senate.

“Josh Hawley doesn’t just want to flip the Senate by electing fellow Republicans Blake Masters and J.D. Vance,” Everett explains. “He wants to bend the entire GOP conference with a bloc of like-minded senators. The Missouri senator, who helped convince both candidates to run, will go to Arizona on Friday for Masters, Ohio for Vance on Saturday and then finish the campaign on Monday in Missouri for GOP candidate Eric Schmitt.”

Hawley, according to Everett, “foresees a Senate GOP that is more confrontational toward large corporations and tech companies and less focused on Ukraine aid, and he’s convinced Vance and Masters have proven they’ll be allies in that endeavor.”

“Republicans have criticized aspects of both campaigns, arguing they didn’t do enough fundraising and took hardline positions that resonate better in primaries than in general elections,” Everett reports. “That only further persuaded Hawley, who said their persistence in the face of GOP reluctance gave him confidence that they ‘are going to have some backbone when they get to Washington, and are not going to be co-opted.’”

Hawley told Politico, “This is just the opening, the warm-up, in terms of the criticism that they’ll get if they stick to their guns. And they’ve shown me that they can.”

Everett notes the tension that has existed at times between McConnell and Hawley.

“The Missouri senator drew stern internal blowback from GOP Leader Mitch McConnell for objecting to Biden’s electoral certification, while Republicans criticized him for his skepticism of some GOP judicial nominees,” Everett observes. “Hawley was the only vote against allowing Finland and Sweden into NATO and argues against ‘blank checks to Ukraine’ as the country tries to fend off Russia.”

The Senate races in Ohio and Arizona remain close, although in Ohio, many polls have been showing Vance with a slight edge over his Democratic opponent: Rep. Tim Ryan. In Arizona, where Masters and incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly are competing for the Senate seat once held by the late John McCain — and before that, the late Barry Goldwater — the race has turned out to be a real nail-biter. Polls released in early November either found Masters and Kelly tied or found Kelly with a slight lead.

A Marist poll released on November 3 found Kelly ahead by 3 percent, but a Fox 10 Phoenix poll released that same day found Kelly and Masters tied.