According to a report in the Daily Beast (from former Salon reporter Zachary Petrizzo), there is mounting evidence that the two defeated Republicans in high-profile 2022 Arizona races are less than BFFs. Kari Lake, the voluble former gubernatorial candidate who has consistently denied losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs, and Blake Masters, the Peter Thiel protégé who lost to Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly by a much larger margin, are both considering running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Kyrsten Sinema, the former Democrat now turned independent. The New York Times recently reported that Donald Trump has told Masters that Trump would not endorse him in a race against Lake. Petrizzo reports that Masters then told Lake, in a tense Saturday night phone conversation, that he would not run against her but that Masters believed he was a stronger candidate.
The Arizona Senate contest is likely to be one of the most closely-watched races of the 2024 election, with Sinema presumably running for re-election as an independent, Rep. Ruben Gallego as the likely Democratic nominee and either Lake or Masters as the MAGA-endorsed Republican alternative. Petrizzo reports that in a 10-minute conversation on Saturday, Lake asked Masters directly if he planned to run for the seat, and he responded that Lake had waited too long to announce her candidacy, telling her, "You should have been in this race yesterday." Lake reportedly made clear that she was unhappy Masters had not embraced her Trump-style claims that the 2022 governor's race — which Hobbs won by less than one percentage point — was stolen. The Beast reports that Lake told Masters, "You ran and hid under the bed as soon as the election was over." Masters then reportedly said he thought Lake needed to "move to the center a little bit" if she hoped to win the Senate race, and that Lake needed people around her who didn't "just drink the Kool-Aid," a possible reference to her Big Lie claims and devotion to Trump.
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