Arizona Republican Blake Masters running for House seat, will not challenge Sen. Kyrsten Sinema
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Arizona Republican Blake Masters, who lost his 2022 bid for U.S. Senate, announced Thursday morning he is running to represent Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.
Masters will vie for the seat now occupied by incumbent Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., who announced last week that she would retire at the end of her current term.
“Biden has failed. We need Trump back. We need to stop inflation, Build the Wall, avoid WW3, and secure Arizona's water future. We need to fight for our families,” Masters wrote in a social media post.
Masters, who lost to Democrat Mark Kelly in 2022, had reportedly been weighing another run for a U.S. Senate seat. Independent Kyrsten Sinema now occupies the Senate seat that will be on the 2024 ballot.
Masters was a political newcomer when he ran for Senate in 2022. President of a foundation funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, Masters was an early investor in Facebook and co-founded the online payment system PayPal.
During his Senate campaign, Masters was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, promoting an “America First”-style platform that emphasized border security, criticizing tech companies’ efforts to curb misinformation on social media and insisting on the baseless claim that Trump won the 2020 election.
He lost to incumbent Kelly in one of two contests that cinched Democrats’ control of the upper chamber.
The race to replace Lesko is already crowded, with at least six other Republican candidates throwing their hat in the ring. They include Abe Hamadeh, a former Republican candidate for Arizona attorney general; Seth Coates; Isiah Gallegos; Jimmy Rodriguez; Rollie Stevens, a retired firefighter and songwriter; and Brandon Urness, who worked as former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich's campaign manager.
Arizona’s 8th Congressional District is considered a safe Republican district, leaning towards the GOP by 10 points, according to the analysis firm Cook Political Report.
Arizona Republic reporter Morgan Fischer contributed to this report. Laura Gersony is a national politics reporter for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @lauragersony.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Republican Blake Masters will not challenge Kyrsten Sinema
