Mark Brnovich is in free fall and so are GOP prospects of retaking a Senate seat

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.

He was the best known candidate in a crowded Republican field and savvy enough (or so I thought) not to repeat the mistakes of McSally, who lost – twice – because she tied herself too tightly to then-President Donald Trump.

In the end, Mark Brnovich faced one obstacle he couldn’t overcome:

Mark Brnovich.

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

Brnovich is now in third place for Senate

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.

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.

“If indeed there was some great conspiracy, it apparently didn’t work …” he told Fox Business’ Neil Cavuto on Nov. 11, 2020, referring to the fact that then-Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, was knocked off by Republican Stephen Richer.

“It came down to: People split their ticket,” Brnovich told Cavuto. “People voted for Republicans down ballot, and they didn’t vote for President Trump or Martha McSally. So, that's the reality.”

Sadly, it’s not a reality that Trump or his most loyal Arizona acolytes would accept, or tolerate.

He had no chance of earning Trump's OK

Brnovich had to know he had no shot at getting the Donald Trump seal of approval. In May 2021, just weeks before he announced he was running for the Senate, Trump called him a “lackluster” attorney general.

This, for refusing to chug the delusion-laced Kool-Aid.

“He (Brnovich) is always on television promoting himself, but never mentions the Crime of the Century, that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, which was Rigged and Stolen,” Trump complained.

The message was clear: find somebody to prosecute … or else.

Roberts: It's bad when Trump tells Brnovich to stop misleading voters

The problem is, you can’t really start arresting people for the Crime of the Century when no crime – of the century or otherwise – occurred. The state Senate’s own audit conducted by Trump’s own supporters turned up no evidence of widespread fraud or any conspiracy to throw Arizona’s vote to Joe Biden.

Other Trump acolytes have produced no end of conpsiracy theories but no actual evidence that anything nefarious happened here.

But Brnovich pandered to Trump voters

Instead of just pointing that out, Brnovich proceeded to chase after a Trump endorsement he was never going to get by pandering to far-right Republicans who were never going to vote for him.

Suddenly, he was issuing legal opinions declaring that the state of Arizona is being invaded at the border and thus within its rights to go to war.

Suddenly, he was refusing to defend the state’s wildly popular, 30-year-old early voting program after the Arizona Republican Party, sure that it was used to steal the election, sued to get it shut down.

Dems blast Brnovich: For backing of 1800s law banning abortions

Suddenly, the attorney general who had earlier defended Arizona’s election was talking about “serious vulnerabilities” in Arizona’s election and touting the fact that his office had “uncovered instances of election fraud.”

As if nine people caught filling out a phony ballot was going to satisfy a MAGA horde hungering to see Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in handcuffs.

He should have played up who he really is

Brnovich could have courted conservative Republican voters, the ones who are looking beyond Trump and the 2020 election.

He could have followed the lead of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defeated Trump-backed candidates peddling their stolen election schtick. He could have followed the lead of Glenn Youngkin, who kept his distance from Trump and still was elected governor of Virginia.

Brnovich is one of the state’s best-known public officials, a diehard conservative who could have found a way to win the Aug. 2 primary.

And, perhaps, those all-important moderate and independent voters who will decide this race in November. The ones who handed narrow victories to Kyrsten Sinema in 2018 and Mark Kelly in 2020.

Yet here he is, falling into third place in the primary behind Blake Masters and Jim Lamon, two far-right guys nobody could have picked out a lineup a year ago (and possibly not even now).

“The easy thing to do is do what he did, which is try and masquerade as a Trump conservative,” Coughlin said. “Clearly, his record shows that he hasn’t been that. He should have focused on his traditional conservatism rather than continue to try to run on issues that he wasn’t going win with.”

Blake Masters won't win against Mark Kelly

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 becasue he cannot credibly move to the middle where this race will be decided.

The saddest part is, Brnovich can’t even go out with his head held high. If House Speaker Rusty Bowers loses his state Senate race to his Trump-endorsed opponent, David Farnsworth, next month, he will at least know that he lost while standing on principle, having refused to give in to the election denial crowd.

Brnovich, meanwhile, is in free fall that offers no such upside – and the Republicans’ prospects of retaking the Senate seat are dropping right along with him.

I predict a hard landing.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mark Brnovich can blame himself for his U.S. Senate free fall