Mark Kelly or Blake Masters? In a tight U.S. Senate race, all bets are off

Corrections & Clarifications: The editorial has been updated to further clarify Blake Masters' change in his abortion stance.

Sen. Mark Kelly says he isn’t worried about polls that suggest the momentum is shifting toward Blake Masters, the 36-year-old Republican whom many had written off.

But Masters’ surge is yet another sign that all bets are off in this year’s midterm election where multiple undercurrents are converging.

Voters are angry at President Biden over the economy, which is hard to dispute since everything is costing more from housing to groceries to gas. Not all of that is Biden’s fault. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a deluge of problems, including a supply chain breakdown and companies jacking up prices just because they can.

But Republicans have pinned that on Biden and by default the rest of Democrats, including Kelly. They’re also beating the drumbeat of a southern border out of control, drowning out Democrats’ warnings about losing abortion rights.

At stake: Who controls the U.S. Senate

Masters hasn’t exactly been the best or most convincing messenger on economic, border security or even cultural-war issues. But as Politico noted recently, he’s riding on the coattails of Kari Lake, a more formidable Republican seeking the governorship.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report this week changed its Senate race rating from “leaning Democrat” to “toss-up,” pointing to polls that suggest Masters is closing in on Kelly.

The prospect of losing Arizona’s Senate race should send shock waves among local and national Democrats fighting to maintain their razor-thin control of the U.S. Senate.

Kelly or Masters? See which Senate candidate is your closest match

Kelly is one of their best bets for maintaining congressional power. The former astronaut garnered enough support to defeat the Republican favorite Martha McSally in 2020 and now has a solid two-year record to showcase.

He says he understands Americans’ anxiety over the economy and insists he has no qualms standing up to Biden on that or any other issue, including soaring gas prices.

“I’ve told the president you’ve got to do more. You’ve got to release petroleum from the strategic reserve and we have to increase oil and gas production,” Kelly told The Arizona Republic’s editorial board. (Kelly requested a separate interview from Masters, who said he would not meet unless the two met jointly.)

The economy is a key issue in this race

Kelly pushes back on pinning inflation squarely on the Democrats, noting, for instance, that high meat prices also could be due to the fact that four companies dominate the meat-packing industry, bolstering “the possibility of (price) collusion.”

In other words, price gouging. That contention isn’t necessarily resonating with voters who are inclined to blame the party in power. Republicans have adeptly capitalized on voters’ anger over paying more for almost everything.

Masters was underwater just a few weeks ago. His former tech billionaire boss, Peter Thiel, and other donors had stepped back on funding his campaign.

Yet Masters is riding Lake’s popularity, and a strong debate performance may have helped reenergize his campaign around the economy and border security.

The Trump-endorsee has gotten a huge boost recently from a MAGA PAC and Thiel, who has pledged $5 million to help him through the finish line.

Little overlap on issues like abortion, border

Kelly and Masters are very different candidates with little overlap on key issues:

• On abortion: Masters supported a fetal personhood law during the primary election that would ban abortion nationwide, only to soften his stance in the general.  Masters’ campaign staff disputed this characterization of his stance, pointing to news articles where he explained he supports federal personhood law that bans abortions after the beginning of the third trimester. Masters campaign scrubbed some references to his position on his campaign website, prompting news reporting that he softened his stance after the primary. He now says he backs a ban on abortion in Arizona after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Kelly, meanwhile, supports a bill to make federal law out of the protections in Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights ruling that the Supreme Court recently gutted.

• On border security: Kelly supports comprehensive immigration reform and tighter border security. He touts legislation offering $1 billion for surveillance technology, barriers and more border patrol agents. But Masters says that’s not enough. He pledges to finish Trump’s border wall, triple the number of agents at the border and deport immigrants faster.

• On the economy: Masters proposes reducing government spending to fight inflation. He says he would encourage domestic oil and natural gas production, including fracking. Kelly supports increasing domestic oil and microchip production and has sponsored legislation to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax.

What the choice between Masters, Kelly means

Kelly touts his involvement in securing additional money for Western water infrastructure and the passage of his CHIPS Act, which would bolster domestic semiconductor production.

He promotes a provision in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices and cap insulin prices and out-of-pocket prescription costs for seniors.

Prior to the election, the senator’s stances on more controversial issues were often a mystery. He prefers to work behind the scenes. But Kelly does have a legislative record to follow. He regularly votes with Democrats on key issues but is willing to cross the aisle and negotiate with his party to make bills more palatable for moderate Republicans.

Blake Masters is even more of an enigma.

He touted extreme views on abortion only to soften his rhetoric after he won the primary. He hawked the narrative of the 2020 election being rigged, characterizing it as a “rotten mess,” only to scrub those statements from his campaign website later.

That is the choice before voters – between an incumbent who likes to bury himself in the weeds of policy and a brash newcomer who, for all his criticism of how things are, hasn’t offered many concrete ideas to improve them.

It is a stark choice, indeed.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic’s editorial board.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mark Kelly or Blake Masters? In a tight Senate race, all bets are off