Polls: Democrat Gallego leads in possible Arizona Senate matchup with Sinema

Next year’s U.S. Senate race in Arizona is expected to be among the most highly contested, but voters are still waiting to hear which candidates are in or out.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake haven’t announced whether they will run, but both were mentioned at a town hall meeting in Gilbert, Arizona, last week with Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego, a congressman representing Arizona’s 3rd district.

“Kari Lake’s got Trump, the other candidate’s got New York,” Gallego said, pointing out Lake’s ties to former President Donald Trump and insinuating Sinema is too close to lobbyists and special interests. “We outraised them. We have more than 100,000 donations for an average I think around 30-ish bucks.”

Gallego leads in a potential three-way matchup against Sinema and Lake, according to a poll released earlier this month from Noble Predictive Insights, or NPI, a Phoenix-based market research firm formerly called OH Predictive Insights.

The poll found Gallego with a 34% plurality ahead of Sinema at 26% and Lake at 25% with 18% undecided.

Sinema’s decision to leave the Democratic Party last year to become an independent opened the possibility of a three-way way race in a state that’s closely divided between Democrats, Republicans and independents. Unaffiliated voters now outnumber registered Republicans in Arizona for the first time since 2016, but the NPI poll showed independent voters are split ahead of next year’s vote.

“Rep. Gallego’s strength in head-to-head matchups shows his appeal across various demographic groups, making him a formidable candidate in this race,” NPI founder and chief of research Mike Noble said in a statement. “However, Sen. Sinema’s entry could create a more complex electoral landscape, given her ability to draw support from independents.”

Gallego also leads in other hypothetical three-way matchups against Sinema and Republicans’ 2022 U.S. Senate nominee Blake Masters or Pinal County’s Republican Sheriff Mark Lamb, who announced his U.S. Senate campaign in April.

Gallego criticized Sinema at the town hall last week, saying she was more worried about hedge fund mangers and lobbyists than everyday Arizonans, and he alluded to her when he mentioned sitting senators who “don’t want to focus on the issues of this ZIP code or the ZIP code where I live in South Phoenix. They’d rather focus on zip code in New York City or San Francisco Bay area.”

“Or Kari Lake,” Gallego added, “who wants to focus on the ZIP code on Mars, because I don’t know what’s going on there.”

Lake, a former TV news anchor in Phoenix, hasn’t conceded her loss in last year’s gubernatorial race to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Axios reported she’s planning to announce a run for U.S. Senate in October.

Gallego accused Lake of having no plan for the state’s growing water needs and criticized her for using the U.S.-Mexico border to “look like it’s a war zone.”

“At the end of the day, my major opponent is going to be Kari Lake,” he said. “She has no vision.”

Lake, who grew up in Iowa, was there Friday for the Iowa State Fair, where she milked a cow, served beer and signed Trump campaign hats that read “President Donald Trump, back to back Iowa Champ,” according to Daily Mail.

Related

• Independent voters now outnumber Republicans in Arizona

• Kari Lake defamation case: what could happen?

When President Joe Biden visited Arizona last week, Gallego greeted him at the airport, while Sinema was on hand for the ceremony designating Arizona’s newest national monument. Biden has Sinema to thank for her help negotiating passage of some his biggest bipartisan wins in the Senate, but to endorse her for reelection would leave his party’s candidate high and dry.

Biden handed Sinema the pen he used to sign the designation at the national monument ceremony, but during his remarks, he didn’t offer any words of support that might be used in future campaign ads other than to mention her by name, while other elected officials got shoutouts, like Hobbs, who Biden said was “doing a heck of a job.”