Sarah Palin's loss should set off warning bells for Blake Masters and Kari Lake

Sarah Palin’s loss in Alaska should send a chill over Blake Masters and Kari Lake and the rest of Arizona’s Trump brigade.

Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Rep. Don Young lost by three points to Democrat Mary Peltola. This, in a state that Trump carried by 10 points in 2020.

Most Republican political consultants attribute Palin's loss to the state's use of ranked-choice voting rather than a traditional general election. But the results offer a window into what could happen in Arizona.

There have now been five special elections for congressional seats since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

Democrats have turned out in bigger-than-expected numbers in all five.

Democrats are fired up over abortion

The Washington Post reports that Democrats overperformed their 2020 margins in the five special elections since the Supreme Court declared that abortion is no longer the law of the land – and the biggest yet in Alaska.

Add in a fair number of moderate Republican and independent voters who deserted Palin and the result is a Democrat yanking away the state’s lone House seat from Republicans for first time in nearly 50 years.

This, in a year when Republicans are supposed to be poised to take over the House or the Senate, or possibly both.

And you wonder why Blake Masters is up to his elbows in rubber gloves, scrubbing away his hard-right views on abortion?

“Two months ago, everyone was talking about a red wave. Today, that has absolutely dissipated,” Republican political strategist Barrett Marson told me. “But where are we two months from now?”

Or more specifically 40 days from now, when early ballots start arriving in Arizona mailboxes.

Arizona's Senate race is no longer a toss-up

Marson still believes Republicans are poised to pick up two House seats – predicting that Republican Eli Crane will oust Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran in the state’s sprawling rural district and that Republican Juan Ciscomani will beat Democrat Kirsten Engel for southern Arizona’s open seat.

Masters’ prospects, however, seem to be dimming.

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate Leadership Fund cancelled $8 million in ad support for Masters, and it doesn’t appear that Masters’ $15 million fairy godfather, Peter Thiel, is flying in to drop more money on his protégé.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election-forecasting newsletter, moved Senate races in Arizona and Pennsylvania from toss-up to “leans Democratic.”

“I think you can stick a fork in Masters,” Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin told me, referring to his recent U-turn on abortion and Social Security. “I don’t think he’s capable of recovering. The biggest debate that’s going on is between Masters and himself. Who really is he?”

Coughlin said he thinks Palin might have eked out a win in a traditional head-to-head race against a Democrat. But the Trump slate in Arizona? Every one of the four could lose, he said.

“I just see the parallel being the negativity of the lack of appeal that the extremist candidates have,” he said. “They can’t get above the ceiling of more than 40% or so to vote for them.”

Masters is moderating. Lake, Finchem are not

The Supreme Court certainly was not their friend.

Abortion was a non-issue until June when the court’s Dobbs decision instantly turned Arizona into a state where abortion doctors soon could find themselves in prison. The state’s century-old law, which bans abortion even in cases of rape or incest, was put on hold in 1973 after Roe v. Wade was decided, but Attorney General Mark Brnovich has gone to court to revive it.

Even if a federal judge rules that abortion remains legal, it’s a given that it’ll soon be outlawed if Kari Lake becomes governor. Next year’s Legislature looks be more conservative than the current crew and Lake has said she supports the territorial law (though she also has separately said she would support exemptions in cases of rape or incest).

Planned Parenthood acts: Abortion care resumes in Tucson for now

While Blake spent August scrub-a-dubbing his website – the candidate who earlier called for a national abortion ban now says he’d be fine with allowing abortion until the 15th week – Lake has not budged from her staunch opposition to abortion.

Democrats Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs, meanwhile, support a woman’s right to abortion.

In the attorney general’s race, Kris Mayes has made abortion – and her belief that the state’s constitutional right to privacy would prevent her from being able to prosecute abortion cases – the centerpiece of her race. Republican Abe Hamadeh has vowed to enforce the century-old state abortion ban should it be reinstated.

Republican Mark Finchem also opposes abortion while Democrat Adrian Fontes supports abortion rights -- an issue that could become an issue given that the the secretary of state is first in the line of succession to become governor.

Not moving to the middle could cost the GOP

Aside from Masters, none of the Trump slate in Arizona has made a move to try to win over those all-important moderate and independent voters. It’s as if nobody told them the primary election is over.

That has Republican consultants shaking their heads, especially in light of Palin’s loss.

Granted, we don’t have ranked-choice voting in Arizona. But there’s a message in there from the voters who ranked the more moderate Republican, Nick Begich, as their first choice. Half of them ranked Palin as their second choice. But 29% of them chose Peltola and 21% didn’t make a second choice. That was enough to give the Democrat the win.

“It says that moderates don’t want the extremes,” Republican consultant Tyler Montague told me. “It says that Lake and Masters cannot ignore the middle because the middle will turn away from you.”

Translation: It’s entirely possible that Democrats could sweep the Trump slate in a year when everybody agreed Republicans could not lose – until they elected what are perhaps the most extreme candidates this state has ever seen.

“If (Republicans) Karrin Taylor Robson and Beau Lane had won the primary, we would not be having this conversation. It would barely be a race,” Marson said. “She (Robson) would have won, 55-45.

“We would go back to being a Republican state. Instead, we picked Trumpies and this state is not a Trump state, and that’s what it boils down to. Arizona is not a Trump state.”

Nor, apparently, is Alaska – not anymore.

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

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sarah Palin's loss should be a warning for Blake Masters, Kari Lake