Blake Masters: The Front-runner With Fringe Views
Like the Warnock-Walker race, Arizona’s Senate contest features a Democratic incumbent (Mark Kelly) who has been raising money at a blistering pace. And while Herschel Walker has struggled to make his viewpoint and background known, the Arizona GOP front-runner and Trump endorsee Blake Masters has been all too clearly expressive about his deeply reactionary, and perhaps even proto-fascist, worldview. Yes, some of the Masters utterances that have recently seen the light of day were made as a college undergraduate. But he’s only 35. And like his law-school classmate, mentor, co-author, boss, and chief campaign donor Peter Thiel, Masters’s views have remained so consistent that the earliest expressions cannot be dismissed as youthful indiscretions. As my colleague Jonathan Chait has noted, they are too consistent to explain away:
Masters, a protégé of Peter Thiel — the Silicon Valley billionaire and quasi libertarian who wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” — has floated a variety of insane and racist theories. He has straight-up said Donald Trump won the 2020 election and suggested January 6 was a false flag directed secretly by the FBI. He blamed gun violence on Black people. (“We do have a gun-violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence,” he said. “It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis, shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly.”) He has endorsed the “great replacement” theory. And he has echoed far-right positions on foreign policy, opposing American entry into World War II and blaming American entry into World War I on a secret plot directed by the “Houses of Morgan and Rothschild.”
The sort of politician who would traditionally be a fringe figure, Thiel’s money and Trump’s endorsement have made Masters the GOP front-runner, particularly since his main rivals, Mark Brnovich and Jim Lamon, have been frantically competing to out-MAGA the designated MAGA candidate.
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