Venture capitalist Blake Masters has surged ahead of the pack in Arizona’s hotly contested Republican U.S. Senate primary race, according to a new poll conducted by Fabrizio, Lee, and Associates.
The poll shows Masters with a four point lead over Attorney General Mark Brnovich and businessman Jim Lamon, Breitbart News reported.
Masters, at 22 percent, leads both Brnovich and Lamon — both of whom are at 18 percent — by more than the poll’s 3.46 percent margin of error. Another candidate, Mick McGuire, is down at seven percent and Justin Olson is at two percent, while 34 percent are undecided.
The survey also found that former President Donald Trump remains extremely popular among Arizona Republicans, with an approval rating of 88 percent.
The poll was conducted for the pro-Masters Saving Arizona PAC May 17 to May 18, and surveyed 800 likely voters ahead of the forthcoming August 2 primary.
“We found that Blake Masters is quite popular with RPV [Republican primary voters] in as far as he is known and continues to lead in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate, buoyed by those who are aware of recent ads about him, underlying the efficacy of pro-Masters communications being delivered to the RPV electorate,” pollsters Tony Fabrizio, David Lee, and Travis Tunis wrote in a polling memo provided to Breitbart News.
A survey in March showed Masters in the lead but inside the margin of error. The new poll confirms Masters’ momentum in the Arizona GOP primary, and puts him in frontrunner status in the final months of the campaign. The Arizona primary election will be held on August 2.
Masters, 35, is the co-founder of Judicata, a technology startup that makes legal research and analytics software. He recently resigned from his leadership positions at the Thiel Foundation, and Thiel Capital, both created by billionaire Peter Thiel.
A year ago, Thiel reportedly donated $10 million to Saving Arizona, a super PAC supporting Masters. He contributed another $3.5 million this month, bringing his total investment in Masters to $13.5 million.
Masters is an unapologetic “America First” conservative who wants to see tougher immigration laws and more advanced technology to secure the southern U.S. border.
In a recent campaign ad, he stands in front of a Dept. of the Interior sign in the desert that warns of “smuggling and illegal immigration” in the area, and blasts the U.S. government for “throwing in the towel.”
“You know what this says to me? It says the government gave up,” Masters says. “This sign should be warning me about rattle snakes, not about criminal narco-terrorist organizations.” The candidate goes on to vow that he will “put a stop to this madness” if elected.
Democrats have given up on you. I never will. We’re going to put an end to smuggling and illegal immigration. pic.twitter.com/JrstTp0PNu
— Blake Masters (@bgmasters) May 5, 2022
“America First is here to stay,” he said in a recent appearance on Fox News’ Ingraham Angle. “President Trump launched this movement in 2016, and man, he upset the applecart. He upended the political establishment. I think he literally saved the country,” Masters told host Laura Ingraham.
Trump issued a statement a month ago saying he would be announcing his pick for the Arizona Senate race “in the not too distant future.”
Until recently, he was expected to endorse Masters, but the vaunted “GOP Kingmaker” has supposedly become gun-shy after last week’s Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate primary didn’t go as he’d hoped.
Unnamed Trump advisers told CNN that the former president might now be reluctant to make endorsements in others races without a clear-cut front-runner, including Senate primaries in Arizona, Alabama and Missouri.
“He’ll be a lot more selective for sure,” a former Trump campaign official told the news network.
The former president called into a Masters campaign event late last month and praised the candidate for being the only one talking about election-integrity issues. During the call, Trump blasted Brnovich, formerly the frontrunner, for taking “that middle path” in his recent “interim report,” on 2020 election fraud which made no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of any individuals. Brnovich’s report did note however that the “investigation is still developing in material ways.”
Trump said, “he found all sorts of things, but he didn’t want to do anything about it.”
Earlier this month, Masters was seen hanging out with “ultra MAGA” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at the premiere of Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules at Mar-a-Lago. The movie makes the case that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election through a coordinated illegal ballot trafficking operation across critical swing states.
Blake Masters and rep. MTG at #2000Mules premiere at Mar-a-Lago pic.twitter.com/CTU6cIp9cW
— Deb Heine, Dissident (@NiceDeb) May 4, 2022