McSally has Now Lost Both Arizona Senate Seats

by Pa Rock
Former Arizonan

Four years ago the Republican Party controlled both US Senate seats in Arizona, and had been in control of those seats for more than twenty years.  But then Donald Trump happened and the Republican hold on those two Senate seats quickly destabilized.

Jeff Flake, the junior Republican senator from Arizona, had been critical of Trump during his run for the presidency, and Trump was not pleased.  After assuming the presidency, Trump turned his sights on Flake and began disparaging the senator by calling him names like "weak" and "toxic."  Trump's intent was to encourage some Arizona Trump Republican to challenge Flake in his 2018 primary race.  When Kelli Ward, a failed GOP congressional candidate in Arizona, took Trump's bait and announced that she would challenge Flake, the senator decided that he would avoid a likely primary defeat and announced that he would not seek reelection.

In speaking to the Arizona Republic newspaper, Flake said:

“There may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.  The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take.”

Speaking on the Senate floor, Flake had this message for Donald Trump as well as members of his own party:

“Politics can make us silent when we should speak, and silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to.  I will not be complicit.”

But Kelli Ward did not mind being complicit, nor did Congresswoman Martha McSally who jumped into the GOP race and ultimately became the Republican candidate to replace Senator Flake.  McSally wound up losing that senate race to fellow congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat - but then Arizona Governor Doug Ducey appointed McSally to fill the seat of Republican Senator John McCain who had recently passed away.  McCain's seat would be filled by a vote of the people in November of 2020, but McSally would serve as the US Senator in the interim. 

And, of course, two days ago McSally lost McCain's senate seat to retired astronaut, Mark Kelly, an anti-gun activist and husband of former Arizona congresswoman and shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords.

To be fair to McSally, her inability to hold onto the senate seat that was gifted to her by Governor Ducey may have had more to do with Donald Trump than it did with her own failings as a senator.  

There was no love lost between Senator McCain and Donald Trump.  Trump had questioned whether being a prisoner of war made one a war "hero" in a 60 Minutes interview in 1999, and in 2016 when  Trump's vulgar comments about grabbing women by their genitals became public, McCain announced that he could not support Trump's presidential bid.  Their fight continued into Trump's presidency when McCain cast the deciding vote in the Senate not to dismantle Obamacare, a move that made Trump furious.  When Senator McCain died shortly after that, Trump was angry that the White House flag had been lowered to half-staff, and had it quickly raised. 

McCain was dead, and Trump's tantrum should have subsided - but Donald Trump can never let anything rest, not even the dead - and over the next couple of years he still would occasionally lash out at the deceased senator from Arizona.   And then this year in an article in The Atlantic, it was revealed that Trump had referred to America's war dead as "suckers" and "losers."  Cindy McCain, the widow of veteran John McCain as well as the daughter and mother of veterans, took great offense at those remarks from a draft-dodger.

Cindy McCain and Jeff Flake, two prominent Arizona Republicans, each endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020 - and those endorsements were a couple of additional nails in the coffin of Martha McSally's short-lived senate career.

So now Arizona will have two Democratic United States senators for the first time since just before the Eisenhower administration began in January of 1953, and the state has Donald John Trump to thank for that surprising turn of events.  With friends like Trump, who needs enemies!

Great work, Arizona!